Coryoon 2-Minute Score Attack Mode - 1,066,518
4Performed off stream, so even though my streaming overlay is present, there's no commentary, chat, etc. This is the result of about an hour of work; based on previous attempts I think I could pick up another 20k with a cleaner opening (260k after the water striders is not very good pace with these strats) and many many more points with a cleaner ending (note how few of the small fruits I grab in the final section). Unfortunately, I seem to have strep throat, which was why I was willing to settle for worse pace to begin with, so I may not be able to work on improving this score by the end of the Devil's Battle Cave tournament.
Some notes:
The first charge shot is not for style points. The charge shot doesn't just damage enemies, it also automatically collects the fruit they drop. I've found that this is the most consistent way to collect the small fruit chain from the sine wave enemies above (although I dropped the cherries this run) without dropping the big fruit at the bottom, which is worth a lot more.
Based on previous runs, I'd say the sloppy opening cost me 20,000 points alone and I dropped so many small fruit at the end (because I was prioritizing survival over score) that it's impossible to guess how many points I missed out on. There are four small fruit chains here, and each is worth 5,500 points, so it's possible that with a cleaner opening and strats that allow me to collect all of the small fruit (I think charge shots have potential here) that would have been enough for 1.1 million points right there.
I think breaking the right claw first is actually better. It's much harder to collect the fruit dropped by the right claw, since it spawns behind you, and the fruit chains up in value regardless of whether you collect it, so in a worst-case scenario with right first strats you would drop a pineapple (worth, I think, 6,000) but collect an apple (worth 8,000), so that alone would save 2,000 points over what I did in this video.
But as I said, I'm sick, and these optimizations are all riskier than they sound, so I would probably lose my mind going for 1.1 million.