Hot damn, I finally did it! No miss, no damage and a new high score to boot! I wish I perfected the airborne turn acceleration sequence, though... ._.

If you're wondering why I'm missing bars or rings and sacrificing an S+ on some stages, it's because of scoring. It turns out getting an S+ on a stage isn't always equivalent to maximizing the score for the stage. I don't know if that was DROOL's intention or a happy accident, but it makes the challenge of maximizing your score rather difficult.

If you look at the 1:40 and 1:55 marks of this video, you'll see I jumped over a bar (losing points) so I could slam on the thump right after it. This charged another thump ahead of me to add points, and I eventually finished the stage with an overall score of 155,200. If I had gained the points from the bars and earned the S+ instead, I would have 2,000 points less.

That's just an example of one out of many scenarios that could lead to higher scores. If you're going to maximize your score it's going to require some math, repetition, and the patience of a saint.

For the mathematical part of the challenge, you can see a thorough breakdown of Thumper's scoring system here:

https://thumpergame.com/manual/

Best of luck, fellow Thumpers!