100,000 minutes of Kaboom!

[Andromeda Stardust]

I just tried it in Stella, by setting RAM locations $A1 through $A3 to 99 99 98 and catching one more bomb, and the game simply freezes at 999999.

LOL, Kaboom has a kill screen!

 

If he does roll over the score, I hope he submits the attempt to Twin Galaxies...

 

Atarian7, how many Paddles did you wear out during the course of your 100,000 hours? Mine are 30+years old and still going strong, but I doubt they've seen as much use as yours. I hope you've got a steady supply of replacement pots!

[2600jones]

Go Atarian7! I remember playing the Atari 2600 endlessly when it came out. I was in grade school. Talk about showing my age. Two months back then was probably normal. Like online game players now. Your quest brings back memories of my misspent youth. Go man go! Defeat that Kaboom!

[Rick Dangerous]

Picked this up at the local play n' trade today. I've been keeping an eye out for it since this article was posted.

 

I have to say: Awesome game! The mad bomber is on bath salts or something because he is fast as hell!! Easily one of the fastest 2600 games I have yet played. It's also a great example of how slick and accurate the paddle controller is.

 

I only got into the low one-thousands so looks like I have some work to do. I will have to check out the tracker, sounds cool

[VW]

I wish Atarian7 the best of luck! I had a dream of hitting 999,999 but could never get past about 35k. Kaboom is one of the all time great games, the only game I play when I break out the 2600 every now and then.

[atarilovesyou]

Late to the party, but this is a tremendous gaming achievement!...I'm still trying to beat 5000 pts, set by my drunk pal back in 95

I vowed a few summers ago to try by practicing like 30 a day until I got there, but I found that after mere seconds of playing when the speed has maxed-out, I would get this 'tunnel vision' thing happening and the screen would appear to shrink horizontally. Very strange...but I'm sure with enough practice, it's possible to get there and stay there, as Atarian7 has displayed. Watching somebody play at that level is amazing!

[davyK]

That is some achievement even getting close to 999999.

 

A long time ago now (mid 80's) I was able to break 300K on Kaboom! But I was playing the PAL version which is a bit slower. I was also playing with the difficulty switch set to B.....

 

I find the game next to impossible at diff A - especially 30 years later! I can barely break 3,000 points now that I am older at diff A.

 

I recently played the NTSC version and I can just about break 10,000 at diff B!

Edited March 31, 2014 by davyK

[carlsson]

In case you missed the news, Kaboom! on the Atari 2600 just reached 200,000 minutes of logged game play in the tracker. It means the first 100,000 minutes were obtained at a rate of approximately 1600 minutes/month while the second milestone was set at a pace of 2200 minutes/month. Atarian7 himself has contributed roughly 97% of that on his own.

 

Will it make 300,000 minutes before the end of year 2020?

[Flojomojo]

That's impressive, most impressive. Imagine if kaboom was as an mmorpg. That number would be crazy.

I think every VCS game could be an MMO ... just need a "Ready Player One"-esque framing device to make it work. Like how Destiny makes the player grind out the same shooter levels over and over again for rewards. After all, "arcade is dead."

 

Seriously, I would love a meta-game of old games. Like Retro Game Challenge. If I were the show-runners behind MAME, that's what I would be building.

[ianoid]

I'd watch someone play to 900,000 on twitch. Amazing.