One think I noticed is that before, I had only played the PC version, and I couldn't believe how much harder this one was. Also, I didn't use any savestates or anything like that, because I wanted to see if I could do it from start to finish. I got very lucky on this playthrough, because on my previous attempts, I always messed up on either the shark or the lily pads. The try right before that one, I actually was coming back from killing Zaks and pressed jump to late on a lily pad and lost my last life.