>>12059652
>bomb this secret spot to get a bajillion extra points
Not really a real issue. Magazines and word of mouth were a thing back then and you could watch other players find these spots in the real arcade. Now is it a bad game design? No. The game encourages you to bomb A LOT and it's even good for survival runs, since destroying certain spots cause enemies not to spawn (stage 4 and 6).
>Also half the characters are locked behind the Konami code
I honestly consider it a bad game design for the original arcade release, but it was solved a long time ago with emulation/save state and Zakk's patch and most recently with the 2016 port qol features. Not sure how it works in the Saturn version tho.

>>12013312
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t5fydsm91lWGFbhzZXexZIXcL8wijLvz/view
There. I did a casual 1cc solely to prove you wrong. 1 miss run, finishing the game full life stock. Dying to BH2 wasn't a big deal, cus I was about to get extend anyway.

Ignore the audio in the background. I was watching some arcadesloppa while at it.