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

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 47, running from November 19 - 25. We logged 5803 minutes of eligible play, playing 82 games on a total of 20 systems.

Top 10:

1. Protector SE (Atari Jaguar) - 380

2. Kangaroo (Atari 2600) - 318

3. Ookma-Kyi (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 300

4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 264

5. Alien 3 (Genesis) - 258

6. B.O.B. (Genesis) - 256

7. Clan Lord (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 220

8. Zero Tolerance (Genesis) - 189

9. Cave Creatures (TI-99/4A) - 180

10. Robotron: 2084 (Atari 7800) - 140

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kangaroo (Atari 2600) - 318

2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 264

3. Cave Creatures (TI-99/4A) - 180

4. Robotron: 2084 (Atari 7800) - 140

5. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 112

6. St. Nick (TI-99/4A) - 110

7. LadyBug (Atari 2600) - 80

8. Vector Patrol (Vectrex) - 75

9. Freeway (Atari 2600) - 70

10. Breakout (Atari 2600) - 68

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1318)

2. Genesis (1053)

3. Neo Geo CD (857)

4. PC (Windows 95/98) (608)

5. TI-99/4A (410)

6. Atari Jaguar (380)

7. Vectrex (364)

8. Atari 7800 (229)

9. PlayStation (103)

10. SNES (90)

In its debut on the tracker, Protector SE grabs the brass ring in a robust Week 47. Meanwhile the VCS edges out the Genesis as the top system, led (as is often the case) by a game that has "Ka" + "oo" in the title.

Meanwhile the 1000-minute club expands to accommodate two more new members, #343 Super Metroid (SNES, 1088 min. logged) and #344 Metal Slug (Neo Geo AES/MVS version, 1033 min. logged).

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600

Crystal Castles - 3 minutes

Dig Dug - 121 minutes

Roc'N Rope - 25 minutes

Stay Frosty 2: Stay Frostier - 85 minutes

 

All of these games are for 2600 NEW HSC Season 8, except SF2, which is for Final Round of 2018 Homebrew Tournament.

Check out Stay Frosty 2 Contest, celebreate the Christmas month and try to rescue Santa Claus, which is the main objective

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/285560-2018-homebrew-tournament-stay-frosty-2-final-round/

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

1) Dig Dug gameplay footage for 2600 NEW HSC Season 8, Week 9 - Gold Medal Pick (sorry for my mistake on the subtitle! )

 

2) Screenshot of First Course closing on Stay Frosty 2. I defeated one of 4 firebosses.

Edited December 2, 2018 by oyamafamily

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Roc 'n Rope: 12 min

 

Sega Master System

Wonder Boy III The Dragon’s Trap: 210 min

 

Some minutes for the 2600 HSC. Absolutely not my game. Some progress in Wonderboy. Great great game. I really want to finish this. It's not going to be a legit finish, because I do consult a walkthrough from time to time. With my bad platforming skills, I need to get the good stuff from the secret locations. Sadly, I really have too little time to find them all myself. I just die too often while exploring, and that always takes you back to the hub.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 26th through December 2nd) on classic systems:

 

Atari 2600:

Chaotic Grill (WIP) - 11 min.

 

Atari 7800:

Baby Pac-Man (WIP) - 6 min.

 

I didn't spend much time playing games this week. I played a bit of Baby Pac-Man, where I only consider the maze part as being really playable while I'm working on the pinball part (and Bob is, as well). Then I tried the new update of Chaotic Grill which features notably improved enemy movement logic, but it's still got its flaws. The enemies get stuck if all ways they could go lead away from the player, which should not happen. I left some feedback in the according thread, also with some ideas how a proper movement logic could work. We'll see what happens next... anyway, since Baby Pac-Man already has two enemy AI's to choose from, I wondered what would happen if you implemented the BurgerTime AI as a 3rd choice in that game.

[digdugnate]

I got a new toy this week (Switch) so I only spent a little bit of time on Classic Gaming.

 

TI 99 4A:

 

Cave Creatures - 120 minutes *heaves a long and dramatic sigh, lol*

[+chue]

Played this week for the TI high score competition:

 

TI/99-4A Cave Creatures, 90 minutes

[+Ksarul]

Turtles and I got in a lot of game time this week, and his older brother actually deigned to contribute a little retro-time as well (he usually sticks with the modern gaming equipment).

 

TI-99/4A

 

Ambulance 12 minutes

Ant Colony 19 minutes

Arcturus 22 minutes

Beyond Parsec 4 minutes

Break Thru 1 minute (the aforementioned older brother's contribution)

Cave Creatures 58 minutes

Computer War 9 minutes

Driving Demon 11 minutes

Espial 13 minutes

Henhouse 75 minutes

Miner 2049er 20 minutes

Munch Man 8 minutes

Munch Man II 9 minutes

Parsec 28 minutes

Rabbit Trail 29 minutes

River Rescue 15 minutes

Schnoz-Ola 15 minutes

Shanghai 7 minutes

St. Nick 132 minutes

Submarine Battle 5 minutes

TI Toad 3 minutes

Topper 2 minutes

Video Vegas 68 minutes (the older brother helped a little bit here too whenever Turtles got slightly distracted)

 

All in all, a definitely fun retro-gaming week for the family!

[iliketurtles]

Turtles and I got in a lot of game time this week, and his older brother actually deigned to contribute a little retro-time as well (he usually sticks with the modern gaming equipment).

 

TI-99/4A

Break Thru 1 minute (the aforementioned older brother's contribution)

I just tried to show my brother retro gaming. It didn't go so well . . .

[zylon]

Actually got some in this week:

 

5200-

Missile Command- 20min (after replacing controller cable)

Moon Patrol- 35min

 

C64-

Night Driver- 10min

 

I keep hearing that Night Driver doesn't exist beyond the 2600 or an arcade machine, but somehow, I've been playing this disk for decades, lol.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Actually got some in this week:

 

5200-

Missile Command- 20min (after replacing controller cable)

Moon Patrol- 35min

 

C64-

Night Driver- 10min

 

I keep hearing that Night Driver doesn't exist beyond the 2600 or an arcade machine, but somehow, I've been playing this disk for decades, lol.

Hal did some Atari ports. Millipede for NES is one example. But I did not know they ever released anything on anything other than Nintendo systems. In fact I did not know they even existed in 1982.

Edited December 3, 2018 by TravisHuckins

[agb]

Times for the week. All Atari 2600:

 

For the HSC:

 

Crystal Castle 5 mins Dont like

Dig Dug 167 mins. Score of over 500,000

Roc n Rope 99 mins using a keyboard.

 

Others

Breakout 48 mins

Eggomania 35 mins

Solar Fox 173 mins

 

Fun week.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:

Tetris - 325 min.

SNES:

Gekisou Sentai Carranger: Zenkai! Racer Senshi - 31 min.

Jaguar:

Kasumi Ninja - 4 min.

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy - 115 min.

Beat Gekisou Sentai Carranger, Trevor McFur, and Level 9-5 in the Type B game in Tetris. Thoughts here.

[+wongojack]

A2600

Circus Atari 20

Kaboom 139 best score this cycle - 13,862

Super Breakout 43

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Donkey Kong Jr - 36 min.

M.U.L.E. - 65 min.

[Heroes & Shadows]

Ookma-Kyi - PC - 200m

Heroes & Shadows - 2600 - 0m

Clan Lord - PC - 200m

Pitfall - 2600 - 20m

Pitfall 2 - 2600 - 30m

Frogger - 2600 - 45m

 

Very busy this week so I'll just post a quick recap. Cloud VM for Heroes & Shadows homebrew is still down. Progress on Ookma-Kyi is slow but, steady. Lot's of Clan Lord parties this week with my friends. When not clanning I was playing on my Atari 2600.

 

Heroes & Shadows

https://heroesandshadowsgame.neocities.org

[carlsson]

In fact I did not know they even existed in 1982.

 

I believe it depends on how you define the word "exist". Already in the late 70's, there was a group of Commodore PET users in Japan which eventually developed a bunch of games for that computer, like Night Drive (!) by J. Suzuki and Car Race ][ by Satoru Iwata (yes, him!). These guys became so good at programming that Commodore Japan hired them to make games, in particular for the VIC-1001 (VIC-20 in Japan) under the label HAL Laboratory, which may have predated the founding of the company HAL.

 

The case was that Commodore held the rights to release home versions of certain arcade games on the Japanese market but not overseas, games like Pac-Man and Galaxian. Commodore though found those HAL ports so good that they released them overseas anyway, with changed game names (Jelly Monsters, Star Battle) to hopefully go under the radar but Atari, who held the home computer rights worldwide except Japan, weren't easily fooled and eventually Commodore had to withdraw some of those. Rally X was sold in Japan, but converted to Radar Rat Race for rest of the world.

 

I'm not sure if Night Driver was sold under its real name in Japan, but it was sold as Road Race on the VIC-20 overseas. When the C64 arrived, Commodore made HAL port some of their games to that format, and for some reason they could now use the title Night Driver, perhaps they made some agreement with the trademark holder.

 

Eventually HAL became a company on their own, and moved away from making Commodore games to making games for MSX, Famicom etc, probably more popular formats in Japan plus that with the increased amount of US and European 3rd party publishers on the VIC and C64, it probably had been tough for a Japanese company to compete on a mostly foreign market unless they got to ride on the Commodore brand.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

That was a wonderfully informative post Carlsson, and a really fun read since a lot of my favorite Game Boy games growing up were published by HAL Laboratory. Anyhoo, some big times from my household this week!

 

 

Atari 2600
Crystal Castles - 6 minutes
Roc N Rope - 22 minutes

Game Boy
The Castlevania Adventure - 155 minutes

Sega Genesis
Alien 3 - 84 minutes
Castlevania: Bloodlines - 682 minutes
Contra: Hard Corps (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 51 minutes
Galaxy Force II - 23 minutes
Zero Tolerance - 853 minutes

Super Nintendo
Super Metroid - 148 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
2,024 minutes (33 hours 48 minutes) [2,024 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Sega Genesis: 1,693 minutes
Game Boy: 155 minutes
Super Nintendo: 148 minutes
Atari 2600: 28 minutes

 

 

 

It was a really laid back week around here this past week, and with not much in the way of real life obligations to take care of there was a whole lot of time for gaming. It also happened to be one of those rare weeks where 100% of the gaming time in my household was eligible for the classic tracker, which makes two weeks a row now. In any case, I started off the week by finishing my play through of Zero Tolerance on the Sega Genesis. As the only first-person shooter on the system and not using any special chips in the cartridge to aid in processing it's a seriously impressive technical achievement, and a heck of a lot of fun for fans of the genre. Zero Tolerance is also quite a long, 10 or 12 hours give or take, and having now beaten the game I can safely say that I will absolutely be playing through it again someday. It was just an all around great game.

 

After finishing my play through of Zero Tolerance I spent most of the rest of the week just bouncing between games, playing a little bit here and a little bit there. I tried out Contra: Hard Corps via emulation (I definitely need to get a real copy of that game soon), played a little Galaxy Force II, then spent some time playing Alien 3 with the misses. We probably would have played a lot more Alien 3 were it not for the game constantly freezing or just glitching out on one particular level late into the game and making it impossible to finish the level. That was pretty much it for me gaming wise until Thursday, when I got a game I had been wanting for quite some time in the mail: Castlevania: Bloodlines.

The spousal unit is a pretty big Castlevania fan herself, so as soon as Bloodlines arrived she popped it in the Genesis and took the first crack at it. Thanks to the handy password saves we were able to trade off playing throughout the remainder of the week and by the time Sunday rolled around we had both beaten the game on Normal difficulty, with the spear wielding Eric Lacarde in my case and the more traditional whip cracking John Morris for the misses. We both thought Castlevania: Bloodlines was easily the second best Castlevania game either of us had ever played, just behind Symphony of the Night at #1.

 

With Castlevania: Bloodlines thoroughly conquered I spent my Sunday afternoon playing through the absurdly difficult yet still strangely likable The Castlevania Adventure on the Game Boy, which took a few hours and caused no small amount of frustration; but I did beat it eventually. Shortly before midnight I also realized that I had forgotten to play the games for the Atari 2600 High Score Club this week, so I quickly set up the Atari 2600 and spent half an hour playing Roc N Rope and Crystal Castles. Roc N Rope was surprisingly fun and if I had remembered to play it earlier in the week I'm sure I would have spent quite a bit more time with it.

 

For her Sunday gaming the misses got back to playing Super Metroid for a few hours, though unfortunately she's pretty stuck on the Ridley boss and isn't sure whether or not she wants to spend hours searching for more energy tanks to have a better shot at beating the boss. I don't think she's had the best of luck with the Metroid series, since the same thing happened when she played the original Metroid. She played it for a dozen or so hours, made it to the final boss, then couldn't beat the boss and permanently put the game back on the shelf; and it looks like Super Metroid might be going back on the (digital) shelf as well.

 

 

Well, that about covers everything for this week! Looking ahead to next week I don't think either of us have any firm plans for what to play, but that's alright. We're both going to have plenty of free time next week so I'm sure we'll find some games to keep us occupied. Until then, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

Edited December 3, 2018 by Jin

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 62 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 31 minutes

Roc'N Rope - 52 minutes

Crystal Castles - 15 minutes

 

 

[Opry99er]

TI-99/4A:

 

Cave Creatures (180 minutes)

St. Nick (120 minutes)

 

 

Not much for me this week. Just some High Score competition times on the TI.

[digdugnate]

Turtles and I got in a lot of game time this week, and his older brother actually deigned to contribute a little retro-time as well (he usually sticks with the modern gaming equipment).

 

TI-99/4A

 

Ambulance 12 minutes

Ant Colony 19 minutes

Arcturus 22 minutes

Beyond Parsec 4 minutes

Break Thru 1 minute (the aforementioned older brother's contribution)

Cave Creatures 58 minutes

Computer War 9 minutes

Driving Demon 11 minutes

Espial 13 minutes

Henhouse 75 minutes

Miner 2049er 20 minutes

Munch Man 8 minutes

Munch Man II 9 minutes

Parsec 28 minutes

Rabbit Trail 29 minutes

River Rescue 15 minutes

Schnoz-Ola 15 minutes

Shanghai 7 minutes

St. Nick 132 minutes

Submarine Battle 5 minutes

TI Toad 3 minutes

Topper 2 minutes

Video Vegas 68 minutes (the older brother helped a little bit here too whenever Turtles got slightly distracted)

 

All in all, a definitely fun retro-gaming week for the family!

I really like Ti Toad- Burger Builder, notsomuch

[digdugnate]

TI-99/4A:

 

Cave Creatures (180 minutes)

St. Nick (120 minutes)

 

 

Not much for me this week. Just some High Score competition times on the TI.

Congrats on your Cave Creatures score!

[Opry99er]

Thanks, Nate! After hitting that, I played 4 or 5 more times and my best in those runs was 19,500ish.

 

I just got on a great run and hit my extra ships at just the right times.

 

I didn't think I was going to beat your score.

[iliketurtles]

I really like Ti Toad- Burger Builder, notsomuch

Isn't that Frogger in a nutshell?

[digdugnate]

Isn't that Frogger in a nutshell?

well, yes, but i think it's a very good clone.

[Eltigro]

Messing with MAME...

 

Okay, this week was mostly spent playing some emulated arcade games... I've got a ton of them somehow... anyway...

 

Arcade

AeroFighters - 30 min (I love shooters, so while many of the games on my MAME list are going to be curiosities that I check out once and then rarely if ever come back to, the shmups are the ones that I'll surely be returning to. AeroFighters is a vertically scrolling shooter with modern day jet fighters. I chose the F-16 looking one for this play. It's a great game, but I do have one little issue with it. When a power-up comes on the screen, it seems to stay too near the top of the screen. I know there should be some risk vs reward, but 90 percent of the time when I go to the top of the screen to get a power up, something comes on the screen and crashes into me. I swear, in the entire play through, I think I only got past the second power up twice.)

Darius - 15 min (And here I thought that the extra wide play field would allow me to see danger coming from a long way off and make the game easier. No. I was wrong. Still tough game. Doesn't help that the powerups seem to go off screen too fast most enemies are behind obstacles or take multiple hits to kill. Oh well... still looks super cool.)

R-Type - 10 min (I did okay... got to the second stage end boss pretty easily, but got killed a few times there so stopped. My joystick is a little loose and hinders me sometimes on precise movements... which you kinda need for a game like R-Type.)

Scooter Shooter - 5 min (I had no idea what I was doing in this game. lol)

Rampage - 128 min (I kept quarter feeding this thinking, "I'm gonna just quarter feed my way to the end." Well... found out Rampage doesn't have an ending. So there I was on day like 115 with cities starting to repeat before I finally looked it up. I mean, I had fun, but I probably wouldn't have spent as long if I knew then what I know now.)

SeaWolf - 5 min (A periscope type submarine shooting game. Not bad, but the gameplay was a little shallow... lol)

 

 

I think I actually played a lot more, but didn't time stuff or write things down. I'll do better in the future. Honest! lol