Scoring differences in Super Xevious, and a 'cheat'?

Quite fortuitously I decided to watch a YouTube video of someone playing Super Xevious to see the new objects in action as they were intended - ie. on a non-patched ROM. The video features the score reaching 9,999,990 which is when the game starts to crash...

Halfway through the player was seemingly stuck on the screen where a series of Garu Zakato (large bombs) explode on the screen, releasing 4 Brag Spario. These Brag Spario circle the Solvalou in a display of celestial mechanics (quite impressive), and the player was trying (fruitlessly) to destroy them whilst trying to evade them. My tactic since 1984 has been to sit near the bottom of the screen, where you have more time to react, and they also promptly disappear before they can circle back (in fact, I didn't even know they circled back until I was testing the transcode in 'invincible' mode, and ventured up the screen!)

Brag Spario circling the Solvalou can't be destroyed...

I was wondering why the player hadn't worked this out, and then I noticed they had racked up a massive score! Watching closely, I realised that the score was incrementing quite rapidly each time a Brag Spario was shot; they can't be destroyed, but as they circle they can be shot multiple times.

Checking the code, I noticed each shot was scoring 2,000 points! Wondering why I'd never seen this tactic in Xevious before, I checked the original code - only 500 pts! On EASY setting (as this video seemed to be), on Super Xevious you could earn an extra Solvalou by hitting a Brag Spario just 20 times - easy to do when 4 of them are circling!

Of course this meant I now had to go through all the scoring in Xevious and compare it with Super Xevious... and found just one other case; Sol Towers have been reduced from 2,000 pts to 1,000 pts.

I hope I haven't missed any other subtle changes in Super Xevious...

Today I (also) added support for separate high score load/save for Xevious and Super Xevious on the Neo Geo. It's painful to test on both BRAM and memory card, but all done now.

Now... sound or sparklies???