Personally, I hated this score system. I was never good with scores in games, but it made the game quite restrictive and you'd have to be so fast while in combo mode. Plus the Gamecube version had that link up thing that can increase it even more [you know, for that tetris-racer minigame thing, I was thinking about swapping my PS2 version for the GC one at several points].
Oh well, least I *did* end up in the hall of fame. 3rd place in the UK PS2 category.