What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2011 (Season 4)

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (March 28th through April 3rd)...

 

Facebook games (non-eligible for the Top 10):

Cityville - 147 min. in 13 sessions

The settlers - 42 min. in 11 sessions

 

Other online games (non-eligible for the Top 10):

City Driver - 79 min. in 2 sessions

Pac Man (Google) - 15 min.

 

Atari 2600:

Dig Dug - 30 min.

Fatal run - 5 min.

Ixion - 30 min.

Time pilot - 23 min.

 

Total gaming time: 371 minutes (53 minutes per day)

 

I played some Atari 2600 games this week... spurred by a tape recording I have digitized, which ends with a crudely played version of Dig Dug's music. Of course, Dig Dug was among the games I played, and I got pretty far in it... I think at least round 16. Those rounds go by pretty quickly in this game. in "Fatal Run" I wanted to check out the 3D effect, which is a bit different than in "Pole Position", but not too realistic either. "Time Pilot" was another one I wanted to try, and I made it to go through all the time zones pretty soon. Nothing special to report about "Ixion"... I think I played this last a few years ago when I took part in the 2600 HSC.

 

As for the other, non-eligible games, I tried the Google version of Pac Man, which is actually pretty faithfully done, except for the radically different maze. In City Driver, I downloaded and printed out a map of it I found on the net, but then I discovered that this game also has got a serious bug... when working as a burger delivery boy, you get to pick up another set of delieveries after delivering the first set of five, but then your first delivery target is in the same location as the burger joint itself (even though it's got a different name), which causes you to be unable to actually get there and deliver, so you're pretty much stuck and forced to crash your car until you lose it in order to get out of this delivery.

 

In Cityville, I hit a road block... I just bought another expansion, but now Zynga changed the rules for expansions... I would have to raise my population by 1000 in order to be allowed to get another expansion, which, since everything's full, means deleting some low-population houses, replacing them with higher-population ones. In addition to that, you can't ask friends for zoning permits anymore, they have to send some without you asking. Unfortunately, I can't get very much further in the quests without having room for additional buildings, so I'm not very keen on continuing to play this game. Until now, when I got time to play, I played Cityville first, and then The Settlers, but I switched that around now because of the expansion disaster.

 

Oh, maybe you noticed I slightly changed the format of my time submissions in order to allow them to be processed more easily (since I'm now playing classic games again).

[TheGameCollector]

Here are my times for the week:

 

NES:

Dr. Mario - 129 minutes

Final Fantasy - 138 minutes

 

I beat all 20 levels + 2 extra levels on Low speed setting for Dr. Mario. My characters are all level 6 in Final Fantasy.

 

Game Boy:

Donkey Kong Land III - 104 minutes

Kirby's Dream Land 2 - 95 minutes

Pokemon Red Version - 737 minutes

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - 188 minutes

 

I didn't get all the secrets in these three platformers and still have a lot of work to do in Pokemon Red.

 

Super Nintendo:

Donkey Kong Country 3 - 251 minutes

Kirby's Avalanche - 48 minutes

Star Fox - 56 minutes

Super Mario Kart - 91 minutes

Tuff E Nuff - 22 minutes

 

I 103% DKC3 but only beat easy mode on the rest of these (Super Mario Kart I got all gold trophies on 50cc and 100cc but didn't touch 150cc)

 

Playstation:

Gex - 249 minutes

 

 

Beat this whole game in one sitting. Did better than ever before and finished with almost 90 lives. Hehe who cares if the PS1 version uses passwords when you can beat it in one sitting.

[GKC]

Last of the week:

 

Jaguar:

 

Zool 2 - 100 min

 

Genesis:

 

Alien 3- 15 min

General Chaos - 20 min

Thunder Force II - 20 min

[+thegoldenband]

The ostensible deadline is noontime EST, but I won't be able to run the stats until tonight, so if anyone hasn't yet posted their times from the past week, go for it!

[StanJr]

NES

 

T&C Surf Designs 30 mins.

Karate Kid 20 mins.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 14, running from March 28 - April 3. We logged 4295 minutes of eligible play, playing 56 games on a total of 13 systems.

 

Top 10:

 

1. Pokemon Red Version (Game Boy) - 737

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 390

3. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 270

4. Donkey Kong Country 3 (SNES) - 251

5. Gex (PlayStation) - 249

6. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (Game Boy) - 188

7. Zool 2 (Atari Jaguar) - 185

8. Karate Kid (NES/Famicom) - 155

9. Section Z (NES/Famicom) - 145

10. Final Fantasy (NES/Famicom) - 138

 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 390

2. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 270

3. K-Razy Shootout (Atari 8-bit) - 80

4. Berzerk (Atari 8-bit) - 45

5. Centipede (Intellivision) - 40

6. Ixion (Atari 2600) - 30

6. Dig Dug (Atari 2600) - 30

8. Crossbow (Atari 2600) - 25

9. Time Pilot (Atari 2600) - 23

10. Utopia (Intellivision) - 20

 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Game Boy (1124)

2. NES/Famicom (825)

3. Atari 2600 (779)

4. SNES (468)

5. PlayStation (249)

6. Genesis (215)

7. Atari Jaguar (185)

8. Atari 8-bit (125)

9. Intellivision (115)

10. Sega Saturn (90)

 

Another week at the top for Pokemon Red, which is now in the 1000-minute club, while the Atari 2600 takes the #2 and #3 spots with Kaboom joined by strong numbers from Missile Command, in a top 10 overwhelmingly dominated by Nintendo and Atari titles.

 

Meanwhile the original Game Boy grabs the top spot on the system charts, perhaps for the first time (?).

Edited April 5, 2011 by thegoldenband

[GKC]

Today:

 

Dreamcast

 

World Series Baseball 2k1 - 30 min

NFL 2k - 40 min

 

Was felling some Dreamcast today. After playing it I cleared off a permanent spot for it on my entertaiment center and will be looking to spend some money expanding my library. Forgot how amazing the Dreamcast really was.

Edited April 5, 2011 by GKC

[StanJr]

NES

Bucky O'Hare 45 mins.

[StanJr]

VCS

 

King Kong 5 mins.

Pete Rose Baseball 75 mins.

Miner 2049er 5 mins.

Miner 2049er Vol. II 5 mins.

 

NES

Castlevania 20 mins.

[zylon]

2600:

Kaboom- 35min

Missile Command- 2hrs

Wolfenstein: vcs mission- 10min Good take on Venture, but gets old quick

Berzerk Enhanced- 10min Except for voice added, SOS

Galaxian Arcade- 5min Improved graphics in background and when aliens in formation, but still same when aliens are moving and gameplay still the same.

Medieval Mayhem- 5min Looks great, but I don't see the magic others have. Liked Castle Crisis better.

5200:

Gyruss- 1.5 hrs

Centipede- 3hrs

A8:

Space Invaders- 5min

[+thegoldenband]

Times for Monday - Friday:

 

Game Boy Color:

Montezuma's Return - 21 min.

 

Genesis:

Shi Kin Joh - 11 min.

 

Sega CD:

Sol-Feace - 334 min.

 

N64:

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes - 9 min.

 

Dreamcast:

Armada - 3 min.

ChuChu Rocket - 4 min.

House of the Dead 2 - 5 min.

Worms Armageddon - 2 min.

 

Came so, so close to beating Sol-Feace on Mania -- at least twice! -- but was ultimately defeated by the second form of the second boss in Stage 7 (who's basically the final boss, since the real last boss is ridiculously easy). I'm totally sick of this @#$@#% game, and want to beat it so I can evict it from my consciousness once and for all.

[StanJr]

Hoo-boy!

 

VCS

 

Pete Rose Baseball 60 mins.

Bank Heist 10 mins.

Lock n' Chase 50 mins.

 

 

NES

 

Baseball Stars II 75 mins.

Bases Loaded 65 mins.

 

 

You can tell what I do on a partially rainy day

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 4th through 10th)...

 

Facebook (non-eligible):

Cafe World - 5 min.

Cityville - 4 min. in 2 sessions

Cooking Mama - 128 min. in 2 sessions

Frontierville - 9 min.

The settlers - 35 min. in 9 sessions

 

Online games (non-eligible):

Regenwurm-Gacksi-Blumendünger-Spiel - 7 min.

 

Intellivision:

Diner - 187 min. in 2 sessions

 

Arcade:

Congo Bongo - 75 min.

 

Total playing time: 450 minutes (64 minutes per day)

 

I played two classic games this week: the first one was "Diner", the Intellivision sequel to "Burger Time". It's a 32 K cartridge (actually, a 20 K, because only 10 bits out of 16 get used), and it contains surprisingly many levels (over 14), but only two of them contain special features (the moving pits on Level 4 and the elevators on Level 5) which are nowhere to be seen afterwards. From Level 6 on, it seems like the programmers only tried to fill whatever ROM they had left with additional patterns, but not with more game elements.

 

The gameplay actually is a bit similar to Data East's own arcade sequel to Burger Time, Peter Pepper's Ice Cream factory. In both games, you are now kicking balls of some sort to the left and right which are able to squash the enemies, and you have to get all of the balls to a given destination in order to complete the level.

 

The other game I played was the arcade version of "Congo Bongo" which I've tried on the TI-99/4A and on the Commodore 64 long ago. The arcade version is seemingly based on Zaxxon hardware and also uses the unique scrolling between screens although it primarily consists of fixed screens. It actually seems a bit like a mix of Q*bert (the coconuts fall down the first level similar to the balls falling down the pyramid on Q*Bert), Donkey Kong (from your main enemy, the bonus counter and the goal) and Frogger (the 4th level). It's not too easy actually making all four levels, but I did it.

 

Apart from that, I played a few Facebook games again. Cityville was on the backburner this week due to the Zoning permit disaster, but I read they fixed it now by increasing the population for some types of homes, so I guess this game will be back to normal next week. To make up for that, I played The Settlers a bit more, also a bit of Frontierville and Cafe World (mainly accepting all the requests I've got), and I also tried a new game, Cooking Mama, which seems to lack some depth since I think I got through pretty much all the quests on the first day of playing it.

 

The game "Regenwurm-Gacksi-Blumendünger-Spiel" is to be translated roughly as "Earthworm Poo Flower Fertilizer game", sponsored by a fertilizer company. It's basically a Snake game with a few twists... each time you eat a bean with your earthworm, you leave some poo behind which in a few seconds turns into a flower which you should avoid. Another unusual obstacle in this game is a bird which starts to roam around the playfield some minutes into the game, and you also have to avoid it.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-366 minutes

 

 

 

High score of the week: 168,836

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the weekend:

 

Intellivision:

Championship Tennis - 58 min.

Venture - 52 min.

 

Sega CD:

Sol-Feace - 186 min.

 

Genesis:

Zombies Ate My Neighbors - 117 min.

 

Game Boy Color:

Montezuma's Return - 9 min.

 

Dreamcast:

Worms World Party - 40 min.

 

No success yet with Sol-Feace, and I'm still getting flattened by Championship Tennis on the highest difficulty, though at least I'm winning one game per match. In fact, that's exactly what I've won in each of the last three matches!

 

Meanwhile my girlfriend and I played a ways into ZAMN before we realized that the number of surviving "victims" is inherited from level to level, and the password records it. Since we were down to just one victim, we started again from the beginning with the intent of saving all ten in every level. So far, so good.

[StanJr]

NES

 

Bases Loaded 2 65 mins

MLB 35 mins.

Castlevania 35 mins.

Flintstones: Rescue Dino Hoppy 25 mins

T& C Surf Designs 15 mins.

[TheGameCollector]

My times this week were:

 

Game Boy:

Pokemon Red Version - 565 minutes

 

Playstation:

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee - 403 minutes

Gex: Enter the Gecko - 185 minutes

 

I felt like my week was so busy and thought I got less gaming done, but I guess I still did accomplish some nice things.

 

In Pokemon Red, I now have all 8 badges and most of the catchable Pokemon. 85 owned in the Pokedex, so there's still a lot of level gaining and evolution to do.

 

Oddworld 1 is completed with all 99 mudokons saved.

 

Gex 2 is about halfway done. Mooshoo Pork has been defeated and I've been working on getting enough remotes to unlock the next boss fight, Gexzilla vs. Mecharez.

 

I didn't have time for Final Fantasy on NES this week but will get back around to it in the near future. Dragon Warrior II will be here in the mail soon too.

Edited April 11, 2011 by TheGameCollector

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 15, running from April 4-10. We logged 3802 minutes of eligible play, playing 43 games on a total of 13 systems.

 

Top 10:

 

1. Pokemon Red Version (Game Boy) - 565

2. Sol-Feace (Sega CD) - 520

3. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (PlayStation) - 403

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 401

5. Diner (Intellivision) - 187

6. Gex: Enter the Gecko (PlayStation) - 185

7. Centipede (Atari 5200) - 180

8. Pete Rose Baseball (Atari 2600) - 135

9. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 120

10. Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Genesis) - 117

 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 401

2. Diner (Intellivision) - 187

3. Centipede (Atari 5200) - 180

4. Pete Rose Baseball (Atari 2600) - 135

5. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 120

6. Gyruss (Atari 5200) - 90

7. Congo Bongo (Arcade) - 75

8. Championship Tennis (Intellivision) - 58

9. Venture (Intellivision) - 52

10. Lock N Chase (Atari 2600) - 50

 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Atari 2600 (761)

2. PlayStation (588)

3. Game Boy (565)

4. Sega CD (520)

5. NES/Famicom (430)

6. Intellivision (297)

7. Atari 5200 (270)

8. Genesis (128)

9. Dreamcast (124)

10. Arcade (75)

 

A third week at the top for Pokemon Red, while the #2 and #3 spots are occupied by CD-based games perched at the edge of the 1000-minute club (though I can't say Sol-Feace deserves it!).

 

Meanwhile the Atari 2600 takes the top spot on the system charts thanks to a loose coalition of mad bombers, baseball players and incoming ICBMs. Very good week for classic systems.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for Monday - Friday:

 

Intellivision:

Championship Tennis - 171 min.

Utopia - 20 min.

Venture - 30 min.

 

Atari 8-bit:

Another World (demo) - 5 min.

 

Amiga:

Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 - 6 min.

 

Atari ST:

Golden Axe - 4 min.

 

SNES:

Final Fight - 122 min.

 

Game Boy Color:

Montezuma's Return - 135 min.

 

At long last I'm making some headway with Championship Tennis's hardest mode. I'm still losing, mind you, and I have yet to win a set, but I won six games in a match (6-2 6-1 6-3) which is rather more respectable than the 6-1 6-0 6-0 defeats I'd regularly been suffering. One key is serving wide from as far over to the side as you can -- that allows you to score some much-needed free points, especially when serving hard from the far court to the computer's forehand.

 

I've also started to figure out Montezuma's Return, which is a pretty fun little platformer that I'm mostly playing via the Super Game Boy on SNES. I don't have the manual, and it seems to have been almost completely overlooked (so there are no walkthroughs on the web), but once I realized where to find certain keys, the game started to open up.

 

Finally (no pun intended), I played a couple games of Final Fight, and was reminded of how much I dislike this game -- at least the SNES port, anyway. Both times I got to the end of Level 4, but couldn't get past the super-cheap boss Abigail. The game felt terribly shallow and cheap back in the early 1990s, and still feels that way to me now. I'll have to fire up the Sega CD version again and see how its one-player mode holds up -- I've played it with my girlfriend, but not alone. (The SNES version doesn't have a two-player mode, of course!)

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-389 minutes

 

 

 

High score of the week: 148,574

[littleman jack]

Atari 800

Centipede-25 minutes, not fast enough for my taste

Beef Drop-15 minutes, quite difficult but fun

 

Atari 2600

Power Lords-15 minutes, strange, goofy, fun in small doses

Centipede-15 minutes, fast and furious, really good

 

Linux

Burgerspace-20 minutes, great Burgertime clone. A lot like Beef Drop.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 11th through 17th)...

 

TI-99:

Ant Colony - 2 min.

Centipede - 10 min.

Robotron: 2084 - 5 min.

Shanghai - 5 min.

Spies Demise - 5 min.

 

Facebook games (non-eligible):

Bubble Twister - 55 min.

Cityville - 52 min. in 9 sessions

The settlers - 18 min. in 7 sessions

 

Online game (non-eligible):

Funny Pizza - about 360 min.

 

PC game (non-eligible):

I need speed - 19 min.

 

 

 

Total playing time: 531 minutes (76 minutes per day)

 

All TI-99 games (which are the only classic games I played this week) were played at this week's TI-99 meeting in Vienna, where I got to play many of the games since I was the best at them. I astounded everything with my score of over 70,000 points at Centipede. That's how the relatively short sessions of so many games came about. I didn't even list a few more games which I only played for maybe one minute each before we went on to another game. I also didn't list some selfmade games I showed to the crowd (versions of "Summer Games" and "Marble Madness") because these are basically unreleased... but I have a PC-readable disk image of them now, so I might put them on the Internet someday.

 

Although I said last week that I would probably pick up Cityville again, it's not what it used to be anymore. Somehow I'm in a process of letting things go which aren't attractive anymore to me, and Cityville is one of them. I tried some new games instead... "Bubble Spinner" is a twist on Puzzle Bobble (pun intended), where the bubbles are arranged around a spinning axle which turns with each bubble you place, depending on its inertia. "I need Speed" is a car racing game by a young Austrian programmer which is still in its beta stage (the game, not the programmer). Right now you only have one track and your car, no enemies, no multiple tracks and no track editor (which is planned). "Funny Pizza" is a browser game where you play the boss of a pizza delivery company. I say delivery because there is no trace of being able to lead a restaurant with guests in it or furniture... you just get the orders in and have to fulfill them. There are some unrealistic features in the game such as a trading place where you can trade your finished pizzas and other dishes with other players.

[StanJr]

VCS

 

Final Approach 20 mins.

Bank Heist 30 mins.

King Kong 5 mins.

[+thegoldenband]

Times for the weekend:

 

Intellivision:

AD&D: Cloudy Mountain - 40 min.

Championship Tennis - 257 min.

 

Game Boy:

Alleyway - 28 min.

 

Dreamcast:

Toy Commander - 57 min.

 

I'd never won a set on the highest difficulty in Championship Tennis before, but I won two in the same match today, losing an epic battle in five sets after saving 2 match points in the 4th set: 2-6 7-6(4) 3-6 7-5 1-6. Totally grueling! I also played a few other matches, losing all of them in straight sets by varying margins.

 

The battle lines are clear, pitting the computer's consistent, steady game against my riskier, attacking game -- it's total Lendl-Borg stuff. My best chance is to overpower the computer with the classic one-two punch: serve out wide, force a short return, hit crosscourt for a winner. But it's very difficult to execute it consistently, and though I hit lots of winners, I make lots of errors.

Edited April 18, 2011 by thegoldenband

[TheGameCollector]

A lot of progress this week:

 

Game Boy:

Pokemon Red Version - 499 minutes

 

Super Nintendo:

Kirby Super Star - 227 minutes

 

Playstation:

Gex: Enter the Gecko - 183 minutes

 

NES:

Final Fantasy - 119 minutes

Dragon Warrior II - 61 minutes

 

In Pokemon Red, I am at the Elite 4 with 94 Pokemon in the Pokedex. Just raising and evolving Pokemon as I go through win & lose cycles. I get a little farther every time as my level grows. All my money was spent on Porygon so the losses don't matter. Still this is a long way to go before acquiring everything in the game.

 

Kirby Super Star is 100% complete. Plasma ability is the easiest way to beat The Arena I have learned.

 

Gex 2 on PS1 is finished. I got 33 red remotes and defeated Rez. That is good enough for me on this one.

 

Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior II are just going at a slow but steady pace. With these 8-bit RPGs I tend to prefer 1 hour sessions because it is hard to remained glued to them. Pokemon Red is helping me tolerate these early NES RPGs a bit more though. These look better than Pokemon because hey, they are in full color.