Wario Land 4 - The Curious Factory [S-Hard] score run (16590)
Channel: Michael McKenzie
Date: 2014-11-13

In a wonderful twist of fate, the blocks that block off the runback area of the stage until you hit the frog switch are actually inset one tile in from the wall above. This allows you to get one extra heart before hitting the frog switch, which despite looking fairly innocuous, is actually huge for the route.

Here's why: There's only five hearts in the first half of the stage, so without collecting any enemies your hearts would be at 6 upon hitting the frog switch. However, the room before with the spearmen is inaccessible at any point after leaving it, so you have to take all those six enemies, leaving room for only one more. The frog switch room is covered in enemies, four of which are in really awkward spots on the conveyor belts (watch how long I take to deal with them), and all but one of them would have to be killed on the time limit, which is a very tight 2:30. There's no way it would work, so you would either miss out on some enemies or have to fill up the gauge an extra time, losing 800 coins.

And yes, there is another heart at the bottom of the first room in the runback. However, once you collect it, you can't get back up to the top of the room, and you can't get out at the bottom because it's blocked off by frog blocks, and the ceiling there is only three tiles high (you need a four or five tile high ceiling to zip). Additionally, you'd have to leave a lot more enemies alone in the early part of the stage, which would make the time limit even more difficult.