AtariWarlord

Thanks for the great season -- it's introduced me to some great games I would never have heard of before (Ali Baba and Thunderpop come to mind). Thanks for the consolation awards for less-than-stellar players like myself. Look forward to the new season.

Small improvements in everything but Frogger: Time Pilot 170,800 Ali Baba 32,000. Grobda 14,560

Ali Baba 27,000.

Seeing as it's almost the half-way point, I thought I'd provide an update: Time Pilot 154,700. Frogger 11,260. Like Donkey Kong, Frogger is on my bucket list of games to master. I still have a ways to go. Ali Baba and 40 Thieves 17,900. This game is winning me over. Nothing for Grobda yet. I've played it a few times but have gotten frustrated at so often blowing myself up by shooting an enemy tank that's too close to me.

I'm still figuring out how to play it.

Boogie Wings 119,640.

Excitebike 86,155.

Excitebike 68,745. This is as far as I've been able to get going from Beginner forward.

Re: Vs Excitebike. It was never made clear in the original competition whether we needed to select the "beginner" track each time or whether we could select a more difficult track to start. Cynicaster, please clarify.

Boogie Wings 127,880. Edit: I just remembered I achieved this score before the redemption round started, so I'm removing it from competition.

The Kong of Donkey: 55,300.

Is the new round coming up or are we now in the redemption round?

Donkey Kong 34,600. I'm taking a new approach to this competition. I'm not looking at anyone else's scores or comparing mine to anyone else's. If I beat my own scores, that's great, but I can't even come close to competing with you guys.

Excitebike 56,435.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but this is probably my first time playing honest-to-God arcade Donkey Kong. I've played the NES version via the Wii store, the 2600 version and Crazy Kong which is almost a straight rip of the original. What I've learned so far? It's brutal. No wonder it's so highly contested for high scores -- doing well is a remarkable achievement.

Boogie Wings 87,850.

Seems like a lot of folks decided to skip this round. Too bad -- these were two great games. Boogie Wings took some getting used to but there is a refreshing sense of open gameplay you wouldn't expect from a horizontally-scrolling shooter. There is no clearly-patterned recipe for success -- you just have to keep experimenting (full disclosure: I still haven't beat any of the secondary levels).

Boogie Wings 84,990. Hey, an improvement is an improvement.

Boogie Wings 82,430.

Probably Coney Island -- it's probably the easiest (which is not to say it's easy -- just relatively so).

Qix 20,946.

I don't have a lot to add here, but please: less Activision and more Imagic games. Activision's great but it's a well-tapped well; there are all kinds of great Imagic games that I haven't seen in the competition and I started in 2016. A few for your consideration: Shootin' Gallery, Subterranea, Moonsweeper.

This is too long coming and my apologies, but I concede. I've never been able to make 60K in Pole Position and I can't see me starting now.

Qix 17,906. Not sure how I'm doing worse on the arcade version than on the Atari 5200 with its awful controls, but that's where I'm at. Boogie Wings 63,490. Okay, I'm starting to get a feel for the skyhook and what to do with it. Still don't feel like I'm making much progress though. There's so much background that my old eyes often have a problem figuring out where my man on the ground is. It's a good but extremely busy game; developer needed to lay off the coke.

Okay, Boogie Wings. Can someone explain WTF I just played?