@ Nukey Shay: Awesome! Despite the fact I can understand all your explanation, I have no clue about how to implement it xD - I'm stil on baby steps in 6502 - ie, using Stella to look for infinite lives and doing some changes here and there. Just a note, I'm using the NTSC rom.
I've replaced a routine in Frostbite so the timer isn't going down, yet at the end of the game, the time goes down as it should. (oh, and I'm damn proud of it LOL)
@ nanochess: Yeah, it would be just too easy