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

[Eltigro]

I'll go ahead and put in my totals since I don't think I'll get a chance to game much today or tomorrow...

 

Intellivision

 

Donkey Kong 4 min (I have two INTVs, a model one with iffy controllers and a Super Pro System with better controllers, but won't play DK. I'm surprised I spent this long struggling with it.)

 

Major League Baseball 3 min (I'll admit, some of this was spent reading the manual. Couldn't figure out why I couldn't pitch, then realised it was 2 player only and it was player 2's turn to pitch. I played both players for a bit so I at least figured out the controls.)

 

Armor Battle 2 min (Quickly figured out it was 2 player only, too.)

 

Lock n Chase 10 min (This was more fun than I expected it to be. I played for a good 9 minutes before I realised you could press the button and leave a wall behind you. But after 10 minutes of playing, my thumbs were raw.)

 

Atari 2600

 

Donkey Kong 20 minutes (I used to play this one a lot back when I was in middle school and all we had was an Atari. I think I've gotten rusty.)

 

Centipede 14 min (Played with my Genesis Arcade Stick and it helped quite a bit. Still no replacement for a proper track ball, but better than the d-pad on a regular Genesis controller. Still need to get some decent 2600 joysticks.)

 

Atari 7800 (emulated)

 

Xevious 6 min (Really, just long enough to remember I suck at Xevious.)

 

Arcade (MAME)

 

Donkey Kong 15 min (Okay, forget my excuses about controllers and getting old... maybe I just suck at Donkey Kong.)

 

Berzerk 15 min (Would've played longer, but we had to leave to go somewhere. I died at least three times because Otto spawned right on top of me. Great fun, but I never got that far. I don't think I ever cleared a room of red robots. "CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT")

 

Dig Dug 20 min (I used to play this one a lot on my step-brother's 5200. I was able to get a little ways in, but kept dying when surrounded... or I wouldn't realise there were two enemies and I'd start to pump up one and the second would kill me. I did a little better when I changed the controls to the d-pad instead of the analog stick. I'm using my XBox One controller... kinda makes me giggle...)

 

Bosconian 9 min (Not a lot of experience with this one in the arcades, but I used to play it in the Namco collection for Playstation and have it on a couple of plug in plays.)

 

NES

 

Iron Tank (emulated) 10 min (I remember renting this one back in the day. The manual says there is a 2 player option, but there isn't. It was the only game I ever called a help line for. SNK's help line was toll free.)

 

GameBoy Advance

 

Castlevania Aria of Sorrow (emulated) 1 hour 38 min (I've always loved the Castlevania games, and I had never played this one. According to the game save, I'm level 13 and 30% though the castle... unless there's an upside down castle to explore also...)

 

Playstation (emulated)

 

Suikoden 10 hours 14 minutes (I finished up the game this week. Last week's Suikoden total was 47 hours even. My last game save before the final stretch was at 56 hours 32 minutes. I started a timer on my phone and when I escaped the castle after defeating Barbarossa, I stopped it at 42 minutes, making it 57 hours and 14 minutes total game time.)

 

Suikoden II 20 hours 22 minutes (I started up Suikoden 2 that same evening. The menus are better in this game, making less clicks necessary when doing things like changing party members. I don't think I like the music as much, though. Still has the same theme, but there are some parts that I think are a little annoying. Nothing terrible, though. The army battles in Suikoden 1 were more of a paper/rock/scissors affair. In Suikoden 2, they play out more like a turn based strategy game, moving units around and attacking and whatnot. I'm seeing a few graphical glitches here and there... mainly on spells, but nothing that threatens gameplay. My actual gameplay time on this one is more than the 20 hrs 22 min listed above, because I was playing along and stopped to read a guide to see if I missed anything. Turns out I had, so I exited the game and loaded up an older save to return back a little and do the parts I missed. I probably only lost about 30 minutes of play.)

Edited January 29, 2017 by Eltigro

[+cvga]

Still hooked on baseball stars for the NES. My 11 year old and I won our latest 50 game season and started another with the same team. Our goal is to go undefeated and then start a new league with only the 5 teams we will have created and the American Dreams. Don't know what the theme for the next team will be yet.

 

 

NES - Baseball Stars - 445 minutes

[Kurt_Woloch]

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

 

Arcade:

Green Beret - 61 min.

Time Pilot - 10 min.

Tutankham - 318 min. in 6 sessions

 

Online (non-eligible):

Frog Fable - 116 min. in 2 sessions

 

TI-99:

Tutankham - 26 min.

 

First I continued my streak of Tutankham, also retrying the TI-99 version of it, and like the Colecovision version, it doesn't require you to backtrack for the first 4 levels.

Then I tried some other Konami games, Time Pilot and Green Beret. I can remember playing the C-64 version of Green Beret back in the day, which was much harder than the arcade original. After I had finally beaten the first level on the C-64, I made it on the arcade machine on my first try. It was a similar thing with Moon Patrol.

 

Then I tried an online game called Frog Fable, which is a kind of action RPG where you mainly have to shoot frogs with bubbles. Sadly the game, at least on my machine under Firefox, doesn't manage to keep up a high framerate, sometimes dropping to about 4 fps, although it's a 2D game you could easily pull off on a Mega Drive or a SNES... probably at 60 fps.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Missile Command: 20 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 95 min

 

Had to use Stella to at least get a score for the HSCs first round. Not fun. Would have loved to have a crack at Missile Command with a decent joystick.

[carlsson]

C64:

Micro Hexagon - 16 min.

I had intended to play more & additional systems this week, but sometimes real life catches up.

[Iwantgames:)]

 

So I got a few more Odyssey 2 games this week, down to 19 titles left to get , so I played a bit of O2. Really like Killer Bees, which is now my 2nd favorite after Attack of the Timelord. Power Lords and Demon Attack are also good but fairly pricey games, and Cosmic Conflict is kinda overly easy. Also got others but they were 2 player so gotta get the wife to play . Found a couple PnPs at Goodwill the steering wheel one doesn't count but has a couple fun retro type games on it, the Intv one is nice for the collection but the controller I don't like for the games Then I played some more of my SMS and my new TG-16 which is cool but Dungeon Explorer the bottom of the screen gets cut off on my little TV and the big one the RF looks like ****. Anyways fun week, and expect more game time from me for awhile as I'm on a couple months vacation

 

Intellivision

 

Night Stalker - 15min

 

Pinball - 15min

 

Star Strike - 5min

 

Total - 35min

 

 

Odyssey 2

 

Attack of the Time Lord - 85min

 

Cosmic Conflict - 10min

 

Demon Attack - 45min

 

Killer Bees - 130min

 

Power Lords - 25min

 

Total - 295min

 

 

SEGA Master System

 

Astro Warrior - 100min

 

Choplifter - 270min

 

Columns - 95min

 

Total - 365min

 

 

TurboGrafx 16

 

Dungeon Explorer - 20min

 

Kieth Courage in Alpha Zones - 20min

 

Total - 40

 

 

Overall Total - 735min (12.25hr)

[BurritoBeans]

PC-98:

Kizuato - 1038 minutes

 

SNES:

The Lawnmower Man - 1020 minutes

 

Alright, so half my playtime was solo and the other half was co-op which was a nice change of pace. One of two trackable games for the week was The Lawnmower Man, a game based on the movie (that shares the title of a King short... is it based on the King short? I don't see any similarity between the two anyways, in the movie and in the game) which is a bit crap but I love for some reason. A friend and I had sat down and said we wanted to try doing a two-player speedrun of a title, so we chose this one as it's known to have so many random glitches, issues, instakill pixels, etc. but it's still fun to mess with. To sum it all up, we sat down for ~200 minutes every weekday and practiced... I swear, apart from Joe and one boss you can just generate so much lag through overloading the sprites that you can skip every boss, and we laughed our asses off seeing stuff like that. If you can find the game I think it's worth getting because I have fun with it, but my god is it a pain at times - maybe consider emulating it before you buy. There's a Genesis version, too, although I hear it's not as good. Maybe if we can do this run around 33 minutes like how PJ/Pootrain had it at AGDQ 2012 (doubting I'll ever get that low...) and I stick with trying to run games I'll try to do a 2 player 1 controller run of it? Those always looked like a lot of fun anyways.

 

For the other title, Kizuato, well it was a change of pace for a bit. In the time not messing with The Lawnmower Man I had nothing to do as I didn't have to go and manage the counter for work and the thing I wanted to screw with, my PSP, was out of a Memory Stick bigger than 512MB until just yesterday so this game got played. In my quest to play every damn random PC98 title I can lay my hands on this came around... it's a visual novel - woohoo for walls of text! The game falls into an adult/horror genre, which generally means it's going to be horrible but I didn't mind this one too much. The plot was the shining aspect of the game, it revolves around a guy named Koichi who has these nightmares where he wants to murder stuff, so after his dad ends up dying he has to go to a cousins. While there he dreams of killing a young girl, and when he wakes up it's reality so he has to figure out what's going on, and if he's actually a serial killer and all that. You've got a wide variety of endings, I've hit like two of them but for what I get there's ~20 that you can get, and there's four main routes - I guess it reminds me of Yu-No except with less sex and time-warping and having more people dying/going nuts in the place of said sex/time warps. The one big issue with this game I guess was said walls of text... I mean hey I love to read but after a good six hours and with stuff slowing down, it got a bit boring so oh well. One thing I did enjoy was the artstyle - you have the generic japanese anime whatever style for the drawn characters, but the backgrounds are closer to real images, just being in a B/W or Sepia-tone which was a bit odd, although hey "a bit odd" worked perfectly with the game. I think I may sit down over a few weeks, doing maybe five hours or so at a time, and seeing what I can do for endings as I'm fairly interested - I think there's a Win95 version out there too for what I get, but I'd have no idea and I have no clue if it's translated or not so this one is probably something 99.99% of people won't ever touch for all I care.

 

Well that's it for the week. I don't have a PS1 anymore and I don't want to drag the PS2/PS3 out but I have 32GB of space on my PSP again (woohoo!) so I may slap some PSX2PSP .iso and .eboots or something because there's been some games I want to play again on there, so maybe that'll be next week.

Edited January 29, 2017 by BurritoBeans

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD: Atari 5200 - Ms. Pac-Man - 100 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

Just one game from me this week:

 

NES:

Flappy - 125 min.

Got through another 20 levels, making it 105 down, 95 to go.

[+wongojack]

Just had time to play one game from my lingering staycation list:

Windows 95/98

Baldur's Gate 750

Ocarina of Time started getting on my nerves, so it was all Baldur's Gate this week. I may get back together with OoT in the future, but I need some space.

[BillyHW]

Still hooked on baseball stars for the NES. My 11 year old and I won our latest 50 game season and started another with the same team. Our goal is to go undefeated and then start a new league with only the 5 teams we will have created and the American Dreams. Don't know what the theme for the next team will be yet.

 

 

NES - Baseball Stars - 445 minutes

 

Wow, that's a lot of Baseball Stars. Awesome.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 109 minutes 87,564

Missile Command - 504 minutes

 

 

[Iwantgames:)]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 109 minutes 87,564

Missile Command - 504 minutes

 

you played something other than kaboom! !!!!!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Though sadly ineligible for the tracker, this week marks the long awaited return of my all time favorite home console to my household's gaming center! The GameCube cometh!

 

 

 

Ineligible

Alien Hominid (GameCube) - 227 minutes

Star Fox Adventures (GameCube) - 477 minutes

Atari 2600

Missile Command - 146 minutes

Game Boy

Battle Unit Zeoth - 30 minutes

Missile Command - 16 minutes

Spot: The Cool Adventure - 117 minutes

Game Boy Color

Monopoly - 88 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 43 minutes

Titus the Fox - 114 minutes

PlayStation

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation - 590 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,848 minutes (30 hours 48 minutes) [1,144 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

GameCube: 704 minutes

PlayStation: 590 minutes

Game Boy Color: 245 minutes

Game Boy: 163 minutes

Atari 2600: 146 minutes

Up until this week it had been nearly 2 years since I had held a GameCube controller in my hands and played any games on my all time favorite home console, since my last Cube broke down several years back and I never could manage to budget for a new one until now, but wow was it ever worth the wait! Though it is ineligible for the tracker due to being released in 2001 I still consider the GameCube a classic console, and by far my favorite for more reasons than I could possibly hope to list here; though I think I'll take a little time to talk about a few of them anyway.

Admittedly nostalgia is a factor, since the GameCube was my go-to gaming system throughout the latter half of my teenage years, but there's a lot more to my love for the Cube than just that. I really dig the aesthetic design of the system, from it's compact boxy shape to the carry handle on the back and the fact that it does become a literal cube when you attach the Game Boy Player; and the unique mini-disc game format is just way too cool for words. I also find the GameCube's controller to be the most immensely comfortable and ergonomically perfect game controller I've ever held, so much so that even with the carpal tunnel in my left hand I can still play GameCube for hours and hours on end with no discomfort at all. The biggest draw of the Cube for me though is the games, as it's game selection is unmatched by any other home console when it comes to the games I personally enjoy. It's got all my favorite games from my favorite home console game franchises, from Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault to the Resident Evil, Metroid Prime, and Sonic the Hedgehog series. Not to mention almost every home console Legend of Zelda game and a whole slew of unique and remarkable games like Killer7 and Alien Hominid, the latter of which I did a complete play through of this week to christen the newly acquired GameCube. It's a really unique system with a lot to offer, and did I mention that it can also play all my Game Boy, Color, and Advance games with it's Game Boy Player add-on? There are many home consoles that I really like, but the GameCube is the only one that I can honestly say I love.

Outside of basking in the warm fuzzies from playing through Alien Hominid and starting a new game in Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube, I also spent a good bit of time this week playing through some more Game Boy and Game Boy Color games for the NintendoAge effort to beat as many of these little handheld gems as possible in 2017. This week I polished off Battle Unit Zeoth and Spot: The Cool Adventure on the Game Boy, then took care of Ms. Pac-Man and Titus the Fox (a much loved game that I had to search for literally a year for before I recently found a good condition physical copy of it) for the Game Boy Color. In addition to those games I also gave Missile Command on the Atari 2600 my best effort for the inaugural week of the new season of the Atari 2600 high score club, and even though I wasn't able to score terribly well in it I still had a lot of fun playing.

As far as the misses' gaming time this week goes, she played a good 45 minutes or so of Missile Command as well (though her scores didn't fare any better than mine) then continued her surprisingly long play through of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation on the PlayStation. I didn't remember Tomb Raider 4 being this long of a game when I played it way back when it first came out, but this marks the 4th week in a row that the spousal unit has been playing through it and it looks like the end may finally be in sight next week if my memory of the game's storyline serves me right. On the upside, in spite of the rather enormous length of the game my other half is still having a great time with it and enjoying it way more than Tomb Raider III; and I haven't heard a single complaint from her about the game's length.

Looking ahead to next week I know I'll be continuing to play through Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube, which means there might not be a whole lot of tracker eligible playtime on my part, but it is a pretty safe bet that the misses will be continuing her quest in Tomb Raider 4 and there will be package arriving in the mail today that should greatly increase our classic gaming time over the coming year. After a good year or so of pondering, planning, and saving we finally picked up EverDrives for both our Sega Genesis and NES, and (postal service willing) they will be showing up on our doorstep today! At this point there aren't any Genesis or NES games that I'm planning on playing right away, but I know that my wife is really looking forward to playing through all the Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Genesis again so there's a good chance that she'll be logging some Sonic time with the new Mega EverDrive X5 next week in addition to her usual Tomb Raider time.

Well, I think that about takes care of everything for this week! Until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

[+wongojack]

there will be package arriving in the mail today that should greatly increase our classic gaming time over the coming year. After a good year or so of pondering, planning, and saving we finally picked up EverDrives for both our Sega Genesis and NES, and (postal service willing) they will be showing up on our doorstep today! At this point there aren't any Genesis or NES games that I'm planning on playing right away, but I know that my wife is really looking forward to playing through all the Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Genesis again so there's a good chance that she'll be logging some Sonic time with the new Mega EverDrive X5 next week in addition to her usual Tomb Raider time.

Well, I think that about takes care of everything for this week! Until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

 

 

. . . . I can't resist

 

Good thing you dealt with that financial emergency and sold your 7800 stuff so you could buy Gameboy lights, a Gamecube, and Everdrives (plural) <snark>

 

 

Anyway, I have to say that I'm impressed with your little SWOT analysis of the Gamecube. Besides the Gameboy player, I think you managed to turn every major weakness of the Cube into a strength! Toy-like design, non-standard disc format, unusual controller layout, and limited game selection were all reasons why the cube was perceived as a "3rd place" console. You even went all Trump on us and just told us flat out that its "game selection is unmatched." Even while realizing how opposite your opinions are from what has always seemed like the majority (besides N fans), I still have to admit that you are at least a little bit convincing. Next to a PS2 or Xbox, the Cube just looks like it will be more fun. Although, I haven't really found the game selection to line up as nicely to my personal tastes.

 

I never finished Tomb Raider 4 bitd. I remember specifically feeling like the game was so long that it would never end. Are there multiple discs with that one? I think I played through to disc 3 of 4 and finally just decided I'd had enough. It was harder to figure out how much more game was left back then. That game has always been something I thought I might come back and finish later, but I never have.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

 

 

. . . . I can't resist

 

Good thing you dealt with that financial emergency and sold your 7800 stuff so you could by Gameboy lights, a Gamecube, and Everdrives (plural) <snark>

 

 

Anyway, I have to say that I'm impressed with your little SWOT analysis of the Gamecube. Besides the Gameboy player, I think you managed to turn every major weakness of the Cube into a strength! Toy-like design, non-standard disc format, unusual controller layout, and limited game selection were all reasons why the cube was perceived as a "3rd place" console. You even went all Trump on us just told us flat out that its "game selection is unmatched." Even while realizing how opposite your opinions are from what has always seemed like the majority (besides N fans), I still have to admit that you are at least a little bit convincing. Next to a PS2 or Xbox, the Cube just looks like it will be more fun. Although, I haven't really found the game selection to line up as nicely to my personal tastes.

 

I never finished Tomb Raider 4 bitd. I remember specifically feeling like the game was so long that it would never end. Are there multiple discs with that one? I think I played through to disc 3 of 4 and finally just decided I'd had enough. It was harder to figure out how much more game was left back then. That game has always been something I thought I might come back and finish later, but I never have.

 

 

The financial situation surrounding the 7800 was a bit of a complicated one that I really didn't want to get into all the details of on the forum, but since you called me out on it here's the full story: Late last year my wife and I had talked about what we were going to do with the gaming budget for the coming year. It was agreed that I was going to sell off all the Wii and Nintendo DS stuff I had accumulated that she couldn't play due to her physical mobility limitations, and that the money from those sales was going to go towards getting EverDrives for our Genesis and NES as well as a new GameCube with a Game Boy Player and a GameCube arcade stick for her so she could start playing Game Boy / Color / Advance games again. It was a good plan, and one that I promptly managed to screw up by blowing almost all the money from the Wii / DS sales on the impulse purchase of an Atari 7800, controllers, and games for it. When the misses found out how much I spent on the 7800 she was not the least bit pleased, so to make things right I sold the 7800, controllers, and games and put the money from those sales towards what we were originally planning on doing with it: EverDrives for the Genesis and NES and a GameCube. I do have the money set aside for a GameCube arcade stick for her as well, we just haven't managed to track down a good condition one on eBay yet. With all that taken care of I'm now out of the dog house once more and have learned a very important lesson about making impulse purchases of new systems without talking them over with my wife. And as far as the backlight for my Game Boy goes, that was all of $15 since I did all the installation work myself. It wasn't a big enough purchase to have any real effect on the budget.

 

In regards to my views on the GameCube, they are my own. I love the system for many of the reasons that others disliked it and I stand by my assertion that "it's game selection is unmatched by any other home console when it comes to the games I personally enjoy". I noticed you left out the last bit there that made it a personal subjective opinion rather than an objective statement. And Tomb Raider 4 is single disc game, surprisingly enough.

[Eltigro]

I've always felt the GameCube controllers were super comfy. When I got married to my now ex wife back in... what was it... 2001? Anyway, a friend of mine got me a Wavebird as a wedding gift.

 

Edit: Looked it up. Wavebird wasn't out until 2002. Maybe that was when I got married...

Edited January 30, 2017 by Eltigro

[Atarian7]

you played something other than kaboom! !!!!!

LOL Yes, I will be playing in the High Score Club just like last year. But I think 504 minutes is the most I have played another game though.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Anyway, I have to say that I'm impressed with your little SWOT analysis of the Gamecube.

 

Thinking back about it more, I don't think it requires any sort of complex analysis to figure out why the GameCube came in third place to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. I was a teenager when those systems were current and at that time the overwhelming majority of people who played video games and had an effect on console sales were kids and teenagers, so I remember the gaming landscape of the time pretty well. When I talked to my gaming peers about the GameCube back then there were very few people who liked the system and either owned or wanted to own one, but it wasn't due to system's cute little cube shape or it's carry handle, nor was it due to the somewhat odd controller layout, the mini-disc game format, or it's overall third party support; since most of the big third party publishers of the time such as EA and Capcom were really good about porting their multi-platform games to the GameCube as well as the PS2 and Xbox. What the GameCube's lack of popularity really came down to was one thing: It didn't have Grand Theft Auto.

 

Looking back on it now it seems a little silly to think that a whole generation of gamers passed on major system due to it being unable to play one specific game, but at the time of it's release Grand Theft Auto III (and a few years later Vice City) was a huge cultural phenomenon and it was just about the only game I ever heard any other teenager talk about. It was the Doom or Mortal Kombat of it's time; a semi-taboo game that every kid wanted to play and parents were terrified of, which of course only made the kids want to play it more. Whenever I went to anyone's house after school there was always only one game ever being played, and that was Grand Theft Auto. When discussing what system they owned or wanted to get the GameCube wasn't even on the radar, it was just a choice between the PlayStation 2 or original Xbox because those two systems had Grand Theft Auto and the GameCube didn't. It was a time when young people were the driving force behind console sales and there was really only one game on their mind, which unfortunately wasn't available on the GameCube.

 

Of course I was one of those weirdo teenagers who couldn't have cared less about Grand Theft Auto and was much more interested in playing brightly colored and charming games like Mario Party 4, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Star Fox Adventures. I did own a PlayStation 2 and Grand Theft Auto III (mostly due to peer pressure from my high school friends) but I got bored of GTA after about a week and the PS2 just collected dust until I sold it a year or so later. I knew the kind of games I liked to play, but I also knew that I was in a very small minority and almost every other gamer I talked to scoffed at the idea of the GameCube simply because it was missing that one game almost everyone wanted.

 

So, from my perspective as a member of the generation that accounted for most of the console sales during the GameCube's lifespan, that's why it came in third place to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It wasn't the console or controller's design and it wasn't the mini-disc games, it just came down to the one cultural phenomenon of a game that the GameCube didn't have: Grand Theft Auto.

 

 

 

... And 16 years later I still kinda hate that game.

 

Edit: P.S.: If you do own a GameCube and are a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series then I recommend checking out True Crime: Streets of LA for the GC as well as Grand Theft Auto Advance for the GBA to pop in the GameCube's Game Boy Player. Neither are a perfect substitute for the three GTA games that graced the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, but they will give you a good fix of violent open world mayhem on your GameCube.

[Eltigro]

My Gamecube is one of the few consoles I ever got specifically because of a game. I got it to play Windwaker. It also came with the collector's disc with LoZ, Adventures of Link, OoT, and Majora's Mask. That original Gamecube got fried by a lightning strike on my apartments (it also took out my stereo and TV), so I got a second one... a refurb from Gamestop I think... Anyway, I still don't have many games for it.

 

(Other consoles I got for a specific game were the N64 for Mario 64 and the XBox One for Fallout 4. I still only have Mario 64 for the N64 and I've been using my XBox One controller more for playing emulators of PS1 on my computer than I have for playing XBox One. lol)

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 4, running from January 23 - 29. We logged 10,157 minutes of eligible play, playing 76 games on a total of 20 systems.

Top 10:

1. Suikoden II (PlayStation) - 1222

2. Kizuato (NEC PC-9801) - 1038

3. Lawnmower Man, The (SNES) - 1020

4. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 880

5. Baldur's Gate (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 750

6. Suikoden (PlayStation) - 614

7. Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (Tomb Raider 4) (PlayStation) - 590

8. Baseball Stars (NES/Famicom) - 445

9. Tutankham (Arcade) - 318

10. Choplifter (Sega Master System) - 270

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 880

2. Tutankham (Arcade) - 318

3. Killer Bees (Odyssey^2) - 155

4. Dacman (ColecoVision) - 120

5. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 109

6. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 5200) - 100

7. Bosconian (ColecoVision) - 95

8. Attack of the Timelord (Odyssey^2) - 85

9. Piggyback Planet (Odyssey^2) - 75

10. BurgerTime (ColecoVision) - 70

10. Gulkave (SG-1000) - 70

Top 10 systems:

1. PlayStation (2426)

2. Atari 2600 (1044)

3. NEC PC-9801 (1038)

4. SNES (1020)

5. PC (Windows 95/98) (750)

5. Sega Master System (750)

7. Odyssey^2 (660)

8. NES/Famicom (580)

9. ColecoVision (528)

10. Arcade (448)

It's another big one! Week 4:

• enters our Top 10 roster of all-time biggest weeks, at the #4 position;
  
• puts the PlayStation in the catbird seat, along with Suikoden II (which last ruled the charts for two consecutive weeks in 2011);
  
• and sends Kizuato and the Lawnmower Man straight into the 1000-minute club at positions #255 and #256, with 1038 and 1026 minutes logged to date, respectively (yes, someone played The Lawnmower Man for 6 minutes back in 2013).
  

In fact we have an interesting phenomenon this week that I don't think I've seen before, in that all of our top 8 games are 1000-minute club members. And this week's top pre-NES game, Missile Command for the VCS, is also now a member of the even-more-elite 5000-minute club.

[BillyHW]

445 minutes of Baseball Stars and it's not even close to #1? Wow.

[+wongojack]

 

What the GameCube's lack of popularity really came down to was one thing: It didn't have Grand Theft Auto.

 

 

I'd believe that. That sure sounds like

 

 

limited game selection

 

to me.

 

I think its possible the lack of viable online gaming options hurt it pretty bad too. Not being able to play SOCOM, Halo, or Madden online didn't help. One big thing that I noticed at the time was that Capcom couldn't wait to port RE4 to the PS2 which always seemed like something Nintendo would have stopped if they could. Seemed like a pretty big blow at the time. It would have been like if God of War got moved to Xbox for the money.

 

Honestly though, I agree with you about GTA. I never really thought there was enough game there to really enjoy all the running around and waiting for something to happen. I could go on about my problems with that series for a while. Another HUGE game at the time was Gran Turismo, but that sucks so much time away that I could probably play the original Playstation version for the rest of my life and never need a sequel - so I play none of them.

 

Seriously though - no DVD player. That just looked foolish against the competition.

[Atarian7]

Is this the first week in a long time that Kaboom! didn't make the top 10?

[carlsson]

Interesting question! I went back to the beginning of 2015 (i.e. a little over two years ago) and since then, it happened exactly once before that Kaboom! was outside Top 10 overall, namely in week 11, 2016 and now again in week 4, 2017. If my math is correct, that is a 44 week streak that just broke but then again prior to that Kaboom! had been on the list for at least 63 weeks and probably far longer than so.