Skippy B. Coyote

72. Nightmare Creatures (PlayStation) I've had a love affair with this game ever since I first played a demo of it on a demo disc from Official PlayStation Magazine when I was 12 years old, but it wasn't until today that I ever actually beat the game without using any cheat codes along the way. Nightmare Creatures is an intensely challenging horror themed beat 'em up, with buckets 'o blood aplenty and a pretty darn harsh difficulty level even on Easy mode. The fun of exploring all the game's creepy locales and discovering new ways of dismembering the denizens of the night that populate them always kept me coming back for more in spite of the punishing difficulty, but every time I ended up playing for a few hours then giving up because the game just got too hard after a while. This is one of those games where even the weakest enemies can kill you in just a few hits if you don't time your attacks and blocks precisely. I wasn't planning on playing Nightmare Creatures this year, but with my Wii currently out of commission due to a broken disc drive and all my Halloween gaming plans on hiatus until I can get the Wii fixed up, Nightmare Creatures was about the only seasonally appropriate game I had around here that I hadn't beaten yet; so I decided to give it another go. I played it again and again, each time getting a little better and learning a little more about what attack and defense strategies to use for each individual enemy, and after 7 hours or so of practice I had finally "got gud" as the kids these days would say and put the nail in the coffin of the final boss. Fans of Dark Souls would do well to give Nightmare Creatures a try.

Most excellent! I just went ahead and placed my order for an SD Encore with case and paper manual. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've put into the Harmony cartridge over the years, it's an absolutely essential product for any Atari 2600 High Score Club player or homebrew / hack enthusiast.

If you need a good joystick on short notice I'd suggest going and checking out any thrift stores or used game shops in your area to see if they have a used Atari Flashback system. From the Atari Flashback 4 onward ATGames redesigned their wired joysticks to be pretty darn durable and comfortable to use. I picked up an Atari Flashback 5 with two wired joysticks for $15 last spring then resold the system without joysticks for $8, so I ended up with two joysticks for $7 and they've both worked great no matter how much punishment I've thrown at them. Also, score update time... Demon Attack (Game 7, A/A Difficulty): 75,435 Bonus Fire Fighter (Game 8, B/B Difficulty): 00:07

Oh yes, the Handy Boy by the aptly named STD. I actually had one of those as a kid and loved it back then, but these days a good backlight kit is a much more convenient option... a whole lot less rad looking though.

It does make it a little hefty, but I've always thought it was a neat device that gave games some extra replay value. The screen on the Game Boy has been backlit with an olive green backlight kit though so no need for any light attachments. At this point the only Game Boy hardware still on my "to get" list is a Game Boy Camera and Game Boy Printer.

Nostalgia… unchanged… boo hoo… Enough… cemetery… take me… my grave... For anyone who might have been concerned, no, I'm not suicidal; that was a quote from the ghost in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. In actuality I haven't been this happy about getting a game system since I was 8 years old! I never thought I'd see my old Game Boy again, but here it is! And now it will remain mine forever, and ever, and ever.

Woo hoo, Demon Attack! I've always liked this bright and colorful take on Space Invaders and all the cool enemy designs. Weirdly though I never even knew there were multiple game modes or difficulty settings and always just played Game 1 on B/B difficulty. The tracer shots make the game a lot faster paced, easier even on A difficulty, and quite a bit more fun if you ask me. I feel like I'm off to a pretty solid start this round! Demon Attack (Game 7, A/A Difficulty): 65,540 I'll have to give Fire Fighter a try tomorrow, I've actually never played that game before.

Thanks Vocelli, that's a real relief! I went back and did the math to figure out roughly how many asteroids I shot down as well as how much time I spent doing it and determined that I was getting 240 points per asteroid wave, each containing 3 pink asteroids worth 30 points each and 15 regular ones worth 10 points each, so in total I ended up shooting down about 6,860 asteroids over the course of 2 hours and 43 minutes. It's a wonder my joystick is still working properly after all that.

It sure was a slog, I never want to do that again. My wrist especially doesn't want to have to do that again. The High Score Club is supposed to be a "just for fun" sort of thing though, so in the spirit of friendly and fair competition I won't mind if Vocelli wants to redact my score; since I did use a unconventional playing technique to achive it. I feel like I worked really hard to get that score, but I did do it in a way that most people probably wouldn't think to try.

Yep, that's exactly how I did it. I figured it out after looking at the HSC all time records for Cosmic Ark (found here: http://hsc.statotronic.com/searchgame.php?game=49 ) and noticing that the top scores for the game were 90,950 from Sku_u and 83,700 from Keilbaca, with the next highest scores after those two being in the 20,000s. Knowing that the asteroids start moving too fast for human reflexes to react to after 20 or so planets, that got me wondering how the heck the top two players got such high scores. I figured there must have been some kind of special strategy to top tier scoring in this game, like how in Centipede you can get several hundred thousand points by staying on the first wave, always leaving one centipede segment alive, and just hunting the spiders while destroying any new centipede segments that spawn from the sides of the screen. I played around with Cosmic Ark for half an hour or so and eventually figured out that sure enough there was a special technique to getting a really high score in this game, which worked exactly as you described. I played as normal until the second planet of yellow Pac-Man looking creatures, which I think was the 12th or 13th planet, then set about asteroid hunting while refilling my energy meter as needed by capturing one alien then letting the mini ship get hit by the defense laser. A few hours, and several close calls nearly running out of energy, later and I had my high score. It sounds like a simple strategy but it was actually quite difficult staying focused and shooting asteroids without getting hit for hours on end, especially after the first hour or so when my wrist started feeling none too happy about the constant strain. But anyway, you are correct, that was my technique.

It was a couple hours, though I kinda lost track of time since my brain had pretty much turned to Jello by the 50,000 mark. The last time I did a brain melting endurance run like that was when I rolled the score in Robotron 2084 on the Atari 7800. Not something I like to do often since it's a bit rough on the noggin and the wrists, but it feels good to have accomplished it.

Today I learned that the score in Cosmic Ark can go up to 6 digits. I also learned that I have far too much free time on my hands. Cosmic Ark (Game 1, Difficulty B/B): 100,150 (Note: I did take video evidence as well and can PM it to Vocelli if he feels further evidence is needed to verify the score.)

Man, all the news around those Blast systems has turned into a real dumpster fire! Fingers crossed for some more positive news when the 2018 Atari Flashback Portable is unveiled in the not too distant future.

Sorry to hear that business has been slow lately, I'll order a complete Harmony Encore with case and B&W printed manual on November 1st (or sooner if finances allow). I did want to ask though, will current production Harmony Encore carts have a nice glossy label on them? The last one I ordered came with a non-glossy paper label that got scratched up in no time flat.

To keep it short and simple, as long as the system I'm playing games on looks original on the outside and functions properly I don't really care what's under the hood.

On eBay it looks like barebones console-only Wii systems are going for $30 + shipping and complete systems with the power supply, sensor bar, cables, and Wii remote are selling for around $60 or $70. That's about what I expected since the local stores around where I live sell complete Wii systems for $60 to $80, so I'm okay with $28 shipped for a factory refurbished GameCube compatible Wii disk drive. It's quite easy to install and will hopefully last another decade, plus it saves me the hours of work that it would take to softmod a new Wii system and install and configure all the emulators I have on my current Wii.

The disc drive in my Wii ended up dying the other day so I couldn't play the games I was planning on playing this week, and thus I returned to Cosmic Ark to see if I could improve my scores a little while I wait to get a replacement disc drive. Cosmic Ark (Game 1, B/B Difficulty): 15,240 Bonus Cosmic Ark (Game 5, B/B Difficulty): 1,694

Good idea! I do have Missile Command, though weirdly I haven't seen a copy of Yars' Revenge locally. I did watch some tutorial videos on how to take apart and repair the Wii then I opened it up and cleaned the laser eye to see if that would fix the problem, but it's still giving me disc read errors. Fortunately while opening up the Wii to clean the laser eye I learned that it's actually really easy to replace the entire disc drive, and new disc drives for the Wii only cost around $28 shipped; which will be a lot more affordable than replacing the entire Wii with a new one. So hopefully next week I'll have the money to order a new disc drive and can get my Wii up and running again. In the meantime the emulator software on the Wii still works just fine so I can continue playing in the Atari 2600 HSC via emulation on the Wii while I wait for a replacement disc drive.

I'm really torn about gaming both present and future. On one hand I'm pretty fed up with the modern distribution methods for games. Almost every modern game I'd like to play does come on physical media but requires an update patch to be downloaded right away for it to not be a glitchy buggy mess, which means in 10 years or less when the servers for those update patches no longer exist the games of this generation will be barely playable. Even the Nintendo Switch with it's cartridge based games can't escape this practice. I was all excited for Starlink: Battle for Atlas until I found out the other day that even if you buy the game on a cartridge you still have to download a 6GB patch to play it. The only current system that still has it's games self contained on cartridges without any patches to download (in 99% of cases at least) is the 3DS. And yet, I still get really excited over new games that look like fun when I see trailers and previews for them. The aforementioned Starlink, Doom Eternal, the Resident Evil 2 remake, and so on. I really want to play quite a few new games and I'm sure there will be a lot more games in console generations to come that I'll want to play, I just can't seem to make up my mind whether or not it's worth saving up and buying a system to play them on when the models that publishers use to distribute the games are so abhorrent. I'll probably cave in and get a Switch some day once Nintendo has released a revision that addresses some of the common hardware issues with the system (casing cracking from overheating, left JoyCon analog stick drifting, etc.) but I still won't be happy about how the software is distributed.

The Wii is dead, long live the Wii. Ineligible Adventure (Atari 2600) - 41 minutes Alien Resurrection (PlayStation) - 328 minutes Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600, Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 122 minutes Dragonfire (Atari 2600) - 76 minutes Stampede (Atari 2600) - 39 minutes Nintendo Wii Crazy Machines - 71 minutes Deadly Creatures - 270 minutes Escape from Bug Island! - 360 minutes JU-ON: The Grudge Haunted House Simulator - 91 minutes SimAnimals - 409 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 1,807 minutes (30 hours 7 minutes) [1,201 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Nintendo Wii: 1,201 minutes PlayStation: 328 minutes Atari 2600: 278 minutes Today is a rather sad occasion for me, as the Wii that I've owned and enjoyed since November 19, 2006 (the day it launched in North America) died on me last night when the disc drive suddenly started failing to load any games. I probably shouldn't be surprised, since after 12 years of nearly daily use almost any slot loading disc dive would be approaching the end of it's lifespan, but it feels especially unfortunate since nearly all my game collecting efforts this year had been focused entirely on the Wii and I had a good two dozen or so new Wii games lined up to play over the fall and winter. But alas, the drive has failed and I lack the knowhow to open up the Wii and run diagnostics on the drive; so it looks like I'll be without a Wii for a while until I can afford to replace the console at some point next month. In the meantime, it was actually quite a good week for gaming around here this past week. With the new season of the Atari 2600 High Score Club reminding me how much fun it is playing Atari games I logged a fair bit of time for both of the 2600 HSC's current games, Dragonfire and Cosmic Ark, then had a little mini high score competition with the misses in Stampede; which she won with a score of 2,213 to my 2,194. It was a really close race! She played some Atari on her own this week as well, with several rounds of Game 3 in Adventure. One of them ended up being one of those rare instances of an unwinnable game in which all the keys spawn inside the castles and even after exploring every screen outside of the castles with the magnet there wasn't a single key to be found. She still had fun playing though and remarked that it was nice to spend some time playing her favorite Atari 2600 game again. The only other game she played this past week was Alien Resurrection on the PlayStation, which she's now only 2 levels away from finishing. She did have to turn on the unlimited ammo cheat code from level 5 of 10 onward since the game was poorly designed and simply doesn't give you enough ammo to finish any level after level 4 even on easy difficulty, but since she fixed the ammo problem she has been enjoying the game; aside from the occasional remarks about frequent and cheap deaths. Other than the aforementioned Atari games, I stuck to playing games on the Wii all week right up until last night when my Wii's disc drive croaked. I finished up the exquisitely good Deadly Creatures early in the week then went on to play another game with lots of bugs: Escape from Bug Island! The latter game is an early survival horror title for the Wii with what may be the most god awful and agonizingly long intro I've ever seen in the video game, but once you get past the abysmal half hour intro it turns into an excellent old school Resident Evil style survival horror game; with tank controls and all. Midweek I played played a ton of SimAnimals to relax during some stressful times and tried out the rare Wii sequel to The Incredible Machine titled Crazy Machines, which was quite a bit of fun as well. I was just going back to finish up JU-ON: The Grudge last night when the Wii croaked in the middle of my attempt to collect the last of the hidden items needed to unlock the final level, thus marking the end of my gaming time for the week. Looking ahead to next week I really have no idea what I'm going to play. I won't have the funds to replace the broken Wii for at least 2 or 3 weeks and I don't have any games for other systems that I haven't played yet, so I might just end up taking a break from playing any significant amount of video games and just watch more movies and listen to audio books to pass the time over the next few weeks. I do know the misses is planning on finishing the last 2 levels of Alien Resurrection on the PlayStation though, so we should have at least some gaming time to contribute to the Classic tracker. Until then, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

The Wii is dead, long live the Wii. Ineligible (All Nintendo Wii) Crazy Machines - 71 minutes Deadly Creatures - 270 minutes Escape from Bug Island! - 360 minutes JU-ON: The Grudge Haunted House Simulator - 91 minutes SimAnimals - 409 minutes Atari 2600 Adventure - 41 minutes Cosmic Ark (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 122 minutes Dragonfire - 76 minutes Stampede - 39 minutes PlayStation Alien Resurrection - 328 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 1,807 minutes (30 hours 7 minutes) [606 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Nintendo Wii: 1,201 minutes PlayStation: 328 minutes Atari 2600: 278 minutes Today is a rather sad occasion for me, as the Wii that I've owned and enjoyed since November 19, 2006 (the day it launched in North America) died on me last night when the disc drive suddenly started failing to load any games. I probably shouldn't be surprised, since after 12 years of nearly daily use almost any slot loading disc dive would be approaching the end of it's lifespan, but it feels especially unfortunate since nearly all my game collecting efforts this year had been focused entirely on the Wii and I had a good two dozen or so new Wii games lined up to play over the fall and winter. But alas, the drive has failed and I lack the knowhow to open up the Wii and run diagnostics on the drive; so it looks like I'll be without a Wii for a while until I can afford to replace the console at some point next month. In the meantime, it was actually quite a good week for gaming around here this past week. With the new season of the Atari 2600 High Score Club reminding me how much fun it is playing Atari games I logged a fair bit of time for both of the 2600 HSC's current games, Dragonfire and Cosmic Ark, then had a little mini high score competition with the misses in Stampede; which she won with a score of 2,213 to my 2,194. It was a really close race! She played some Atari on her own this week as well, with several rounds of Game 3 in Adventure. One of them ended up being one of those rare instances of an unwinnable game in which all the keys spawn inside the castles and even after exploring every screen outside of the castles with the magnet there wasn't a single key to be found. She still had fun playing though and remarked that it was nice to spend some time playing her favorite Atari 2600 game again. The only other game she played this past week was Alien Resurrection on the PlayStation, which she's now only 2 levels away from finishing. She did have to turn on the unlimited ammo cheat code from level 5 of 10 onward since the game was poorly designed and simply doesn't give you enough ammo to finish any level after level 4 even on easy difficulty, but since she fixed the ammo problem she has been enjoying the game; aside from the occasional remarks about frequent and cheap deaths. Other than the aforementioned Atari games, I stuck to playing games on the Wii all week right up until last night when my Wii's disc drive croaked. I finished up the exquisitely good Deadly Creatures early in the week then went on to play another game with lots of bugs: Escape from Bug Island! The latter game is an early survival horror title for the Wii with what may be the most god awful and agonizingly long intro I've ever seen in the video game, but once you get past the abysmal half hour intro it turns into an excellent old school Resident Evil style survival horror game; with tank controls and all. Midweek I played played a ton of SimAnimals to relax during some stressful times and tried out the rare Wii sequel to The Incredible Machine titled Crazy Machines, which was quite a bit of fun as well. I was just going back to finish up JU-ON: The Grudge last night when the Wii croaked in the middle of my attempt to collect the last of the hidden items needed to unlock the final level, thus marking the end of my gaming time for the week. Looking ahead to next week I really have no idea what I'm going to play. I won't have the funds to replace the broken Wii for at least 2 or 3 weeks and I don't have any games for other systems that I haven't played yet, so I might just end up taking a break from playing any significant amount of video games and just watch more movies and listen to audio books to pass the time over the next few weeks. I do know the misses is planning on finishing the last 2 levels of Alien Resurrection on the PlayStation though, so we should have at least some gaming time to contribute to the Classic tracker. Until then, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

That's how it always goes for me too. I think I'm pretty good until I see some of the scores that start getting posted towards the end of the week. Honestly though, just participating every week counts for a lot and you really don't have to score very highly in every game to make it into the final brackets at the end of the season. As long as you play and post a score every week you can get there. Consistency is a lot more important than high scores, so don't get discouraged.

After another hour of trying I think I've already hit my reflexes' breaking point in Game 1 with my last score submission so there probably won't be any more main game scores from me for rest of the week, but I did manage to improve a little in the Bonus Game 5. Bonus Cosmic Ark (Game 5, B/B Difficulty): 1,304