What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2019 (Season 12)

[carlsson]

By the way, I recategorized Crossed Swords and Jonas Indiana as Neo-Geo AES/MVS, based on what I can find online. Frog Feast seems to have been released for Sega arcade hardware. I understand now that Neo-Geo often is grouped with (other) arcade games which in particular if you play it through emulation can make it difficult to determine which system it is unless you dig into configuration details.

[+davidcalgary29]

 

 

 

Yesterday I went to the Quarter Lounge in Bedford and Regeneration arcade and bar in far North Dallas.

 

The Quarter Lounge is in an old retail space, so the ceilings are low and arcade machines take up several rooms in what could have been some sort of office space years ago. They also had an area for consoles and PC games. You pay $3 to get in and then the classic machines are a quarter. Pinball machines are .50. I had the most fun playing Frogger and the Mata Hari pinball machine, but I also pumped a few dollars into Pole Position. Stuff was well maintained there for sure and it was somewhat busy. They don't sell food, but I carried a flask with Bourbon in it with me and drank from it while I played - no one seemed to care. There is also a game and toy resale shop in the same building. I assumed it was run by the same owner, but I didn't ask. I bought 4 used Wii games from their shop.

 

Regeneration is a place where you pay $10 and all the games are free. They also feature ALL Texas beers there which was interesting, and I ended up drinking a lot more alcohol than a typical Sunday. It felt like being in the dream business of a very specific 40/50 year old person who adapted what he likes to attract millenials. They also had consoles set up, and it was fun to watch someone play the first hour or so of L2tP since I just recently played it myself. I met a friend, and we had the most fun playing Gorf and the Popeye pinball machine together. I stuck around after he left and played a handful of other games including F14 Tomcat (pinball). It is super close to my house, so I may just end up going there again some night to play 10 games of pinball and leave or something.

 

I'm very concerned that both places won't make it very long. Perhaps that is irrational, but there's no way that arcades can just come back right? I have more plans to visit some other local places including Realms of Arcadia near Lake Lewisville, Free Play arcade in Richardson, the BOS pinball lounge in Garland, Cidercade in Oak Cliff, and the Texas Pinball Museum down in Midlothian. There are even some others that have popped up that I want to go to as well. Truly an explosion.

 

Sounds awesome, but forget arcade machines! I want someone to set up a "home computer arcade" where you can sample various systems from the '70s through the early '90s, so I can play with a plus 4, a Spectrum QL, and an Archimedes on the same afternoon.

[oyamafamily]

The game Pac-Man 2600 8K by DINTAR816 which I played this week on Stella Emulator was nominated to 2018 Atari Awards (Best WIP Homebrew category).

Check out the following reference: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/287472-best-wip-homebrew-2018-atari-awards/

 

2018 Atari Awards Winners: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/288615-2018-atari-awards-winners-and-feedback/

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I'm pretty wiped out from the last day of vacation today so it'll be another week of just posting my household's times without any picture or writeup, but I think next week I should be able to get back to the usual routine.


Ineligible
Pinball FX3 (Nintendo Switch) - 15 minutes
Sonic Mania Plus (Nintendo Switch) - 210 minutes
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo Switch) - 510 minutes

Sega Genesis
Castlevania: Bloodlines - 24 minutes
Columns - 81 minutes
Contra: Hard Corps - 42 minutes
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker - 38 minutes
Mortal Kombat II - 52 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 56 minutes
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition - 52 minutes
Samurai Shodown - 33 minutes
Sonic 3D Blast - 12 minutes
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 150 minutes
Splatterhouse 2 - 75 minutes
Tanglewood - 80 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,430 minutes (23 hours 50 minutes) [695 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Switch: 735 minutes
Sega Genesis: 695 minutes

[Opry99er]

Classic Mac:

 

Age of Empires II (240 minutes)

PGA Tour Golf (300 minutes)

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (40 minutes)

 

 

TI-99:

 

Blasto (90 minutes)

[carlsson]

Here's the summary for Week 15, running from April 8 - 14. We logged 4639 minutes of eligible play, playing 83 games on a total of 14 systems.

Top 10:

1. Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation) - 673 min.
2. PGA Tour Golf (Mac OS Classic) - 300 min.
3. Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 277 min.
4. Dragon's Lair (NTSC) (NES/Famicom) - 272 min.
5. Donkey Kong (Arcade) - 253 min.
6. Age of Empires 2 (Mac OS Classic) - 240 min.
7. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 187 min.
8. Blasto (TI-99/4A) - 150 min.
8. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis) - 150 min.
10. Miner 2049er (C64) - 131 min.

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 277 min.
2. Donkey Kong (Arcade) - 253 min.
3. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 187 min.
4. Blasto (TI-99/4A) - 150 min.
5. Miner 2049er (C64) - 131 min.
6. Eggomania (Atari 2600) - 118 min.
7. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 101 min.
8. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 85 min.
9. T:me Salvo (Atari 7800) - 78 min.
10. Bank Heist (Atari 2600) - 54 min.

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1004)
2. Genesis (762)
3. PlayStation (673)
4. Mac OS Classic (580)
5. NES/Famicom (541)
6. Arcade (486)
7. C64 (162)
8. TI-99/4A (150)
9. Atari 7800 (78)
10. TG-16/PC Engine (75)

 

Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation scores another 11+ hours of gameplay, twice as much as #2 PGA Tour Golf and just as promised last week now the most played FF game ever, overtaking FF1 on the NES.

 

On the other two lists, Super Breakout fends off Doney Kong for another week in the top, and together with another 17 Atari 2600 games they take the systems title with 4 more hours than the 16 Genesis games in second place.

 

We have two new entries on the 1000 Minute Club:

 

#367 Age of Empires 2 (Mac OS Classic) - total 1020 minutes

#368 Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast) - total 1007 minutes

 

Also for the 8th time this season, 5 of the (currently) all-time top 20 games had minutes recorded in the same week. So far we didn't have a week with more than 5 of those, but 10 of 20 have had some minutes logged this year.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Also this forest of 8K Pac-Man games for the Atari 2600 confuses me a lot. The tracker had like a half dozen entries for Pac-Man 8K in various forms and versions, dating back to 2009. After some research and educated guesses, I'm down to 2 entries, one Pac-Man 8K game/hack that dates back to Nukey Shay in 2004, and the New Pac-Man 8K by DINTAR816 first posted in 2014.

 

Based on the video posted by oyamafamily, he must have played the latter this week. Kurt twice this year played Pac-Man 8K, most recently two weeks ago, but I don't know if it was the new or the old one. Same goes for minutes posted in the last few years:

 

2008: Pac-Man 8K (DINTAR816) 0 + Pac-Man 8K (Nukey Shay) 0

2009: 0 + 210

2010: 0 + 35

2011: 0 + 41

2012: 0 + 15

2013: 0 + 12

2014: 21 + 0 <- DINTAR816 version arrives

2015: 49 + 15

2016: 194 + 120

2017: 176 + 97

2018: 38 + 0

2019: 25 + 39

 

Total 503 + 584

 

Probably not a biggie, but I strongly think it would be a good idea for programmers making new versions of games already existing on the same system, to give those unique names even though I fully understand the excitement to call your game Pac-Man which is exactly what it is and plays like.

The binary I'm usually playing is called pacman2600_8k_v7_test.bin. I think that's the DINTAR816 version as well. It certainly looks like the video posted by Oyamafamily. It actually makes me think if someone could make a better version of Ms. Pac-Man like this as well... I think it should be possible, but I can't see anyone having tried.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 175 minutes

Boxing - 2 minutes

 

Boxing is my game for Round 2 of 2600 NEW HSC Season 8 Silver Medal Tournament. Novastar is now my opponent, and was one of BEST 5 fighters on regular weeks (Activision Quickies Contest). If I lose this battle, I will have another chance - play and do my best on Losers Paper Medal Knockout Tournament.

[digdugnate]

I'm done with my classic gaming time for this week- any free time I have today I'm going to spend playing FF X.

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Blasto -- 67 minutes (for the high score competition)

Alpiner -- 30 minutes

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Dragonfire: 28 min

Frogger: 3 min

Missile Command: 5 min

 

NES

Swamp Thing: 14 min

Tiny Toon Adventures 2: 10 min

 

Sega Mega Drive

King’s Bounty: 65 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 55 min

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Hubbub - 6 min.

International Karate [2014 Enhanced Edition] - 21 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 15th through 21st)...

 

Arcade:

Mikie - 27

Splash - 208 min. in 2 sessions

Targ - 20

Spectar - 118 min. in 3 sessions

Uncle Poo - 15

Space Bugger - 7

 

Atari 2600:

Pac-Man 8K (Dintari) - 15

Parsec (Prototype) - 3

Targ (Prototype) - 2

Taxi Panic - 10

Universal Chaos - 5

 

I continued to play Splash this week, and in the second session I decided to apply continues until the game was finished, which unfortunately took over 2 hours.

Then I tried Uncle Poo and Space Bugger which are rare games shown in a Youtube video about the non-existant arcade game Polybius.

In search for a game similar to T:me Salvo which I played last week, I found the arcade game Targ which they say Crossfire is based on, which in turn is the basis for Salvo. However, Targ is a bit too simple, but I also found the sequel, Spectar, which is much better in my opinion. Also, there's an Atari 2600 prototype for Targ (I was initially looking for similar Atari 2600 games) which fits the bill quite nicely and has been completed, renamed to Universal Chaos.

Other games I tried were Taxi Panic, a game similar to Crazy Taxi on the 2600 (but in a 2D view), and a Batari Basic version of Parsec which is much cruder than the TI-99 original. Then after our discussion about Pac-Man 8K, I discovered that there was a newer version released than the one I've been playing (Version , so I tried that one for a bit. The thing most improved in it is clearly cornering. Finally, I also put in some time on Mikie before I gave up gaming completely for the last days because I didn't manage to get on with my household chores and my private projects anymore.

Edited April 21, 2019 by Kurt_Woloch

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - 4 min.

Sword Master - 40 min.

Wayne’s World - 106 min.

Beat Wayne's World. It's not excellent.

[zylon]

5200-

 

Pole Position- 1hr 40min

[agb]

Times for the week. All Atari 2600:

Beamrider 95 mins. High score of 47,858

Barnstorming for HSC 37 mins. No good score.

Eggomania 173 mins. High score of 81,714.

Kaboom 32 mins. High score of 3,792.

Solar Fox 247 mins. High score of 5,607,110.

All fun.

[+wongojack]

Arcade

Arabian 79

Beast Busters 4

Crystal castles 5

Cyber Sled 13

Donkey Kong 48

Frogger 8

Gauntlet Dark Legacy 15

House of the Dead 2 40

Mario Bros 8

Outrun 3

Paperboy 9

Pole Position 8

Reactor 6

Star Wars 12

Star Wars Trilogy 157

Superman 3

Tetris 12

Two Tigers 7

Wizard of Wor 16

Zaxxon 3

Atari 2600

Miner 2049er (Faster & Sprite Hack) 20

C64

Miner 2049er 29

Super Mario 64 2

Tales of the Arabian Nights 89

Odyssey 2

Attack of the Timelord 23

KTAA 7

PT Barnum's Acrobats 13

Wildlife 1

 

 

I had more activity this week than I had expected in the classic tracker. I started the week looking for Donkey Kong knock offs in MAME, and I discovered Arabian which is a fairly fun single screen platformer. It got much more fun when I mapped "up" to a button so I didn't have to press up to jump.

 

Once I had played the Arcade version, I tried out the C64 game that is loosely based on it called Tales of the Arabian Nights. This game is incredibly difficult. The thing that saves it is the controls are very responsive, so you usually feel like failure is your fault. I played it with unlimited lives turned on which let me see the various stages that add some nice variety to the challenge. It is sort of a platformer/shmup crossover with both those genres being represented at their virtual origin point. I actually think this game is pretty good, and if it had given the user a choice of multiple difficulty levels in 1984 then it would probably be remembered as fondly as Aztec Challenge or Beach Head.

 

The weekend brought more local arcade hopping as I visited Free Play Denton and Realms of Arcadia. My wife felt left out last week, so she accompanied me along to these two establishments, and I recorded her time in the arcade as well. Free Play was awesome because it only cost $6 to get in, and all the games were free. The arcade and pinball selection is great, and they also have an enormous amount of beers on tap. Realms Of Arcadia was a different vibe and much more kid friendly. I talked to the owner for a bit. He was in law enforcement and became a self taught arcade repair man. He buys arcade and pinball machines cheap and fixes them to put on his floor. Gaming highlights were playing all the way through House of the Dead 2 together at FreePlay as well as playing Sega's Star Wars Trilogy at ROA. I also came home and tried to figure out how to emulate Star Wars Trilogy. It took me a few tries to get the game running, but I mostly got it. It would help if I had a little faster computer. If you want to give it a try, you can get the emulator used to run Sega model 3 games. It is called 'Supermodel' and you can downolad it here: http://www.supermode....php?f=3&t=1206. To get the right ROM, try searching for Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (Revision A) on a site like edgeemu.net.

 

Finally, I stopped into a used game store while I was in Denton called Freaks and Geeks. I had been contacted by the co-owner because I posted some items for free on a local buy/sell/trade FB group. He wanted them, and I wanted to give them a good home, so I got to meet him and talk for a bit. When I saw he had The Voice for the Odyssey 2 in stock, I picked it up and he gave me a very good deal. If I was closer to this place, I would probably go back more often. Anyway, now that I have The Voice, I can finally hear what the Timelord is telling me.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Override (PC-Engine/TG-16) 25 mins emulated 35 mins real hardware 60 mins total
Cooyoon: Child of Dragon (PC-Engine/TG-16) 40 mins (I love this game. It seems a lot like Air Zonk but way more expensive lol)
Galaga '88 (PC-Engine/TG-16) 15 mins emulated
Terra Cresta II (PC-Engine/TG-16) 10 mins emulated
Blodia (PC-Engine/TG-16) 5 mins (I hate this game lol) emulated
Neutopia (PC-Engine/TG-16) 20 mins emulated (Like Zelda but way more frustrating. I dunno if I like it or hate it.)
Gate of Thunder (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 25 mins emulated
Image Fight II (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 10 mins emulated
Star Parodier (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 45 mins emulated (love this game)
Lords of Thunder (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 15 mins emulated
PC Denjin: Punkic Cyborgs (Air Zonk) (PC-Engine/TG-16) 45 mins

I found a great PC-E CD Cue/Bin archive and have been burning the games I'm interested in to CD-Rs.
When I eventually get a Duo I won't have to buy games unless I find a great deal.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Override (PC-Engine/TG-16) 25 mins emulated 35 mins real hardware 60 mins total

Cooyoon: Child of Dragon (PC-Engine/TG-16) 40 mins (I love this game. It seems a lot like Air Zonk but way more expensive lol)

Galaga '88 (PC-Engine/TG-16) 15 mins emulated

Terra Cresta II (PC-Engine/TG-16) 10 mins emulated

Blodia (PC-Engine/TG-16) 5 mins (I hate this game lol) emulated

Neutopia (PC-Engine/TG-16) 20 mins emulated (Like Zelda but way more frustrating. I dunno if I like it or hate it.)

Gate of Thunder (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 25 mins emulated

Image Fight II (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 10 mins emulated

Star Parodier (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 45 mins emulated (love this game)

Lords of Thunder (PC-Engine CD /TG-16 CD) 15 mins emulated

PC Denjin: Punkic Cyborgs (Air Zonk) (PC-Engine/TG-16) 45 mins

 

I found a great PC-E CD Cue/Bin archive and have been burning the games I'm interested in to CD-Rs.

When I eventually get a Duo I won't have to buy games unless I find a great deal.

 

oops that's Coryoon: Child of Dragon... damn typos lol

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 93 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 36 minutes

 

 

 

 

[carlsson]

Arcade

Gauntlet Dark Legacy 15

Star Wars 12

 

In the tracker, we have a single entry for "Star Wars: The Arcade Game" which I'm not sure if it refers to Star Wars (1983) or Star Wars Arcade (1993). Wongojack played "Star Wars" several times in the past few years, some others also tracked times for the same game. It could be worthwhile to determine which of the two it was.

 

Also Gauntlet Dark Legacy is listed as from year 2000. The guidelines say we include arcade games up to year 2000, while home video games are cut-off before year 2000. I think it makes sense to apply the rule in the same way and thus I'd carry over this game as an arcade game in the modern tracker.

[Opry99er]

Not many games this week, but lots of quality:

 

 

Classic Macintosh

 

Age of Empires II (210 minutes)

PGA Tour Golf (240 minutes)

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (120 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Blasto (145 minutes)

[Eltigro]

My times (all approximated, unfortunately... forgot to actually time anything)

 

2600

Kaboom - 30min (Man it took forever for me to get this cart to work. I'm sure it's a combination of my Atari getting worse (already had rf output issues) and the cartridge being really dirty. Several alcohol swabs and tries later, though, and the mad bomber finally showed his face. Great... cartridge does work. Now... where were those paddle controllers... here they are... now which pair work... this one... but jittery... more alcohol. I need to probably do a better cleaning and such of the paddles, but a little alcohol got them to work well enough to play. I played for a while, but I'm not good at it. Highest score I got was just below 2000. 1950 I think. Can definitely see why people talk about getting into a zone with this game. I had some rounds where I thought, "Man, I can't believe I didn't miss one there..." Fun game, and I'll be playing more of it soon.)

 

TurboGrafx

R-Type - 30 min (Played for a bit and game overed at my usual spot. End of 3rd level. I can go through the first two levels pretty much without dying, but I've yet to figure out that level.)

 

Arcade

Berzerk - 5 min (One of my favorite 2600 games, so it's fun to play it in the arcade with the voices and Otto.)

Dig Dug - 5 min (I gotta try out Dig Dug every time I see it in an arcade. It's another game I'm not that great at, but I still like to play.)

Frogger - 10 min (Love the game. Did not match George Costanza's score though.)

Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road - 10 min (I haven't played this in forever. Such a fun game. There's an NES version I think, but it in no way compares. Gotta have that wheel to spin.)

Mario Bros - 10 min (Always a fun game. Not sure if I like it better than the 7800 version, which is my current favorite, but it's great.)

Moon Cresta - 5 min (Kind of a Galaga/Space Invaders type shooter. Your ship is about a quarter of the way up from the bottom of the screen, though instead of on the bottom. Had trouble getting used to the flight patterns of the enemies and couldn't hit them with any skill. Didn't last long. This was the only cocktail arcade I played that day.)

Ms Pac Man - 20 min (This one played just as fast as the one in Portland. But I was ready this time. I mean, I'm not a superstar, but I got to the banana stage a couple times and got the high score on the machine... and then bested my high score. I kinda watched while playing other games, and a few people tried it after me... one twice... but when I walked by before leaving, my score was still at the top of the screen.)

Robotron - 5 min (First time playing this. Love the twin stick control. Definitely an arcade game I'll look forward to playing again, but there were so many to try that I didn't spend long on this one.)

TMNT Turtles in Time - 20 min (My best friend and I played this one together. He had trouble with the jump button and ended up switching part way through. I played through my lives and was gonna stop but was wondering why another character had "Push Start" instead of "Insert Coins" so I hit start and started playing that one. We had some trouble seeing the screen because it was close to the front of the arcade and they had big windows... lots of glare.)

Tempest - 5 min (A great version of the game. Taught my friend about it, how to play, and he got just below my score on the high score board. I'm obviously not that good if a brand new player can almost match my score.)

 

Pinball (wasn't sure if this was a separate category or even counted...)

Iron Maiden - 5 min (Saw this one at PRGE, but didn't get to play it. A fun pinball table, but I don't play pinball much, so I'm not good at any of them. It lets you pick the music you want to play which I thought was a neat feature.)

 

 

There were probably some other games I played at the arcade, but are slipping my mind right now. I really did take a pen and paper and was intending to write down some stuff while I was there, but then didn't. lol

[Agamon]

Arcade

 

1942 (17 min)

Asteroids (11 min)

Aero Fighters (8 min)

Burgertime (10 min)

G-Darius (13 min)

 

Still on a shoot em up kick, still not very good at them, but practice is helping.

[Eltigro]

Burgertime! That was another one I played at the arcade. Only about 5 min though. I could've sworn I used the pepper! Stupid egg.

[+wongojack]

Looks like some others made it to an actual arcade this week!