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

[+Darrin9999]

Intellivision:

 

1. Bowling - 115 min

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

1. Parsec - 15 min

[carlsson]

Amiga OCS:

Premier Manager 1 - 355 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Boulder Dash - 9 min.

Flip and Flop - 14 min.

Mogul Maniac - 11 min.

Pole Position - 4 min.

Rainbow Walker - 19 min.

C64:

Decathlon - 17 min.

So I started the week as I ended the last, with a couple marathon sessions of football management. As mentioned before, it is a game you can play while watching TV or chatting on IRC at the same time, rather low intensity which results in long play times.

Then I went to the thrift store and found a $2 dance mat for the PS2, something I've looked for a while in order to connect to my PSX64 interface that otherwise is used with Guitar Hero guitars to play Shredz 64 or Tracker Hero on the Amiga. The dance mat maps just like a regular joystick, so that is perfectly fine. Of course I had to give it a stress test, so I connected it to my C128D and played one full round of Decathlon. Man, I was panting halfway through! I'm quite overweight and nowhere near physical shape, but perhaps the dance mat in combination with a few rounds on my neglected exercise bike could help me getting into shape? I must admit the 400 meter race was nearly killing me, I had to lie down on the floor and play through that event using my hands instead of feet. The last 1500 meter event was fine with slow walking until the last 200 meters of sprint, which I barely finished.

Once done, I connected my 130XE and played a few games using a regular joystick. Then it struck me that Mogul Maniac originally was sold with the Amiga Joyboard, which today is hard to find and also wouldn't sustain my weight if I tried. So of course I had to try this with the dance mat, set to joystick setting (the joyboard setting reverses left and right). It was quite fun, and since you accelerate by pushing upwards, I had to come up with a technique where I'd hop to the left and to the right for each slalom port, moving the left foot from left to up and the right foot from up to right and back again, in order to not lose speed. Almost like real slalom, I imagine!

Finally, I had to play a few of the other Atari games again using the mat, but it was much harder, nearly impossible to play both Boulder Dash and Rainbow Walker using the mat. More complex arcade games, I wouldn't even attempt.

Update: I also tried Pole Position on the Atari. Thanks to it has auto acceleration and use fire to brake, it was nearly playable with the mat, but hard as **** and I wasn't able to succeed in qualification.

Edited January 9, 2016 by carlsson

[Opry99er]

That has to be the coolest Tracker update I've seen.

 

Well done!!!!

Edited January 9, 2016 by Opry99er

[karokoenig]

NES

Paperboy: 7 min

Silent Service: 2 min

Yoshi: 8 min

 

Sega Mega Drive

LHX Attack Chopper: 15 min

Phantasy Star II: 10 min

Phantasy Star III: 15 min

Sonic 1: 11 min

Sonic 2: 5 min

 

VC20:

Mole Attack: 3 min

Metagalactic Llamas: 8 min

 

C16/Plus4:

Treasure Island: 5 min

 

Schneider CPC:

War Hawk: 6 min

 

Happy and sad moments playing games this last week. Happy moments, because I found time to continue testing some NES and Genesis games from a super cheap haul I scored a while ago. The guy back then gave me a box of 30 games (NTSC NES and Genesis) at 2 Euro apiece, including titles like Phantasy Star 2 to 4 and other high-profile RPGs. He did this in full knowledge of how sought-after some of those titles are these days. He said he just collects for NES, and neither cared for Sega nor for disabling the 10NES chip in his console.

 

Somewhat sad moments are connected with the playtime on the 8-bit Home Computers. These playtimes were accumulated during testing sessions when I sold the whole lot, games and peripherals included, to this guy. I know him and his channel for years, and I sold them to him for a very cheap price (probably 1/3 of their current market value or less), because I know they are in good hands now, and he will make good use of them. I would have loved to keep the machines (especially the Plus4, since it's awesome!), but with a 19-month boy in the house, there is neither time nor room to set them up and actually use them anywhere in the near future. Once my boy is old enough, I will instead set up my own C64, which I still keep at my parents' house, so he can play with it.

 

On the positive side, I had a fun day with Theshadowsnose. He lives just 2 hours away from me and came personally to pick up the computers. Fine fellow, and we thoroughly enjoyed a day of fiddling with 8-bit technology and geek talk. I am looking forward to seeing my machines being used in his comparison videos in the near future. Also, getting rid of the computers provided me with a decent amount of free shelf space, into which I could re-order the rest of my collection.

[Opry99er]

Final posting for the week:

 

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Parsec (45 additional minutes)

 

 

Gameboy:

 

Baseball (30 additional minutes)

 

 

VCS:

 

GORF (15 minutes)

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Bowling (210 additional minutes)

BurgerTime (35 minutes)

Super Pro Football (45 minutes)

World Championship Baseball (40 additional minutes)

 

 

I have become an Intellivision junkie lately... The controller interface is what does it for me, I think. I am a TI-99 nut, so having a keyboard at my fingertips seems like "the only way to game" sometimes... The Inty has 16 buttons plus a 16 position disc.... Basically a computer keyboard.

 

The sports games are unreal. Loving every minute I get to play Intellivision games... Bowling will cross the 1000 minute club this week, I think. Alot of guys gearing up for the start of league play in the Intellivision Bowling League.

 

Anyway, good week this week.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Opry99er

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 502 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 175,981

 

 

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800: Pac-Man Collection - 70 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikem1cTRTcA

 

NES: Ms. Pac-Man [Tengen License] - 235 minutes

 

 

[zylon]

2600-

 

Kaboom!- 2hrs 8min

[+Darrin9999]

Intellivision:

 

1. Bowling - 16 min

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Intellivision:

 

PBA Bowling: 90 Minutes give or take

Kool-Aid Man: 20 Minutes

Snafu: 10 Minutes

Brickout!: 35 Minutes

Donkey Kong Jr.: 15 Minutes

Donkey Kong: 10 Minutes

 

NES:

 

Arkanoid: 20 Minutes

Super Mario Bros. 2: 40 Minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Intellivision:

Piggy Bank - 59 min.

NES:

Adventures of Captain Comic - 112 min.

Faria - 2 min.

Fist of the North Star - 2 min.

Jimmy Connors Tennis - 12 min.

Mighty Bomb Jack - 19 min.

Quattro Sports - 70 min.

Racket Attack - 280 min.

Rackets & Rivals - 10 min.

Top Players' Tennis - 86 min.

SNES:

Andre Agassi Tennis - 163 min.

Art of Fighting - 23 min.

Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool - 40 min.

David Crane's Amazing Tennis - 141 min.

Knights of the Round - 80 min.

Toys - 58 min.

Super A'Can:

Boom Zoo - Bao Bao Dong Wu Yuan - 3 min.

Beat a huge pile of games this week -- all of which I've beaten before -- including Captain Comic, Racket Attack, the tennis quarter of Quattro Sports, and all of the listed SNES games except for Knights of the Round (which I played with my wife). As you might guess, I was doing so for the "beat-'em-all" efforts at NintendoAge, since otherwise I don't habitually replay games I've beaten.

I also put some time into Top Players' Tennis and a short amount into Jimmy Connors Tennis, but I don't know if I can bring myself to slog through either of those again. Rackets & Rivals I just can't get into -- seems like it might be the worst tennis game on the system, which is saying something.

Otherwise the main highlight was playing Piggy Bank, which turns out to be a terrific, addictive little game in a style I enjoy (single-screen platforming with a mild puzzle element). So far my best effort has been reaching Level 10 or 11, so I have a ways to go before clearing Level 20!

Oh, and the Super A'Can was in emulation -- web-based emulation, with no sound to boot -- while he game itself was a fairly banal Super Bomberman clone. Still, interesting to sample such an obscure console, and one that I don't think has ever appeared on the tracker before.

[BurritoBeans]

"It's time"

 

Atari 2600:

Chase - 10 minutes

 

Dreamcast:

Resident Evil CODE: Veronica - 20 minutes

Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 - 200 minutes

 

Macintosh:

Deja Vu: 45 minutes

Deja Vu II: 40 minutes

Shadowgate: 15 minutes

Uninvited: 20 minutes

 

PC-9801:

Policenauts - 120 minutes

 

PC-Engine/TG16:

Die Hard - 250 minutes

Power Golf - 30 minutes

Solider Blade - 15 minutes

Splatterhouse - 45 minutes

 

Sharp X68000:

Cameltry - 30 minutes

 

Well, there are some times. I played a bit of Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast, it's a fairly fun RPG to me. Cameltry got the daily playtime, so that was all good. The MacVenture series got some playtime, and dang Uninvited is fun but a bit of a pain, I always end up dying from the air or something. Other than all that, nothing really exciting for games.

[+thegoldenband]

The MacVenture series got some playtime, and dang Uninvited is fun but a bit of a pain, I always end up dying from the air or something.

I'm trying to remember whether that happens automatically in the Mac version, or if it's a consequence of having an item you shouldn't (as in the NES version).

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for the past week (January 4th through 10th)...

 

Atari 2600:

Turbo (prototype) - 2 min.

 

Facebook (non-eligible):

On the run - 169 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Nonogram of the week - 73 min.

 

TI-99:

Q*Bert - 287 min. in 11 sessions

 

Toshiba Visicom:

Doodle - 30 min.

 

This week I continued to play the TI-99 version of Q*bert which is a little more challenging than the arcade original.

 

The Toshiba Visicom is a color clone of the RCA Studio II which is able to display one of 4 colors per pixel from a fixed pallette, and I used its built-in Doodle program (which is some kind of simple drawing software) to draw up a mock screenshot of Pole Position on the Visicom which I posted over at the Studio II thread.

 

Then I noticed that the prototype ROM of Turbo for the Atari 2600 has been released, so I tried that, but as was noted in that thread, it's pretty much unplayable.

 

A more playable racing game in the same vain would be the Facebook game "On the run" (actually it runs on the Unity web player) which I played for several hours this week.

 

Then I did the Nonogram of the week which I managed to solve this time.

 

Finally, I read that MESS and MAME have been merged into a single emulator, and it now also emulates some handhelds like Coleco's "Donkey Kong" or Tomy's "Caveman" which I both used to have, and also some more oddball items like the Bigtrak which is actually a vehicle controlled by a TMS1000 family microcontroller. You can give it the commands on a keypad mounted on top of it and then press "Go", and it will execute the movements you punched in before (go forward and backwards, turn left and right, fire and wait). Since MESS has a debugger, I started to disassemble and comment the ROM built into the chip. So far I've got about 40% of the ROM commented (it's only 1024 bytes), but I don't understand all of it yet. I didn't list that since it isn't an actual game.

[Atarian7]

2600-

 

Kaboom!- 2hrs 8min

So, how did you score?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Sneaking in at the last second (a little late actually) today due to oversleeping, but here's my household's times for the week.

 

Ineligible

Clubhouse Games (Nintendo DS) - 7 minutes

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS) - 5 minutes

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (Nintendo DS) - 12 minutes

Touch the Dead (Nintendo DS) - 521 minutes

Game Boy

Boggle Plus - 31 minutes

Game Boy Color

Monopoly - 326 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

902 minutes (15 hours 2 minutes) [357 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo DS: 545 minutes

Game Boy Color: 326 minutes

Game Boy: 31 minutes

As we enter into the second week of the new year, I'm starting to foresee a lot more ineligible playtime in my household's future this year. My wife has been putting her new DSi XL to constant use this past week, playing through Touch the Dead several times on different game modes, and I'm planning on picking myself up a DS Lite in the not too distant future to replace the old one that I sold last year. In any case, I still managed to log some eligible time in a couple of my favorite Game Boy/Color time killers and I'm going to be trying to get in some play time on at least a couple eligible systems every week; even if the majority of my household's gaming focus may drift towards slightly newer and ineligible systems for a while.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 2, running from January 4 - 10. We logged 5860 minutes of eligible play, playing 86 games on a total of 25 systems.

Top 10:

1. Bowling [aka PBA Bowling] (Intellivision) - 673

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 630

3. Premier Manager 1 (Amiga) - 355

4. Monopoly (Game Boy Color) - 326

5. Q*bert (TI-99/4A) - 287

6. Racket Attack (NES/Famicom) - 280

7. Die Hard (TG-16/PC Engine) - 250

8. Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) (NES/Famicom) - 235

9. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 230

10. Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 (Dreamcast) - 200

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Bowling [aka PBA Bowling] (Intellivision) - 673

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 630

3. Q*bert (TI-99/4A) - 287

4. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 230

5. Parsec (TI-99/4A) - 120

6. Frogger (Odyssey^2) - 80

7. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 70

8. Piggy Bank (Intellivision) - 59

9. Piggyback Planet (Odyssey^2) - 47

10. Super Pro Football (Intellivision) - 45

Top 10 systems:

1. Intellivision (1132)

2. NES/Famicom (905)

3. Atari 2600 (657)

4. SNES (505)

5. TI-99/4A (407)

6. Amiga (355)

7. TG-16/PC Engine (340)

8. Game Boy Color (326)

9. Dreamcast (220)

10. Odyssey^2 (172)

Does that large black ball have three holes or a lit fuse? Well, that's what separates our #1 and #2 games as, with or without the PBA, Bowling -- and its host system, the Intellivision -- take the top spot in a very diverse week.

Bowling is also one of a whopping four games to make the 1000-minute club, with 1021 minutes logged to date. The others are Q*bert for TI-99/4A (1121 min.), Racket Attack for NES (1220 min.), and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Genesis (1002 min.). This quartet claims spots #189-192 in that particular block of mezzanine seating.

[Opry99er]

Nice rundown! Thanks

[carlsson]

Which is the game with the longest name to have entered the tracker? I just played one game for next week whose title consists of 94 characters.

[Opry99er]

"Christmas Carol vs. The Ghost of Christmas Presents" would be a candidate...

Only 51 there though.

[+thegoldenband]

I don't have a good way to count strings by length, but the longest I spotted was "Iida Joji Nightmare Interactive: Moon Cradle - Igyou no Hanayome". Some of those Japanese games get quite lengthy of moniker.

[zylon]

So, how did you score?

 

not much. only about 5k or so. Best i ever get is about 30k on the 5200/a8 versions or 25k on this one. I finally managed to get an Atari to display a playable picture down here so I gave it a workout. If I use channel 2 and turn off enough things in here, it works tolerably. All the wireless cable services in this complex use channel 3. My Sega can get through it, but not the 2600.

[carlsson]

Perhaps there is a Faraday cage to buy at a nearby supermarket, big enough to fit the 2600, a TV and ideally also you?

Edited January 12, 2016 by carlsson

[Atarian7]

If you can get to 25k you can get a lot higher. Hope your 2600 issues get worked out.

[+Darrin9999]

Odyssey 2 :

 

1. Air Assault - 52 min

2. Astrododge - 10 min

3. Dino Dash - 20 min

4. Demon Attack - 33 min

5. Frogger - 31 min

6. Piggyback Planet - 20 min

7. Popeye - 55 min

8. Casino Slot Machine! - 159 min

9. Catch The Ball - 10 min

10. Sub Chase! - 12 min

11. Blobbers! - 20 min

 

Intellivision :

 

PBA Bowling - 183 min