Well, just finished the run, and on my first try! I did end up bringing in a handful of items, but I only ended up using one POW Block outside of what I got in the Pit.

Some various thoughts:
- Mega Rush P was hardly missed, no joke. It made the 20s considerably harder, though (which were incidentally the site of my only two failed runs to date). Pretty much any enemies that I would have used it on ended up being bearable anyway.
- Heart Finder was sorely missed in the 60s for bringing back partners; that set of floors was far and away the hardest without partners to help me grind out harder battles.
- Item Hog and Pretty Lucky #2 were missed anout as much as Attack FX Y. Don't kniw if the drop rate was unusually high or what, but I never ended up short on items, and was very conservative with what I did have. Likewise, I never really needed an evasion boost.
- I forgot to use FP Drain, so I don't know how the final fight would have gone with it.
- Power Plus was just sick; being able to do 2-2 jumps and 6-power Fire Drives was completely invaluable throughout the run.
- Average luck with enemy sets, but they had a TON of held items. Nothing terribly debilitating; but the two sets of Elite Wizzerds had four or five items between them.
- No Fright Masks used, only three or four Movers, but obviously no Amazy kills, so I ended up at a reasonable level 23 this time.
- The 60s were absolutely hideous, with a ton of fighting at 10-15 Mario HP; conversely, the 80s and 90s went absolutely perfectly. I Superguarded roughly 30% of Mario hits by Dark Craws, but upwards of 80% on all of the 80s (I think I had a run of twelve superguards on Dark Bristles alone).
- Two Last Stands P = win. I kept Goombella alive tons longer than I would have otherwise.

The run went really great overall, much better than the one I have on my YouTube channel. Considering doing some live commentary, but I don't know. Three and a half hours+ of commentary could get repetitive pretty fast.

Sounds like you're going to have a rough time regardless if you're going to do it without Mega Rush P. But, the Power Plus should come in handy for extra powerful Fire Drives. It won't help too much for Power Bounces.

FP Drain on Bonetail isn't a bad idea, though, you're taking an inherently longer battle in the name of keeping FP high. Add Happy Flower and Pity Flower, and you should be able to have at least 2FP for nearly every turn. On the other hand, without FP Drain and with Power Plus, you can do 1 damage with a normal hammer attack, and get a stylish for more SP.

Well, I finished the whole game on Hard Mode today; the difficulty curve was surprisingly static for the first seven worlds, with the change in my number of lives being largely based on individual levels rather than a general increase in difficulty.  At least until the latter half of World 7; I started losing lives like crazy right near the end of World 7 and eventually got a Game Over in 8-1 or 8-2, with several continues afterwards.  World 9 in particular wasn't nearly as easy to 100%, especially without extra players, and the whole game felt fresher the second time around. 

As a side note, I kind of wish I hadn't found out the actual way to get the first coin in 9-5 and the third(?) in 9-7; finding out about the latter was especially disappointing, after perfecting that crazy jump off of the falling Monty Moles.

I'm midway through world 7 at the moment.  I finally had to go and replace the background music there, as the blandness was getting to me, especially since the levels are pretty long.  Levels 7-5 and 7-6 sound awesome with the Battlerock Galaxy music, at any rate.  Also, 7-3 was really fun; anything with wrap-around edges is typically a great level.  Worlds 5 and 6 I didn't care for much, excepting a couple of the early levels in each.  World C was amazing, as well, and I wish world E had been a bit longer.

Finally fixed some more balance issues, and I released a pretty snazzy PDF guide that shows the stats of everything in the game and such!  Be sure to check out version 1.5 if you haven't played before!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AilOobLLxfE - Changelist / release trailer