I remember beating it without using guides but man, that took probably 5 or 6 hours longer than it should have because of all the doing random stuff in places I was stuck. I also had a spiral notebook full of notes from this game. I wrote down everything, tried deciphering the tips, etc.

I did not know about the Nintendo Power guide till years later when I found several issues at a yard sale. That would have saved me a ton of time. Lol.

It would have probably been a lot easier with a proper localization as well. I need to replay this one using one of those patches. It cannot be as hard as it was with Konami's official translation. Lol

There are a ton of games patches over on that ROMHacking.net website, not just translation updates. Some get pretty interesting - changing various characters between games, swapping enemies, or whole levels, etc.