What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2015 (Season 8)

[Opry99er]

So far:

 

TI-99/4A:

 

St. Nick (120 minutes)

Tunnels of Doom (90 minutes)

Aperture (60 minutes)

Parsec (30 minutes)

Alpiner (25 minutes)

Minesweeper (20 minutes)

Touch Typing Tutor (50 minutes)

The Sinking Ships (40 minutes)

 

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Christmas Carol (30 minutes)

 

 

 

VCS:

 

Stay Frosty 2 (40 minutes)

GORF (15 minutes)

[+thegoldenband]

Hey, while we're on the subject, I have a bare TI-99/4A system along with the speech synthesizer and an Atari-to-TI joystick adapter. Two questions:

 

1) I can play games like Tunnels of Doom and Adventure by using any cassette player, not just a TI one -- am I correct? (I don't have the carts yet but they seem affordable.)

 

2) What's the next thing I should buy to expand the range of games I can play? I don't think I want to buy a disk drive or anything bulky, nor anything much over $50.

[Iwantgames:)]

Yes any cassette player will work with correct cord.

 

The basic TI w/ cassette can play a lot of the games. But without 32k upgrade some games won't be playable. The 32k is avalible in the PEB but thats well over your $50 limit. And also as a sidecar but again over $50. But you could do the 32k in system upgrade mod cheap

Edited November 28, 2015 by Iwantgames:)

[+thegoldenband]

Hey, thanks. What's the necessary cord? I have a cassette cord for the TRS-80 CoCo, which I'm sure isn't compatible.

 

Are there any SD-card based options in the pipeline for disk drive support + RAM expansion? I know a couple things use Compact Flash but I'd rather stick with SD/MicroSD, since I have tons of extra cards.

[Iwantgames:)]

I actually have an extra cassette cord I could send you for free if you want PM me your address

 

As for SD card interface I'm not sure I know there's the nano peb but that's CF I believe.

[+thegoldenband]

^You are too kind. PM sent!

 

I'll take a look at the NanoPEB. It looks like it's about $100 -- is the CF7+ cheaper? I'm a Mac user so a parallel port isn't good, but I assume I'd just be loading stuff directly onto the CF card anyway...

[Opry99er]

CF reader on the PC side, CF7/nanoPEB on the TI side. Yep.

 

TI cassette cables are cheap, but it looks like iwantgames has you hooked up in that department.

 

There is a 2015 Holidays demo cassette coming out in a couple weeks that will be fully packaged with cassette label, J card, shrink wrapped, etc. $5 plus shipping.

[Opry99er]

Click this link for pictures of the release package.

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/245439-2015-holiday-demo-contest/page-8?do=findComment&comment=3379110

[Iwantgames:)]

Some excellent coding on that cassette too. Will be hard to choose a winner

[Opry99er]

If the entries stand where they are, I have mine selected.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Firebug: 5 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 465 min

 

Well, the second playthrough is done, the war is over. In fact, in the above playtime, there are already a few war patrols of a third career included. Playing on all difficulty settings set to max now, and so far, I don't see a huge difference. Can't tell yet, though, since I haven't encountered too many enemy destroyers. But I think my playtime on that game will drop considerably now.

 

So, Thegoldenband... where does Silent Hunter end up at the moment? I'd like to know now.

[+thegoldenband]

Sure! From the all-time standings as of last week:

 

#2: Galaxian (Atari 2600) - 11445

#3: Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 7629

#4: Berzerk (Atari 2600) - 7495

So this week's time puts Silent Hunter up over 8000 minutes (8094 to be exact), but it still needs another 3300+ minutes to catch Galaxian at #2.

Except for 2011/2012, when keilbaca was attacking the Berzerk world record, Berzerk seems to average 100-150 minutes per year (it's got 71 minutes logged so far this year). So it'll probably be a while before it catches up.

[carlsson]

C64:

Elite Gramophone Company - 15 min.

Movie Business - 18 min.

Prime Time - 33 min.

In my hunt for a good but "unknown" business simulation game, I started off the week by playing the above games. Neither had very much depth, and the play time of Prime Time is depending on how many rounds you choose to play for in the beginning. I have a couple more games to try out, but I didn't have the time nor energy to get into those this week. Alas, for the third week in a row I settled with an emulated C64 which is kind of depressing, but also very convenient.

[Atarian7]

 

Sure! From the all-time standings as of last week:

 

#2: Galaxian (Atari 2600) - 11445

#3: Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 7629

#4: Berzerk (Atari 2600) - 7495

So this week's time puts Silent Hunter up over 8000 minutes (8094 to be exact), but it still needs another 3300+ minutes to catch Galaxian at #2.

Except for 2011/2012, when keilbaca was attacking the Berzerk world record, Berzerk seems to average 100-150 minutes per year (it's got 71 minutes logged so far this year). So it'll probably be a while before it catches up.

 

I wonder what number 1 is.

[BillyHW]

I wonder what number 1 is.

 

Hello Kitty Island Adventure?

[jfitzenr]

 

Hello Kitty Island Adventure?

 

I'm hoping it's Color a Dinosaur

[oyamafamily]

Intellivision:

Christmas Carol (30 minutes)

 

VCS:

Stay Frosty 2 (40 minutes)

Stay Frosty 2 (2600 VCS) and Christmas Carol (Intellivision) are excellent games to play in December.

Edited November 29, 2015 by oyamafamily

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800:

Mario Bros. - 360 minutes.

Highest score of this week: 1,266,700 points (Rolled The Score) on Expert. Posted yesterday on 7800 HSC Season 8.

 

NES / FAMICOM:

Ms. Pac-Man [Tengen] - 15 minutes

Edited November 29, 2015 by oyamafamily

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 808 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 195,791

 

 

[Opry99er]

Stay Frosty 2 (2600 VCS) and Christmas Carol (Intellivision) are excellent games to play in December.

 

With your high score prowess, you should join the AtariAge TI-99/4A high score competition. We have one per month... The new game is starting on the first of the month. Prizes are given to the winner. We are just a smallish group, but we have fun and enjoy the friendly competition.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week (November 23rd through 29th)...

 

Arcade:

Q*bert - 24 min.

 

Atari 7800:

B*nq - 74 min.

 

Atari 800:

Q*bert - 60 min.

 

Colecovision:

Q*bert - 24 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Gremlins (Atarisoft) - 42 min.

Q*bert - 124 min. in 2 sessions

R-Nest - 10 min.

 

Creativision:

Blocks - 8 min.

 

Intellivision:

Q*bert - 66 min. in 2 sessions

 

Odyssey^2:

Q*bert - 34 min. in 2 sessions

 

Online (non-eligible):

Nonogram of the week - 45 min.

 

TI-99:

Ku-Bert - 63 min. in 2 sessions

Q*bert - 85 min.

 

VIC-20:

Q*bert - 9 min.

 

ZX-Spectrum:

Q*bert (Prototype) - 29 min.

 

As you can see, this week I tried to play all existing versions of Q*Bert (at least those which I didn't play already in the last weeks). Here's a comparison:

 

Arcade:

Of course this is the original version. It proved to be easier than the Intellivision version I had been playing for a long time. I reached Level 6 on that one.

Atari 7800:

Here I played the unofficial port B*nq. On "Easy" it's laughably easy, and I quit the game after Level 9. However, already on "Normal" the red balls get faster than you.

Atari 800:

This version only has got 8K of ROM and monochrome sprites. They didn't attempt to multiplex the four available players, so there are at most 3 enemies on screen at any time. To compensate for this, the enemies are pretty fast. They also did away with the level intro.

Colecovision:

This was one of the last versions I played. The 24 minutes were one single game in which I instantly reached Level 5. In this version the characters are also monochrome, but there is a level intro screen. Apparently they limited the number of enemies to 3 here as well in order not to have more than 4 sprites on screen at any time. This was solved much better in the TI-99 version...

Commodore 64:

This is the version that's the closest to the arcade, and also one of the largest at 16K. All characters are multicolored here, and many of them are actually layered sprites in hi-res. Yes, they did multiplex the sprites here although the C-64 already offers 8 sprites. I think if they had done this on the Atari 8-bit version as well, they could have achieved much better graphics, but maybe they would have needed more than 8K of ROM for that. This is also one of the easier versions in which after a bit of practice I reached Level 6.

R-Nest is a Q*bert clone by Colo Software which is much inferior to the released version. Here everything is synced together, so all enemies have the same speed as the player which makes the game very hard to play. At later levels you also have multiple green balls or multiple Wrongways on the screen at once.

Intellivision:

This is the version I've been already playing in the last weeks. It's actually relatively hard, but I managed to reach Level 5. However, due to the different scoring scheme I didn't manage to reach 100,000 points.

Odyssey^2:

This is generally a relatively fast version which also limits the number of sprites to 4 (because this is the maximum number of user-definable objects the Odyssey is able to display). The scoring is radically different (you only get 1 point for each cube colored), and Levels 4 and 5 are jumbled. Since there are a maximum of 3 flying discs on screen, I ran out of discs on Level 4 (which actually acts like Level 5) and maxed out at under 2000 points.

TI-99:

The official version of Q*bert has got better graphics than the Colecovision one despite using the same video chip. I think this is because in order to be able to run on any TI-99, Parker had to use an 8K CPU ROM (in order to be able to use native code) AND a 6K GROM (required by the revised TI-99 OS, containing any sequentially readable data like graphics and sound lists, but no assembler code), for a total of 14K. They put this to good use by layering most of the sprites, however the VDP limit of 4 sprites per scanline causes some features of the characters to disappear sometimes, but never their main body. For instance, Q*bert's eyes become transparent in this case.

Then there's another version I played... Ku-Bert. This is one I knocked together myself back in 1984 in Extended Basic. It's not as good as the official one, and it's also got some bugs. It also doesn't follow the scoring scheme of the arcade version at times because it was based on the Atari 2600 version which doesn't give you 15 points for turning blocks into their intermediate colors, and I wasn't familiar with the fine details of the original arcade game, having only seen it briefly.

Since this is an as-of-yet unreleased version, I've attached an image of it to this mail. You can run it directly from Classic99 or put it onto a DSK file for other emulators.

KU-BERT.zip

VIC-20:

This is a rather dull version. The VIC-20 doesn't have sprites, and they tried to solve it by displaying Q*Bert and all the enemies in a black box centered on the cubetop. However, this means that you can't see the characters jump. Still the enemies are pretty fast and often come at you unexpectedly (especially Slick and Sam).

ZX-Spectrum:

This is a prototype. Although the ZX-Spectrum doesn't have sprites as well, they solved the problem much better than on the VIC-20, although in essence you still can't see the characters jump. This version is pretty hard in that the red balls and Coily are the same speed as you, only Coily's egg is much slower while it falls. Maybe the finished version would have been better. In this prototype the sound doesn't quite match up with the sound in the arcade which actually has shorter "blips" that would have better suited the Spectrum. It also doesn't play the end-of-level-tune which should have been possible on the Spectrum since not much animation is going on while it plays, and it doesn't offer the level intro despite being 16K long. Also the flying discs are the wrong colors and shape.

 

What strikes me about Q*Bert is the different ROM size. The C-64, Intellivision and Spectrum each got 16K, the TI-99 got 14K, the Atari 8-bit, Colecovsion and VIC-20 got 8K and the Atari 2600 got 4K. However, the quality of the versions doesn't always match up with the ROM size. From the conversion quality, I'd put the C-64 first, followed by the Atari 7800, TI-99, Colecovision, Intellivision and Atari 8-bit versions, then with a big gap come the Odyssey^2, Spectrum and VIC-20 ports, leaving out "R-Nest" and "Ku-Bert" as inferior duplicates on the same system.

 

As for the other games, I replayed "Gremlins" on the Commodore 64, which is the Atarisoft version where you are equipped with a sword slashing enemies, saving Gremlins into a cage.

 

Blocks is a Tetris clone for the Creativision. Actually there was a version of Q*bert announced in Madrigal's Creativision forum, but it's still WIP, and all you get here is the pyramid with several sprites displayed and several sounds played which have been taken from the TI-99 version. Blocks seems to be finished however.

 

Then I tried to solved the Nonogram of the week again, but about halfway through I made a mistake and gave up.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Kurt_Woloch

[zylon]

5200-

 

Gyruss- 25min

 

Genesis-

 

Sword Of Vermillion- 5hrs 53min

beat-down completed, bonus feature is very lame.

[Iwantgames:)]

Played a little TI-99, tried my new Sega flashback, and started a PS1 game.

 

Ti-99/4A -

 

Computer War - 10min

 

Crossfire - 30min

 

Guardian - 20min

 

Honeycomb Rapture - 15min

 

Ku-Bert - 2min

Got a bad value error or would have played longer. Seems like it would be fun if finished

 

Neverlander - 60min

 

Pitfall! - 10min

 

Popeye - 5min

 

The Mine - 10min

 

 

Genesis -

 

Gain Ground - 20min

 

 

PS1 -

 

Descent - 107min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Intellivision:

Tower of Doom - 157 min.

 

Just a few post-Thanksgiving attempts at the Grail Quest. I actually got the Grail very early in one of those runs, but didn't have the weaponry to make it far after that. I should've tried using the Grail, just to see what happens -- I don't know whether it'll randomly spawn another one, insta-kill your adventurer, or what.

[jfitzenr]

Well let's see what we got! Week mostly off, plus I've been sick and still nursing this back injury so... I mean at least I got to waste a lot of time on games!

 

Genesis -

 

Sword of Vermilion = ~15 hours.

 

NES-

 

Double Dragon - 65 Minutes.

Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers - 20 minutes

Mega Man - 80 minutes

Little Samson - 30 minutes

 

TG16-

 

Galaga '90 - 55 minutes, and a new high score!

 

2600-

 

Berserk - 30 Minutes

 

SNES

 

Donkey Kong Country - 45 minutes

 

 

ARC:

 

Ms Pac Man - 25 minutes

Wonder Boy in Monster Land - 110 minutes

 

 

 

I have GOT to be nearing the end of Sword of Vermilion, considering I maxed the XP counter out yesterday. (Level 31 is the cap? Weird.) It's a shame, this game suffers from what I noticed a lot of older console RPGs did- the variety and plot don't really escalate well toward the endgame, so while at first the novelty is great, by the end it becomes a bit of a grind. I still really like this game, but I definitely understand now why it isn't as highly regarded as some of the standard 'classics.'

 

Took some detours to beat have fun with some old favorites. Megaman wasn't quite as hard as I remembered though still rough and I decided I'd resort to the pause trick this time around for the demon. I've been on a 'quest' to beat 'all' the classic Megaman games recently, and so with this I'm making more progress. Double Dragon is still one of those games that I've never beaten since childhood and it's been in the back of my mind ever since... hopefully it falls soon!

 

Got a new high score on Galaga '90 - for some reason I absolutely love this game. I'm not very good though. When I finally build the cabinet I've been 'planning' on building for over a year, I think Galaga 88 will probably end up as a constant top-5.

 

And I had to log a few minutes on 2600 Berzerk just because it was mentioned here. I haven't played this version since childhood, and I had no recollection of this being such a fun, well-executed, excellent port.

Edited November 30, 2015 by jfitzenr