Eltigro

Only a few games for me this week... TurboGrafx-16 Blazing Lazers - 63 min (I've beaten this before, but it was by cheating. This time, no cheating, and no continues. I couldn't believe what a great run I had. Anyway, was down to 3 ships left on the last boss and no powerups... I was sure those last three ships were going to go fast because the previous three or four had gone fast. But then the boss died. Got the bonus points for killing the boss and 50 lives for some reason and credits rolled. Looked on the How Long to Beat website to see what it said. Fastest was 55 minutes... Okay... some people beat the bosses faster... makes sense. But longest was like three and a half hours. WHAT WERE THEY DOING? lol) Bonk's Revenge - 47 min (I've beaten Bonk's Adventure several times before, but not this one. I don't know if it's actually harder or if I'm just less familiar with it. Played until I got a game over, which was on the third level boss.) R-Type - 150 min (Playing a lot of this lately. Got a lot better at the third level and got past it several times this week. I actually got to the boss of level 4 once, too. First time ever for that. I think playing this so much is what helped me on my Blazing Lazers run, actually. Dunno. Anyway, will probably play more this next week, we'll see.)

First time I did this in years. Beat Blazing Lazers on the TurboGrafx-16 with no continues. It was close at the end as I was using up lives and bombs like crazy, but did it. =)

I was also late to it... and was close to 20 years old when I got mine in the mid to late 90s. Mine was one of the clear cased Play It Loud systems. Someone had brought it back to the Target I worked at because it wasn't in color. I'm not sure if they thought it was supposed to be in color or if it was the GameBoy Color or what. Not sure when exactly it was that I got it, but I feel like it was probably before the GBC came out. Anyway, the service desk marked it down as a returned electronics item, so I got it with the mark down and my employee discount. It came in the clear plastic case with Tetris, of course. I later got Link's Awakening and The Castlevania Adventure, but I never really got that many games for it. I was fully into my Playstation back then and most of my gaming budget went towards that. I lost it sometime later. Lost the case, the system, and Link's Awakening (still have Castlevania). No idea what happened to it. I have a GameBoy Pocket now, and a couple GameBoy Advances. I still had the box, manual, and inserts for Link's Awakening until about two years ago when I sold them. I should have just gotten another loose copy of the game and had a complete copy, but oh well. I got about $40 for it.

Yep, put some pics up in the Arcade and Pinball area... It was a pretty nice place. Got there early and pretty much had the place to myself.

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.

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

Visited a really nice arcade today. Pay a ten dollar cover fee and all the machines are set to, as the name would imply, free play. They had a mix of classic and newer machines, but it was definitely slanted toward the classics. Ms Pac Man, Galaga, Burgertime, QBert, Frogger, Mario Bros, Tempest, Defender, Asteroids, Dig Dug, Rygar, Donkey Kong... I realised afterwards that I should have taken more pictures, but I was too busy playing. (And as a bonus, outside we saw a Vista Cruiser station wagon just like in That 70s Show.)

Yeah, I like the channel. They're goofy, but you can tell they have fun. Met Aaron (the guy in the jean vest) at PRGE and he seems like a really nice guy. Anyway, as far as this video goes, yeah... I didn't see much that I actually would want. Even the Impossible Mission II... just not that interested in. I'd love to go through some of the hardware that was there, though... saw some boxed Sega controllers and such... and I'm sure there's some games in there that I'd like, but weren't featured in the video. Would like to roam about with a few hundred dollars and see what I could pick up.

I went through all this to get a River Raid patch back in the day... then it got destroyed in a house fire... I can't remember if I used a Polaroid or not... I think my sister had one. But imagine if you finally get the high score, take a picture of the screen, turn the system off, send off the film, get the photos back the next day or whenever, and the picture didn't come out... glare on the screen... or something else... man that would suck.

Not gonna happen... I'm on Xbox One... no files to check. lol

I'll try it again. Ever since I first got it and realized it was refusing to act like I played any of it... saying I had no scores... I haven't played it. Kinda frustrated at it.

I've got a PSP that I've got some emulators and such on. It's nice... the screen is great... but the battery life sucks. It's the older 1000 model and I know a new battery would fix most of my issues, but this still looks interesting... Especially after seeing Yakumo1975's video. It might be nice for trips, but I feel that it'd be a little limited by lack of buttons... I mean, it doesn't have shoulder buttons, does it? Looks like it has trouble with SNES games (or maybe it's just the emulator used), but with no shoulder buttons, how many games are you going to have to skip? It's something I'd have to look further into...

I dunno... I just kinda see it as an interesting technology looking for an application. Like I said, I'll be interested to see what applications they can adapt it to... in a commercial sense. Playing games and making art is okay, but I don't think that's what will push the tech ahead and make it succeed. I mean, gaming can be a way to really advance a technology, but Kinect has already kinda fizzled for gaming. (I think.) So they move on to Plan B: find some industrial use for it that makes the old way of doing that task obsolete or something. I can't think of anything, but that's why I'm not making the big bucks I guess. I remember a while back seeing an interactive table for a restaurant. It was a touch sensitive display that could do things like show the menu and videos and games and such while you were waiting, but it'd also do things like signal the wait staff or you could just lay your credit card on a spot next to the image of the receipt and it would scan the card and process your payment. It seemed that they had thought of a lot of things for it to do as a table. But then I never saw anything about it again. It was something that seemed really cool, that had an application, but never was actually used (probably high cost). I'm pretty sure it was a Microsoft thing. Where's that?

Thought it looked kinda "Doodle Jump" ish... I'd have to see more of the gameplay.

And I still don't want it. But seriously, it'll be interesting to see what applications they can adapt it to. But sometimes on something like this, they can say, "Oh you can use it like this! Instead of doing what we do now!" And there's nothing wrong with what we do now and it's more expensive and prone to failure and less intuitive than what we do now, so why change? (Or do I have grumpy old man syndrome?)

I don't know about ugly... I mean, it'd be kind of cool to have something like that (with no controllers or games or anything... really just a Capcom sign) to hang on the wall. Especially if it was mixed in with arcade posters or marquees or something. "Game room décor". But it's not a product for me, anyway. Too expensive. Too big. Not enough games I'm interested in (I don't like fighters).

Heard some rumblings on Twitter about a new NeoGeo machine? Reviews of the X and Mini were kinda mixed... hopefully this ends up better?

Heh... Truck Bros... every time I see one of those with the flags flying, I say, "I didn't know there was a parade today."

I lived on Coit road close to Campbell for about five or six years. So that area is pretty well known to me. Might have to try out Regeneration next time I'm up there.

Sounds like I need to get to Dallas to visit some arcades. I live a couple hours East of the Metroplex, but every time I go there it's for some specific purpose and not much time to go around and do my own thing. (Maybe I'll sneak off some Saturday...)

Only one modern game for me this week: XBox Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 - 49min (Interesting that I played the same amount of minutes on this as I did of Castlevania Bloodlines for the Classic Tracker. Front 9 was meh, but five birdies and an eagle on the back made me seven under for the round.)

Just one game this week: Genesis Castlevania Bloodlines - 49 min (Still not very good at this game, but got further than I had before... I think.)