Function #'s of Importance
8 Bonus Ship Level = 10,000
9 Ships Per Game = 3
17 Free Play = 0
18 Starting Difficulty = 5 Moderate
19 Progressive Wave Difficulty Limit = 15 Moderate
21 Planet Restore Wave Number = 5
Special Notes: These are the Factory Default settings

Arcade - Defender - Points [Marathon] - 3,751,000 - Gary Whittingham

Function #'s of Importance

8 Bonus Ship Level = 0

9 Ships Per Game = 5

17 Free Play = 0

18 Starting Difficulty = 5 Moderate

19 Progressive Wave Difficulty Limit = 15 Moderate

21 Planet Restore Wave Number = 5

BAITER HUNTING IS ALLOWED (please see additional info):

Special Notes: These are Twin Galaxies Tournament Settings

Goal: Highest score on default settings.

--3 life start
--10k bonus life
--Any official romset is allowed

Illegal:
--Must be played out by 1 person, no assistance from other players.
--Using the "10-man drop" to freeze the CPU processing for breaks is NOT allowed.
--Cumulative scoring is not allowed, which would be restarting your game due to unforeseen game resets or rolling your life counter (256 lives). Cumulative scoring for marathons was allowed for TGIS in rules from 82-84 but not allowed for this newer TGSAP score track.

Tips for Adjudication:
--Red roms are most common, setting 18=5, setting 19=15,
--Green roms are most common overseas and more difficult than red, 18=0, 19=10
--White and Blue are very difficult, being the earliest iterations of the production code.
--Be aware of the "Goldilocks zone" which is a math quirk in the code which will award the player a bonus life/smart bomb for everything hit/scored between 990,000 to where the score rolls back to zero at each 1-million point threshold, to be paid back in full before the player can begin earning new bonus lives/bombs.

Goal: Highest score using 5 lives with no bonus lives, and no baiter hunting.

--Any official romset on Default settings
--5 lives to start with 0 bonus lives

Tips for Adjudication:
--Red roms are most common, setting 18=5, setting 19=15,
--Green roms are most common overseas and more difficult than red, 18=0, 19=10
--White and Blue are very difficult, being the earliest iterations of the production code.

Baiter Hunting Notes:
The original TGTS track allows baiter hunting which is a form of stopping the forward progression of the game by leeching points from baiters.
Baiters were designed as an intended way to keep the wave moving forward, much like the small ufo in asteroids or Evil Otto in Berzerk.
But there were a couple of design limitations/oversights which players learned to exploit to leech points.
Basically, if you pick up many humanoids and kill baiters without any direct intention of killing off the enemies on the wave, then you are baiter hunting. If you leave 4 or more enemies on a wave and kill baiters without any direct intention of killing off the wave enemies then you are baiter hunting.

Arcade - Defender - Twin Galaxies Tournament Settings (TGTS)- NO BAITER HUNTING - 324,825 - simon grant

Description: Hardest Difficulty - 15K bonus - Green ROMs

Game settings:
#8 - Bonus Ship level: 15.000 pts
#9 - Ships per game: 5
#18 - Starting Difficulty = 99
#19 - Progressive Wave Difficulty Limit = 00
#21 - Planet Restore Wave Number: 5

Special Rule:
No leeching during the so called 'Extra Life Bonanza', aka 'Goldilocks Zone', i.e. 990.000-999.975 pts, where the player is awarded 1 Bonus ship + 1 Smart Bomb for every enemy he/she shoots or crashes into. Normally, if played right through it, a player will collect around 40 ships/bombs here. These are awarded in advance, however, so the player must now play for the next 600.000 pts (40 x 15K bonus) without being awarded any ships or bombs.
But there is a way to leech during the Bonanza. If a player repeatedly crashes into bullets (25 pts) on purpose he/she will be awarded 1 ship, and lose 1 ship, but gain 1 bomb - for every crash. Furthermore: because the ships/bombs are awarded in advance, 67 awarded ships should mean no ships/bombs for the next 1.005.000 pts. But the game will ignore that, and count it as 5000 pts - i.e. the player will be awarded his next ship and bomb directly after the Bonanza, at 5000 pts - and with a score of bonus ships and bombs.

Info About Romsets:
The Green romset is important for this challenge. On the Red ROM set the difficulty, although you can actually set it at '00', it stops at 30 - whereas on the White, Blue and Green sets it goes all the way up to 100 ('00'). The White set is super-rare (only 1 known), and Blue is also very uncommon. The Green set is choosen for practical reasons: there are a lot more of them to go around. Also the Green set has 11 ROMs, and can be played on both an Early, and a Later Series ROM board, whereas the White and Blue sets have only 10 ROMs and have to have different jumpers to be played on a Later Series ROM board. A player can always have set of ROMs burned, but has to find a used ROM board to put them in - and 7 out of 8 ROM boards are Later Series.