Alright, Gaia is finished. Unfortunately I didn't end up being too into this one -- the first half was decent, pretty easy to read and it felt good to make fast progress, but the second half felt very unpolished. A lot of the setups feel unwieldy, or like they just barely work. It got to the point where I was occasionally wondering if the game had any playtesters, but there were four of them in the credits. I also felt like a lot of the time the game couldn't decide whether it wanted you to be going fast or slow, and a lot of sections ended up being slow. In the end it was fine, I'm happy to have cleared another hack, but I don't think I'd recommend it.
I started SMW Remade from Memory with my Mario-loving (but non-kaizo-playing) best friend last night, and we had a really good time. It really is like the uncanny valley of vanilla SMW. We flew through a lot of the game but got brickwalled at Roy's Castle, which is both much harder and meaner than the original level. Kind of an unpleasant difficulty spike, but overall I'm loving the hack. Will probably continue through the rest on my own.
Also, Snake, I just watched that last clip you posted, and holy shit that is some gameplay, my dude. Well done!