Well, thanks guys, that was awesome.
Lots of solutions, some very different and varied, some very clever. And all entertaining.
It's now quite clear who mis-spent their youth hanging out in the video arcade.
Some flirted with trying a 5x score, and not being tempted by the seemingly expensive trip across the void and back to achieve the 6x multiplier, but in the end everybody scored their highest with a 6x multiplier.
1st, scoring 4308 (718 x 6) is Mark_man. A brilliant piece of "lateral" thinking. Congratulations!
2nd, scoring 3768 (628 x 6) is Arunion. Again the bridesmaid.
3rd, scoring 3708 (618 x 6) is KuzyaHG. But it was tweakable to 3930.....
4th, scoring 2904 (484 x 6) is Dec10. Having fun as usual.
Meanwhile, the Winner of Donkey Kong, scoring 0 (0 x 6) is Dec10.
Put the background_111.jpg file in the Levels folder (one above the solutions) for a completely "different" challenge.
Many thanks for the entertainment.
I hope I got everyone's best scores correct, and included all of the files in the .zip. Between the amazing entries, and my own tweaks and plays, there were rather a lot of files to find....
This proved to be much harder than expected to judge the legality of solutions. Not all impacts caused a sound effect, and mostly the dillo seemed to overlap the plate significantly before reacting to a contact. But one entry towards the end managed to produce a sound and reaction when there was a line of background pixels showing between the dillo and the plate, so ultimately the rule had to become that if the dillo was seen to overlap the plate at all, he is deemed to have touched. In the end, all of the solutions were legal. And there is no controversy about the winner, thankfully.