Guys,(posted 9121 days ago)T. Alex has replied to my email on the matter of Solomon's Key.
In his Solomon's Key recording If you watch carefully you will notice that he is using the following modifications to the default dip switch settings -
1. Lives Set to 5 (rather than the default 3)
2. No Bonus Lives (rather than bonus lives at 30K,100K,500K)
He changed these because when he was awarded a life from score his game would crash through what he assumes is an emulation bug. He therefore had to disable the bonus lives. He upped the lives to compensate. He certainly wasn't trying to gain an unfair advantage.
Anyway just to set the record straight for all critics/skeptics he has uploaded a recording with lives set to 3 and no bonuses which is surely acceptable as it is undoubtedly harder than the default settings. In this recording he gets a higher score than in his previous best! Check it out!
As a side note, T. Alex has sent me a solomon recording where he gets a high score of 60 Million (yep!) by exploiting the abovementioned 'ducking' trick in the last level of the game. I am urging him to upload it to MARP under the 'weird' section.