What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2018 (Season 11)

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600

Track N Field - 8 minutes (for HSC)

Space Invaders - 63 minutes (for HSC and Hi-Score Today)

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK: My scores written on my identification paper during my last session of Space Invaders for 2600 HSC

Edited November 12, 2018 by oyamafamily

[Heroes & Shadows]

When are the top 10 games going to be posted for the week of Nov 5-11? Seems like someone fell asleep on the wheel cause it's the 13th already. [emoji14]

 

Heroes & Shadows

https://heroesandshadowsgame.neocities.org

Edited November 13, 2018 by Heroes & Shadows

[Iwantgames:)]

When are the top 10 games going to be posted for the week of Nov 5-11? Seems like someone fell asleep on the wheel cause it's the 13th already. [emoji14]

 

Heroes & Shadows

https://heroesandshadowsgame.neocities.org

Sometimes it takes him a few days to compile data. Its a lot of work

[Opry99er]

We normally get the final tallies on Tuesday night or Wednesday. thegoldenband always comes through. . We often have late entries on Monday and occasionally on Tuesday, so he waits to make sure all times are in before putting it al together.

 

And also, as 'games said, it takes some time to compile.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 45, running from November 5 - 11. We logged 4179 minutes of eligible play, playing 63 games on a total of 14 systems.

Top 10:

1. Cyber Virus (Atari Lynx) - 550

2. Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis) - 314

3. Clan Lord (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 300

4. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 5200) - 240

5. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 182

6. Dragster (Atari 2600) - 180

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 161

8. Joust (Arcade) - 140

9. Mouse Trap (Atari 2600) - 137

10. Breakout (Atari 2600) - 123

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 5200) - 240

2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 182

3. Dragster (Atari 2600) - 180

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 161

5. Joust (Arcade) - 140

6. Mouse Trap (Atari 2600) - 137

7. Breakout (Atari 2600) - 123

8. Heroes & Shadows (Atari 2600) - 80

9. Eggomania (Atari 2600) - 79

10. Space Invaders (Atari 2600) - 75

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1216)

2. Atari Lynx (710)

3. TI-99/4A (534)

4. Genesis (467)

5. PC (Windows 95/98) (420)

6. Atari 5200 (240)

7. Arcade (165)

8. SNES (85)

9. PC (DOS) (72)

10. Intellivision (71)

Three charts, three systems, all Atari! This week it's Cyber Virus for the Lynx that colonizes the top spot, while Ms. Pac-Man on the 5200 gets the pre-NES laurels, and the Atari 2600 is the #1 system despite having no games in the Top 4.

No new entries in the 1000-minute club this week -- but Solar Fox has joined the elite 10000-minute club, with 10,168 minutes logged to date. That's a lot of Skip-A-Racks.

[digdugnate]

lookit at our little TI making 3rd place!

[Opry99er]

The TI in 3rd place for systems, but not showing on either Top 10 list. That's interesting!

[+davidcalgary29]

Dreamcast:

 

Typing of the Dead: 62 min. playtime; 30 minutes freaking out 9 year-old by waving around the jewel case and cackling.

 

Crazy Taxi: 115 minutes

[Heroes & Shadows]

Sonic CD - Sega CD - 104 minutes

Heroes and Shadows - 2600 - 40 minutes

Tron - 2600 - 5 minutes

Clan Lord - PC - 300 minutes

Ookma-Kyi - PC - 10 minutes

 

Heroes & Shadows

https://heroesandshadowsgame.neocities.org

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Mouse Trap: 50 min

 

High Score Club. That's all. The gameplay time probably isn't very accurate, since I didn't look at my watch when I started playing. But it should be a reasonable estimate.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Defender - 105 minutes

Mouse Trap - 81 minutes

Popeye - 12 minutes

All of 3 games played for 2600 NEW HSC Season 8 (The Arcades).

 

ATARI 7800:

Galaga - 30 minutes

Joust (for 7800 HSC Season 2018-2019) - 12 minutes

Pac-Man Christmas 2018 - 25 minutes

If you want more infos about Pac-Man Xmas 2018, check out this thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/284986-pac-man-christmas-2018/

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Mouse Trap gameplay footage, for 2600 NEW HSC Season 8, Week 6 (Main scorings)

 

2) Defender partial scores written on my identification paper and my cartridge used to play on my 7800 ProSystem console, for 2600 NEW HSC Season 8, Week 6 (Bonus Game)

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Ski-It - 23 min.

Laser 500:

City Invasion - 4 min.

H-Tron - 145 min.

Mastermind - 8 min.

Mine Killers - 9 min.

Moon Lander - 14 min.

For a long while, the VTech Laser 350/500/700/750 family of computers have been underdocumented online but during the fall of 2018, a lot of activity has happened, both through discussion on the AtariAge forum and a newly started Facebook group. Manuals have been scanned, new emulators have been written, a handful of classic games have been recovered, new games have been written, turbo tape routines have been developed. In this case, H-Tron is a new cross-platform Tron game available for nearly any Z80 based home computer (and a few consoles) you can mention. For most formats, it would just be one of hundreds or thousands of existing games, for some formats like the Lasers it would make up roughly 1/10 of the entire library, and rather addictive once you start to play it.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for the past week (November 12th through 18th)...

 

Arcade:

Jr. Pac-Man - 33 min. in 2 sessions

Ms. Pac-Man - 30 min. in 2 sessions

 

Atari 2600:

Chaotic Grill - 11 min.

 

Atari 7800:

Baby Pac-Man - 17 min.

Not a Pac-Man game - 11 min.

 

I played Chaotic Grill for the Atari 2600 for a bit because a new update was issued for it. Then I played various Pac-Man games because of a somewhat strange reason... I'n thinking of an electric scooter charger simulation where you have to drive around and collect electric scooters, then recharge them and serve them at some designated places (those in a city where Lime and/or Bird have deployed their scooters will know what I mean...). This game could take place in the Pac-Man maze where the maze walls are actually the residents' houses, and the monster pen could be the central location where you have to charge the scooters.

 

On Baby Pac-Man, I tried both the normal setting and the setting where the AI matches the other Pac-Man games in the arcade... which isn't that hard to play either, but it's still FAST.

 

Finally, Not a Pac-Man game is actually a space game posted by Baby Blue Azure in the Atari 7800 Baby Pac-Man thread. Since he talked about evolution, I thought about how his game could be merged with mine, but I can't see a good solution because his game is radically different to both parts of Baby Pac-Man.

[+Ksarul]

The family had a most productive week of retrogaming goodness on our TI-99/4A system. ILikeTurtles provided most of the times, but a small fraction of them were mine too.

 

TI-99/4A

 

Ambulance 23 minutes

Cave Creatures 39 minutes

Doncaster Racecourse 5 minutes

Driving Demon 33 minutes

Eric in Monsterland 8 minutes

Flying Shark 53 minutes

Henhouse 28 minutes

Knight Lore 20 minutes

Lobster Bay 26 minutes

Nonogram 2 minutes

Restless II 20 minutes

Sabre Wulf 12 minutes

Schnoz-Ola 5 minutes

Shanghai 3 minutes

Snake Plissken 5 minutes

Squary 32 minutes

St. Nick 90 minutes

Video Vegas 45 minutes

War Zone 10 minutes

 

Turtles worked his way through most of the titles (released and unreleased) from Funware as part of his gaming experimentation. Now he wants me to build him some individual cartridges of the ones he could only find on compilations. That should be a lot of fun. . .

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 101 minutes

Mouse Trap - 14 minutes

Defender - 10 minutes

 

 

[+wongojack]

A2600

Video Pinball 17

Video Olympics 8

Arcade

Sprint 2 15

 

 

These were all played via Atari Vault.

[+thegoldenband]

No gaming for me this week.

[Iwantgames:)]

Odyssey 2

 

Blobbers - 15min

[agb]

Times for the week

 

Atari2600 only

I had another week of paddle games using my new paddles from the flashback 8 on my old hardware.

Breakout 35 minutes. Scored an 864 without losing a ball.

Eggomania 34 minutes. Really like this game.

Kaboom 6 minutes. Getting better but hard for me.

Super Breakout 31 minutes. On of my all time favorites.

Video Olympics 21 minutes.

 

For the HSC

Defender 14 minutes

Kangaroo 12 minutes

Mouse Trap112 minutes. Good game, hard level.

 

Also

Dodge em 4 minutes

Solar Fox 167 minutes (going for the 20,000 minute club).

 

Really fun Atari week.

[Eltigro]

So I'm sure this has been answered before, but asking again...

 

On a game like Namco Collection or whatever it's called for the OG Xbox... I'm playing older arcade games, but on game for a newer system... do they go in classic or modern? I'm kinda going back and forth comparing 2600 versions of games with other versions I have of the same game (Draconian/Bosconian, Ms Pac Man, Pac Man...). I think this kind of thing usually comes down to "is it a port or is it emulating the arcade" doesn't it? Anyway, any input is appreciated.

 

Edit: I'm leaning toward putting them here...

Edited November 19, 2018 by Eltigro

[carlsson]

Yes, I believe if it is thought those are emulations of the original arcade games they go here. If they seem to have ported or reimplemented on modern hardware, in particular with improved audiovisuals, it probably goes into the modern tracker.

 

On the other hand, StormSurge who mainly posts in the modern tracker, has for two weeks now listed minutes for Galaga in the Arcade Game Series, played on the XB1 which I believe are emulations of the original arcades with some fancy bezels but I'll include those minutes there.

[Eltigro]

Well, I've got the 2600 versions which will obviously go here... the ones from the Xbox which I think are emulations, so I'll put them here... but also some from a plug-n-play. I'll just put them all here.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was almost all Metroid, Metroid, and a little more Metroid around here this past week!




Ineligible
Metroid: Other M (Nintendo Wii) - 1,042 minutes
Metroid Prime Trilogy (Nintendo Wii) - 187 minutes

Sega Genesis
B.O.B. - 12 minutes
Sonic Spinball - 57 minutes
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure - 220 minutes

Super Nintendo (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)
Super Metroid - 634 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
2,152 minutes (35 hours 52 minutes) [923 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 1,229 minutes
Super Nintendo: 634 minutes
Sega Genesis: 289 minutes



Towards the end of August this year I picked up a copy of Metroid: Other M from Half Price Books during one of their 20% off sales, and this week I finally got around to playing it. I did a complete play through of the game from beginning to end (including the extra story bits after the credits) and while it did have it's moments of frustration I thought it was a great game with a surprisingly engaging narrative that kept me glued to the TV for most of the week just to see what would happen next. My only real complaints about the game were that the difficulty level was much higher than other games in the Metroid series and I found myself dying dozens of times over, whereas I usually only die once or twice during a play through of any other Metroid game, and the game was often rather cryptic about what it expected you to do; particularly during boss fights. Still, it was a very enjoyable game and I hope that the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 follows in Other M's footsteps by giving Samus a voice once more.

Watching me play through Metroid: Other M this past week gave the misses the itch to play a Metroid game as well, and she settled on Super Metroid for the SNES; which neither of us had ever played before. I'm not sure exactly how far into the game she is at this point but she has been having an awesome time with it and I can definitely see why so many people declare Super Metroid to be their favorite entry in the series. My favorite Metroid game happens to be the original Metroid Prime for the GameCube, and as soon I finished off Other M this past week I actually started in on the Wii port of the original Metroid Prime on the Metroid Prime Trilogy collection.

Other than the 3 different Metroid games, the only other titles played around here for the week were a few Sega Genesis games. B.O.B. and Sonic Spinball are childhood favorites of mine that I re-bought copies of this week and spent a little time trying out, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure was a game I had never played before until I received a copy in the mail from eBay a few days ago. To take a break from all the Metroid action the misses and I parked it on the couch together and tried out Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, taking turns trading off the controller between levels until we had made it all the way to the second to last level. It's a surprisingly good high-speed platformer that was clearly influenced by Sonic the Hedgehog, and it was put out by Konami of all companies.

The graphics and sound were wonderful and spot on to what a Tiny Toons game should look and sound like, and the controls were really tight and responsive. The only complaint I could possibly make about Buster's Hidden Treasure is that it's insanely hard for a game that was marketed towards children (did Konami let the Contra team design this one?) and while you do get password saves after every level the game stops giving you passwords when you reach the first of the last 4 levels, which are of course all brutally difficult. Neither the spousal unit nor I could make it through the last 4 levels on our allotment of lives, so this game is probably going to sit on the shelf unbeaten for a good long time. Those last 4 levels aside, it was a very enjoyable game and I'd certainly recommend it to fans of the Tiny Toon Adventures cartoon or anyone with a Genesis looking for a challenging and well designed platformer to play.

That covers everything for this week! Looking ahead to next week I'll be continuing my play through of Metroid Prime on the Wii and the misses doesn't look like she'll be giving up on Super Metroid any time soon, so it should be another Metroid filled week for us next week as well. I would like to get back to the Atari 2600 High Score Club games and spend some more time playing B.O.B. on the Genesis though, so there should be a bit of variety in the mix (even if B.O.B. does have a suspiciously Metroid'y looking arm cannon).

Until next time, best wishes, happy gaming, and—for those in the US—a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Edited November 19, 2018 by Jin

[Eltigro]

My gaming this week...

 

2600

Draconian - 63 min (Got a new high score again... 172440 I think it was on Quadrant A. Went through and played some of the other Quadrants this time. Some pretty interesting patterns for the bases. Including some that had the horizontal and vertical bases super imposed on each other, so you had to shoot out all the cannons to kill them. Throwing surprises at me!)

MsPac Man - 20 min (Played with both the CX-40 and my Genesis arcade stick. The Genesis stick is more comfortable so I'd definitely recommend it for this. There's no real need to use the buttons, so you can easily use it with either hand. Missing the intermission scenes of course and scaled back a good bit on graphics and sound, but still a solid port with the mazes pretty well translated.)

Pac Man - 10 min (Who hasn't played this one? lol We all know this version. Bonk bonk bonk boop boop bonk bonk popop... The graphics are sub par, the maze is nothing like the arcade and the fruit in the middle doesn't even look like fruit. I remember back in the day, we always said it was a Starburst candy chew.)

 

Arcade?

These were all played via the Namco Museum 50th Anniversary on the original XBox. I think they are pretty decent arcade emulations, but if someone knows better, let us know!

Bosconian - 15 min (Much harder than Draconian I think... certainly a bit faster. But I do wonder if the difficulty is because I'm having to use the d-pad on the XBox controller instead of a real joystick.)

Ms Pacman - 25 min (This one looks and sounds great. Very similar to the arcade. Differences are probably down to being played on my LCD instead of an actual CRT. I will say that this game (and Pac Man) REALLY suffers from not having a joystick. These games are just terrible to play without a proper joystick. That being said, I still had fun and actually ended up playing it longer than I figured I would. I'll also say, I don't know if the machine I played in Portland was sped up or what, but this started off a LOT slower than those machines.)

Pac Man - 10 min (Never enjoyed the original as much as I enjoyed Ms Pac Man. Not sure why... probably the cutscenes and different mazes and such. But always remember playing much more of Ms in the arcades.)

 

Jakks Pacific plug and play

not sure exactly when this plug and play came out, but I've got a couple of them... including a pic of it so you can see which one I'm talking about because I think there's about a million of these...

Ms Pac Man - 10 min (This doesn't look nearly as good as the XBox one, but it has the advantage of having an actual joystick! It's not a great joystick... but not too bad. The worst part of it is the same as using the CX-40... trying to hold the base still while using the joystick. The game itself is pretty much the same as the XBox one. Can't remember anything specific for differences now that it's been a day or two since I played them.)

 

Pac Man plug and play

Bosconian - 11 min (This is pretty much exactly like the XBox one. And this has a joystick, so it's a little easier to play. However, this is probably the mushiest joystick ever. Seemed imprecise and like I was fighting it more often than not. Sometimes I couldn't go diagonal... in Bosconian, you need to go diagonal.)

Pac Man - 8 min (A good emulation. But suffers from the same issues as Bosconian... that darn joystick. I know a good gamer shouldn't blame his controller, but this thing really is mushy. Has anyone else played on one of these? Did I get a dud? I've mainly just had this on the shelf to look pretty for almost a year... haven't really played it since I first got it.)

Dig Dug - 5 min (Same issues as before, really... but then I've always felt the control in Dig Dug was a little bit of a mystery to me. But one thing that playing this did show me is that this plug and play saves high scores! I haven't had batteries in this thing for probably a year, but when the high scores for Dig Dug came up, it showed my initials on a score that I'd gotten back when I got it! Pretty surprising, really.)

 

[Opry99er]

TI-99/4A:

 

Borzork (25 minutes)

Cave Creatures (45 minutes)

Donkey Kong (20 minutes)

Munchman (10 minutes)

St. Nick (30 minutes)

Tombstone City (15 minutes)