BiffMan

Very glad you're giving it a try! Once you get into a groove, it's a completely delightful game. The variety of later enemies is great and the difficulty progression is top notch. In the midst of all that goodness, is one single, brilliant game design decision: no extra lives!!

Jacob, yes. Sorry, Jacob!! 🙂

In the Tron thread, Jacob said we'd be moving to a new game starting each week, but still running for 2 weeks each, so should get something new this coming weekend. In the meantime... FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BUY TRON DEADLY DISKS!!! Ahem. 🙂 Someone here should be able to hook you up with a loose cart for cheap, I would think.

1,673,450 Speed 1, in the spirit of the contest. 😁 Old school, with just a Flashback controller, no 2-handed stuff.

I have no problem with that. As long as you can put up with the crushing despair of knowing you ducked a challenge. The challenge of maintaining your focus on the slower playing speed! Woo! WOOOOOOOO! WOO. Woo? Seriously though, perhaps we make future such challenges 'slow (1) or faster' in the interests of pleasing folks while not excluding those new to the game who might benefit from the slower speed?

Because he asked us to and it's different? 😁 I've played a bazillion times on disc speed, never before on slow. Doing something new in a 38 year old game is nice.

I'm down with trying on slow. You're the boss and it's all about trying out different things, right? 🙂 Looking forward to alternating games, thanks for that!

I tried on disc speed and it is noticeably faster, but can't say 'slow' is unplayable. 'Slowest' (3) is definitely unplayable. 🙂

I can't honestly notice much difference in the speed. And to get us started... 431,700

OMG, OMG OMG OMG.... 🤩 Edit: slow speed? Sadist. 🙂

I tried avoiding a couple games last night, definitely doesn't work better for me. It did get me a little more in tune with their movement patterns, but seems the easiest way to 'avoid' them is to have them not make it down to you in the first place. 🙂

I definitely need to give that a try. Since all of my deaths on bosses come when I don't shoot all the drones, I guess I let them scare me into obliteration as my primary strategy. Getting more Zen dodging them would be of great benefit when I inevitably miss a few.

I hadn't even considered just avoiding the boss drones, will have to give that a try. I've been just shooting them all. 🙂

Can't say tracers are a help for the most part, but if you don't mind wading into the thick of things in the middle, you can put them to good effect. I'd definitely rather be without them. Wouldn't say the difficulty plateaus that I can tell. Starting the 2nd round, those nuke missiles are by far the worst thing and they just keep coming faster and thicker. Each round seems a hair faster than the last, so you adjust well enough, but I've rarely seen a game that requires this much second to second focus. Hate the paired red enemies, by far my least favorite wave. First wave and boss are usually gimme free lives, but those red bastards are nasty and the yellow/red/blue connected wave can get out of hand quickly if you're not careful.

That was an unexpected and completely epic answer!!

Tommy, any games of the "co-op panic" variety under development? Things along the lines of Spaceteam or the boardgame Space Alert? I've always found the simultaneous, but somewhat frantic nature of both to be pretty fun and the Amico controller would be exceptional for that type of game. Alternatively, would also make a hell of an AD&D dungeon crawler if everyone had their own job/character to control. Maybe that's how to turn Tarmin into a multiplayer game? Think Dungeon Master, but real-time with the play centered around controller mini-game inputs to do your attacks/spells/trap disarm/etc.

Wish we could nail down the issue, since it's a fun game, but intermittent issues are always bastards to troubleshoot.

Those who are having the most lockups, are you using autofire? Can you try playing with the fire button held down instead, or is that too rough on the joints? The only thing I can think of is the fewer things going on, the better, if it's a coding glitch of some sort. I've played probably 5-6 hours with only 2-3 freezes total. Science may not be of any use here, just trying to limit the variables.

Awesome score, congrats! Glad you managed to have a good run without it locking up on you!

I'm using a Flashback controller, so closest I can get. Definitely hard on the thumb for the fire button. I do vastly prefer holding the thumb button for autofire when necessary vs always autofire. Patience indeed! That was probably a 40+ minute game and it gets really hard to maintain focus that whole time. I can 'feel' when I'm engaged or not, so sometimes I just have to come back another day, but when you're locked in, it feels like you could play forever. That was finally a satisfying score where I didn't do something overly stupid.

40,403 😎

I've had it twice in emulation, both times near the boss, once immediately after destruction, not sure when the other was. I also think it has something to do with moving during transitions, so have avoided doing so.

Yep, definitely better as player 2. I don't have any particular issue losing enemies in the earth, but can see where that would be a distraction. It is quite awesome looking for the era.

Ultimately, the real issue with trying to educate random people on the internet is an assumption they can be convinced via evidence or a sane, rational discussion. Not everyone is sane, rational individual.

At 1pt per? No thanks. I'll just take my extra chance from a clean run and move on. 🙂