Hello and welcome to the community. Im fairly new myself and ive had a blast playing through the games. I totally get your frustration with MoF. It's the first game without an option to let you start with 5 lives so clearing it is pretty hard. Ive 1 cc'd every prior game and still havent beaten the final boss yet, but i made it my mission to only move on with a game once i 1cc it, and im very stubborn so... ive not played anything past it yet, but i one day i will beat kaneko. Although i think the rest of the stages arent too bad. I once got a run with 1 or 2 lives left to stage 6. And stage 4 is easier than it looks, much more than earlier games. if you just stay at the bottom and focus on surviving rather than picking up items. You'll see the patterns to dodge pretty quickly.