What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2017 (Season 10)

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD - Atari 2600

 

Enduro - 75 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 298 minutes

Dragster - 87 minutes

Skiing - 10 minutes

Enduro - 468 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 199,862

 

 

[+davidcalgary29]

Dreamcast

 

Samba de Amigo rematch! 100 minutes of playtime, followed by a Samba de Meltdown by pouty eight year-old player. And a set of thrown maracas.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:

Moai-Kun - 18 min.

Motocross Champion - 5 min.

Ys III: Wanderers from Ys - 251 min.

CoCo 1/2:

Dungeons of Daggorath - 287 min.

Monster Maze - 12 min.

CoCo 3:

Castle of Tharoggad - 6 min.

Super Pitfall - 27 min.

Atari Lynx:

Blue Lightning - 14 min.

Spent the first part of the week chipping away at two games I've beaten before with savestates and am now doing legitimately, Blue Lightning and Moai-Kun. In between I took an unexpected snow day and used it to play through the fan translation of Ys III for NES, which is a terrific localization of an OK game. Thoughts on that, plus Drakkhen and Flappy from past weeks, here.

Then I pulled out my CoCo 3 over the weekend and tried to beat Dungeons of Daggorath for the first time in about 25 years. I got close on one run, making it partway through the fourth floor of the dungeon (out of five), but couldn't quite pull it off. Of course I'm also not bothering to use the savegame function, which would obviously help.

I also played a few other games, including Daggorath's infamous sequel Castle of Tharoggad, which is about as inelegant a piece of programming as you'll ever see, as well as the dull Berzerk clone Monster Maze and the low-framerate port of Super Pitfall (which I'm sure is a technical marvel, but a slideshow's a slideshow).

[Eltigro]

Man, I really didn't get as much play time this week as I thought I was going to. But, I did complete a couple of goals... I got further in the story on FF7 and I played something on a real console.

 

TurboGrafx-16

Keith Courage in Alpha Zones - 64 minutes (I played until I got annoyed with dying on spikes. Don't remember what level it was... the level where you get the Jewel Sword I think?)

 

Playstation

Final Fantasy VII (emulated) - 124 minutes (Got the Huge Materia and got Capn (Cloud) and Tifa back. They are about three levels below everyone else now, but oh well.)

 

And that's pretty much it. Work and other things just kicked my butt this week. I didn't get to work on scores for the VCS HSC. Although I did get further in the story on FF7, it wasn't very far. Oh well, that's life.

 

 

[Eltigro]

Oh, and just for the halibut, I figured I'd put up a picture of the real Capn. I name most of my nameable video game characters after him.

 

[zylon]

5200-

Stargate- 20min

[+wongojack]

A2600

Desert Falcon 14

Star Strike 3

Yars' Revenge 7

 

 

That's all I did last week. Too much work and then too much College Basketball ?

[Opry99er]

All the Enduro talk got me excited.

 

To add:

 

 

VCS:

 

Enduro (70 minutes)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It's that time of the week again!

 

 

 

Ineligible

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (GameCube) - 87 minutes

Arcade

Ms. Pac-Man (Played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 12 minutes

Scramble (Played on Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced for Game Boy Advance) - 58 minutes

Atari 2600

Adventure - 24 minutes

Alien - 44 minutes

Crystal Castles - 71 minutes

Enduro - 31 minutes

Skiing - 19 minutes

Atari 7800 (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Pac-Man Collection - 48 minutes

Robotron 2084 - 21 minutes

Game Boy

Space Invaders - 18 minutes

Game Boy Color

Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 36 minutes

Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 79 minutes

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe - 28 minutes

NES (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

The Legend of Zelda - 272 minutes

PlayStation

Doom - 284 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,132 minutes (18 hours 52 minutes) [1,045 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

PlayStation: 284 minutes

NES: 272 minutes

Atari 2600: 189 minutes

Game Boy Color: 143 minutes

GameCube: 87 minutes

Arcade: 70 minutes

Atari 7800: 69 minutes

Game Boy: 18 minutes

This week ended up being a little slower than usual due to me winding up in the hospital on Tuesday and the aftermath of that incident, but other than that it was a pretty good week. I've been suffering from thyroiditis for the last month and a half or so and have been handling it pretty well for the most part, up until late Tuesday night when my thyroid finally went kablooey and I had a thyroid storm attack. That landed me in the hospital for a night but I am recovering from it and should feel back to normal in a month to a month and a half with any luck. Until then though I'm stuck taking an anti-thyroid medication every day that always makes me feel a little dizzy, unsteady on my feet, and queasy for about 12 hours after I take it. That medication is why my household's gaming time for this week is a bit lower than usual, since once I take it about midday I can't play anything that involves a moving screen without getting really nauseous.

So, with that knowledge in mind, this week I played a lot of single screen games. Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man on various systems were a lot of fun, and the misses and I had a great time playing Alien and Crystal Castles on the Atari 2600 together. Alien was played off the Harmony cartridge but Crystal Castles was one of the games I lucked out on and was able to pick up complete in box from a fellow AtariAge member last week. Back before I liquidated my old Atari 2600 collection a few years ago I remember having a ton of fun playing Crystal Castles with the Wico trackball, but sadly the game just doesn't work very well with the official Atari CX-80 trackball. I don't know if it's that the CX-80's ball doesn't roll as smoothly as the Wico one or whether the encoder speed for joystick mode is just slower on the Atari trackball, but in any case it didn't work too well and it didn't take long for me to decide to use my Best Electronics upgraded CX-40 joystick instead. I guess that just means that I have a good excuse to hunt down a new Wico trackball now!

The only other game that I played a lot of this week was the original Legend of Zelda for the NES, via emulation on the Wii that is. It's been fun so far, though it has reminded me why I don't generally care for NES games and it's for that reason that I don't know whether or not I'll stick with it and play it through to the end. My one big complaint about the NES has always been that almost every well regarded game on the system is way too hard for my liking, and Zelda is no exception. All the Super Mario games, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Punch-Out, Contra, Rad Racer, and pretty much every other well known game on the system (aside from Kirby's Adventure) are just crazy difficult compared to the games on other systems I like; to the point that I generally don't enjoy them. I have a hard enough time with NES games when I'm in good health and my brain isn't in a fog from anti-thyroid meds, so now probably isn't the best time for me to be playing games on this particular system.

Lastly, before I get to the misses' gaming activities for the week, I did want to mention that I was really happy to have achieved the new HighScore.com world record in Game Boy Advance port of the arcade version of Scramble this week with a score of 93,260! I managed to pull that off Tuesday afternoon before I ended up in the hospital that evening and I'm still really pleased about it, especially since I already held the record for the Atari 7800 port of Scramble and it's great to be able to add another version of one of my favorite game's to my slowly growing world record score collection.

Wrapping things up for this week, my wife continued playing through Doom on the PlayStation and finished off the Ultimate Doom portion of the game mid-week. Since then she's been getting in a few levels of the Doom II portion of the game here and there as time allows, but she also took some breaks now and again to play some Atari 2600 too. In addition to the time we spent playing Alien and Crystal Castles together she also played several games of Adventure and beat it on all 3 game settings, adding it to her list of games beaten for this year. As far as what next week has in store I think it's safe to say that my wife's interest in finishing Doom isn't going to be going away anytime soon, but what I end up playing may largely depend on how my medical situation goes. I'm feeling pretty good at the moment so as soon as I'm finished with this post I'm going to go play Chopper Command for the Atari 2600 High Score Club, and I know that later today the new Atari 7800 system we picked up from Video61 to replace the old one that was rather foolishly sold back in January will be shipping out. I've managed to pick up a few Atari 7800 games in advance of getting the system, so I'm sure that the spousal unit and I will both make some time to check out the new games once the Atari 7800 system arrives.

Until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

Edited March 20, 2017 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 11, running from March 13 - 19. We logged 8049 minutes of eligible play, playing 62 games on a total of 23 systems.

Top 10:

1. Lemonade Stand (TI-99/4A) - 870

2. Enduro (Atari 2600) - 809

3. King’s Quest (Apple II) - 400

3. Tokio Twilight Busters (NEC PC-9801) - 400

3. Wedding Bell ha Takakara ni (NEC PC-9801) - 400

3. Lawnmower Man, The (SNES) - 400

7. Henhouse (TI-99/4A) - 320

8. Never-Lander (TI-99/4A) - 300

9. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 298

10. Dungeons of Daggorath (CoCo 1 & 2) - 287

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Lemonade Stand (TI-99/4A) - 870

2. Enduro (Atari 2600) - 809

3. King’s Quest (Apple II) - 400

4. Henhouse (TI-99/4A) - 320

5. Never-Lander (TI-99/4A) - 300

6. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 298

7. Dungeons of Daggorath (CoCo 1 & 2) - 287

8. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 220

9. Rally Speedway (Atari 8-bit) - 170

10. Alpiner (TI-99/4A) - 160

Top 10 systems:

1. TI-99/4A (2470)

2. Atari 2600 (1487)

3. NEC PC-9801 (1040)

4. NES/Famicom (559)

5. PlayStation (408)

6. Apple II (400)

7. SNES (400)

8. CoCo 1 & 2 (299)

9. Atari 8-bit (170)

10. Game Boy Color (143)

Last week it was a snowstorm, this week it's the dawn of spring, so how oddly appropriate that Lemonade Stand comes out of nowhere to take the top spot over Enduro (itself a weather-afflicted game).

Much like Week 10, we put up the kind of numbers that would've made the all-time Top 10 until recently, led by a massive 2470 minutes from the TI-99/4A. In fact, our total this week of 8049 minutes is only 35 minutes more than last week's 8014 minutes, though we have more systems (23 vs. 18) and fewer games (62 vs. 83) this week.

And, also like last week, we get three new entries into the 1000-minute club, as Lemonade Stand (1195 min.) and Never-Lander (1085 min.) on the TI are joined by the C64's Toy Bizarre (1026 min.) in spots #268-270.

Finally, one more point of comparison with Week 10: consider the sad case of Doom for PlayStation, which made #9 in last week's Top 10 with 289 minutes. This week it logged 284 minutes -- a drop of only 5 minutes -- but that was enough to get it knocked off the charts by Dungeons of Daggorath, the original creepy first-person real-time battle game, and by a margin of only 3 minutes. So quickly can things change!

[Opry99er]

Awesome!! Thanks again for maintaining the tracker!

 

Point of clarification:

 

Do BBS door games count here? Many of the door games I play were written before 1995, and are hosted on vintage computer systems.

 

Thanks!

[+thegoldenband]

Awesome!! Thanks again for maintaining the tracker!

You're welcome!

 

Point of clarification:

 

Do BBS door games count here? Many of the door games I play were written before 1995, and are hosted on vintage computer systems.

That's a great question. My instinct is to say yes, but the logistics of classifying a game played via a terminal are a bit daunting. Opinions?

[Opry99er]

Well, since emulated games count, I think the door is open. (see what I did there? )

 

In my opinion, if the BBS is hosted on a vintage machine, and if the games run natively on said machine, they should be accepted. I think the name of the BBS needs to be posted with any entries, and possibly the name of the host machine.

[carlsson]

We already have Arcade which is vague, plus that someone once tracked "Linux" so a "BBS" category would work for me.

[+cvga]

Only one game this week but it was fun...

 

Atari Lynx

Ms. Pacman - 45 minutes

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Getaway - 127 min.

Kaverns of Kfest - 76 min.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Chopper Command - 59 minutes

Enduro - 35 minutes

Jawbreaker - 5 minutes

Jr. Pac-Man - 16 minutes

Kangaroo - 10 minutes

Quadrun - 5 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

Chopper Command Game 1 B/B, for 2600 NEW HSC Season 6, Week 9 (Bronze Medalist Choice - With video and statistical tables)

 

[oyamafamily]

Add 10 minutes of Quadrun for Atari 2600

[Iwantgames:)]

Not much classic gaming for me lately

 

Gamate -

 

Cube Up - 10min

 

 

Supervision -

 

Alien - 25min

Pyramid - 5min

[Opry99er]

Been doing mostly hardware stuff and BBSing this week.

 

Short list, unless we get a ruling on BBS Door Games.

 

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Henhouse (60 minutes)

NeverLander (360 minutes)

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Copter Command (120 minutes)

Snafu (60 minutes)

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 356 minutes

Chopper Command - 400 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 183,795

 

 

[+thegoldenband]

Been doing mostly hardware stuff and BBSing this week.

 

Short list, unless we get a ruling on BBS Door Games.

 

Oh, list them for sure. I guess since they're basically platform-agnostic, I can list them under BBS Games, unless there's some sane way of classifying them by transmission protocol, text encoding (ANSI vs. ASCII?), or something like that.

[Opry99er]

Cool!!!

 

 

BBS Door Games:

 

(Heatwave BBS)

 

 

Battleship (150 minutes)

BBS Baseball (90 minutes)

PGA Golf (240 minutes)

 

 

(The Keep BBS)

 

MajorMUD (10 minutes)

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

CoCo 1/2:

Dungeons of Daggorath - 107 min.

Famicom Disk System:

Konamic Tennis - 9 min.

TurboGrafx-16:

Crest of Gaia (Gaia no Monshou) - 4 min.

Energy - 118 min.

Beat Energy thanks to a newly-released translation patch, and took a couple more failed runs at Dungeons of Daggorath.