What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2010 (Season 3)

[cvga]

Any chance of listing the most played game by system? I'm guessing Kaboom for the 2600.

 

I thought I did this within the past couple of weeks but here's an update through today...

 

Atari 2600 - Kaboom! (#1 alltime)

Commodore 64 - Park Patrol (#3 alltime)

NES - Final Fantasy (#6 alltime)

Arcade - Galaga (#7 alltime)

TI-99 - Centipede (#8 alltime)

Colecovision - Mouse Trap (#10 alltime)

Sega Master System - Hang-On (#11 alltime)

Atari 7800 - Jr. Pac-man (#16 alltime)

Genesis - Phantasy Star 4 (#22 alltime)

Turbo Grafx - Devil's Crush (#25 alltime)

Intellivision - Burgertime (#31 alltime)

Atari 5200 - Berzerk (#46 alltime)

Atari Jaguar - Breakout 2000 (#53 alltime)

Sega Dreamcast - Worms World Party (#77 alltime)

Atari 8-bit - DROL (#148 alltime)

Gameboy Color - Pokemon Red (#178 alltime)

Channel F - Pac-man (#215 alltime)

GameBoy - Super Mario Land (#232 alltime)

CoCo - Bedlam (#239 alltime)

Neo Geo - Magical Drop 2 (#271 alltime)

Sega Saturn - Batsugun (#282 alltime)

Nintendo 64 - Quake II (#284 alltime)

Aquarius - Burgertime (#310 alltime)

Apple II - Dino Eggs (#339 alltime)

NGPC - Pac-man (#363 alltime)

Vectrex - Solar Quest (#408 alltime)

Microvision - Bowling (#416 alltime)

Atari Lynx - Xybots (#429 alltime)

Sega 32X - Virtua Fighter (#446 alltime)

 

1,643 total games have been logged

[cvga]

We also passed the 200,000 mark for alltime minutes logged this week!

 

BTW - This is the 73rd week of the tracker for those wondering.

[+thegoldenband]

Times for Monday - Friday:

 

Sega Genesis:

Sword of Vermilion - 315 min.

 

Dreamcast:

Worms World Party - 105 min.

 

Sega 32X:

36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples - 5 min.

Blackthorne - 18 min.

Cosmic Carnage - 3 min.

Kolibri - 37 min.

Mortal Kombat II - 2 min.

Space Harrier - 24 min.

Tempo - 10 min.

Virtua Fighter - 2 min.

Virtua Racing - 14 min.

Zaxxon: Motherbase 2000 - 3 min.

 

Vectrex:

Space Wars - 22 min.

 

Very brief notes:

 

Sword of Vermilion - Finally finished this one, after giving in to the temptation to use maps from the Internet to deal with the last couple areas/dungeons. Since the game originally came with a massive hintbook, I don't feel too broken up about it. The final boss fights were anticlimactic at best -- the sideview combat thing just doesn't really work.

 

Tempo - Boy, this game seems like the Poochie of platformers. Cheesy, in-your-face, and with the kind of "attitude" that usually comes from a marketing committee. Maybe it'll grow on me.

 

Kolibri - Playing this in two-player mode is like...I don't know, something involving a rubber band and frustration.

 

Space Wars - Finally figured out some reliable strategies to beat the computer in this one, and thus in this week's session, I won a game on every difficulty level. (I lost one match early on, and so played that level twice.) Great game!

 

Virtua Racing - I managed to complete the better part of a race with my eyes closed. Nuff said.

 

Worms World Party - My girlfriend destroyed me in this game last night, winning 3-0 and taking all but one round. Now that she's regained her jetpack and ninja rope skills, I have to be careful not to let my guard down for a moment, or else "Boom! There goes the dynamite." (Actually, the dynamite is more my weapon of choice -- she's fond of homing missiles and mines.)

[VectorGamer]

 

Arcade - Galaga (#7 alltime)

 

 

How about top 25 arcade games and the respective minutes played?

[cvga]

 

Arcade - Galaga (#7 alltime)

 

 

How about top 25 arcade games and the respective minutes played?

 

 

You got it.

 

1. Galaga - 2,256 minutes

2. Pepper II - 979

3. Ms. Pac-man - 697

4. Pac-man - 530

5. Sinistar - 514

6. Turtles - 467

7. Jr. Pac-man - 424

8. Asteroids - 407

9. Donkey Kong - 338

10. Canyon Bomber - 299

11. Food Fight - 297

12. Millipede - 266

13. Space Invaders - 249

14. Tapper - 245

15. Mikie High School Grafitti - 231

16. Galaxian - 225

17. Road Blasters - 224

18. Bosconian - 222

19. Space Firebird - 215

20. Juno First - 194

21. Eagle - 184

22. Tempest - 177

23. Pac-man Plus - 173

24. Tail Gunner - 163

25. Magical Spot II - 143

[StanJr]

So far today:

 

Dragon Warrior (NES) 1 hour

 

(VCS) all the following

 

Spider-man 30 mins.

Star Strike 15 mins.

James Bond 007 45 mins.

Tapeworm 15 mins.

Super Cobra 15 mins.

Asteroids 15 mins.

Berzerk 10 mins.

Bowling 15 mins.

Casino 10 mins.

Circus Atari 10 mins.

[accousticguitar]

 

I thought I did this within the past couple of weeks but here's an update through today...

 

Atari 2600 - Kaboom! (#1 alltime)

Perhaps you did and I missed it. Thanks for listing them! Larry Kaplan should be proud that his game is still so popular.

 

My times for this week.

 

7800

 

Centipede - 262 min

Food Fight - 14 min

Galaga - 9 min

 

2600

 

MissAdventure Revised - 27 min

Miniature Golf - 18 min

Chunkout - 6 min

Millipede - 11 min

Adventure Country - 10 min

Shield Shifter - 28 min

 

Intellivision

 

Beauty and the Beast - 8 min

 

 

Over 4 hours of Centipede. It took over 2 hours to break 100,000. The weather was rainy this week so I had more time for video games.

[sandmountainslim]

Atari 2600

 

Evil Magician Returns 20 minutes

 

Bombs Away 65 minutes....HOOKED on this one!

 

Wp

[StanJr]

more today:

 

Spider-man (VCS) 30 mins.

James Bond 007 (VCS) 30 mins.

Sky Diver (VCS) 10 mins.

 

Dragon Warrior (NES) 1 hour

Gyruss (NES) 30 mins.

[Taskmaster99]

NEO GEO AES

--------------

Magical Drop 2 - 30 min.

SVC Chaos - 15 min.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

 

Kaboom!-222 minutes

[cvga]

We've had a nice rebound with 74 different titles played this week for over 4,250 minutes so far.

[VectorGamer]

Arcade

Sea Wolf 45 mins

Tail Gunner 45 mins

Sea Wolf II 30 mins

[Kurt_Woloch]

OK, here are my times for this week (March 8th through 14th)...

 

The classic games:

 

Shamus (TI-99) 359 minutes in 5 sessions

Turtles (Odyssey^2) 269 minutes in 2 sessions

Turtles (Adventurevision) 53 minutes in 2 sessions

Dark Maze (TI-99) 36 minutes

Beryl Reichardt & The Helm Of Wooldridge (TI-99) 20 minutes

Burgertime Beta (TI-99) 20 minutes

Burgertime (TI-99) 19 minutes

Picnic Paranoia (TI-99) 17 minutes

Thin Ice (TI-99) 11 minutes

TI-99 Cosz (TI-99) 11 minutes

Inaccurate Invaders (TI-99) 8 minutes

Space-Trap (TI-99) 6 minutes

ZombXB (TI-99) 4 minutes

TI Simon! (TI-99) 4 minutes

Canyon Bomber (TI-99) 3 minutes

Meatball (TI-99) 2 minutes

Cyberrun (TI-99) 2 minutes

TI-Trooper (TI-99) 2 minutes

Chisholm Trail (TI-99) 2 minutes

Escape! (TI-99) 2 minutes

 

The non-classic games (not eligible for the Top 10)

 

Robot wants Kitty (Online game) 27

The company of myself (Online game) 11

 

Here is some commentary again...

My most played game this week was the TI-99 version of Shamus, which I completed to about an estimated 90-92% (with still 12 rooms to go). I found a special trick which has got to do with the way the game works.

Basically, this game runs at about 20 fps, but you can actually only control your character in one out of four of those frames, after which it will run for one character position (8 pixels) in the direction you steer in 4 steps until you can control it again. This means that your character will basically always move in full character steps, albeit smoothly. Now here comes the catch:

Normally, you can cancel out enemy fire with your shots. However, this doesn't work with vertical shots if your character isn't lined up with the walls. If he's lined up or not depends on where he last entered a room. Actually, only those rooms matter which have been entered from the left or right. If you enter a room from the left, your character will always be lined up with walls vertically, and will be able to cancel out enemy fire until it enters a room from the right. At this point, it will stand on two character positions at once, and will not be able to cancel out enemy fire. This condition lasts until a room is entered from the left again. If rooms are entered from the top or bottom, this condition will not change because you always enter them at the same vertical position as you left the last room. This is especially crucial in corridors which you enter from the top or bottom. Normally, your safest bet is to just stand there and shoot into the room until you've killed all the enemies that come at you, unless a jumper gets too close in which case you should briefly exit the room and re-enter it, or unless another enemy gets to the left or right of you, in which case you should do the same. Enemy fire won't hurt you in this case since all of it will be cancelled by your shots... that is, if you can do that. If you cannot do that because you're not properly lined up, you run danger of being killed by enemy fire. On the positive side, however, when you are not lined up vertically with the walls, you can also shoot enemies being in two character columns instead of only one, sometimes even two of them at the same time, so you get through with them a bit faster. Still, the danger of being killed by enemy fire outweighs the advantage of being able to kill the enemies faster, so I normally try to avoid entering a room (corridor) from top or bottom if I've last entered rooms from the right instead of the left. This isn't possible to avoid in all cases, but at some points of the map it is.

 

I tried the Odyssey^2 and Adventurevision versions of Turtles this week. The O2 version is noticeably faster and also plays quicker since the boards are smaller and only 6 instead of 8 nests are present on the screen. However, the maze layouts differ drastically from the arcade, especially on floors 5 and 6 which have many dead-ends not present in the arcade version. Floors 7 and 8 are somewhat easier with the closed-off areas where enemies actually easily get trapped. There's no additional animation after floor 8, however... in the arcade you see your turtle first appearing on the roof and then coming out of the hotel with some of the rescued kid turtles. The O2 version just restarts on Floor 1, with 4 instead of 3 enemies in pursuit, but otherwise not harder than the first time around. This is different to the arcade version where the time it takes for a set of bombs to reappear after having been collected just keeps getting longer and longer with each floor completed, and doesn't get shorter after restarting on floor 1.

 

Other than that, I think this is the Philips/Magnavox game that comes closest to its arcade original of the whole Magnavox library. Some of the sound effects have been faithfully recreated. OK, the music's not so good, but they play the melody from the arcade version, although they screwed up the rhythm of it. And it's highly unusual for a Magnavox game that you get multiple lives... in just about any other Magnavox game (except for third-party ones) you only get one life.

 

The Adventurevision version of Turtles is a bit slower. At first I thought it was harder too, but then I got the hang of it and made it through to Floor 12. Yes, the floor numbers don't go back to 1 here, although from the 9th floor on you again have the maze layout of Floor 1, which then stays the same for the rest of the game, which means the other layouts don't reappear. And actually, I think the first maze, appearing on floors 1, 2 and from 9 on is the hardest one with all the short walls. Other than that, the game never seems to get any harder, and it noticeably awards bonus turtles every 5000 points instead of after the first 5000 points only.

 

Oh, and the Adventurevision emulation in MESS seems to be broken now, although it previously worked. In MESS version 0.135, two copies of the screen are shown, one of which is rotated by 180 degrees, and they both only show a portion of the screen. I then tried MESS version 0.66, and in that version, the emulation is still correct, but lacking sound. There is some sound in version 0.135, but it still doesn't seem correct, at least the music mostly repeats the same note over and over again.

 

Then I played Burgertime and the beta version of it on the TI-99. The beta version differs in that there is also a coffee cup in addition to the ice cream cone, giving you 1000 bonus points instead of 500. But to make up for this, killing the egg or letting it fall only awards 200 instead of 300 points. One notable difference to the arcade original is that in the arcade, you get far more points for letting the enemies fall than for squashing them, but on the TI-99 version, both actions are worth the same. In the beta version, the enemies also seem to be somewhat dumber than in the final version and never get any faster either.

 

Picnic Paranoia is one of the games Atarisoft made for the TI-99 which aren't actually arcade hits (never seen that one in the arcade at least), but rather seems to be licensed from Synapse Software, as Shamus and Protector II are.

 

And Chisholm Trail heavily reminds of Tombstone City, and also seems to be built on the same codebase, borrowing some of the sound effects from Tombstone City.

 

All the other games I played on the TI-99 are entries to the Short&Sweet contest going on over in the TI-99 Programming section of this forum. Some of them I played for longer, and some of them for not as long.

 

As for the modern games, both of those are Jump'n'Runs, but with rather different play mechanics. In "Robot wants Kitty" you're slowly accumulating extras enabling you to reach sections of the maze that were unreachable before (similar to the keys in Shamus). In "The company of myself", most levels involve playing them multiple times, at some point aborting them with the spacebar, at which point a copy of you is shown which does exactly what you did in the last run, but your current character can now jump on your former self (similar to how Mario and Luigi are able to jump on each other in Mario Bros.) and thus reach parts of the level that previously were unreachable. The game consists of many one-screen levels, however, while "Robot wants Kitty" basically is one single, huge, scrolling playfield.

[StanJr]

So far today:

 

Dragon Warrior (NES) 1 hour (finally took down the green dragon and rescued the princess!)

 

all VCS:

 

James Bond 007 15 mins.

Battlezone 15 mins.

Centipede 30 mins.

Crystal Castles 30 mins.

Dig Dug 25 mins.

Galaxian 10 mins.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 15 mins.

 

 

more to come

[VectorGamer]

Arcade

Galaxian 65 mins

Super Mario Bros. 5 mins

Xevious 5 mins

Zaxxon 3 mins

Ms. Pac-Man 24 mins

Qix 4 mins

Sinistar 5 mins

King and Balloon 3 mins

Rip Off 12 mins (this week's HSC)

Star Castle 4 mins

Pepper II 10 mins

Reactor 10 mins

Gyruss 5 mins

Eagle 27 mins

Donkey Kong 5 mins

 

I opted for the more challenging Galaxian this week abandoning Galaga entirely.

 

I'll be playing in the Classic Arcade Gaming Dot Com tournament this weekend beginning with practice on Thursday. Two arcade games that should see some significant "timeage" this week are Gyruss and Eagle which are just two of roughly 25 games in the tournament.

 

Also, Rip Off is this week's Arcade/MAME HSC and Pepper II needs some play to bump it into the 1,000 minute club.

[+thegoldenband]

Here are my times for the last two days of the week:

 

Sega Genesis:

Columns - 18 min.

Golden Axe 2 - 38 min.

Granada - 19 min.

MERCS - 47 min.

Rocket Knight Adventures - 58 min.

Wheel of Fortune - 21 min.

 

Sega 32X:

Cosmic Carnage - 38 min.

 

Dreamcast:

Worms World Party - 213 min.

 

We ended up canceling travel plans because of the bad weather, which led to a couple long sessions of Worms (and, at last, some wins for yours truly). We also hit Columns for the first time in a while, but our doubles skills have definitely lapsed -- we used to be able to consistently clear Level 5 on Pro difficulty in Flash mode, but this time out we got our hats handed to us repeatedly.

 

Other brief notes:

 

Cosmic Carnage - Trashed by many critics, then and now, but I don't think it's that bad at all. Yeah, the controls are a little flaky/unresponsive at times, but the basic mechanics feel comfortable enough, and the graphics and music are appealing. I'd rather play a fighting game like this than one of the many overcomplicated, combo-heavy titles out there (Mortal Kombat 3, I'm looking at you and your Run button).

 

Granada - Bought this a while ago, and played it for a few minutes to test it out, but hadn't played it again until tonight. I remembered it as being gritty and undersized, but I think I'm confusing it with Crack Down, because it's a nice-looking, nice-sounding title that plays really well. The Level 2 boss had me bewildered for a while until I realized that I needed to STOP shooting to get it to reveal its vulnerable spot. Tricky!

 

MERCS - Reminds me of all the best parts of a game like Guerrilla War (NES). Fast-paced, full of firepower, and hard as hell. And I haven't even touched the "Original" mode yet, which is supposed to be the game's crown jewel. If only there were a two-player option...though then again, this is the kind of title that usually frustrates my girlfriend to no end -- dodging endless streams of projectiles and enemies, brutal difficulty, etc. -- so maybe it's better this way. Also, enemy soldiers harass you from behind if you stall, making it difficult to camp out and pick off your opponents; this pushes you to keep moving, which is a great idea but can get overwhelming!

 

Rocket Knight Adventures - I've been hearing forever that RKA was one of the most underrated/overlooked platformers on the Genesis, and the more I play it, the more I agree. Great play control, creative level design, and it's tough as nails, but fair. I could only make it halfway through this time (on the "Children" difficulty setting!), but if the quality stays this high through to the end of the game, it'll easily be in my top 20 for the Genesis, at least in terms of my admiration for it. (When putting together Top 20 lists, it's always a weird question -- should you include the games you admire the most, or the games you actually play? There are some terrific games out there that don't have a lot of replay value.)

 

Wheel of Fortune - An Atariage member kindly gave this to me for free as part of a Genesis lot, and it's not bad at all. True, the wheel graphic is pretty dire, and the characters look like mannequins, but the gameplay is intact and that's really what matters. We played one game, using one computer opponent, and I won every puzzle -- but that's on Easy level, and I've read that the computer is far more dangerous on other settings.

Edited March 15, 2010 by thegoldenband

[4Ks]

Todays times.

 

Quake II (N64) 60 mins

Xybots (LYNX) 15 mins

Atari Basic (A8) 60 mins

[StanJr]

Dragon Warrior (NES) 2 hours 15 mins.

 

grinding as I head south, picking up momentum

[Taskmaster99]

PC Engine/Turbo Grafx

--------------------

Ninja Gaiden - 15 min.

Street Fighter 2 - 10 min.

[StanJr]

Lots of VCS tonight:

 

Spider-man 10 mins.

James Bond 007 30 mins

Millipede 20 mins.

Mario Bros. 25 mins.

Krull 20 mins.

Kangaroo 10 mins.

[cvga]

Week 10 comes to a close with a strong finish. 122 games played this week for 6,198 minutes...

 

All Games:

1. Uncharted Waters: New Horizons (Genesis) 654 minutes

2. Dragon Warrior (NES) 630

3. Shamus (TI-99) 359

4. Worms World Party (Sega Dreamcast) 318

5. Sword of Vermilion (Genesis) 315

6. Turtles (Odyssey 2) 269

7. Centipede (Atari 7800) 262

8. Hang-On (Sega Master System) 240

9. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) 222

10. Quake II (Nintendo 64) 220

 

Here's a look at the Top 10 for Pre-NES games:

1. Shamus (TI-99) 359

2. Turtles (Odyssey 2) 269

3. Centipede (Atari 780) 262

4. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) 222

5. Beauty and the Beast (Intellivision) 123

6. James Bond 007 (Atari 2600) 90

7. Bombs Away (Atari 2600) 65

8. Atari Basic (Atari 8-bit) 60

8. Spiderman (Atari 2600) 60

10. Turtles (Adventurevision) 53

 

Keep gaming!

[cvga]

Sword of Vermilion (Genesis) becomes the 26th game to join the 1,000 minute club!

[cvga]

Here is a tally of the minutes for each system this week...

 

1. Genesis - 1,415 minutes

2. NES - 945

3. Atari 2600 - 888

4. TI-99 - 528

5. Arcade - 330

6. Sega Dreamcast - 318

7. Sega Master System - 299

8. Atari 7800 - 285

9. Odyssey 2 - 269

10. Nintendo 64 - 220

11. Sega 32X - 156

12. Intellivision - 131

13. Neo Geo - 115

14. Atari Lynx - 109

15. Atari 8-bit - 63

16. Adventurevision - 53

17. Turbo Grafx - 25

18. Vectrex - 22

19. Atari 5200 - 20

20. NGPC - 7

[VectorGamer]

 

6. James Bond 007 (Atari 2600) 90

7. Bombs Away (Atari 2600) 65

 

Arcade

Galaxian 65 mins

 

 

8. Atari Basic (Atari 8-bit) 60

8. Spiderman (Atari 2600) 60

 

Keep gaming!

 

Just seeing if I'm still awake, eh?

Edited March 16, 2010 by rmaerz