What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2013 (Season 6)

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 13, running from March 25 - 31. We logged 1820 minutes of eligible play, playing 37 games on a total of 12 systems.

 

Top 10:

 

1. Warrior of Rome II (Genesis) - 411

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 335

3. Qbillion (Game Boy) - 170

4. Astrododge (ColecoVision) - 110

5. Pac-Attack (Genesis) - 107

6. Q*bert (Arcade) - 89

7. Mr. Do's Wild Ride (Arcade) - 79

8. Adventure 2 (Atari 5200) - 45

8. Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis) - 45

8. Mortal Kombat 3 (SNES) - 45

 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 335

2. Astrododge (ColecoVision) - 110

3. Q*bert (Arcade) - 89

4. Mr. Do's Wild Ride (Arcade) - 79

5. Adventure 2 (Atari 5200) - 45

6. Thunder Castle (Intellivision) - 35

7. Missing in Action (Atari 7800) - 30

8. Koffi: Yellow Copter (Atari 5200) - 25

8. Night Stalker (Intellivision) - 25

10. Pitfall (Atari 2600) - 20

 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Genesis (566)

2. Atari 2600 (455)

3. Game Boy (176)

4. Arcade (168)

5. ColecoVision (110)

6. SNES (76)

7. Atari 5200 (70)

8. Intellivision (60)

8. NES/Famicom (60)

10. Atari 7800 (30)

10. PlayStation (30)

 

Our #1 game is now in its fifth week atop the charts, and just shy of 3000 minutes logged. Its time-consuming gameplay proves the old adage about Rome: will it turn out to take six weeks? Seven?

 

Only time will tell, but to paraphrase Marvin the Martian -- who, after all, was decked out in Roman gear -- one expects that when Rome finally delenda est (or should that be constructa est?), its fall from the top spot will be heralded with an earth-shattering Kaboom.

[AtariBrian]

Nes

Spelunker 60 minutes

 

Atari 2600

Juno First 20 minutes

[AtariBrian]

Nes

Spelunker 60 minutes with a high score of almost 700,000 before my game ended with 18 guys left The record will be mine soon !

[karokoenig]

Some variety this week on my end.

 

Atari 2600:

Jr. Pac Man: 8 min

Pac Man: 4 min

 

Just testing stuff on my old 2600 this week. Gee, Jr. Pac Man is one fast little game...

 

 

NES:

Kabuki Quantum Fighter: 35 min

 

Damn hard game, and only 3 continues. May be way too hard for me.

 

 

Commodore 64:

Battle Ships: 16 min

Bruce Lee: 22 min

Space Taxi: 32 min

Wonder Boy: 7 min

 

Stumbled across some C64 longplay videos on Youtube... had to plug in my USB Competition Pro and fire up the VICE emulator right away. Emulated gameplay counts, doesn't it? Anyway... As kids, we played the hell out of Wonder Boy, and we got really far. Trying it out today, I have no idea how we made those long jumps so easily back then... I am, however, pretty content with my Space Taxi performance. First try after not playing it for a year, I made it right to the middle of the Night Shift (level 19 of 24, I think). No hacks, no trainer versions. The old man still has it in him :-).

 

 

Game Boy Classic:

Power Racer: 8 min

Solar Striker: 17 min

 

 

Game Boy Color

Frogger: 13 min

 

I think I filed "Frogger" under Game Boy Classic in my last posts. If yes, sorry about that. Whatever the system is - I suck at this game. Can't really make it past level 4. Still so cute and fun to play.

Edited April 5, 2013 by karokoenig

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-419 minutes

 

 

High score of the week:132,884

[AtariBrian]

Snes

Donkey Kong Country 2 Diddy Kongs Quest: 60 minutes

Megaman 7: 20 minutes

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week:

 

Arcade:

Q*Bert - 20 min.

 

SG-1000:

Q*Bert - 397 min. in 7 sessions

 

I only played one game in 2 versions... the SG-1000 version having the vast majority of gameplay time. I finally made it through to Level 5-4, I think... although this version seems to be a bit harder than the arcade version. One difference of the SG-1000 to the original is that if you jump on a flying disc, Coily, instead of following you, continues going into the same direction until she jumps off the pyramid (unless your cube flight is over before Coily leaves the pyramid). And eliminating Coily gives you a whooping 2500 points, which extra lives awarded every 20,000.

[ACrystal2011]

Colecovision -

 

Astrododge - 330min

Lock n Chase - 20min

squish em sam - 15min

Mouse trap - 100min

 

SNES -

 

Super Mario World - 60min

[zylon]

5200-

Missile Command- 2hrs, 25min

[AtariBrian]

Had to get this last one in tonight

 

Snes

Donkey Kong Country 2 Diddy Kongs Quest: 30 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

CoCo 1/2:

Dallas Quest - 3 min.

Donkey King - 6 min.

Dungeons of Daggorath - 2 min.

Marble Maze - 22 min.

Phantom Slayer - 5 min.

Sea Dragon - 8 min.

 

CoCo 3:

Castle of Tharoggad - 5 min.

Mind Roll - 5 min.

Rad Warrior - 15 min.

Springster - 4 min.

Super Pitfall - 3 min.

 

Genesis:

Warrior of Rome II - 1928 min.

 

SNES:

Ace o Nerae! - 51 min.

 

3DO:

Trip'd - 12 min.

 

PlayStation:

The Bombing Islands - 18 min.

Bugs Bunny Lost in Time - 5 min.

Power Shovel - 30 min.

 

No, that appallingly large time for Warrior of Rome II isn't a typo. I wanted that game done, especially when I cleared the last stage displayed on the Campaign map, thought I was about to see a victory sequence...and then found out there was one more stage to complete: an attack on Rome itself. So I just went for it, and the battle initially went well -- but, when I was approaching victory, the enemy kept respawning scads of stronger-than-average armies, and the whole thing dragged on.

 

Since I had Friday off from work, I pushed hard all day to finish it, and I did indeed finally beat the game on Friday night. But I don't plan to pull a session like that again anytime soon; it made me feel like crap physically, and by the end of it I was seeing little soldiers whenever I closed my eyes. I probably would (and should) have taken it slower, but who knows when those old games' batteries will finally give out? The thought of losing 80+ hours of work was pretty alarming, and I simply wanted the game off my plate and off my mind (though I'm going to be reviewing it for Sega-16).

 

After that, you'd think I'd want to steer clear of video games for the rest of the week -- but I had some nice finds this weekend, and couldn't resist trying them out. On Saturday, I got a bunch of PlayStation games in mint condition at a thrift store for a very nice price. Of those, the highlight was the wonderfully bizarre Power Shovel, in which you operate heavy machinery while being harangued by an angry Japanese man. It's quite challenging!

 

Then on Sunday, I bought a CoCo 3 in great shape with a disk drive and games at a yard sale, again for a very fair price. My CoCo 3 from childhood has been kaput for a couple years now, so this was a perfect opportunity. In addition to the games that came with it (three loose carts, 2 CIB disk games, plus a bunch of floppies that are mostly blank), I tried out some CoCo 3 games I got a while back that I'd either played briefly or, thanks to my CoCo breaking, not at all. Of those, the most appealing was Rad Warrior, but I don't have the instructions and the controls are pretty horrendous, which limits its Metroid-ish appeal.

 

I also tried loading a few games from my laptop via the cassette cable (after converting them to WAV format), then saving them to floppy disk. It's an involved process and doesn't work with some games, but I was able to transfer a few, including the Marble Madness clone Marble Maze. It's quite slow and, like most CoCo games, is undermined by the lack of music. Still, it was satisfying to reach the sixth board.

 

Between those sessions, I played a few exhibition matches in Ace o Nerae (Aim for the Ace!), a Japanese exclusive tennis game I recently bought for the SNES. I don't normally collect SNES imports since I'd rather play translated versions on my EverDrive, but this game uses an enhancement chip (which is used to implement a bizarre moving camera that actually gave me mild motion sickness), so I had to get the real thing. I lost three matches 6-0 before the gameplay finally "clicked", as so often happens, and I won the fourth one 6-1.

 

And last of all, my fiancée had the urge to play Trip'd, so we fired up the 3DO for the first time in a while and played a few rounds -- though I ungallantly won all of them.

[karokoenig]

As real history has taught us, the domination of Rome had to come to an end one day. Sounds like you went through quite a chore with that one. I'd be interested in a link to the review, though, once you've put it up.

[Atarian7]

1928 minutes!?!

 

I think that beats my personal record for most time played in one week.

 

 

I don't know if it beats homerwannabe's record for when he was trying to break the Galaxian world record. (Which he did eventually.)

[twoquickcapri]

Atari Jaguar:

Tempest 2000 - 60 min.

 

NES:

Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream - 20 min.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 14, running from April 1 - 7. We logged 4120 minutes of eligible play, playing 42 games on a total of 16 systems.

 

Top 10:

 

1. Warrior of Rome II (Genesis) - 1928

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 419

3. Q*bert (SG-1000) - 397

4. Astrododge (ColecoVision) - 330

5. Missile Command (Atari 5200) - 145

6. Spelunker (NES/Famicom) - 120

7. Mouse Trap (ColecoVision) - 100

8. Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES) - 90

9. Tempest 2000 (Atari Jaguar) - 60

9. Super Mario World (SNES) - 60

 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 419

2. Q*bert (SG-1000) - 397

3. Astrododge (ColecoVision) - 330

4. Missile Command (Atari 5200) - 145

5. Mouse Trap (ColecoVision) - 100

6. Space Taxi (C64) - 32

7. Bruce Lee (C64) - 22

7. Marble Maze (CoCo 1 & 2) - 22

9. Q*bert (Arcade) - 20

9. Juno First (Atari 2600) - 20

9. Lock N Chase (ColecoVision) - 20

 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Genesis (1928)

2. ColecoVision (465)

3. Atari 2600 (451)

4. Sega SG-1000 (397)

5. SNES (221)

6. NES/Famicom (175)

7. Atari 5200 (145)

8. C64 (77)

9. Atari Jaguar (60)

10. PlayStation (53)

 

...well, I tried to build it in a day. Or at least conquer it. (But, ultimately, it took two.)

[+thegoldenband]

As real history has taught us, the domination of Rome had to come to an end one day. Sounds like you went through quite a chore with that one. I'd be interested in a link to the review, though, once you've put it up.

 

Hey, thanks -- will do! There's a lot to appreciate about the game, but it does...take...a...long...time.

 

1928 minutes!?!

 

I think that beats my personal record for most time played in one week.

 

I don't know if it beats homerwannabe's record for when he was trying to break the Galaxian world record. (Which he did eventually.)

 

Yeah, it's pretty nuts -- though in terms of the level of intensity required, Warrior of Rome II doesn't remotely approach what you and homerwannabee have accomplished! For one thing, I can eat or talk on the phone while playing it, especially in the early stages, and it has an instant save/reload function built into the game. That said, I had to constantly monitor pretty much everything that was happening, or else I'd blink and lose my three best armies...

[TheGameCollector]

My hard drive died. Now I have to re-play everything in order to get the footage again. I guess I better start releasing my videos right away as I do each one next time.

[Taskmaster99]

Saturn

----------

Dungeons and Dragons Collection - 45 min.

Dracula X - 30 min.

 

MVS

------

KOF 99 - 20 min

World Heroes 2 Jet - 30 min

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-528 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 341,810

[karokoenig]

Game Boy Classic

Bomb Jack: 12 min

Power Racer: 9 min

 

Game Boy Color

Metal Gear Solid: 10 min

Quest for Camelot: 45 min

Shadowgate: 8 min

 

NES

Astyanax: 7 min

Pirates: 190 min

Solstice: 3 min

 

Atari 2600

Buck Rogers: 7 min

 

PS1

Tomb Raider 4: 105 min

 

A lot of new stuff this week. Got lucky on the flea markets. So it's mostly a mix of playtesting new games I got - apart from Pirates!, which arrived as ebay purchase via mail. That game is so awesome, I "playtested" it for 3 hours + on end ... I quite like the NES version so far. Gameplay is great, and graphically it's a bit better than the C64 version. The NES is now the 4th system on which I adore this game. C64, Amiga, PC and NES.

 

P.S. Nice score, Atarian. You're on the rise again, it seems.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 8th through 14th)...

 

Arcade:

Q*bert - 21 min.

Q*bert's Qubes - 73 min. in 3 sessions

 

SG-1000:

Q*bert -196 min. in 3 sessions

 

TI-99:

Q*Bert - 64 min.

 

Lots of Q*Berts and nothing else this week. I played the SG-1000 version of Q*Bert until in the last session I reached Round 5 several times and realized it's very hard to get on since Wrongway usually destroys your pyramid before you can complete it.

 

As a comparison, I replayed the TI-99 version which I found rather hard. At first I had to get into the slightly different control scheme, resulting in only 4-5 minute long games, but then I got the hang of it and reached Round 5 there as well. Contrary to the SG-1000 version, this version gets faster starting with Level 4... much faster at Level 5. But it's mostly your jumping speed, the enemies don't get that much faster which makes it easier to outrun them in later rounds, if you can keep concentrating with all the things going on at once.

 

Furthermore, I also replayed the arcade version which, of course, is the original and the smoothest one, and benefits from a generous collision detection compared with other versions which register a collision as soon as the characters as shown on screen overlap even though they don't overlap when viewed in 3D.

 

I also replayed Q*Bert's Qubes for a few games. Compared to Q*Bert, this is much easier in earlier rounds which are also faster to complete (for some you only need 5 jumps), but it does get harder in later rounds.

 

A "game" I didn't play myself at this week's TI-99 meeting was an educational game shown there, I think it was Numeration, but I'm not sure. In it, you have to tell the computer the correct number of objects appearing on screen, in a multiple choice fasion. I thought about how this game could be made more "funny". For instance, it could show three elephants on screen and then ask "How many Clowns"? The correct answer would be 0, but this isn't one of the choices given... let's say, the only choices are four, six and eight. If you choose one of those, the TI-99 would say it's a wrong answer, and the correct answer would be seven. You get the idea... Oh, and I had my red stuffed dog in my pocket, which is called "Cerberus" after a TI-99 game. :-)

[zylon]

5200-

Pole Position 45min

[AtariBrian]

Atari 2600:

Boulderdash 20 minutes

 

Atari 7800:

Armor Attack 20 minutes

Commando 20 minutes

 

Snes

Donkey Kong Country 2 30 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Action in New York (S.C.A.T.) - 6 min.

Youkai Club (Youkai Kurabu) (J) - 10 min.

 

Sega Master System:

Super Boy II - 13 min.

 

Genesis:

Dinosaurs for Hire - 88 min.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York - 223 min.

Pac-Attack - 84 min.

Wimbledon Championship Tennis - 310 min.

 

PlayStation:

Fighting Force - 83 min.

 

N64:

South Park - 11 min.

 

Beat Home Alone 2, which I haven't posted about yet in the beaten games thread. It has the potential to be more than a run-of-the-mill licensed platformer, but squanders it with bad stage design and, later, respawning enemies.

 

I also beat Fighting Force on Easy with my fiancée. It's a crude, but passable beat-'em-up, and we more or less enjoyed it. However, we both hated Dinosaurs for Hire, a run-'n'-gun/action-platformer that, after a promising start, collapses into a puddle of cheap deaths and poorly-implemented co-op play.

 

Later in the week, I won the titular event in Wimbledon three times, defeating three opponents in each tournament. To beat it you need to win the championship a fourth time, and unfortunately the AI turns into an omnipotent monster that can only be defeated through trickery. Despite multiple attempts I wasn't able to beat the first opponent, though I came very close (up a set and 4-1). I think I injured my wrist playing the game, though no doubt I was carrying excess tension from sheer frustration.

 

Finally, I played through the first level of a few different games, including trashy Mario clone Super Boy II (the sequel to the game from which my avatar is taken), and made it past the halfway point in Pac-Attack's puzzle mode.

[ACrystal2011]

Coleco -

 

Centipede 30min

Astrododge 480min