You get a clear bonus for each life remaining in stock, but it's only 8 million with all 7 extra lives stocked. ((#extra lives + 1) x 1,000,000)
I'm guessing he's much better at pointblanking stuff in the stages; that's really where the bulk of the points come thanks to the massive boost to the combo meter. On the plus side, even a newbie who isn't good at scoring is pretty much guaranteed to get all three extends by stage 5.
Now that I think about it, the stage 4 miniboss encounters would give out a ton of combo/approach for the bullet cancel sections afterwards if you used bombs to stay close to the miniboss as much as possible. Perhaps Stage 4 would net you a crazy score if you pointblanked the minibosses nearly constantly by using bombs for score (which normally hurt score by killing enemies too quickly or destroying bullets you'd want to get a cancel bonus from).
Edit: HOLY CRAP. The first Stage 5 midboss has a
speedkill weakness to
rapid shots, not the laser. Killing it in a few seconds causes a whole SHITTON of enemies to pop out that are super easy to laser to death at close range - I almost got a 3000 approach built up before the train tracks appeared in training mode!
Edit: 145,701,515 - BKR - Type B - Stage 5 (stupid giant boss lasers ;_;) - Autobomb *OFF*
For fuck's sake. I woulda cleared the game if I hadn't died FOUR FRIGGIN TIMES with 3 bombs left in stock in the middle of Stage 5. I managed to reach Stage 5 with 6 lives, 1 bomb (5 bombs in Stage 4
) and messed up badly (started by ramming the first midboss, derp). Gotta remember I turned autobomb off...
Also, where the hell is Sasupoika's score coming from?! Best I've managed is 32 mil from Stage 1, 11 mil from Stage 2, 60 mil from stage 3, and finally entering stage 5 with 100 or so million points. 200k I can see reaching with some serious pointblanking, but there must be some scoring mechanic (like the medal x2 chaining?) that I'm missing here, because 250k seems crazy huge. How is he getting such a massive score? Help!