Well I guess I must address the WR elephant in the room...
Evidence suggests that the top 3 Major Havoc Arcade WR's may have benefited from abusing the Level 13 hand/finger trick with the Rev 2 romset, which brought up on this thread recently...
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthre...l=1#post887137
If nobody can tell me what final level each of the top three finished on to help us verify whether or not Level 13 was looped this way then I am leaning towards these being suspect submissions that somehow got through without anyone asking too many questions about them (like I-Robot and Black Widow cough cough). I hope these players or those that know them and any details speak up someday to clear this up hopefully. Isn't it odd that nobody knows what level they ended on for such legendary scores?
You earn about 120-140k per cycle of final levels 13-16 that repeat forever. Although there is less oxygen for levels 17-20+ so it may be lower than that. This game I got 1,085,974 points at the end of Level 16. Subtract that from the 950,000 point warp award to level 13 and I earned about 135,000 points on those 4 levels that repeat forever with not much change other than less o2.
So let's call it a 130k average for the loop of Levels 17-20+. The 1,940,078 Ettore WR - 1,085,974 @ end of Level 16 for me = 854,104 points I need to match the old TG arcade WR from Level 17+. At an average scoring of 130k per 4 levels it looks like I would need to play another 6.57 loops of 4 levels = about 26 more levels after 16 (Level 42-ish).
The main problem with that is the lack of points and lives (ignoring my current tournament settings here). You normally get 3 lives to start. 1 extra for the Aqua Warp. 1 Extra for finishing the Breakout Game. Those 5 lives can be gotten by or around 1 million points when you earn your first 100k bonus life. Total lives between 950k warping and 1.9 million I think possible would be 3+1+1+10 lives for every 100k between 1 million and 1.9 million = 15 lives total. But you have to give up 1 life per cycle of 4 on Level 16, 20, 24, 28 etc up to 42 because this level lacks enough o2 to finish in one go (after you get the red key and disable the finger you end up with near zero o2 by the time you get back to the reactor and not enough to escape by far).
If I need to play 26 more levels I need to give up 7 lives just on the repeating Level 16. So that leaves 8 lives to spare for the whole trip to 1.9 million otherwise. You would hover around 5-6 lives from 1 million plus with little room for error at any point while you earn 100K bonus lives up to 1.9 million (1 per cycle that you lose anyway on each level 16 repeat trip).
That might seem possible in a near perfect game but starting on the cycle of 4 levels from 17-20 the Oxygen counts down even faster than 13-16. Repeating Levels 18 and 19+ (13/14) are nail biters that must be perfect the whole way or you either die from lack of o2 or the reactor timer gets you. There is a random seed issue on the Maze level 15 that makes things harder : Even if you execute the level the exact same way, the timing of the ceiling opening after the gun hallway can leave you in a very tough spot trying to descend through the Fryoids b4 the reactor area costing you o2 you simply don't always have. That level can become impossible to clear on 1 life Level 17+ if that ceiling opens at the wrong timing which it probably would at least ones or more in that long a trip to Level 42. Even sacrificing one life on Level 16 you face a very tight reactor timer at the end even if you are perfect playing so you might die on that a couple of times too.
Throw in the sometimes random behavior of the Fishoids, the equally difficult Flyboid sections, and the must be near perfect Maze, plus very very tough Angry Red Lines outer space section of each cycle and it becomes harder and harder to believe somebody could get that far with some tricks we don't know about yet on so few lives/points available. You would have to play 28 levels almost perfectly to get that old WR score which seems a tall order I still want to believe in, but like Santa Claus delivering presents to every kid in the World in one evening it looks pretty unlikely at this point.