2600 Rom Comparisions and Dumps

[2600 Rom Comparisions and Dumps]

2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Maybe some people saw the Enduro like score and the River Raid like fuel displays and made a link to Activision?

Maybe!

 

On the forensic tip, are there any things that Crane consistently does in his Atari games that are unique to him -- signature bits of code, that kind of thing? Or, conversely, is there anything so horribly mis-programmed in Motocross that you find it difficult to believe someone as skilled as Crane would commit that particular sin?

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

On 12/9/2020 at 11:51 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

So.. um... what are the recommended games in Action 52? I think a few of them have some potential, although I forget their names at this point.

If you'd like a far more detailed answer to this question than you ever possibly wanted, I decided to compile my Action 52 capsule reviews from 2016, clean them up a bit, and add a few entries. I've now beaten just over half of the games on there, the majority of which are the more difficult ones (someone else got to most of the easy ones before I did, since this was part of a community "beat all the NES games" effort).

 

Abandon all hope, ye who click on this spoiler tag:

 

Spoiler

Action 52 capsule reviews

 

As of December 2020. Most games played in 2016, the below is based on notes taken then. Asterisk (*) = I beat it, i.e. looped it or played it until it always crashes or softlocks.

 

1. Fire Breathers*

2P-only single screen player-vs.-player shooter, sort of like Gunfight/Outlaw with dragons, over the course of eight stages. Might be fun with 2P, but seems very bare-bones. I "beat" it by button-mashing my motionless foe to death, times eight.

 

2. Star Evil*
Total trash, buggy as hell, the basic mechanics are playable but there's hardly anything there. Infamous for killing you with obstacles at the very beginning of each level.
 
3. Illuminator*

By far one of the best games and game concepts in the set, though ultimately the random enemy spawns make it impossible to call it a "good" game -- but at least it's playable.

 

An Atari 2600 demake could be great, though a similar concept has been done with the homebrew Fade Out.

 

4. G-Force Fighters*
Absolutely pathetic, 3-level side-scrolling shmup. In essence it's Space Jockey for Atari 2600, but without the ground enemies, and with the addition of a health bar and very basic, repetitive music. At least Space Jockey had some vague charm and variety; this has neither. No sign of effort of any kind put into this one.
 
5. Ooze*

Experienced in its complete form, Ooze is probably the best and most coherent platformer that Action 52 has to offer (which isn't saying much). But that last level is brutal, the controls and hit detection are a mess, etc. It has an ending, though -- I'm one of the very few people on the planet to get that congratulations screen legitimately! Too bad I can't mail in for my prize...

 

6. Silver Sword*

Easily one of the best games on Action 52, and certainly one of the hardest. It's sort of like Action 52's version of Ikari Warriors: three very long, difficult stages that require extensive memorization or mapping. Fortunately, at least you can (mostly) waltz through Stage 2 unharmed.

 

If all the games on Action 52 were on this level, I think the cart would be a different story. Silver Sword still lacks polish and variety (not to mention a proper ending), and there are one or two minor bugs, but it's really not that different in quality from many early third-party Famicom titles.

 

Take Silver Sword, add better music and an ending, polish out a few bugs, throw in a couple powerups, and it starts looking pretty typical for 1986-1987 Famicom. (Hell, it's already probably better than the likes of Super Monkey Daibouken or Stargazers.) The lack of an ending is a huge demerit, though.

 

7. Critical Bypass
8. Jupiter Scope

Haven't played these, or not enough to form an opinion.

 

9. Alfredo and the Fettuccini* (aka Alfred N The Fettuc, etc.)

Alfredo has a certain kusoge appeal, and other than a lack of presentation/polish it's not that much worse than the worst Famicom platformers. Exploitable bugs help since enemies in the third level get very nasty, and repeating background patterns help to anticipate them.
  
10. Operation Full Moon*

Don't really remember anything about this one. Always crashes at the end of Level 8.

 

11. Dam Busters
12. Thrusters

Haven't played these enough to form an opinion.

 

13. Haunted Halls of Wentworth*

If it weren't for the random attacks from the left, and a couple of annoying control quirks (especially not being able to jump to a lower platform without dying), Haunted Halls (aka "Haunted Hill") would be one of the strongest contenders for "almost decent" in the Action 52 library. The stage layout clearly isn't random, and even hints at good design in a couple of places. And even the random attacks from skulls and ghosts can usually be defeated if you're quick and brave.

 

Over and over again I'm finding the same thing in these games -- there's always some way to make it through, some narrow path to victory, suggesting that the designers usually did have playability in mind. (They just weren't very good at it.)

 

14. Chill Out

Didn't beat/don't recall.

 

15. Sharks

Didn't beat this one, but it's one of the horrific titles that use random enemy spawn patterns (leading to totally unfair deaths) and require you to mash the fire button for minutes on end. Horrible.

 

16. Megalonia*

Pretty straightforward little shooter with an interesting gimmick -- every enemy you kill in the stage depletes the boss's health. Unfortunately your ship is slow, the music insanely repetitive, and the game itself is buggy, but it's still about as good as Action 52 seems to get in the shmup department.

 

17. French Baker*

Dull single-screen title, a bit like BurgerTime with projectiles? Very easy once you figure out where to camp to avoid cheap respawns.

 

18. Atmos Quake

Didn't beat/don't recall.

 

19. Meong

Unexpectedly cerebral game (by Action 52 standards) where you have to find a path through multiple grid-based levels filled with death traps, and can't stay still for long or else you'll fall to your death. There's the germ of a good idea here but the execution is rough to say the least. I didn't beat it, and would have to map it out meticulously to do so.

 

20. Space Dreams*

My notes say "Very easy until the last level or two, and even those aren't too tough." I think this was the vertically-scrolling shmup where you play as a baby bottle and are attacked by kids' toys, or something like that.

 

21. Streemerz

Didn't beat/don't recall.

 

22. Spread Fire

Didn't beat this, but my notes say "The trick is to maintain a very high fire rate, which keeps enemy sprites from spawning, and only let up for just long enough to allow one enemy to spawn at a time. I was able to get to Level 10 on my second attempt, and WashYourFace reached Level 12, so I think it's doable. The collision detection is maddening, though, and there's an invincible enemy that could ruin everything."

 

23. Bubble Gum Rosie*

AKA "Bubble Gum Rossie" on the title screen and "Bublgum Rosy" in the menu.

 

Whoo, where to begin with this one...it took me over five hours to beat. It starts out with relatively straightforward platforming in typical Action 52 style (at least your character can jump and fall a reasonable distance), except for a mid-level jump that requires absolutely perfect timing but fortunately doesn't punish you for failure. After a while I was able to no-hit that with relative ease.

 

Then the second stage switches to a driving game that depends almost 100% on the RNG, since the enemies move completely at random and there's nothing you can do if they block your path. Otherwise it's pretty easy, but only if luck breaks your way.

 

But the third stage, wow...easily one of the most aggravating I've encountered in Action 52. It's back to platforming, but you're constantly under attack from fast-moving bats (at least I think they're bats) that change direction at random and are hard to see (light yellow on light blue). You can proceed slowly and try to take them out one at a time, but it's incredibly frustrating to try to target them -- they always seem to be just out of range -- and in some areas, you just don't have enough maneuverability to do it safely.

 

When you've got three or four of them after you, and you pair that with tricky platforming over spikes or piranha plants à la Mario -- not to mention, of course, the utterly screwy controls -- it's just brutal. And you can only take two hits, and only get two lives, so...yep. Glad that one is done.

 

24. Micro Mike

Haven't beaten this one but it's a completely ridiculous, fast-scrolling shmup that requires superhuman reflexes just to survive for more than a few seconds. Dunno how Bea_Iank managed to beat this one.

 

25. Underground

26. Rocket Jockey

Haven't played these, or not enough to comment.

 

27. Non-Human*

Weirdest platform hit detection ever, more than a few pixels to the left of where your character's feet appear. I don't remember much else about it, since it only took me ~15 min. to beat.

 

28. Cry Baby*

This single-screen action game reminds me somehow of Impossible Mission, but there's nothing to it except offing long strings of enemies, and occasionally killing yourself by falling two feet or climbing down the wrong object.

 

29. Slashers

Haven't played/beaten.

 

30. Crazy Shuffle*

Bizarre overhead shooter set in a hedge maze, where the key to success is to find invincible enemies stuck in a fixed pattern, and shoot them until the level advances. It vaguely reminds me of a game I can't place, with similarly tiny characters and bullets...can't think of what it is, maybe something for the TI-99/4A. Kind of a cool concept but no more than that.

 

31. Fuzz Power*

You can tell they wanted to achieve something with Fuzz Power, since the character design and play control are a bit better than most other titles on the cartridge, but the gameplay is by turns abominably unfair and trivially easy. Ends with an impassable wall early in Level 3.

 

32. Shooting Gallery

Haven't played/beaten.

 

33. Lollipops*

Lollipops features a few Action 52 trademarks: unrecoverable dead ends if you choose the wrong path, music that glitches out completely in the third level, attacking suspends you in the air temporarily, falling kills you in mid-air, dying glitches out your sprite, etc. Still, it takes less than half an hour to beat if you have good antennae for the dynamics of broken games.

 

34. Evil Empire
35. Sombreros

Haven't played these enough to comment.

 

36. Storm Over the Desert

Didn't beat this one, but it's another "random spawn" game and even worse than Sharks. A horrible abomination. Bea_Iank at NintendoAge found some exploits to make it marginally less impossible to beat, but I still don't know how she did it.

 

37. Mash Man

I know/remember nothing.

 

38. They Came...*

Beating They Came... was one of the toughest feats I've ever managed on the NES. It's actually not too hard, except for the unremitting brutality of Level 6. I could reliably clear Levels 1-5 on my first try, Levels 7-8 on my second or third, and Level 9 I may have solved (see below), but Level 6 seemed almost impossible.

 

On my winning run, I actually lost count of the 20 enemies I needed to beat Level 6, and thought I had 4-5 fewer than I actually did, so clearing it was a great surprise (and maybe I played better since I was less stressed about making the threshold). Then I had plenty of extra lives for the rest of the game.

 

The game is a multidirectional, single-screen shooter. Everything is random, but you can control the number of enemy spawns based on your fire rate and the number of objects onscreen. Level 6 of that one seemed impossible, but I eventually got through.

 

In Level 9, I think there's a safe spot at the lower-right corner -- hide there, and I don't think the big ships can reach you (at least not the ones in vertical orientation). Throughout the game, maintaining a high fire rate is key to minimize the number of enemies onscreen, and also to discourage enemies from shooting, but you have to let up occasionally so that new enemies will materialize. (In Level 9, once a big ship shows up, shoot nonstop so no others will come.)

 

In Level 6, it seems like the grey enemies don't shoot if you've got 3-4 1UPs onscreen; if you have 5 onscreen, though, no enemies will appear at all until you collect at least one. I found it was too frustrating waiting for enemies to appear if I had 4 onscreen, so I typically had 2-3. Otherwise I just shot up the center-left (hanging out by the skull in the lower-left), got lucky with my shots when I could, and hit the occasional horizontal shot if an enemy dove to the side.

 

39. Lazer League

I know/remember nothing.

 

40. Billy-Bob*

It's amazing how much the infinite continues in Levels 3-5 change Billy Bob from an intolerable wreck, to something that's almost like a prototype of the "Nintendo hard" homebrews of recent years (where the whole point is playing and replaying a ridiculously difficult level repeatedly until you finally make it through). Without them I don't think there's much chance I would've beaten this -- Level 3 just has far too many possible insta-death spawns, and Level 4 has a couple stumbling blocks too.

 

The trick of starting big jumps by tapping the direction away from the pit made a big difference. Only five enemies can be onscreen at once, so tracking that can be helpful, and bumping your head against the ceiling to clear spears is an important tactic. That said, it's good to avoid jumping into the top of the screen whenever possible; it cut down on unnecessary deaths when I realized you don't need to jump at the end of Level 1, and there are a bunch of places where falling is preferable to jumping in Levels 2 & 3. On the third screen of Level 3, a halting jump forward near the gap on the second floor will put you in position to do a "grab the ledge" jump up to the top floor.

 

Really nice-looking game by Action 52 standards, still quite decent by general NES standards. Plays like a nightmare, of course, especially the jump controls. You have to be moving, and you should tap the button as quickly as possible. I think every frame you hold the button down counts against you for horizontal movement, so tapping for the absolute minimum time possible -- one frame? two? three? -- is best.

 

41. City of Doom*

City of Doom is sort of like Level 2 of Silver Sword, as if played on Crazy Climber's playfield. That is, the enemy spawn patterns seem deterministic and are triggered by scrolling, but like Level 2 of Silver Sword you can just charge ahead and ignore them (there are a few exceptions in Silver Sword, but none here).

 

Meanwhile the main body of the playfield is a deathtrap best avoided, with unpredictable hitboxes for the windows, and the boss battles are typical random Action 52 garbage.

 

The best approach is just to stick to the left edge of the building, shoot upward until you reach the boss (which makes the whole level before the boss battle trivial), and then hope that the random movements of the boss line up with your shots. Don't bother with horizontal movement, except when you move over at the beginning of each stage.

 

Try to stay as vertically far from the boss as possible, but if he's coming straight at you, better to shoot rapidly and hope for the best. It's important to know how many hits you've landed -- watch your score.

 

There are basically two positions he can be in when he reaches the left edge; in one of them, he can move vertically through you without inflicting any damage -- his hitbox is weird and seems biased toward one side.

 

Another glitch is that on multiple occasions I defeated the boss only for the level to fail to end; when it happened on Level 1 it was annoying, but on Level 2 it was infuriating. It started happening a lot after I'd been playing for a couple hours, so I restarted and the problem went away. I think hitting him with horizontal shots, and getting hit (but not killed) by the boss, increase the odds of the glitch.

 

42. Bits and Pieces

Didn't play/can't remember.

 

43. Beeps and Blips

Didn't beat this one and don't really remember it, but I have extensive notes from WashYourFace on how to approach it. Glitches out in Level 8, which can't be passed.

 

44. Manchester Beat*

This side-scrolling action platformer is so obviously broken that the whole game turns into one big exploit that you'll inevitably figure out. The boss fights add the vaguest whiff of interest, but it's a mess.

 

45. Boss*

Oddly enough this side-scrolling stroll-'n'-gun gets easier as it goes on, since while the bombs fall faster as the game goes on, the time between drops stays the same -- so in later levels, you actually have a larger window to get through safely.

 

In a way, then, Level 1 is the hardest level, though Level 4 cost me several lives when I got to the end and the boss didn't spawn. I think the trick to preventing that is halting as soon as you see the sixth and final enemy, and moving back toward the left side of the screen before shooting him.

 

46. Dedant*

Simplistic Centipede ripoff, sort of. The GameFAQs guide makes it sound like the safe zone on the edge of the screen is a glitch, but I think it's an intentional part of the gameplay (and absolutely necessary for survival).

 

47. Hambo's Adventures

Didn't beat/don't recall enough to comment. (I always think there's a pig in this one, can't remember if there actually is.)

 

48. Time Warp Tickers*

Pseudo-psychedelic-rockabilly-whatever side-scroller in which you play as a pair of fingers, are attacked by musical instruments and the like, and every time you kill an enemy, the word "Time?" floats upwards. Horrible hit detection and unfair, random enemy spawns, but it wasn't nearly as tough as I expected, as after a while, you can start to identify patterns in the enemy spawns. Total trash, but amusingly bizarre trash.

 

49. Jigsaw

Didn't play/can't remember. Crashes instantly on real hardware, at least in some revisions.

 

50. Ninja Assault*

Ninja Assault really brings home what a massive, massive difference it makes when these games are deterministic, i.e. non-random -- they're actually playable, and even mildly amusing for the hour or so it takes to figure them out.

 

In the case of Ninja Assault, the only tricky part is a log jump section with completely counterintuitive controls. Otherwise the game is one of a handful on Action 52 that approach "licensed Famicom kusoge" levels of quality, in that there's actually a game there with some sense of level design and graphic design.

 

51. Robbie and the Robots*

"Robbie and the Robots", aka "Robbie Robot", aka "Robbie N The Robots", is an action platformer of a very primitive sort. It's definitely one of the better Action 52 titles I've played -- but it's marred by a hugely unfair bottleneck near the beginning of Stage 4, where you reach an enemy gun turret on a set of ascending blocks. You have no chance to dodge its shots, and if you intuitively jump backwards to avoid them, you'll often die from falling one square too far, à la Spelunker.

 

The only chance is to fire like crazy (which you need to do throughout the game anyway since it reduces the enemy fire rate), while executing the jumps necessary to reach the turret in between shots, and hope it doesn't shoot you before you shoot it.

 

(That same segment is reused at the very end of the stage, but fortunately the stage clear point is a couple tiles before you reach the turret, so just charge forward and you're golden.)

 

The other big issue is just that you're constantly under fire from turrets that you can't shoot back (they're too high and you can only shoot horizontally). That always annoys me in games: we all spend so much of our lives taking unfair shots from people we can't hit back, so what's the sense in subjecting players to that same experience?

 

Otherwise, it's typical Action 52 -- though above-average for the cart, and with some vague sense of thought into the design. It reuses patterns that can help the astute observer (if the ceiling dips in Stage 3, then Evil Robbie is about to attack, etc.). Since the game lets you walk on floor tiles below the surface, it's often wise to do just that -- getting you out of the way of the floating robots.

 

52. Cheetahmen

Haven't played much, not enough to comment. The ambitious title of the bunch, right down to the team of Action 52 mascots, but even if you can deal with the janky gameplay, it'll crash on you eventually.

 

 

[SegaDude]

Recently traded with SegaDude, and it was a positive experience all around. Easy to work with, friendly, and the items he sent were packed appropriately, shipped quickly, and worked perfectly. Would gladly trade again! 👍👍

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

My times for the week:

NES:
Bases Loaded - 184 min.

 

Master System:
Mecha-8 - 1 min.

 

PlayStation:
Buttsubushi - 91 min.

Hyper Final Match Tennis - 64 min.

 

More butts, more subushis.

 

EDIT: Ha, I don't believe "subushi" is a word in Japanese (and it'd be "tsubushi" anyway), but right after making that joke I just found out how Google Translate renders subushi (すぶし) -- as "fist"! LO-to-the-L.

[2600 Rom Comparisions and Dumps]

On 3/2/2010 at 6:04 PM, Rom Hunter said:

Inside the Suntek version of Motocross a nice looking Home Vision logo has been found.

 

Home Vision announced (but never released) a game called Around the World, which could very well be the same game.

 

If Home Vision got their hands on Crane's Motorcycle game is hard to tell (they did steal and even expanded Activision's Tennis, though).

 

IMO only Crane can answer this.

 

I must admit that the first time I played this game, it reminded me very much of Enduro.

 

Perhaps the contents of Motocross can be compared to Enduro to see if any routines were copied?

Very old post, but interesting to see this discussion pop up at the Lost Media Wiki:

 

https://lostmediawiki.com/Untitled_Motorcycle_Games_(lost_Atari_2600_games_by_David_Crane;_existence_unconfirmed;_early_1980s)

 

I assume (though I'd love to be wrong!) that this was never resolved, and that there aren't any "smoking gun" Crane-isms in the program code?

 

That Home Vision expansion of Tennis is one of the coolest things in the entire Atari 2600 library, or at least the non-mainstream library!

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

8 hours ago, BDW said:

I used to have the "collect them all" attitude. I would maintain collection lists, buy games I had no intention to play, upgrade carts with poor labels as I found them, etc. After a while I found I was straying away from the reason I came to the hobby in the first place: playing fun video games. These days I've gotten pretty selective about what I buy... With free time being more scarce than money at this point, I've found it's important to spend your time doing what you actually enjoy. You know, playing games.... instead of being a glorified bookkeeper. 

On the "buy games I had no intention to play" tip, this is what's kept me from striving for a complete Intellivision set, and what discourages me from attempting most any other complete set.

 

Now, I'm pretty omnivorous as a gamer -- I'll play sports, board games, visual novels, strategy games, total shovelware, potentially just about anything. And having a ton of cheap games can be nice, in the same way that getting a pile of cheap vinyl or cheap books can be nice: options, the thrill of spontaneous discovery, etc.

 

But the thought of spending big bucks to own Learning Fun I & II, the system's educational titles, was just not happening. Even owning them would be a drag, since I'd have an object I didn't really want, but whose monetary value forced me to take care of it. I also got rid of my copy of Triple Challenge, a very nice CIB copy at that, because who needs a game that's just a compilation of three other games I already own?

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

I don't actually remember wanting to "have them all" either, not as such. I certainly would have loved to have as many Atari games as possible, for example, but at the time I was most interested in getting certain specific games (some of which never came out, like LOTR or Ewok Adventure).

 

Did I want to play them all? Basically speaking, yeah -- I wanted to beat every NES game that had an ending, even back in the late 1980s. The games that had no ending, I didn't care about.

 

I can't imagine attempting completism of either type (ownership, "beat every game") for the library of any computer. Even if you restrict yourself to commercial or even retail releases, there's just too much, and too much of it is garbage, and magnetic media are too fragile.

 

At least console games generally run at a reasonable frame rate and have sound hardware and sprite support, but on those 8-bit computers with no hardware sprite support or dedicated sound chip/tone generator, there are games that fall below a minimum threshold of playability. Maybe I'd consider it for the Tandy CoCo, since I grew up with it and the library is modest.

 

My main completist project these days is to beat every tennis game released for 20th century consoles (not computers). I'm nearly halfway there, believe it or not.

[In Defense of 9 Oft-Berated Atari 7800 Games...]

52 minutes ago, Giles N said:

For Double Dragon (which I hope to get a KevinMos3 update version on Cart someday), have you tried to play it by - pretty much the same way as the Arcade, just switching punches for kicks; walk up to an enemy - release 2-3 kicks rapidly, then finish off with a punch.

 

It made a whole lot of difference for how I liked the game.

My approach to arcade Double Dragon (and NES too) has always been elbow smashes. Those pretty much break the game, though not to the point where it's not fun anymore. Don't remember how that plays out in the 7800 version, nor the 2600 version even though I've beaten that one!

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

46 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I don't know if having folders for programs slows anything down. Likely not. But they lend a sense of presence & permanence.

 

Updating and making them is a fun wintertime pastime, like scrapbooking and knitting. Fits in with a happy day of family crafts when everything is snowed in.

I knew a guy in college who used to spend time carefully managing the appearance of his magneto-optical disks -- not the physical media themselves, but the contents. He'd organize them meticulously, and supply custom icons for every folder, set it up so that the folders would spawn in geometric patterns, etc.

 

A friend of mine used to scoff at it, and thought that the guy was just being pretentious and seeking attention (if you were in the computer lab, it was kind of eye-catching to see him at work). But then he talked to the guy and asked him, and his reply (made humbly and a bit hesitantly) was "I don't know, I guess I just like it to look nice." And my friend felt like kind of a jerk.

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

11 hours ago, Keatah said:

Roms causing hyperactive switching between games is a fallacy. It isn't the cause, it's a revealer. The cause is inherent or previously existing in the person and the roms collections just highlight it.

Cause, no; facilitate or encourage, I'd say yes. I certainly don't read e-text the same way I read a book, and I don't treat an MP3 player the same way I treat a turntable. The medium and its access methods do affect us, though to be clear I've also put 30 hours into a game I only have as a ROM on a flash cart, without changing games once.

 

If you're really into a game, you'll be really into it in whatever form, but the means through which we access it definitely have a psychological effect -- even the ceremony of taking the time to get it affects the experience.

 

In a way, the taking of time is the point -- the thing that slows us down, the obstacle that's organic to the process but also serves a function in terms of our experience. (It can also be annoying as hell, of course, especially if you're loading a game from cassette on certain 8-bit computers, or from disk drive on others...)

 

I think it's the things that don't grab us right away -- the potential slow burners -- that sometimes suffer the most from being another ROM in a list, MP3 in a folder, movie in an omnibus torrent. "Engage me now or go away", but of course that very feeling is a vice.

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

15 hours ago, XtraSmiley said:

No, what you just described is buying a VCR and then trying to get every movie ever made on VHS.

 

If you mean understand a director, then it would be like getting all the Metal Gear Solid games and beating them.

Naah, the North American NES library doesn't even come close to that. It doesn't even come close to getting or watching every movie released on laserdisc. And consoles like the N64 are a fraction of that.

 

You might be underestimating how prolific certain composers and (to a lesser extent) directors are. Still, the complete works of Bach would take about 180 hours to listen to, which seems low to me but I guess must be correct, vs. 3435 hours for TMR's NESMania (though that included a lot of chatting, taco breaks, songs, raffles, and other interludes).

 

No idea where Telemann, Vivaldi, Hovhaness, Milhaud, et al. would fit into the picture...

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

55 minutes ago, wongojack said:

For instance, I recently got out all of my original GameBoy carts.  I did an inventory and compared what I had to the running lists I keep.  I set some priorities and decided to play 5 GameBoy games every day for about a week.  This led to a bunch of interesting discoveries about the GameBoy and those games.  For example, I played one game that had a review from a magazine calling it "The worst game they reviewed in 1991."  I enjoyed that game a lot and appreciated the variation it provided in my little experiment.  I could have easily done the same thing on an emulator, but I was not really motivated to do that at all.  Something about the physical carts really appeals to me (in some situations).

Oh, man, that makes me think of The Amazing Spider-Man on the Game Boy. It got absolutely savaged by a certain well-known YouTube reviewer (someone whose work I generally enjoy) as totally unplayable, impossibly difficult, and one of the worst on the GB.

 

Meanwhile, I fired up my cart, played it, and beat it within 2 hours of first trying it. Yes, the game had frustrations, but it's basically a straightforward platformer with one annoying quirk in the controls, and I enjoyed it.

 

My point isn't that I'm better at video games than the reviewer, or even that I'm more willing to wade uphill. It's that treating each game as though it had meaning and value -- rather than viewing it as yet another obstacle to the Greatest Hits that are the only games we "should" be playing -- comes more easily when you have the physical object, because the physical object replicates the experience of what owning games was actually like at the time of release, and provides a kind of structure that encourages self-discipline.

 

(And conversely, most reviewers don't really know what the hell they're talking about, and stick to the most superficial aspects when reviewing: does it look nice? Is it already popular? Does it make me feel heroic and like I'm "in charge"? If so, it's a good game. Bonus points if it's Japanese in some obvious way.)

 

By the way, one big reason I don't emulate much anymore: lag. I used to roll my eyes at people complaining about lag; then I went from playing a game on an emulator and struggling, to playing it on real hardware and beating it immediately. I play better without lag, ergo I enjoy it more, as simple as that.

 

The funny thing is that I've almost completely stopped collecting since about mid-2017. All I buy any more are new releases and, very occasionally, a real cart for an NES game that crashes on my system (since my EverDrive N8 seems to draw a bit too much power for some games to be 100% stable).

 

Outside of the Intellivision and 32X I never wanted a complete set, just cheap games to play whenever I got around to it...since to paraphrase one of Harlan Ellison's characters, “Who wants a library full of [games] you've already [played and beaten]?" I did like the idea of having a comprehensive understanding of the relatively small libraries for those systems, though -- to play the hell out of (i.e. beat) every single game -- and in fact I still do.

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

11 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

So.. um... what are the recommended games in Action 52? I think a few of them have some potential, although I forget their names at this point.

Back in 2016 I beat 24 (I think) of the 52 games in the collection -- and by "beat" I mean "played them until they either loop or always crash". I've forgotten a lot about them, though I had an extensive set of reviews that were lost when NintendoAge changed hands (though I can probably get them back with some effort).

 

The one that really sticks out in my mind is Silver Sword, a kind of gauntlet through three levels of brutal overhead run-'n-gun-ish action. I practiced that one for hours and hours before I learned the levels, and it was satisfying as hell to get the win. Billy Bob and Haunted Hill had some decent animation and/or sprites, and beating them was a formidable challenge.

 

But to be clear, none of the games are "good", though I agree some had real potential. There were several programmers involved, and one of them churned out some really dreadful, 100% RNG-based efforts like Storm Over the Desert and Sharks, where there's no meaningful strategy at all and enemies can spawn directly on top of you, so the only way to win is for RNG to smile upon you.

 

Those are the games that are absolute trash beyond redemption; most of the others had something going on, even if it was only a thin thread.

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

10 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

Nitpick but having "teh full romz" == "complete collection" so if quantity is what causes the "I can't settle" it doesn't really matter the media behind it.

Right, and I agree that quantity is half of the equation and can happen with a big ibrary of any kind. The other half (with ROM sets and flash carts) is just the...detached meaninglessness of a bunch of files. Ultimately I think the issue is one of investment, in the literal and figurative sense: as with everything else in life, what you put into something tends to correlate with what you get out of it.

 

10 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

What big picture? You do not have to "play it all" 'cause there really is a lot of garbage out there.

You don't try to walk every mile of every road to get "the big picture" do you? 
You don't count every grain of sand in that beach you like to get "the big picture" do you?

I don't want to come in as too hard but the idea that to understand it (aka the big picture) you HAVE to HAVE experienced it all is simply preposterous. 

I don't judge where one choses to pour his/her resources at the same time refusing to acknowledge it is an aberration, however safe it may be, is also illusory.

I'm not sure why it's necessary to use pejorative words like "preposterous" in what ought to be a civil and pleasant discussion: why go there? This isn't a point-scoring competition or even a debate.

 

That said: is there a big picture? Of course there is. There's zero doubt that TheMexicanRunner has a more comprehensive perspective on the NES library thanks to having played through every game on it. To take one example, he knows what the hardest games actually are, as opposed to what the hardest games are claimed to be (and it ain't Mega Man, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, etc.).

 

More generally he's had the opportunity to form his own opinions, rather than rely on received YouTube wisdom and the like, because by actually playing a game at length you learn things about it that aren't obvious from superficial, 5-minute sessions. Sometimes a really impressive-looking game turns out to be hot garbage, unfair and joyless, under the hood; sometimes a really ugly, janky game with weird controls turns out to be a pleasure to master.

 

Who said anyone "has" to "play it all"? I certainly wouldn't say that anyone has to. But firsthand knowledge usually has more substance than secondhand "everyone knows" stuff, so I appreciate it when someone takes time to actually experience the art form itself, especially on its own terms and with goodwill.

 

I value their perspective more, that's all, in the same way that talking to someone who knows the complete works of Beethoven is a different experience from someone who just knows the greatest hits. People in the former category can make unexpected connections, and see large-scale phenomena, that people in the latter category can't.

 

And if the point is that video games aren't deserving of this kind of care, scholarly attitude, or whatever, and that it's a waste of time or "aberration" to apply those things to video games? Well, I'd simply note that -- as a wise musician once noted -- everything is a waste of time. Ultimately we're all going to die, and everything that makes us who we are will be utterly destroyed and forgotten. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

 

In the face of that, one of the few things that makes life seem worthwhile is when we come to understand new things -- when we grasp them through experience, or by acquiring new skills, and grow as a result. For me, playing games has done that (as part of what I'd like to think is a reasonably well-rounded life), and the games that people dismiss as "garbage" have often given me more of that than the alleged AAA titles that bore the crap out of me because they look nice, sound nice, and play like a guided tour whose purpose is to kiss the ass of bored teenagers with wispy mustaches who want to feel important.

 

Now you could, I suppose, argue that video games don't deserve to take up that kind of space in our lives. But then, if we use that as our standard, we really can't justify spending even a minute playing video games, and should instead dedicate our every waking hour to things like helping others. So in that regard, I see no difference between playing video games at all and playing them with the kind of mindfulness I described -- it's just a question of degree, and no one here is in a position to throw any stones, ever.

[Full Set Collecting : Is it an unhealthy obsession to be a completionist? Merely the attainment of a childhood dream to "Have them all"?]

This conversation has taken a rather strange turn, but I want to point out one thing: for those of us who actually play our games, and buy them in order to play them, the idea of a complete set can be a totally different thing, and has more to do with playing than collecting.

 

Among other things it's a way to experience the entire library for a console, ideally with an open mind and with each game on its own terms, rather than via someone else's idea of what we "should" play.

 

That's what I love about people who try to beat a system's whole library, like TheMexicanRunner, Goati, and others like them. They understand the big picture in a way that few do -- in the same way that you can understand a director by watching all their movies, or a composer or band by listening to all of their works -- and they seem to develop a deeper appreciation for everything they play, rather than leaping to typical, off-the-cuff YouTube hot takes.

 

Of course the counterargument is that you can have the same experience with a ROM set, and in many ways you can. But we all know the pseudo-ADHD condition many of us get from ROM sets, in which we can't settle on any one game to play -- and it's not just a question of numbers, but also of the way that ROMs can start to feel meaningless, divorced from the context offered by the game's packaging, manual, etc.

 

I recently got a Jaguar Game Drive cart and found myself having that experience: on a console where I could only play the 7 games I actually owned, and had been able to focus enough to beat the majority of them, now I could play anything...and didn't really want to stick with anything. Having the real thing helps me focus, at least.

 

Also, I can't tell you how many times I've played a game and discovered that some non-obvious gameplay element was only detailed in the manual or other packaging elements. (The puzzle in Marvel's X-Men for NES was pretty obvious to me as a kid, but impossible to deduce without the physical cart or a scan of it!) And tons of games still don't have full manual scans online, let alone the maps and other things that sometimes came with the games.

 

That said, I've only really tried to collect complete sets for two consoles with small libraries, 32X and Intellivision. Came very close with the 32X, with only one game left, but didn't want to pay big bucks for Spider-Man; Intellivision, I've got all but a few games. In both cases I got almost everything on the cheap.

[Smithereens is my daughter's best friend's (a little 6 year old) favorite game]

On 7/20/2020 at 2:46 PM, ubersaurus said:

Bob Cheezem himself confirmed this to me. He said this was pretty common for them at the time, for European games to be sent over to them to rework to run on NTSC systems. The addition of the Voice was all him, though - otherwise I think he matched up with Stone Sling pretty closely despite the differences under the hood.

Very interesting! And since the Voice is (IMHO) what elevates the game from "pretty fun" to "a blast and hilarious", it was effort well spent.

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

Yes, it was the #2 game of 2016! I wonder what strange, inscrutable weirdo could have played Action 52 that much? He'd have to be an odd duck indeed...

[Games Beaten In 2020.]

6 hours ago, player1"NOT"ready said:

This took a few attempts but I did win against my Atari 2600 In chess.

That's a pretty slick checkmate to pull off, especially given that you were down a Queen and Rook (for a Knight and Pawn), and with Black about to launch its own mating attack after 1...Qd1+ (though I don't see an immediate checkmate after 2. Bg1 Bf2 3. Nh3). Well done!

[Games Beaten In 2020.]

82. Mega-Bug (Tandy CoCo)

 

I don't usually think of arcade-style games as something to "beat". But the win condition on this one is so clear-cut (empty the maze of pellets), and the reward for doing so is such an unambiguous victory cutscene ("We'll get you next time!" say the ants), that it's hard not to feel as though one beat the game even though it loops afterward (without any increase in difficulty, I don't think?).

 

As for the game itself, it's a nice technical achievement and plays well, though the combination of having only one life + a randomly (procedurally?) generated maze with dead ends = a recipe for unavoidable GAME OVERs, which is a minor downer. Great speech sample and music, though, and a classy presentation overall. B.

 

EDIT: Oops, there's a higher difficulty level I need to beat, per the manual. Well, I'll still count the win for now, but I plan to return to this game!

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

My times for the week:

 

CoCo 1/2:
Androne - 20 min.
Mega-Bug - 20 min.

 

NES:
Bases Loaded - 188 min.

 

PlayStation:
Buttsubushi - 227 min.
Hyper Final Match Tennis - 156 min.

[In Defense of 9 Oft-Berated Atari 7800 Games...]

2 hours ago, Cousin Vinnie said:

Oh... but brother, Tower Toppler has level selection to help a man practice!

www.Atari7800forever.com/ttc.html

 Yeah, I vaguely remembered that there was some sort of code or exploit to that effect. But I think those kinds of things should be built into a game like this (i.e. one that constantly trolls the player), not hidden away.

 

If, instead, TT had a level select that gave you a "NOW DO IT WITHOUT THE LEVEL SKIP!" ending, that'd be great!

[In Defense of 9 Oft-Berated Atari 7800 Games...]

I think the lack of an ending really hurts Dark Chambers, or at least makes me massively less inclined to play it. In fairness, that issue affects Gauntlet too (except the NES port), but that game manages to be more fun and dynamic; even so, I have no interest anymore in playing arcade Gauntlet, NES Gauntlet II, etc., since I know they just go on forever despite employing a kind of gameplay that implies an end goal.

 

Anyway, in the case of Dark Chambers, the lack of an ending just makes the game feel cheap.

 

I like Tower Toppler in many ways, and it's a nice-looking game that sits well on the 7800. It's pretty easy to understand why it's loathed by so many people, though; the controls are needlessly frustrating and opaque, while the stage design is sadistic and depends on deliberately unfair, trial-and-error gameplay that doesn't suit a game without unlimited continues.

 

(I generally don't like the idea of a game "aging poorly", but if that label applies to anything, it's to a game that wastes the player's time in order to artificially extend its shelf life.)

 

The Japanese release on the NES, Kyoro-chan Land, includes a password system that makes the game a lot more fun since you can learn the later levels without wasting hours of your life replaying levels you already know. I played through that version to practice for a legit run of the password-less NES version (Castelian), which I did earlier this year.

 

My plan is to replay the 7800 version on real hardware sometime in the next year or two (I did play through it in emulation with savestates many years ago).

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

My times for the week:

 

NES:
Bases Loaded - 327 min.

 

Sega CD:
Third World War - 27 min.

 

PlayStation:
Buttsubushi - 145 min.
Dreams to Reality - 75 min.
Hyper Final Match Tennis - 185 min.
Missland - 10 min.

 

Dreamcast:
102 Dalmatians - 16 min.
18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker - 7 min.
Bangai-O - 6 min.
Boku no Tennis Jinsei - 6 min.
 

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

It's tricky, but I'd personally count GBC games that are GB-compatible under the Game Boy Color category -- pretty sure that's what I did in the past? Otherwise you potentially get the same game counted in two different contexts.

 

You can also tell visually: the charcoal GBC carts are monochrome-compatible, while the clear ones aren't. But then you get curveballs like the Pokémon games with their solid-color carts -- not to mention that a few games were issued both as GB and GBC carts, and when you play the GBC version on a monochrome GB, the gameplay is indistinguishable from the GB cart.

 

Quite a mess, but if memory serves, the monochrome GB releases of those games are rare European ones. (Montezuma's Return and Smurfs' Nightmare are two that I know of.)

 

I'm trying to think of what other cart-based systems pose this issue. Neo Geo Pocket Color and Wonderswan Color might, I can't recall what their backwards compatibility is like.

 

One console example that occurs to me is the SuperGrafx, where I think there's one game that will run on a vanilla PC Engine, and another is the Videopac+ G7400 aka Odyssey³ -- all but three of the G7400-enhanced games will also run on the older hardware. And a few CoCo 3 carts will switch to a CoCo 1/2 mode if they're on the older system.

 

These hardware devs sure didn't plan to make a tracker's life easy!

 

EDIT: Hoo boy, this gets complicated.

[What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)]

My times for the week:

 

NES:
Bases Loaded - 165 min.

 

PlayStation:

Action Man: Destruction X - 408 min.
Buttsubushi - 25 min.
Double Dragon - 212 min.

 

Beat the Neo Geo port Double Dragon on the higher difficulties (Normal and Difficult), thus beating the game for my purposes. Thoughts here; it was a pleasant surprise to master the game -- or at least find a brutally efficient pattern -- in the process of my Difficult run, as I don't "own" a SNK fighting game boss every day.

 

A PAL-exclusive release, Action Man: Destruction X is an unexpectedly fun and well-made little game -- sort of Grand Theft Auto Jr., I guess, or maybe a really souped-up version of Motor City Patrol for NES. In any event I beat it on Normal, and got gold medals in the Driving School, Spotlight, and Combat minigames. Extreme difficulty would be next, and I hope it doesn't demand that I start driving carefully -- barreling through the city at full tilt is half the fun of the game.

 

I also cleared a few more puzzles in Buttsubushi, and won a half-dozen more games in Bases Loaded.