Yup, the timing feels a lot better. But let's check the tale of the tape:
https://youtu.be/Nl3_oyxhlmsFirst off, I cut this out, but there is still the issue where there is a short delay before the last ship boosts out of the hangar, and that is not on the original cartridge.
As before, I cut both videos on the frame right before the vertical barn door wipe starts (interestingly, there are already some minor timing differences on the wipe itself). I went back to not touching the controller for this one, as actually playing the game introduces too many variables.
The most interesting thing to me is that I was previously judging how far off the two are by when the ship that kills me on the original cartridge goes offscreen. The sync between the two videos is frame-perfect here!
But obviously there are still some accuracy issues, as the Arwing has veered a little further to the left on the v08 firmware, so it hasn't taken as much damage from hitting the central tower, and it takes one more hit before dying. Also, at various moments before this, the timing is off by up to a half-second or so, and also note that the ground-based enemy fires off three plasma balls on the original cart, but only two on SD2SNES.
Still, this is a LOT closer.
It's obviously still nowhere near as accurate as the Cx4 support is, but would I rather play this than the SNES Classic? For the first time, I think the answer is yes, because it feels about right now. And mentioning this makes me sort of want to see what happens when I run the same test with the SNES Classic. I guess stay tuned?