Ashley I'd say around 1000 at this point. I'll be doing a final clean up. But yes there are a lot of objects. Every stage has it's own backgrounds, enemies, bullets... etc etc. Some of the bosses are made up of multiple parts. The special effects are usually objects if not particles. Power up items, other weapons, 4 different player sprites with all of their various bullets. Then there is the shooter stage that has it's own set of graphics etc.
I've probably got about as many enemies in the game as a big castlevania game at this point and a lot of those have invisible sprites that control them. Then there is the map/savegame/item select screen, Cutscenes, etc etc. I am, however, about to cut a boss fight which required a whole new player sprite set because they are riding horse back and shooting. The old bosses for that stage are there too. So I'll probably be able to cut the game by another 200 objects at least between that stage and old NES gfx bits I'm still finding.
I think you are right about Windows thing. When I started making the mock up capx and duplicating those objects when I hit around 200-250 objects the object bar icons weren't working right anymore. For example, it was showing the villager sprite icon over and over when the tiled background icon should have be seen, or even one of the icons for the plugins.
But if it is Windows, what could even be done about that? Some sort of work around?