Just saw your reply, thanks. I actually started thinking a couple days back about completing the level in something like this sort of manner but hadn't got to trying it out (and tbh probably wouldn't have thought about everything in your solution above anyway).
Took a few goes to get the timing down, but finally got there.
Seeing your solution for that level was the only way I was going to complete the game - I had to look up the solution for about half a dozen levels previously, for which I used a NES walkthrough on youtube... it was only Mayhem 21 and 24 (and 25 to some extent too) I had trouble with because of how they differed from the NES version.
So now I got 100%. Nice.
