What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2016 (Season 9)

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Venture: 29 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 60 min

 

A very annoying game in this week's HSC, and just enough time to squeeze in one (also annoying) patrol under the Sea. Man, you guys had some crappy torpedoes early in the Pacific War...

I just don't get Venture. Does it require a lot of thought or is it just plain speed? Or both?

Edited April 16, 2016 by Atarian7

[carlsson]

Genesis / Mega Drive:

Columns - 26 min.

Super Hang-On - 21 min.

Super Monaco GP - 12 min.

Truxton / Tatsujin - 36 min.

I've come to understand that a lot of people look down on Columns as a boring game, a kind of Tetris rip-off without playability value. Personally I kind of like the game, but the Sega implementation - and I've come to understand it was the first and official version - really doesn't cut it. Apart from the horrible cathedral music, the very sudden speed increase and sudden decrease again makes it difficult to get into. Also the algorithm to calculate when there are blocks to remove and chain effects is laughable. As you have seen from my previous play times, for the last 2.5 years I have spent a little over 6.5 hours on Magic Jewelry on the Famicom, which is an unlicensed game that I believe would have become a big seller for N* if they had made it official. I have also put 78 minutes into Amiga Columns that I used to play a lot in the 1990's, and even 10 minutes into the somewhat lacking VIColumns (sorry TMR, you're free to dislike one of my games in return), so I really can dig the type of game, just not Sega's official version for the Genesis/Mega Drive. :-(

On a similar vein, Super Hang-On does very little to me. The arcade mode has at least some action going on, while the "original" mode with repair shop and other stuff seems even slower on the track and generally dull. This is a game I played quite a deal on the C64, so perhaps I should try that conversion again, for nostalgic feelings. On this one, I couldn't care less if I'm driving the motorbike straight into a tree, I don't even try to steer away from the accident happening...

Edited April 17, 2016 by carlsson

[karokoenig]

I just don't get Venture. Does it require a lot of thought or is it just plain speed? Or both?

 

I don't know, but I got a feeling there's not much thought involved. It's just a lacklustre port with random enemy movement, awkward controls, weird collision detection. I found it very hard to motivate myself to try a higher score. At first I wanted at least get that bonus point for 10k points, but after a few attempts, I thought "Suck it".

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I just don't get Venture. Does it require a lot of thought or is it just plain speed? Or both?

Venture has always been my favorite game on both the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision ever since I was a little kid, so I'll toss in my two cents. Playing Venture well really just comes down to planning out your routes for the levels and rooms to avoid enemies until after you collect the treasure (only shoot them before collecting the treasure when absolutely necessary, since you won't get any points for it) then getting out of the rooms and on to the next one ASAP. Once you get through the first two rounds of levels the hardest part becomes baiting the hall monsters to lure them away from the paths you want to take from room to room, and having fast enough reflexes to dodge the enemies once you get into a room.

 

While I do really like the music, improved graphics, and third level in the ColecoVision version I think the Atari 2600 port is probably my favorite of the two to play since I find the difficulty curve smoother and more challenging. I usually score around 14 or 15k most of the time I play the Atari 2600 version, so maybe I'll pop into the high score club and give it a go.

Edited April 17, 2016 by Jin

[karokoenig]

I usually score around 14 or 15k most of the time I play the Atari 2600 version, so maybe I'll pop into the high score club and give it a go.

 

Hurry up then. Last day of the Venture competition today...

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Hurry up then. Last day of the Venture competition today...

Already did! I played a few games and posted my best score from them, which was 19,500. I know I can do better than that though, so I'll try again in the morning after I've gotten some much needed sleep. I'm really hoping I can break my previous personal high score of 20,300 with a little more practice.

[Atarian7]

Thank you for your input Jin and karokoenig. Maybe I'll try one more time today. So far I played a total of 63 minutes in 8 different sessions and my high score is 6300. LOL

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800:

1) Baby Pac-Man [hack of Pac-Man] - 24 minutes

 

2) Caterpillar / Cat-Man [hack of Pac-Man] - 26 minutes

 

3) Failsafe - 15 minutes

 

4) Fast Ms. Pac-Man [hack of Ms. Pac-Man] - 61 minutes

 

5) Kung-Fu Master - 5 minutes

 

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD: Super Cobra on Atari 5200 - 32 minutes (for 5200 High Score Club Season 9)

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 11th through 17th)...

 

Amstrad CPC:

2048 - 15 min.

 

Arcade:

Space Invaders Part II - 10 min.

 

Atari 800:

2048 - 87 min.

 

Gameboy:

Slider - 70 min. in 2 sessions

 

Master System:

2048 - 87 min.

 

Mega Drive / Genesis:

2048 - 44 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

20 Euros - 107 min.

2048 Tetris - 9 min.

 

This week I mainly played different "demakes" of 2048. Here's a quick rundown of the versions I played:

Amstrad CPC: This one, I think, was programmed in BASIC; as slow as it is. It plays two moves at once (in the same direction), so you don't have as much control over the playfield as in the original version.

Atari 800: This is the best of the bunch. It has nice big numbers on the tiles (but it displays 1K and 2K for the 1024 and 2048 tiles), and it plays music with a player that's as good as it gets on the Atari 8-bit. It cycles between very nice renditions of "Englishman in New York" and "Golden Brown".

Gameboy (Slider): This is a silent version with monochrone tiles (not even using the 4 shades of grey the Gameboy offers). It seems to be harder than the original, maybe because it does successive merges in one move.

Master System: This is fairly good, but silent as well. It flickers a bit, I think it blanks the screen while a move gets done. Also it spawns quite a lot of 4 tiles, making the game harder.

Mega Drive / Genesis: This one I think is the second-best behind the Atari 8-bit version. It has very smooth tile movements, but I think it lacks a bit on music. The music here reminds me a lot of the arcade music of "Hang on" by Sega.

 

There are six more versions I didn't try out of various reasons:

The Uzebox version doesn't run on the version of the Uzebox emulator I have. A newer version of the emulator is only available in source code form, so it all got too complicated for me.

For the Chip-8 version I would have needed an emulator, but like the Uzebox one, it's only availaible in source code form, at least as far as I can tell.

For the Amiga version I first needed to figure out how to run a LZH game on an emulator. Once I had that down, I learned that this version of 2048 needs a later OS and graphics library, and doesn't run on a plain vanilla Amiga 500. Since this means it needs a pretty unusual system to run, I didn't continue at this point.

ZX-81: I got this as a p file which is supposed to be loaded from tape. I got a ZX-81 emulation running, but loading the program didn't work.

MSX: An MSX version has been made and announced on a forum, but the link to it is dead.

Jaguar: I didn't bother to check out this one since I never had a Jaguar emulation going on.

There are versions for the Plus-4 and possibly others which I didn't check out yet. However, I'm pretty sure there isn't a version of 2048 for the Atari 7800, Colecovision, Sega SG-1000, Intellivision, Mattel Aquarius, Odyssey^2 / Odyssey^3, Philips VG-5000, ZX-Spectrum, Videobrain, Channel F, Epoch Cassette Vision, Epoch Super Cassette Vision and RCA Studio II systems or for any arcade hardware.

 

Other than that, I played two variants of 2048 online... 2048 Tetris where the rules have been changed a bit, and 20 Euros where you put together Euro coins as I already told you last week. I also played some quick games of Space Invaders Part II, but didn't get very far in the game.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 347 minutes

Venture - 89 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 433,974

 

 

[+wongojack]

 

 

This week I mainly played different "demakes" of 2048. Here's a quick rundown of the versions I played:

 

 

I had never heard of this game until your post. Interesting I guess. Sounds kinda like a single player version of dominos with all the annoying math elements that make your head hurt.

[oyamafamily]

Final time to add - Super Cobra on Atari 2600 (15 minutes), which I played for Bonus Point at 5200 HSC.

[+Ripdubski]

For the week.

 

Atari 8 Bit:

 

Asteroids - 8m

AtariNet - 95m

Donkey Kong - 12m

Donkey Kong Arcade - 78m

Donkey Kong Jr. - 8m

Joust - 13m

Kid Grid - 64m

River Raid - 17m

Xevious - 9m

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

DOS:

Heathkit DND - 2 min.

NES:

Galactic Crusader - 4 min.

Ghosts 'n Goblins - 441 min.

Beat both loops of GnG; thoughts on that, and two other games, here.

[Iwantgames:)]

More TI-99/4A today

 

Super TI-99 Mario Bros. - 20min

 

Snake - 10min

[+wongojack]

C64
Delta (Patrol) 119
Katakis 5
Life force 29
Silkworm 30
Cybotron 18

Gameboy
Game and Watch Gallery 50

Dreamcast
Dave Mirra BMX 5

I was prompted to play Delta by a high score challenge on another site. I avoided games like this as a kid so I'd never played it before. It's kinda awesome and I'll probably continue with it this week. I was playing on my original hardware so I played the US version (Patrol). I also tried a few more C64 games that I never got exposed to as a kid.

I was testing my Dreamcast and got it to work by adjusting the eye so I played a quick run of BMX whatever.

Game and watch was an impulse buy a few years ago. Never really played it till now. What does pushing left and right on the menu screen do exactly? Looks like maybe there are unlockables?

I also played/watched Quantum Break for XOne for more than four hours. Interesting that this is also "Game and Watch"

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Time for another big weekly wrap up!

 

 

 

Ineligible

Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS) - 324 minutes

Arcade

Centipede - 15 minutes

Donkey Kong - 43 minutes

Donkey Kong Junior - 51 minutes

Frogger - 10 minutes

Gun.Smoke - 7 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man -5 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (Speed-Up Version) - 8 minutes

Pac-Man - 10 minutes

Space Invaders - 8 minutes

Atari 2600 (All emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Frogger - 11 minutes

Gorf - 10 minutes

Millipede - 7 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 27 minutes

Venture - 113 minutes

ColecoVision (All emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Centipede - 2 minutes

Cosmic Avenger - 13 minutes

Donkey Kong - 6 minutes

Donkey Kong Junior - 20 minutes

Frenzy - 11 minutes

Gorf - 30 minutes

Lady Bug - 7 minutes

Venture - 17 minutes

Game Boy Color

Beatmania GB - 13 minutes

Titus the Fox (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 189 minutes

NES (All emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Donkey Kong Junior - 16 minutes

Lemmings - 68 minutes

PlayStation

Riven: The Sequel to Myst - 478 minutes

Street Fighter Alpha 3 - 180 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

1,699 minutes (28 hours 19 minutes) [1,375 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

PlayStation: 658 minutes

Nintendo DS: 324 minutes

Game Boy Color: 202 minutes

Atari 2600: 168 minutes

Arcade: 157 minutes

ColecoVision: 106 minutes

NES: 84 minutes

Both the misses and I ended up playing a ton of different games this week, with a heavy focus on arcade and arcade style games for the most part. The household 60-in-1 multicade saw a whole lot use this week, and the more I explore the options for emulating classic consoles on the Wii the more I like it! It's emulated every 8 bit and 16-bit game that I've thrown at it flawlessly so far, and thanks to the Wii I was able to play some of my favorite games from my childhood for the first time in over 20 years this week. I grew up playing my older brother's ColecoVision all the time, and some of my fondest gaming memories from back then were of the ColecoVision games that I played on the Wii this week. I can't even begin to explain what an incredibly joyous nostalgia trip it was to hear the music from the ColecoVision version of Donkey Kong Junior again for the first time in two decades, and I gotta say that the Wii remote made controlling the games a heck of a lot more comfortable than I remember the ColecoVision controllers being.

Along with my trip down memory lane I also used the Wii to play a Game Boy Color game that I've been wanting to get my hands on for a long time but have never been able to find a good condition copy of (Titus the Fox, and you can find more info on that experience here) and several Atari 2600 games that I had been missing since I liquidated my Atari 2600 collection late last year. The Wii may not be quite as perfect of a solution for classic gaming as playing the games on the original hardware, since you miss out on playing with special controllers like paddle controllers and trackballs (though most of the light gun games for the Atari 7800 and NES do have Wii remote compatible versions of their ROMs available), but I think it's still a darn great way to experience the vast majority of 8 and 16-bit games out there for very little expense. Next month I'll be picking up a Classic Controller for the Wii to improve my emulation experience even further, and I'm also hoping to track down one of those Mad Catz Tatsunoko vs Capcom Wii arcade sticks (which the Wii recognizes as a Classic Controller) for my wife so that she can join in the fun too.

Speaking of the misses, in addition to playing a bunch of arcade games on the multicade—and setting a new household high score record of 49,100 in Donkey Kong in the process—she also logged quite a bit of time on her all around favorite system: The PlayStation. She spent a few hours thoroughly whipping my ass in Street Fighter Alpha 3, then started in on the copy of Riven: The Sequel to Myst that I gave her for Christmas last year. She really loved Myst and had no problem beating it without ever referencing a guide, but Riven has been a bit more of a head scratcher for her and she has peeked at the hint book I picked up for her along with the game a couple times so far. In spite of the increased (or at least more esoteric) puzzle difficulty she has still been enjoying Riven a whole lot, as evidenced by how excited been to tell me about it every time she solved a particularly dastardly puzzle, and I'm pretty confident that she'll see it through to the end over the next week or two.

Well, I think that about wraps it up for this week! I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be playing next week at this point, but I think that regardless of what I choose to play it's pretty safe to assume that my household will be posting a lot more time in Riven come next week.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Jin

[BurritoBeans]

3DO:

DOOM - 200 minutes

 

Genesis 32X:

DOOM - 210 minutes

 

Sharp X68000:

Hydlide - 62 minutes

Hydlide 2: Shine of Darkness - 132 minutes

Hydlide 3: The Space Memories - 230 minutes

 

Yeah, nothing much in variety, but I did get a good bit of time in. Started the week with some DOOM, played the 3DO and 32X ports, and I'll probably be playing a good bit of DOOM as I guess we got a preorder of the new one so I want to beat all the old ones to compare to the new one when it comes out. Other than DOOM, the X68000 got playtime, as I felt like playing through the three Hydlide games on there (Didn't feel like getting the Saturn out for Virtual Hydlide) and they're still OK. The first game is simple, just that grinding can be a bit boring, and I save often as combat is very unpredictable. The 2nd game I always have trouble at first, as I usually just keep getting killed over and over. Finally, 3 plays the same as Super Hydlide on the Genesis, just with the built-in FM synth on the X68K instead of the Genesis which sounds a bit nicer. So yeah, nothing exciting by any means, but still a good week.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 16, running from April 11 - 17. We logged 4823 minutes of eligible play, playing 99 games on a total of 21 systems.

Top 10:

1. Riven: The Sequel to Myst (PlayStation) - 478

2. Ghosts 'n Goblins (NES/Famicom) - 441

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 347

4. Venture (Atari 2600) - 256

5. Hydlide 3: The Space Memories (Sharp X68000) - 230

6. Doom (Sega 32X) - 210

7. Doom (3DO) - 200

8. Titus the Fox (Game Boy Color) - 189

9. Street Fighter Alpha 3 (PlayStation) - 180

10. Hydlide 2: Shine of Darkness (Sharp X68000) - 132

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 347

2. Venture (Atari 2600) - 256

3. Delta (Delta Patrol) (C64) - 119

4. AtariNet (Atari 8-bit) - 95

5. 2048 (Atari 8-bit) - 87

6. Donkey Kong Arcade (Atari 8-bit) - 78

7. Kid Grid (Atari 8-bit) - 64

8. Fast Ms. Pac-Man [hack] (Atari 7800) - 61

9. Donkey Kong Jr. (Arcade) - 57

10. Donkey Kong (Arcade) - 53

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (673)

2. PlayStation (658)

3. NES/Famicom (639)

4. Sharp X68000 (424)

5. Atari 8-bit (391)

6. Arcade (356)

7. Sega 32X (210)

8. Game Boy Color (202)

9. C64 (201)

10. 3DO (200)

Another big week for variety, both of platforms and of games. In the end it's Riven that takes the top of the individual charts, but Kaboom claims the pre-NES charts and leads the VCS to victory in a tight three-way race for the top system spot.

Meanwhile, pity poor Ghosts 'n Goblins: not only does it get edged out by Riven for the #1 spot, and fail to lead the NES on the system charts, but it falls 5 minutes short of the 1000-minute club! Don't worry, you grotesque little fella, you'll get there someday.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

8. Titus the Fox (Game Boy) - 189

9. Street Fighter Alpha 2 (PlayStation) - 180

 

Awesome work with the Top 10 list as always, and sorry that your ghoulish buddies got just ever so slightly edged out of the number 1 slot this week. It was pretty darn close!

 

I did want to correct a couple errors on the list though. The version of Titus the Fox I played last week was for the Game Boy Color and not the original Game Boy, and the Street Fighter Alpha game was 3 rather than 2. That's all

[+thegoldenband]

Awesome work with the Top 10 list as always, and sorry that your ghoulish buddies got just ever so slightly edged out of the number 1 slot this week. It was pretty darn close!

 

I did want to correct a couple errors on the list though. The version of Titus the Fox I played last week was for the Game Boy Color and not the original Game Boy, and the Street Fighter Alpha game was 3 rather than 2. That's all

 

Oh, thanks for catching that. Since I've played Titus the Fox for Game Boy, I think I just saw what I expected to see, if that makes sense. Fixing now...

 

EDIT: Fixed. And check out the 3-way logjam at the bottom of the system charts! Only separated by a minute...

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Oh, thanks for catching that. Since I've played Titus the Fox for Game Boy, I think I just saw what I expected to see, if that makes sense. Fixing now...

 

EDIT: Fixed. And check out the 3-way logjam at the bottom of the system charts! Only separated by a minute...

No worries! I haven't played the original Game Boy version of Titus the Fox yet, but I'll probably be checking it out via emulator at some point this week. I think the only real differences between the Game Boy and Color versions, aside from the GBC version being in color, is that the GBC version has two additional levels added in at the start of the game. I was really confused at first when I started playing it and realized the first two levels were titled "Extra Level 1" and "Extra Level 2", then Level 1 starts after you beat the extra levels. It didn't make much sense to me until I watched a short play video of the original Game Boy version and found out the two extra levels weren't in it. I guess that that was the little incentive the developers tossed in for the GBC version to try to make it appealing for fans of the Game Boy original.

 

And holy cow, you're right! I don't think I've ever seen that close of a race between three systems on the Top 10 list for the week before. Cool stuff!

Edited April 19, 2016 by Jin

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Atari 7800:

Galaga: 20 Minutes

Pole Position 2: 10 Minutes

Centipede: 15 Minutes

NES:

Super Mario Bros: 40 Minutes

Mega Man: 45 Minutes

SNES:

Super Adventure Island: 30 Minutes

Mame/Arcade:

Vs. Dr. Mario: 20 Minutes

Tempest: 7 Minutes

Pole Position: 5 Minutes

Mario Bros: 15 Minutes

Frogger: 5 Minutes

Star Wars The Arcade Game: 7 Minutes

Robotron 2084: 3 Minutes

King and Balloon: 4 Minutes

Ms. Pac-Man: 10 Minutes

Track and Field: 8 Minutes

[Syzygy1]

Mega Man games and some Atari games