thanks for the info everyone.
@zengeku - yeah if one wanted to cheat one's way to a perfect game like that it'd definitely make such a feat possible. personally i don't see the fun in it (though i wouldn't mind watching a replay for kicks) cuz i'm just trying to get better in a more efficient manner...
/begin rant
playing through all of stage 3 just to practice hong's final spell card is just a huge time sink. prolly worse is patchy... i get impatient getting up to her for practice, inevitably get sloppy and will have some incredibly stupid death before even getting to her... which makes me frustrated... and do worse than usual on her, totally nullifying any practice time i get -_-
i guess the annoying part is that, yeah, true, i can perfect my play on the regular part of the stage - but once i'm getting up to the boss without deaths/bombs, it doesn't directly help me achieve my goal of a 1cc! at this point the practice has added an extra hardness that has nothing to do with skill, it's just time.
/end rant
ah well, guess i just need to suck less and get better faster.