Cynicaster

The conversation in this thread has me wondering, does anybody check the DIPs listed in each new round and change them if necessary? I have long been quietly wondering this. Can we get a show of hands? Aside from highlighting the required changes in bold red font, I'm not sure what else I can do. I suppose I can always use the absolute easiest settings. But this will break with precedent on lots of games played in the HSC over the years.

Juno - 243,600 Rally - 92,900 That’s a good scoring tip provided by youxia. I have used that trick in the past but now that we’ve ratcheted the difficulty DIP settings up to hard, I can’t survive without shooting things so I just gave up on that trick. By the way, I selected hard for the difficulty setting because wherever possible I try to use the same settings as were used in the past in the HSC.

Wow, just look at those standings. I actually had to increase the number of decimal places shown in the spreadsheet to show the difference, because rounded to the nearest 10th of a percent they're equal!

This round's game 1 of 2: New Rally-X ROM Name: New Rally-X ROM File: nrallyx Picked by: patbb DIP settings (changes from default shown in RED): Difficulty: 3 cars, medium Bonus life: A (20,000 80,000) This round's game 2 of 2: Juno First ROM Name: Juno First ROM File: junofrst Picked by: zoyous DIP settings (changes from default shown in RED): Lives: 3 Difficulty: 8 [Hardest] Rules: Please change your DIPs to the settings listed. If you're unsure how to do this, please ask Screenshots required No continues No save states No cheats Any working version of MAME can be used, but the ROMs provided for this competition will be verified to work on MAME v0.139. The "user interface" version of MAME v0.139 can be downloaded at: http://www.progettosnaps.net/mameui/ Competition ends: Sunday March 1, 11:59pm PST PREVIOUS ROUND RESULTS: Berzerk youxia 12,140 100.0% MAME Offender 9,540 78.6% Ramses 9,100 75.0% Cynicaster 8,950 73.7% AtariWarlord 7,670 63.2% jblenkle 4,960 40.9% Floyd Turbo 3,560 29.3% roadrunner 3,520 29.0% zoyous 2,770 22.8% hero2billions 1,150 9.5% Mangia-Boy 0.0% patbb 0.0% S.BAZ 0.0% asponge 0.0% Mister-VCS 0.0% MERCS MAME Offender 620,750 100.0% Cynicaster 195,450 31.5% youxia 181,300 29.2% Ramses 123,350 19.9% AtariWarlord 81,400 13.1% zoyous 79,050 12.7% Floyd Turbo 75,600 12.2% roadrunner 69,700 11.2% hero2billions 46,600 7.5% jblenkle 16,700 2.7% Mangia-Boy 0.0% patbb 0.0% S.BAZ 0.0% asponge 0.0% Mister-VCS 0.0% OVERALL STANDINGS TO DATE: ** NOTE: standings now reflect the rejection of each player's lowest (3) percentage scores STANDINGS TO DATE 1 Cynicaster 78.81% 2 Ramses 78.76% 3 MAME Offender 67.66% 4 youxia 63.91% 5 Floyd Turbo 52.21% 6 AtariWarlord 51.54% 7 asponge 30.83% 8 zoyous 24.69% 9 patbb 18.66% 10 hero2billions 18.49% 11 Mangia-Boy 18.46% 12 S.BAZ 13.87% 13 jblenkle 13.58% 14 roadrunner 7.32% 15 Mister-VCS 1.12% junofrst.zip nrallyx.zip

Berzerk 8950

Hey dude, just wanted to let you know I finally got around to trying out C64 Crackpots last night. Great work! I'm not as big a fan of Crackpots as I am of Frostbite, but I am quite familiar with Crackpots and this port is dead-nuts on. Sometimes it's a bit tricky to make sure you're directly over a flower pot to drop it, but that's how the original game plays as well. The red spiders seem a bit more brutal on this version than the original, but that's fine. Thanks for the game! Hope you bring more of the Activision games to life on the C64; many of them are childhood favorites for me.

Mercs - 195,450

Berzerk - 7,790

Mercs- 85,200 More fun than I remember, but we’ll see if it lasts.

Berzerk - 6,980

I am absolutely hopeless at Berzerk... maybe this round will give me the chance to work on it a bit. And Mercs... wow, haven't played that game in years and years. I remember playing its sequel "Wolf of the Battlefield" on PS3 about 10 years ago, which was a pretty cool game.

This round's game 1 of 2: Berzerk ROM Name: Berzerk (Set 1) ROM File: berzerk Picked by: AtariWarlord DIP settings (changes from default shown in RED): Bonus life: 5,000 10,000 This round's game 2 of 2: Mercs ROM Name: Mercs (World 900302) ROM File: mercs Picked by: Floyd Turbo DIP settings (changes from default shown in RED): Difficulty: 4 (normal) Allow Continue: NO Rules: Please change your DIPs to the settings listed. If you're unsure how to do this, please ask Screenshots required No continues No save states No cheats Any working version of MAME can be used, but the ROMs provided for this competition will be verified to work on MAME v0.139. The "user interface" version of MAME v0.139 can be downloaded at: http://www.progettosnaps.net/mameui/ Competition ends: Sunday February 16, 11:59pm PST PREVIOUS ROUND RESULTS: Chameleon Ramses 57,400 100.0% Floyd Turbo 49,000 85.4% AtariWarlord 39,600 69.0% Cynicaster 36,400 63.4% youxia 36,400 63.4% S.BAZ 30,200 52.6% Mangia-Boy 24,600 42.9% MAME Offender 12,600 22.0% jblenkle 11,400 19.9% hero2billions 9,000 15.7% roadrunner 7,200 12.5% patbb 0.0% asponge 0.0% zoyous 0.0% Mister-VCS 0.0% Amidar Cynicaster 113,660 100.0% MAME Offender 88,470 77.8% Mangia-Boy 67,420 59.3% Ramses 66,990 58.9% AtariWarlord 50,240 44.2% Floyd Turbo 46,890 41.3% S.BAZ 25,690 22.6% roadrunner 15,790 13.9% jblenkle 8,620 7.6% hero2billions 8,270 7.3% patbb 0.0% youxia 0.0% asponge 0.0% zoyous 0.0% Mister-VCS 0.0% OVERALL STANDINGS TO DATE: ** NOTE: standings now reflect the rejection of each player's lowest (3) percentage scores STANDINGS TO DATE 1 Ramses 82.9% 2 Cynicaster 81.7% 3 MAME Offender 64.1% 4 youxia 63.8% 5 Floyd Turbo 56.0% 6 AtariWarlord 51.9% 7 asponge 35.2% 8 zoyous 25.8% 9 patbb 21.8% 10 Mangia-Boy 21.5% 11 hero2billions 20.2% 12 S.BAZ 16.2% 13 jblenkle 12.2% 14 roadrunner 5.2% 15 Mister-VCS 1.3% berzerk.zip mercs.zip

I'm not remotely offended by the comment; I'm simply responding to it. If what you meant to say was that more discerning music fans will be more likely to know about and appreciate Bleach, then I 100% agree with that. Nevermind is arguably their masterpiece, but it also is much "easier" for the masses to like because it is full of pop songs. Bleach is more raw and gritty, and not for the faint of heart. I think Dave Grohl's drumming style is a better fit for Nirvana than Chad Channing's, but I agree that Chad is pretty good in his own right. It's worth pointing out that Dave Grohl copied Chad Channing's drum parts more or less beat for beat on some of the Nevermind tunes, including In Bloom with its cool drum-fueled intro and the machine gun blast drums of Stay Away (which was called Pay to Play when Chad was in the band).

Of course. Tastes vary. Heck, there are definitely days when I’m more in the mood for Negative Creep than In Bloom. I just don’t agree with the sentiment that people who prefer Bleach are the only “true music fans.”

Huh? What's this about true music fans...? Don't get me wrong, I love Bleach, but I can't think of a single criterion by which Bleach surpasses Nevermind or In Utero. I know this for sure: Kurt and Krist certainly wouldn't consider Bleach to be their best work; far from it. At the time of Bleach, Nirvana didn't have the luxury of true creative freedom, because they were basically nobodies (relatively speaking.) Kurt had to suppress many of his songwriting instincts to "fit" into the Sub Pop scene. This is why most of Bleach is kind of 1-dimensional, full of warmed over 70s riffs, etc. He did sneak "About A Girl" onto the record, which hinted where Nirvana would eventually head musically, which was toward the melodic sound that would define Nevermind and make them superstars. It's telling that some of the tunes on Nevermind already existed at the time Bleach was recorded, but they didn't put them on Bleach because they were afraid they wouldn't fit well with the Sub Pop scene at the time.