Thanks for Perikles for maintaining the thread before.
There are various versions of each game and I'm unsure of all the differences (lower rank or something, as it's not always noticeable). The biggest difference is between Japan and US which can pretty much be considered different games at this point. I'm going to assume that Japan and World (not US) are the same, and US is something else, but if someone knows better, please tell. Don't play US, it's inferior.
Basically please just play "thunderxj" if you're using MAME, it's the safer choice.
More details regarding Thunder Cross I US version (from Perikles): it's generally agreed that the original Japanese version is much better than the US one. You can tell that you're playing the US version if you start the game on the second stage instead of the first one (when you have skycrapers in the background instead of being in a cavern), have two options right off the bat and also bombs (called "Lil' Baby"). As far as MAME is concerned, the US version is called "set 2" in the builds I've tested ("thunderxa"), all the other sets (Japan, set 1, set 3) seem to be the Japanese version (usually with English font), the PS2 release also contains that version.
Thunder Cross I seemed to freeze for Perikles but I never had this issue personally, maybe it was fixed in recent MAME builds or maybe I didn't play enough. Please try to use a recent version of MAME for those games, they seem to have some bugs (Thunder Cross II had some display issues for me but nothing game-breaking, even on MAME 0.238).
I don't know if the PS2 version has any difference, unless someone can confirm there's anything that changes I'll just put everything in the same table, so the only thing that matters is the region (Japan or US).
Perikles' scores have been removed as he requested. I kept DEL's scores as Perikles did, in a special part at the end due to the lack of information and precision (whether it's the version or the score itself), as DEL himself said he didn't mind in the previous thread. Still keeping the scores for history's sake.
The format for submissions should be:
For Thunder Cross I
Game - Region
SCORE & PLAYER & STAGE & AUTOFIRE
For Thunder Cross II
Game - Region - Player Side
SCORE & PLAYER & STAGE & AUTOFIRE
If you have a replay, feel free to post it too, it will be added.
Thunder Cross
Japan
US
Thunder Cross II
1P side
2P side
June 2023 edit: Out of "fairness", I have made separate tables for 1P and 2P sides in Thunder Cross II. The reason is that 2P can deal much more damage by pointblanking (with no disadvantage compared to 1P), and once you reach high loops it's very recommended to make progress. There's no indication of player side for most scores, and frankly it matters less for a 1-ALL, so I'm going to count them all as 1P side since it's the most likely pick (DEL's score was more likely to be 2P but without more info I can't be sure).
However, for future submissions, please include the player side for TC2, especially because the leaderboards don't display it.
This doesn't matter at all for the first game.