It's a really fun game (lot of explosions - I'm easily pleased), but maybe not such a good choice for a high score challenge seeing as you can't see the score until you die?
Yeah, I noticed that but it could be worse - there are plenty of older games that only show you your score while you're still playing! I guess it makes working out the best high-score strategy pretty challenging though.
On Parodius, it's the Vic Viper for me for the moment, for old times' sake, but they've all got there own specialisms. Vic Viper's got either the powerful laser (for when you don't need the double) and the ground-running missiles. Octopus has the two way missiles (although they don't ground-run) and the ring cannon thing. Twinbee's my current back-up with its tail gun and fun rocket punch. And Pentarou's a sort of best-of mix of the others, with ground running potons and the spread gun.