Tempo changes aren't necessarily bad. It's one dimension of musical expression. I wonder if it would be possible to make the visuals and music together so that the slowdowns etc make sense musically and visually. :)
I tried playing this demo on lr-vecx, a Vectrex emulator for Libretro, and it sounds very off, nothing like this recording at all. I guess it's the emulator at fault? Also, would there be a way to get the sound onto an .ay file, to play on something like a ZX Spectrum 128k or 48k with sound interface (which has the exact same AY PSG)?