So I finally beat this game, and it was a blast. Never had so much fun being frustrated before! I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves difficult sidescrollers. And awesome music.
I've decided that I'm going to stop punishing my blog with all this neglect (a good years worth!). It looks like it has learned its lesson, so maybe I'll make an effort to start posting again. My other "blog" is, after all, becomingly increasingly pathetic. SO I'm going to try to balance out my imaginary literary scale a bit.
Also, I apparently saved a handful of drafts before the dry-spell.. So I have something to go on. Thank you, overly-zealous past-self!