So this is a game I stumbled upon while going through NES games on emulator a while back. At the time, the game didn't grab me that hard, but I recalled enjoying it when I stumbled across the TAS, and so these runs happened.

Cody is the character I finished first by a significant margin. His standing string is the most useful of the characters, and his fireball special he gains at level 4 can be a useful way to finish off enemies at a distance. The biggest advantage of Cody's standing string being so good is that it makes it easy to manage enemies' health so that I can kill them with the 3rd knee bash from Cody's throw. The EXP you gain per kill is based on what attack you finish an enemy off with, and the 3rd knee bash gives 6 EXP, as does the fireball he gains at level 4. The rest of his attacks build 4 or less EXP and so are sub-optimal for grinding. It's important to grind EXP quickly because you do more damage with levels, with a HUGE damage spike when you reach level 6.

Otherwise, the run is basically just rolling against the game's pretty extreme RNG. What food drops out of barrels (if any) is random, and eating food at full health gives EXP instead of health. What enemies spawn, which side of the screen they spawn on, and how much health they spawn with is all random, so some mistakes are tolerated just because the spawns worked out to be faster regardless.