Kurt_Woloch

Now that's odd... that the game would get harder after the 2nd rollover, instead of staying the way it was for so many rounds... I tried the arcade version in MAME32 for a comparison, and there the ramping up of difficulty definitly doesn't stop with the 4th wave... what happens there is that a higher and higher percentage of things you have to shoot are ducks, so right at the start of the wave you get attacked by multiple ducks, and you have a hard time shooting them all. Then fresh ducks keep coming out at a faster and faster rate. All in all, I'd say this is one of the games which earned Coleco the reputation of intentionally crippling their games for other systems. While the graphics look pretty good, some game elements are definitely missing which should have been rather easy to do, most notably the music and the bear intermissions. They just should have used more than 4K of ROM (hey, their Colecovision games were also 16K, so why try to save money here?). Pretty much the same thing with "Donkey Kong"... I think an interesting homebrew project could be to do a better version of the game improving on those shortcomings (maybe building on the given codebase).

Now I'm a bit confused about that one... did I really choose the correct game? No, wait... I've got another screenshot here, maybe this is the correct one...

Hmmm... are scores higher than 99990 counted in this game? Normally, the HSC rules state that if you've rolled the score, you've beaten the game and thus additional points don't get counted. So... yes, I rolled it, and then quit the game after thinking that more isn't possible anyway. However, I didn't make to take a screenshot at the maximum points, because those happened just at the end of a round. Otherwise I would have included the "credits" message which appears when rolling the score ("Program by / S. Kitchen"), but it flew by so quickly that I couldn't catch it. So here are the screenshots... This was on the start of the last round before rolling the score... And this was a bit after that... So I hope you believe me that my maximum score was... 99990. And this is my last entry for this week (unless the scoring gets counted differently than I thought...)

I took a peek into the code... SWCHB gets read two times... once bit 0 only gets used, and once bit 1 only gets used. Which means that only the SELECT and RESET switches get polled. The COLOR / B/W and DIFFICULTY switches have no effect.

OK, here's my first entry offffff this week... 16630. Oh, and to take a screenshot, you don't have to pause the game... just wait until the flashing score is ON... it flashes slow enough for that. And as an experienced gamer, you SHOULD be able to get the timing right...

OK, here's my first entry for this game... 5500. I know I didn't even get past the 2nd screen of the first mission yet... but it's a start.

OK, I also managed to improve my score a bit, so here's my 2nd and final entry for this week... 56090.

OK, I did it now... I made a video out of my rewritten song "H.E.R.O.". In it, you can hear me sing while watching video footage of the 2600 version of "H.E.R.O.". You can watch it here...

OK, here's my first entry... 44350. This is a game I played extensively on the C-64 back in the 80's. And it reminds me of some rewritten lyrics I created back in 1998... H.E.R.O. There's a H.E.R.O. if you look among your carts, You don't have to be afraid to plug it in. There's a girlfriend if you reach into its caves And the walls that you can see may go away. And then a H.E.R.O. flies along with the strength to carry bombs And you blast the bats aside and you know you can survive So when you feel like hope is gone, look around you and be strong And you'll finally see the truth that a H.E.R.O. lies in you It's a long way when you face the caves alone No one reaches out a hand for you to hold You can touch lamps if you fly along the walls And the light that lights the caves will disappear. And then a H.E.R.O. flies along with the strength to lay his bombs And you blast your walls aside, and you know you can survive So when you feel like hope is gone, face the lava and be strong And you'll finally see the truth that a H.E.R.O. lies in you Lord knows platforms are hard to follow But don't let anyone tear them away Hold on, there'll be bigger sorrow, but in time you'll find the way And then a H.E.R.O. flies along with the strength to blast his bombs And you shoot them all aside, and you know you can survive And when you feel your lives are gone, just reset it and be strong And you'll finally see the truth that a H.E.R.O. lies in you

OK, here's mine... 927. I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do... for now. Maybe I'll get better until the end of this competition week...

Sorry... I didn't make it past the 2nd end boss... and I didn't have too much time to play this week. So my entry is... 24480

OK, I managed to improve my score a bit, though I didn't reach the 250,000 points. Here it is: 48027 However, if the deadline really is Wednesday, January 1st (which actually was a Tuesday), all of our scores are invalid...

OK, here's my entry... 31563. This was my first and probably my last game on this... it already took me over 20 minutes, and this is normally over my limit of what amount of time I'm willing to put into a single game.

I'd have a proposal then... how about extending the deadline for scores of this game? We could amend the rules for this round so that scores are being accepted until one week after the binary has been released... but it wouldn't stop the next round from starting in time. It would only get a bit tricky in that the standings would have to get updated for all subsequent rounds once this round closes...

Hmmm... seems like I have to sit out this week too. Not that I couldn't afford the cart, but since I'm in Austria, if I buy it now, the contest would probably over when I get it, because there are only two normal workdays (tomorrow and Friday) between now and January 1st, so I won't bother. And unlike with "Kaboober" where I couldn't find the ROM here in Atariage, but found it elsewhere on the net, I can't find a ROM for this one. Sorry... and a happy New Year to all contestants! See you next year at another round of the HSC! Kurt

First try... 5075.

Hmmm... just tried this. Good job, although the "buzzing" is a little irritating. But if you say they also had that in the A8 version... I just wonder if they did it on purpose or by mistake. And are you really supposed to get 0 points for a grabbed bonus item? I think that was different in the C-64 version which I played long ago...

OK, here's my entry... 16450. I'm not sure if I'll have time for any more entries this week... so much to do until Christmas! And then, I own this game... but I still played it on emulation, because of course I own the PAL version since I'm in Austria.

Now that's interesting... on your PAL TV, there seem to be about 55 lines visible. By the way, did you get my recent message with the new converter version attached? I didn't get any reply to that one yet...

Yes, I've got that record too. Please contact me if you need a Karaoke version of it... And now for the first score submission... 27560

OK, this is my 2nd and last entry for this week... 65040. Somehow, this is a typical Activision game, concerning the scoring scheme. There are several Activision games I know where the scoring increases with each round, and the remaining lives get counted as a bonus at the end of each round, where each life's worth also increases with each round. Those games include Pressure Cooker, Keystone Kapers, Plaque Attack, Seaquest, Frostbite... but ACTUALLY, that scoring scheme has been derived from the Atari coin-op "Missile Command", where you also get a multiplier which increases every other round... and the remaining shots and cities get tallied up at the end of each round. Oh, and I've read in the news some days ago that Activision, that company started by 8 disgruntled Atari employees, now has been bought by Vivendi... just thought I'd mention this because we're playing an Activision game this week.

Wait a minute... there's something wrong here. According to your screenshot, you still had 5 men on the grid, and the princess also hadn't reached the rainbow yet. So in my opinion, the game wasn't over yet, and you could have scored higher. Or am I missing something here?

OK, seems like I'm the first one to actually post a score... and not a bad one at that since the limit of 50,000 points for becoming a "Kabasher" is not so far away. My score is: 39100 Now for some hints: - The manual seems to be wrong on a few counts. One of them is that game variation 3 actually starts at grid 8, not grid 3, because you get 160 points for each squashed enemy. - At the end of each round, each baby buvsky you have left awards the same score as a squashed enemy. As far as I know, you don't get bonus points for catching the princess early. - A promoted baby buvsky has to be "fed" with a green Guvsky first before it's able to stomp other enemies than Guvskies. This includes the princess which also can kill you if she stomps on you, and you have to stomp on her with an adult Buvsky, since a baby Buvsky will get killed off if it stomps on anything else than a Guvsky. - The princess has got a wrong name in the manual... she should actually be called Ruvsky because she's red and has the same shape as the green Guvskies and blue Buvskies. - You only get extra baby buvskies for stomping Guvskies with an adult buvsky. Other enemies don't give you baby buvskies, and "feeding" a promoted baby with a Guvsky also doesn't create a new baby. - It's advisable to always promote a baby buvsky as soon as you've got only 1 buvsky on the grid left, because if you lose that one, you'll probably lose some of the baby buvskies before you're able to send one of them onto the grid. - You shouldn't go backwards too often since the time to catch the princess is not too long. An exception to this is if you need extra babies urgently or need to feed promoted babies in order to be able to complete the round (or survive the enemies better). Remember that if you lost your last buvsky by having the princess step on it, and you send a new one to the grid, that one first is a baby and can't stomp the princess immediately, it first has to stomp on a guvsky.

OK, this is my second and last entry for this week... 85000. I know I'm not very good at this game, but it's better than nothing...

OK, this is my first entry for this week... 60000. This seems to be a typical M-Network game. M-Network tended to do some things differently than other companies. Their specialities are: - not too colorful graphics (no multicolored objects) - Beautifully drawn, but rather low-res backgrounds - Using missiles and balls for displaying objects that don't look like missiles and balls (here they even multiplex them) - an inconsistent framerate (the player doesn't seem to move at a constant speed, but sometimes pauses, and so do the enemies - this effect also is somehow present in Burger Time) - rather slow-moving games