hyperspt.nv definitely has to be deleted before playing back. The score may be different if you don't do that. If you want to keep your scores, you don't have to delete it when recording, but temporarily rename it when playing back. The score you get on the playback is the "correct" one.(posted 9292 days ago)The reason is that the mole will not appear on the pole vault when you get a top 3 jump. So during the first round, your latest submission will not show any moles when hyperspt.nv is deleted, because almost all jumps beat a previous top 3 jump. But if you play it back a 2nd time without deleting hyperspt.nv, you'll see a lot of moles (and of course the bonuses that come with it). This can make quite a difference:
I deleted hyperspt.nv, then played back your recording. The score was 359,060. Then I played it back again without deleting hyperspt.nv (so keeping the one from the first playback), and the score was 378,060!
I think the NVRAM files are the cause of a lot of recordings (not just Hyper Sports) not playing back correctly (of course, Hyper Sports plays back correctly, but the score may be different). So I strongly advise people to delete the NVRAM file for the game they're about to play right before they start recording. This of course only applies to the later versions of MAME (i.e. the ones that use NVRAM). I think this started with 36b14.
Cheers, Ben Jos.