EDIT: Looks like at the very least he used savestates. It's not a TAS because a lot of those jumps look so sub-optimal for such. But yeah, It's not as great as it's titled, much less "Perfect."
Likely separate categories, but I'm not sure. Even a run this "good" is only a couple minutes less than a glitchless run. I guess it's up to the runner, partly, but if someone does an out-of-bounds run like this, the requirements are going to be pretty strenuous.
depends on the rules you set for it. i'm not sure about sda's rules. they may have two separate categories, but i'm not sure.
Door glitch usage is a strange topic at sda. I believe that it may be used to bypass a ceiling and end up above where you started glitching (like going up to where the ice beam is in norfair w/o highjump), but not to wrap all the way around the screen and end up below (like getting the ice beam in brinstar).
I only had time to watch part one and can say that this definately doesn't earn a title like "The Best". The runner obviously didn't do much research into enemy manipulation. Game play was pretty good but I also suspect emulation and savestates. Whenever I post something that was done on an emulator I make a point of giving a full report of emulator used, save states, and whether it was done in real time.
Edit: After seeing some of the missle pick-ups I would say either he's the luckiest person on the planet or there was indeed some emulation here. I have been playing this game non-stop for about 2 weeks working on my up+a warping run and have yet to get that lucky. Example: he has just 1 missle when going to get the bombs and skips all the enemies till the last 2. They miraculously both give missles? Fishy.
Yeah they definitely make you invincible, but if you're also rolling around as you do so, you tend to bounce at inconvenient angles or have a really tough time timing your drops so that you're constantly bombing. It seems like you can only have 3 out at a time, and you have to have 0 vertical momentum.