My timing method is as follows:
-Begin the frame that the first cutscene disappears (you gain control during the "loading screen" after that)
-End timing the frame that the screen disappears after killing the final boss.

Big shoutouts as always to everybody at SDA for everything they do for us! I need to give extra big thanks to all the other Rad Raygun runners who helped me with routing and general techniques: Sir Fist, ozzy88, and MilsTailsPrower.

Rad Raygun is a game I never heard about until I saw Sir Fist's submission on The Sunday Sequence Break. I was immediately interested, but only had like 20 MS points or something and didn't want to spend $20 just to spend $0.50 worth in points. After I bought Battleblock Theatre though, I had some leftover and decided to finally buy this game. Best $1 I ever spent.

This is an incredibly broken game. Half the walls have holes in them, and most of those will crash the game. With the air backdash you can superjump and infinite jump, which basically tears this game wide open. The superjump can force you into/through almost any ceiling in the game. I'd try to explain more than that but there's no point. It's super broken.

This game has a built-in stage select, so you can go the final stage literally the same second you gain control. Because of this, the Rad Raygun runners decided to run the "all bosses" category, which plays through every stage. We can still stage select, but we must finish every level.

The fastest way to beat this game is to stage select to Berlin immediately to get the air backdash, and then stage select to level 1 (Washington DC) again and play through the game as normal from there. Air backdash lets us skip basically the entire first level, so it is definitely worth the detour.

Movement is very simple. Whenever possible, I want to alternate sliding and backdashing on the ground. Whenever there are enemies or blocks on the ground in my way, I'll just infinite air backdash over them. That's all. The only thing to be careful of is backdashing through a screen transition, because the game usually gets locked there and scrolls between screens for like 5 transitions. Whenever I am approaching a screen transition, I try to make sure I am always sliding through it. The most awkward part is that there is a substantial delay after every slide/backdash if you let it finish. If you press down mid-slide/backdash, you can do it again immediately. I try to do this, but the controls are super awkward for this sometimes and just flat-out refuse to cancel.

That's all. I'll do some short level comments I suppose:

Washington DC:

Movement is awkward until I get the slide because I only have air backdash. I try to use it to gain a bit of time, but it's pretty picky. After the air backdash you do a brief jump. I use this to climb the ledges at the beginning, but it didn't go high enough this time for some reason, which threw off the bullet pattern I like. That is the biggest execution error of the run. The rest of the stage goes fine.

Irafghanistan:

This is my favorite stage. I really enjoy the music, and it is packed full of neat tricks. This is a really good playthrough of the level. I didn't make any real mistakes and I got really good boss luck. If I got a *perfect* pattern on the boss I could save ~4 seconds (if he transforms immediately and fires twice in place), but that has only ever happened to me twice. I wasn't going to bother trying for it. Not worth it for this game.

There's one minor improvement that I can't figure out. Sometimes when you airdash to the right at the start of the boss room (like I do here) you will zip like half a screen length to the right. It'd obviously save time but I can't figure out how it works.

Berlin:

This is a really hard stage, but I nailed it. I want to do a superjump at the start but it needs to be the lowest possible superjump. If I superjump a little higher, I would trigger two extra screen transitions. Immediately after that, I need to infinite jump across that one screen without falling. If the screen scrolls down, I die. After going through the upper right block, I need to fall down the other side of the wall and then infinite jump back up to the 2nd highest block to actually trigger the screen transition. Sometimes it takes like 4-5 attempts. I got really lucky here.

The boss fight is tremendously difficult to do quickly, but I nailed it here. I've had attempts where I "ran out of ammo" somehow. Like, I couldn't fire the gun anymore. Idk if the bullets went through the wall and just kept on traveling (can only have 3 active bullets at a time), but it's no good. I'm really happy with this stage.

Chernobyl:

I had two extra screen transitions at the tower, but the rest of the stage was really strong. I got a bit unlucky with the boss and had to deal with one extra attack, but this luck is still very above average. This boss is a pain in the ass. You can only kill him after his charge attack, I think. If you reduce his health to 0, he will just heal. It is really silly.

Moscow:

There is a lot of interesting stuff in this stage. My route is significantly different than the route Sir Fist and the others used. I infinite jump across the entire top of the level and then sneak through a wall on the other side of the level. It's a pretty solid route. I unfortunately have to deal with a few extra ladders as a result. Ladders are awful in this game because they're hard to grab while climbing and you can't drop off of them easily because you jump so high. I have to rely on some tricks like getting damage boosted off a ladder or jumping off by having a fake ledge in the wall prevent me from landing on the floor again. The maneuvers in this stage are much harder than they look. Haha. And much harder than they should be.

I air dashed into a wall at one point, but otherwise this level is really strong. This was a IL PB for me by 1 second, which is impressive. The only improvement I wish I could've nailed was the final boss fight. After killing the second form, I try to scroll back one screen and stand in the nook between the two slide-channels. The screen tries to push me back constantly though. If I am very lucky, sometimes it won't scroll back and I can stand there. When that happens, you can just mash the fire button to the left and kill the final form as he lowers down. Even though he is off screen, his spawn is not delayed at all (everything resumes during screen transitions; you can see this during his death animation) and he can still be hit by bullets. This method is 1.5-2 seconds faster than fighting him in the proper boss chamber. Seeing as it is luck-based and my luck in this run was already extraordinary, I'm not too bummed that I couldn't do it this time.

There's one more improvement to this stage that I didn't even attempt. You can do a zip through a wall near the end and infinite jump OoB for awhile before coming through the floor. It skips like 4 screen transitions and several enemies. Unfortunately, it is totally luck-based. Even with a proper setup, I was only like 20% with it. If I get it first try, it'd save like...2 seconds. So yea, there's that. I'm definitely not trying it though.

Conclusion:

This is a really fun game to play, but running it is pretty frustrating. The menu is super clunky and the ladders are really frustrating to deal with. The run basically comes down to boss RNG at this point, and the optimal patterns are so insanely rare I don't even care to try for it. This run can probably be improved by 10 seconds with perfect RNG on all bosses and similar execution to my run, but I am definitely not going to try for it. Not worth it for me.

This run was done on the 4th of July. What better way to celebrate our independence than to prevent nuclear catastrophe? :P