Ok, pretty much everything has been said already, and I'm jumping in kinda late... but better late than never.(posted 9867 days ago)Nearly everyone recording that I've UL'ed to MARP has been done with MAME's default settings. I never change them or specify TG settings since I usually don't even know what TG settings even are for the game! Not even all games listed in the World Records Book have settings listed... so I'll just sit tight and wait for the official MAME TG list. If the TG settings differ from MAME's defaults, I'll only switch if someone else beats a score of mine using those.
As for games with "Forced endings", I think that all recordings done for MARP should be ONE credit only. While some games take away your score when you continue, being allowed to use infinite credits on a game that keeps your score when you continue is sometimes just asking for trouble. Like the aforementioned Bad Dudes... the scoring system in that game is all screwed up. Unless another person is playing, you will almost ALWAYS wind up with a score of 999,999 by the end of the game. How is that a measure of a player's skill, especially with the infinite "virtual credits" supplied by MAME? The game is do-able on one credit, so I think it should stay that way. Strangely, Dragon Ninja (the Japanese version) doesn't have this problem, because most of the scoring is divided by 4 (i.e. a boss awards 40,000 points in BD, but 10,000 in DN). Why? Well, as Krool would say, because Bad Dudes is one of those cutdown lame-o US versions. :)
Just my 2 credits (1 to continue),
-BBH