Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
The Results Screen you get at the end of a Cuphead level might seem very unassuming: but it's actually a surprisingly difficult and impactful part of the Speedrun! This video will cover all its intricacies: what makes it so difficult and complex, and some of the discussion that has generated around it in the Speedrunning community.
Some audio taken from Pixabay (DRAGON-STUDIO)
Shoutouts to myekul.com as usual.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:46 Scoreboard Breakdown
04:34 Approaches
08:08 Community Discussions
08:58 Added Depth
13:46 Conclusion
Corrections:
13:46 It looks like this mechanic was further changed on Cuphead version 1.3, and it will now simply calculate the HP Bonus based on remaining health. This means that Double KOs are the only available method to get 0/3 HP Bonus on later versions of the game.
Music used:
Cuphead - Inkwell Isle 4
Cuphead - Dramatic Fanatic
Cuphead - Fiery Frolic
Cuphead - Porkrind's Shop
Cuphead - Floral Fury
Cuphead - Inkwell Isle 3
Cuphead - Ruse Of An Ooze
Cuphead - Bourree on the Board
Cuphead - Inkwell Isle 1
Speedruns Channel: youtube.com/@SBDWolfSpeedruns
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sbdwolf.bsky.social
Twitch channel: twitch.tv/sbdwolf
The Results Screen you get at the end of a Cuphead level might seem very unassuming: but it's actually a surprisingly difficult and impactful part of the Speedrun! This video will cover all its intricacies: what makes it so difficult and complex, and some of the discussion that has generated around it in the Speedrunning community.
Some audio taken from Pixabay (DRAGON-STUDIO)
Shoutouts to myekul.com as usual.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:46 Scoreboard Breakdown
04:34 Approaches
08:08 Community Discussions
08:58 Added Depth
13:46 Conclusion
Corrections:
13:46 It looks like this mechanic was further changed on Cuphead version 1.3, and it will now simply calculate the HP Bonus based on remaining health. This means that Double KOs are the only available method to get 0/3 HP Bonus on later versions of the game.
Music used:
Cuphead - Inkwell Isle 4
Cuphead - Dramatic Fanatic
Cuphead - Fiery Frolic
Cuphead - Porkrind's Shop
Cuphead - Floral Fury
Cuphead - Inkwell Isle 3
Cuphead - Ruse Of An Ooze
Cuphead - Bourree on the Board
Cuphead - Inkwell Isle 1
Speedruns Channel: youtube.com/@SBDWolfSpeedruns
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sbdwolf.bsky.social
Twitch channel: twitch.tv/sbdwolf
![Castlevania II: Simons Quest Any% Speedrun (JP FDS) in 4:03/3:43 loadless [Former World Record]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U5bPkir5tdg/mqdefault.jpg "Castlevania II: Simons Quest Any% Speedrun (JP FDS) in 4:03/3:43 loadless [Former World Record]
This was an unbelievable run which I got as my second attempt of the first day back after a year or so. Im not gonna try to beat this any time soon. Good luck to whoever decides to.
This is the Japanese version of Castlevania 2 (known as Dracula II: Noroi no Fuuin) which came out on the Famicom Disk System add-on for the Famicom. It includes a variety of extra glitches useful for speedrunning, which can be used to beat the game in under 5 minutes. Heres a breakdown of the route:
- Buy holy water;
- Go to Veros Town and try to get the Night Gitch. It involves going through a screen transition on the same frame itd turn night, which skips the text box and keeps the daylight. This saves 7 seconds.
- Take a death off of the eyeball on the same frame as a screen transition. This delays the death and respawns Simon in an unstable, white-textured, glitched version of Ondol Town.
- Hope the game doesnt crash while trying to floor drop down (its important to not press any buttons on the controller during the loading time or itll guarantee a crash), then void out to the left. This respawns Simon in a glitch world.
- Navigate through the glitch world to Draculas castle.
- Attempt the Hexadrop (double floor drop followed by the quad drop).
- Kill Dracula with two frame perfect Holy water tosses (the last active frame of the holy water is glitched and deals 185 HP of damage, enough to kill Dracula in two hits if nailed).
With this run, Night Glitch and Hexadrop are now mandatory for a world record run. This makes it at least 6 mandatory frame perfect tricks (some floor drops during the Hexadrop didnt feel frame perfect so they arent being counted, but I never really tested that).
Time without loads is 3:43.217. Time without loads is used because the Famicom Disk System has inconsistent loading times, so they are removed for fairness.
I played on Wii Virtual Console. This lost me about a second from a slightly lower framerate, but it was the best option available to me. WiiVC has very short loading times compared to original hardware, keeps the sound intact (unlike an Everdrive/Powerpak on an unmodded NES) and has low input delay (unlike emulator which also emulates the long loading times and disk side switching).
Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/sbdwolf")
![[Former World Record] All Bosses Speedrun - 25:44 - Legacy, Expert, Solo - Cuphead](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UDC0ECe3HRI/mqdefault.jpg "[Former World Record] All Bosses Speedrun - 25:44 - Legacy, Expert, Solo - Cuphead
Got the sub-26. A few time losses but Im pretty happy with the time for this category right now.
The one major trick Im missing is the Hilda Glitch, which Ive found a decent setup for but it doesnt save nearly as much time as on Regular (my best time with the glitch is 1:11 so far, which is only 4 seconds faster than my best glitchless time which is 1:15), and its in addition harder and much more rng dependent. So I decided to skip this trick for now, might implement it in the future if that time save becomes important. But for now, Im moving on.
My controls:
Jump: Right Bumper
Shoot: Left Trigger
Ex Shoot: A
Switch Weapon: X
Lock: Left Bumper
Dash: Y")
![[Former World Record] All Flags Speedrun - 35:18 - Current Patch, Regular, Solo - Cuphead](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VNKsFceAzVY/mqdefault.jpg "[Former World Record] All Flags Speedrun - 35:18 - Current Patch, Regular, Solo - Cuphead
If youve seen an All Flags run on Current Patch you might have known the category as a 2-part run where you play through the first half of the game normally, you buy whetstone from the shop, and finish the game trying to make use of that charm as much as possible. This not only generally saves time on bosses but also made the Beppi Glitch more consistent and allowed to perform Octopus Skip in Perilous Piers which saves around 10 seconds.
This run did none of that! Ever since the Lobber optimizations Ive wondered if just using the All Bosses strats was better off. The whetstone IGTs are deceptive in a sense that every time you parry, the In-Game Timer on the results screen gets paused for 0.16 seconds, so even though you can get much better IGTs with whetstone, when going by loadless time it actually doesnt save much compared to Lobber strats and Luigi Swaps on ground and plane stages respectively.
By forgoing whetstone a lot of time is saved between skipping coins, overworld movement and not shopping.
One downside is that I cant do Octupus Skip since I dont have the heart charm, so the two routes are still pretty close together in terms of viability.
Jason2890 is going to keep using whetstone so Im really looking forward to seeing how the two routes compare.
(And to clarify, Im not the first one to use this route, I had the idea originally but Grondious ran this route before I did and he even held World Record for while)
My controls:
Jump: Right Bumper
Shoot: Left Trigger
Ex Shoot: A
Switch Weapon: X
Lock: Left Bumper
Dash: Y")
![[Former World Record] One Gun Roundabout - 33:09 - Regular, Solo - Cuphead](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VltQzaALBPI/mqdefault.jpg "[Former World Record] One Gun Roundabout - 33:09 - Regular, Solo - Cuphead
An ok run for an ok category.
My controls:
Jump: Right Bumper
Shoot: X
Ex Shoot: Left Trigger
Switch Weapon: A
Lock: Left Bumper
Dash: Y")
![[Former World Record] All Flags Speedrun - 30:04 - Legacy, Regular, Solo - Cuphead](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WHy7MQQh4ng/mqdefault.jpg "[Former World Record] All Flags Speedrun - 30:04 - Legacy, Regular, Solo - Cuphead
Apologies for the choppiness.
Not entirely satisfied with this run as I had a few execution mistakes, but Its still really solid. Sub 30 is close!
My controls:
Jump: Right Bumper
Shoot: Left Trigger
Ex Shoot: A
Switch Weapon: X
Lock: Left Bumper
Dash: Y")
