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Kurt_Woloch

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Posts posted by Kurt_Woloch

  1. Posted

    Here are my times for this week (February 1st through 7th) on modern systems...

     

    Browser based:

    Forge of Empires - 884 min. in 15 sessions

     

    This week I almost doubled my playing time on Forge of Empires, but it will probably go down again next week since I've reached a point where achievements get harder to reached, so you have to spend more time collecting funds and goods before you can do anything. I'm close to completing the iron age in that game though.

     

    • Like 3

  2. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 25th through 31st) on modern systems...

     

    Browser based:

    Forge of Empires - 527 minutes in 10 sessions

     

    This week I started playing Forge of Empires, a typical browser game where you build your city and your empire through the ages. I'm still in the early stages, just getting a hold on the trading system, and I'm not in a guild yet. We'll see how this turns out in the next weeks...

    • Like 3

  3. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 25th through 31st) on classic systems...

     

    Atari 2600:

    Alligator people -16 min.

     

    The only classic game I played this week was Alligator people. The 16 minute were a single game in which I reached about 42,000 points, and I decided that's enough. I then started to play Forge of Empires, but that's on the modern side.

     

    Apart from that, I basically gave up analyzing the format of the Yamaha Playcards. What I did find out is that it's bit oriented, not byte oriented, which makes it a similar mess as the LPC data format of the TI-99 speech synthesizer. There are also some tables with values which I can't fully see through. The format of my old Yamaha PRS-60 keyboard (as saved on tape) is much easier to understand since it's basically also a straight RAM dump, so what's on tape gets loaded that way and stays in memory until it gets played. And it's divided into several tables which get played through from start to finish in the order they are stored.

    • Like 3

  4. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 18th through 24th) on classic systems...

     

    Arcade:

    Mario Bros - 117 min. in 4 sessions

     

    Atari 2600:

    Alligator people - 30 min.

     

    I played 2 different games this week. In Mario Bros., I finally managed to reach the KO round, which is phase 25. After that, however, it continues counting KO + 1, KO + 2, KO + 3 andl KO + 4, but then it reverts back to KO, however the numerical phase display at the start of each round keeps counting up, but the game doesn't seem to get any faster. It's at its breaking point at that point however with occasional slowdowns occurring. So I think I've beaten that one.

     

    Alligator people actually seems to be a very relevant game to the current COVID-19 situation in that you play as a syringe and have to spray antidote at people who slowly turn to alligators in order to cure them. And the antidote is scarce, very much like the COVID-19 vaccine now given to people. I caught myself giving names to objects in the game which I didn't use when I last played the game, which was way before COVID-19 broke out. For instance, the yellow things you collect are now clearly doses. Nowadays you see syringes and people treated with them on TV every day, and the number of doses available comes up regularly as well, so the content of this game feels quite different than it did a year ago. And it wouldn't be difficult to rewrite the backstory so that it's about COVID-19 instead.

    • Like 4

  5. Posted

    Here are my times for the past week (January 11th through 17th) on classic systems...

     

    Arcade:

    Mario Bros. - 19 min.

     

    I only played a single game of Mario Bros. this week because I found something else interesting to do... I'm currently working to comment a disassembly of the MSX cartridge Yamaha Playcard System (or Yamaha Playcard Program), trying to find out the format in which the music is stored on the Playcards after being successful with finding out the format in which their PRS-60 keyboard (which I own) saves the music on tape. For the Playcards I haven't had success yet though I did find out some routines and their probable purpose. In Mario Bros. itself, it's the usual fare of about 160.000 points.

    • Like 3

  6. Posted

    Just for the record, I won a Game Gear back in 1992 at a Karaoke contest. It was the bundle pack with the power adaptor, and the power adaptor says "Adaptor for use with power base", so at that time, and for Europe / Austria at least, it was the same adaptor as for the Master System. The ratings are 9V 1A. The actual power requirements of the GG are lower though... it draws about 250-300 mA from the batteries while the Master System (at least the first generation) draws about 400 mA from the adaptor.

  7. Posted

    Here are my times for the last two weeks (December 28th, 2020 through January 10th, 2021) on modern systems... including non-consoles:

     

    Browser Based (Flash):

    Castaway - 104 min. in 3 sessions

     

    I've completed Castaway in time for the disappearance of the Flash player which will probably take away many old games with it. The trend now actually as I see it goes to phone apps and to other platforms which at least in part don't run on Windows XP at all, at least not in their current version, for instance, Unity or HTML5. Shapez.io is one of those games which only work on my laptop which runs Windows 10, but not on my desktop PC which still runs Windows XP.

    • Like 4

  8. Posted

    Here are my times for the last two weeks (December 28th, 2020 through January 10th, 2021) on classic systems:

     

    Arcade:

     

    Donkey Kong 3 - 7 min.

    Elevator Action - 19 min. in 3 sessions

    Funky Fish - 9 min.

    Hyper Sports - 13 min. in 2 sessions

    Jr. Pac-Man - 6 min.

    Mario Bros. - 144 min. in 8 sessions

     

    Atari 2600:

    Ixion - 19 min.

    Mario Bros. - 17 min.

    Oystron - 13 min.

     

    I've returned to playing the arcade version of Mario Bros., but I've also tried the greatly simplified Atari 2600 version. In order to avoid too much flicker, they changed some game elements which would make things easier for the player, so this had to be counterbalanced by making the physics more difficult to master and by sending through more and faster fireballs. I don't really like that version very much.

     

    I also played a bunch of other games where there's not much to report. In Hyper Sports, I still didn't manage to complete the triple jump which seems to be picky about when you're really able to jump as far as you should.

    • Like 4

  10. Posted

    Here are my times for this week (December 21st through 27th) on modern systems (I didn't play any games on classic systems this week):

     

    Browser Based:

    Castaway - 515 min. in 13 sessions

     

    I continued to play Castaway this week, and I played it for even longer than last week given it's the holidays now. By now I've reached the last area, and I hope to complete it over the course of the next week. There have been a few drawbacks though... there is one room in the last area (with the fire elementals) where your health actually gets boosted by a few hundred points, so I regularly set out to spend those points on slashing tough monsters. Problem is, the health of my pet does not get boosted, so the game often ends by my pet dying, and I have to start over from the save point. I should return to the base before that happens, but at least today, most of the time I didn't make it before it was too late.

     

     

    • Like 3

  11. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (December 14th to 20th) on modern systems... (systems?!! See below)...

     

    Browser based (possibly ineligible):

    Castaway - 315 minutes in 6 sessions

     

    The only game I played this week was the browser game "Castaway" on Armor Games, and I played it for long enough... by now I've reached the 3rd world (Castaway Jungle).

     

    As for the possible ineligibility... I've noticed that the Atariage forum was restructured, and this thread is now located under "Modern Consoles" instead of "Modern Gaming". Unfortunately, browser-based is not a console system, therefore it could be ineligible now, though I don't know any other tracker where it would be eligible. Well, maybe there will be more changes regarding this in 2021...

    • Like 4

  12. Posted

    Here are my times for this week (December 7th through 13th) on modern systems:

     

    Browser based:

    Castaway - 158 min. in 5 sessions

     

    Castaway is a Flash game on Armor Games which may go away in January due to support for Flash games ending. Since my PC still runs on Windows XP, my browsers stopped getting updates which also means they still support Flash. So it's maybe my last chance to play this game again. Right now I'm still on the first island, but the only task left is to finish its "boss" and deactivate the "sand generator". To reach that, however, I still have to gain some levels. Right now I'm at Level 6 which is the same as the first scorpion I encountered, so I suppose the boss will have a few more levels than me, and I still have to gain some strength to beat it.

    • Like 2

  13. Posted

    Here are my times for this week (December 7th through 13th) on classic systems:

     

    Arcade:

    Chicken Shift - 6 min.

    Donkey Kong Jr. - 8 min.

    Hyper Sports - 9 min.

    Galaxian - 4 min.

    Mario Bros. - 18 min.

    Ms. Pac-Man - 5 min.

     

    This week I finished playing Mario Bros and played a few short sessions of other games - Chicken Shift, Donkey Kong Jr., Hyper Sports, Galaxian and Ms. Pac-Man - 1 game each. Other than that, I started playing the brower game "Castaway" which is to be found in the modern tracker. In Hyper Sports, I got through to the 5th event... maybe it will help to redefine the inputs like I did in Track & Field. Nothing spesial to report for the other games.The most unusial of those is probably Chicken Shift.

     

    • Like 6

  14. Posted

    Here are my times for the past week (November 30th through December 6th)...

     

    Arcade:

    Mario Bros. - 160 min. in 7 sessions

     

    Like last week, Mario Bros. was the only game I played this week. Though this isn't as popular as its successor, Super Mario Bros., the game does have its significance in gaming history... it's the first time Mario could collect coins yielding a "Pu-ling" sound. This sound somehow transcended the original game it appeared in, it's also heard in Super Mario Bros., Flappy Bird and even a commercial for photo books which I saw on TV this week. I wonder if the producers of this commercial ever played Mario Bros...

    • Like 5

  15. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (November 23th through 29th)...

     

    Arcade:

    Mario Bros. - 121 min. in 7 sessions

     

    I'm trying to keep my sessions short these days, so less playing time than last week, but still the same game... no improvements, I'm holding steady at about 160,000 points per game.

    The family rules have changed... the family consists of my father and me, and my father has changed the rules. The new focus isn't on building up my life anymore, it's at tearing it down. Not completely, but by throwing away as many things as possible which I don't need. I guess the goal is to get rid of about 80% of the things I own, but I don't know if I'll make it that far before my father loses interest and the rules change yet again.

    The future is probably digital... I can see some of my old systems being discarded... the most likely victims are the TI-99, the Atari 2600 and the Odyssey^2 which all don't have a proper video output, but are designed to do RF output only... and the CRT TV that has RF input should go as well.

    The future will most likely be digital and integrated, and the old systems will be emulated at best... with the old analog systems being discarded as well. Thus my Hi-Fi tower will lose most of its devices, those which are there to deal with all the different types of analog or at least non-integrated media... laser discs, CD's, VHS tapes, audio cassettes and vinyl records. Today you can have all the stuff as digital files which was used to be played on those devices.

    That's the distant future however... the stepping stone is content... I still have much content on one of those media types only, however, if I'm not using many of these, it still doesn't make sense to keep them.

    I know this is a bit out of topic, but these are the things I'm thinking about nowadays.

     

    • Like 4

  16. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (November 16th through 22nd)...

     

    Arcade:

    Mario Bros - 338 min. in 10 sessions

    Q*Bert - 22 min.

    Xevious - 3 min.

     

    I played quite a bit of Mario Bros. this week... I desperately tried to clear Round 24, after that the round counter would switch to "KO", but I didn't make it... the farthest I got was Round 23 at a score of about 190,000. And lately I seem to get worse at it, not better...

    therefore I also broke out and replayed two other games, Xevious (but not for a long time) and Q*bert (for a longer game). Nothing new to report there...

    By the way, Mario Bros., played in MAME, seems to have a bug... if you start MAME and the game, there's a setting that gives you extra lives every 20,000 points, but if you reset the game, it won't give any extra lives anymore.

    • Like 4

  17. Posted

    Here are my times for the past week (November 9th through 15th)...
     
    Arcade:
    Mario Bros - 116 min. in 5 sessions
    Popeye - 9 min.
     
    This week I played the same two games as last week, Popeye and Mario Bros. In Popeye I managed to beat the 3rd screen and get the "ending" after which the game restarts at the 1st screen with added difficultiy.
    In Mario Bros, there are no such cycles, but the game advances screen by screen, and more enemies get added over time. It would count to the 24th screen, after that it's "KO". But I didn't get that far, I think the furthest I got was phase 19 (Each level is a "phase" in Mario Bros) with a bit over 160,000 points on the easiest setting.
    • Like 3

  18. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (November 2nd through 8th)...

     

    Arcade:

    Mario Bros - 103 min. in 5 sessions

    Popeye - 43 min. in 2 sessions

     

    This week I played two Nintendo games, Mario Bros and Popeye. I think Mario Bros is clearly the stronger game, though Popeye uses more graphics trickery, like the 16-color background in a pretty low resolution (112x64 pixels) which is overlayed by interlaced sprites and probably even another layer displaying the score and such. On this hardware, the sprites actually have the problem that they, as a whole, are transparent to the background, but not to each other, that is, they shouldn't ever overlap, and the game does various things to prevent them from overlapping. In Popeye, I didn't ever manage to beat the game (all 3 screens) even on the easiest setting while in Mario Bros I get pretty far by now with 13 through 18 minute long games.

    • Like 4

  19. Posted

    On 10/26/2020 at 11:20 PM, carlsson said:

    Sure it is! If you like, post an URL to allow it to be pinpointed further in case there are many different sites offing online Sudoku games. Generally it is a small genre but each implementation has its rightful place.

    OK... the site I played on is the folowing one:

    https://sudoku.com/

     

    Also, here are my times for this past week (October 26th through November 1st) on modern systems...

     

    Android phone:

    BadGame - 10 minutes (estimated)

     

    So this week, I basically beat BadGame by having bought all the extras there are to buy and then playing 1-2 more games. But there's nothing earth-shaking in the last extras to buy, it just gets a bit funkier, more and more like fireworks, which also makes the game a bit harder to play since the rectangle you're holding on to gets more likely to be busted by a missile or shrapnel so that you suddenly lose the grip when you didn't plan to.

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 26th through November 1st) on classic systems...

     

    Arcade:

    Jr. Pac-Man - 39 min. in 2 sessions

     

    Atari 7800:

    Popeye (Mini Game version) - 22 min.

     

    Commodore 64:

    Park Patrol - 17 min.

     

    This week I played a game of Park Patrol after not having played it for a longer time, and 2 sessions of Jr. Pac-Man. Nothing exciting there. A new game I didn't play yet is Popeye on the Atari 7800, which is still in development, but only the mini game version is available for download which basically has the first level only, also with some simplifications, which repeats ad nauseum. There is a full version, but no binary of it has been posted, only a Youtube video is available. It plays pretty fine, but it seems a bit harder than the arcade version as far as I can tell, with slightly bigger sprites and less room to avoid things.

    • Like 4

  21. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 19th through 25th)...

     

    Android phone:

    BadGame - 25 min.

     

    Browser Based:

    Online Sudoku - 22 min. (not sure if eligible)

     

    This week I didn't continue playing Shapez.io because that took far too long last week. I also only played modern games, no classic ones.

    I continued playing BadGame on my phone, and by now I've collected all the extras except for a single one which costs about $2 million.

     

    While watching a Youtube video about different variants of Sudoku puzzles, I also solved a Sudoku myself on a website offering that. I'm not sure if this is eligible though... but on the other hand, a few years ago I played Nanograms, which is a similar style of game (also released for the TI-99), and I did list that as well. Solving that puzzle took me 22 minutes, after which the video was over as well.

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 12th through 18th) on modern systems...

     

    Android phone:

    BadGame... 40 minutes (estimated) in several sessions

     

    Browser based:

    Shapez.io - 349 minutes in 2 sessions

     

    THis week I played some more short sessions of BadGame on my Android phone. The main game, though, was Shapez.io which I played as a browser based game though there's also a "full version" you can buy on Steam (which then would be PC instead of Browser based). I actually played this for far too long, having planned only about 30 minutes per sessions... but somehow you always find something you can tweak quickly... so this game is hard to put down.

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 12th through 18th) on classic systems...

     

    Arcade:

    Jr. Pac-Man - 71 min. (in 4 sessions)

     

    Atari 2600:

    Mr. Postman - 7 min. (in 2 sessions)

     

    This week, I've played two games on classic systems, Jr. Pac-Man (like last week) and Mr. Postman, which is an Atari 2600 game by Bit Corp. whose topic sounds interesting, but it's actually not very bright. Back in the day, it was available in Germany as an EPROM cart which you could then erase and program with another game. Though the cart had 8K of capacity, the game is only 4K. Actually, I wonder how the cart was able to support different bank switching schemes...

     

    Jr. Pac-Man... well, nothing new there. I chased a score of 60,000 points, but didn't reach it, though I managed to get over 50,000.

     

    • Like 3

  24. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 5th through 11th) on modern systems:

     

    Android phone:

    BadGame:) - 20 min.

     

    This week I also played a bit on my phone. The game is BadGame, which has been originally programmed in 30 minutes while shooting a Youtube video (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrrR_8USmns), after that it was ported to several systems. Contrary to other games, it works quite well as a mobile game... the basic premise of the game is to hang on to red squares and gain momentum while swinging so that if the hook to the red squares is released, you fly as far as possible while crashing through other red squares for points. After you die, your points get accumulated, and then you get money for buying upgrades in a shop, and you also advance in a level system.

     

    For a 30 minute game, despite it's name this game is actually not bad at all, and I can see myself playing it again. I think this could work well on old consoles such as the Atari 2600, although it's questionable how to create a good control scheme on a joystick for this game.

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 5th through 11th) on classic systems:

     

    Arcade:

    Jr. Pac-Man - 131 min. in 8 sessions

     

    The only classic game I played this week was, again, Jr. Pac-Man. I still try to keep my sessions short, throwing in a session here and there, and they often consist of only one game. I've head great success with the strategy of leading the ghosts around in circles, which works well on several maze-like games.

    • Like 4
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