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

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 44, running from October 28 - November 3. We logged 3179 minutes of eligible play, playing 43 games on a total of 13 systems.

Top 10:

1. RBI Baseball 4 (Genesis) - 797

2. Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 650

3. ToeJam & Earl (Genesis) - 270

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 244

5. Mangia (Atari 2600) - 237

6. Tom & Jerry: Frantic Antics! (Genesis) - 120

7. Super Chef BT (Intellivision) - 120

8. ALF (Sega Master System) - 82

9. Vigilante (Sega Master System) - 73

10. Grand Theft Atari (Atari 2600) - 68

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 650

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 244

3. Mangia (Atari 2600) - 237

4. Super Chef BT (Intellivision) - 120

5. Grand Theft Atari (Atari 2600) - 68

6. Joust (Atari 5200) - 65

7. Spiker! Super Pro Volleyball (Intellivision) - 45

8. Lock N Chase (ColecoVision) - 40

8. Magical Tree (ColecoVision) - 40

10. Major League Baseball (Intellivision) - 32

Top 10 systems:

1. Genesis (1279)

2. Atari 2600 (1242)

3. Intellivision (209)

4. Sega Master System (155)

5. ColecoVision (80)

6. Atari 5200 (65)

7. Atari 7800 (45)

8. Game Boy (27)

9. VIC-20 (25)

10. NES/Famicom (20)

The Genesis holds court for a third week in a row, staving off the Atari 2600 by a margin of less than 3% in a close contest. Otherwise, our top 10 is dominated by aliens, compulsive eaters, street violence, co-dependent relationships, and the careful striking of balls.

[karokoenig]

Variety week for me. Lots of stuff I found in the wild during the last two months, and had no chance to test before yesterday.

 

Atari 2600

Challenge of Nexar: 93 min

Circus Atari: 6 min

Dragonfire: 3 min

Name this Game: 20 min

Outlaw: 3 min

Smurf: 2 min

Space Incaders: 4 min

 

Mostly HSC playtime again, and some hardware testing. Got Dragonfire new, and had to try out a Vader I found on a flea market last week.

 

 

SNES

Asterix: 7 min

Earthworm Jim: 4 min

F-Zero: 3 min

Lufia II: 12 min

Star Fox: 2 min

Starwing (European version of Star Fox): 6 min

Street Fighter II: 4 min

Super Mario All Stars: 4 min

 

Testing testing. Had quite a few good finds, I'd say. Everything is working like a charm, including an NTSC-PAL adapter I grabbed for 3 euro :-).

 

 

VC20

Avenger: 5 min

Black Max: 6 min

Earth Defense: 5 min

Super Cobra: 4 min

 

Carts and tapes I picked up on ebay. Amazing that these old tapes still contain their data. If you count these as games, I also tried out "Adress Register", "Biorhythm" and "Basic Course". Fun thing about Biorhythm: it's supposed to print out your - well - biorhythm for the current day. But you can't enter dates later than 1999. Ah well... the program/tape works perfectly, hehe...

 

Oh by the way... Super Cobra is NOT Super Cobra. The game is more like Surround on the Atari. The germans seem to have a habit of renaming VIC 20 games. Just so you non-german VIC20 users know when you think about buying carts or tapes from Germany.

 

 

Mega Drive

Dragon's Revenge: 10 min

Sonic I: 18 min

Vectorman: 4 min

 

Dragon's Revenge is a nice pinball game from Tengen. A little on the easy side, though. But it has a lot going on. Played Sonic to test a Mega Drive II I picked up complete with everything and in perfect condition for 8 bucks.

 

 

Game Boy Classic

Nemesis 2 - The Return of the Hero: 6 min

 

Just fiddled around with this one for a little, realized again that I suck at shooters, and stopped embarrassing myself.

Edited November 9, 2013 by karokoenig

[carlsson]

I was just about to say there is no known official Super Cobra on the VIC-20. I looked up the three to me unknown titles on YouTube, and since I don't recognize either, I'd say they probably are not known under other, more canonical names.

 

Since I'm unlikely to have time for gaming on Sunday, I might as well post my stats. This weekend we had a mini exhibition in the concert hall, in addition to the local symphony orchestra playing two concerts with game music, ranging from C64, Mario and Zelda to the very latest PS3 games rescored/arranged for orchestra. The exhibition was quite popular among the visitors, the newer console the better though. It also let me get access to some systems I don't own personally.

 

Amiga CD32:
Dennis - 3 min.

 

C64:
Spy Hunter - 15 min.

 

Megadrive:
Thunder Force IV - 2 min.

 

NES/Famicom:
Super Mario Bros - 2 min.
Super Mario Bros 3 - 12 min.

 

Nintendo 64:
Super Mario 64 - 10 min.

 

SNES:
Donkey Kong Country - 10 min.
Super Soccer - 24 min.

 

Sord M5:
Moon Patrol - 8 min.

 

Vectrex:
Mine Storm - 10 min.

Edited November 9, 2013 by carlsson

[AtariBrian]

Atari 2600

Princess Rescue - 20 minutes

Space Rocks - 30 minutes

Halo 20 - minutes

Lasergates - 15 minutes

Chetiry - 20 minutes

 

Atari 7800

Frenzy/Berzerk - 30 minutes

Kung Fu Master - 15 minutes

Scramble - 15 minutes

Gingerbread Man - 30 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-261 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 123,099

 

Got my high score early in the week and had trouble playing later in the week. I don't know if the paddles

are a little jittery or what. I tried playing player 2 for a short while but didn't get far on that paddle either so maybe it's in my mind.

 

 

 

 

[Kurt_Woloch]

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

 

Commodore 64:

(The) Legend of the Amazon women: 630 minutes in 5 sessions

 

Yep, I only played that one game... for that long. Actually, I also completed it by exploiting a bug...

You see, this is a fighting game with a time limit, but you can only die if upright. As long as you crouch down, you're not upright, so you won't die even if the time is up or you've lost all your health. But actually, you get more points for dodging the arrows that fly through the screen than for hitting the enemy. And even if you're crouched, arrows keep flying through and give you 1000 points each if they don't hit you, and even 2000 points if they hit your enemy. The enemy will not be able to dodge all the arrows, so she will eventually be killed by them, and then the arrows still keep flying through. Now every 200,000 points you get an extra life, so if you don't have lives left, just keep crouched until you get another extra life from the arrows scoring. This is how I managed to complete the game.

Edited November 10, 2013 by Kurt_Woloch

[xDragonWarrior]

This week on 1 game I have clocked In on 2100 minutes(give or take a few) which comes up to 5 hours a day.The game...Black Hole a pinball machine.I got it recently off Craigslist for a really cheap price and have hot been able to put it down since!(can you even use this expression when referencing a pinball machince as you never pick it up).It's beautiful from the side and playfied art to the spinning Black Hole playfield and robotic sounds."Do you dare enter the Black Hole?

[zylon]

5200-

 

Joust- 50min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Genesis:

ESPN Baseball Tonight - 3 min.

Generations Lost - 57 min.

Last Action Hero - 89 min.

Mario Andretti Racing - 3 min.

No Escape - 3 min.

WarpSpeed - 300 min.

Beat WarpSpeed for the Sega-16 beat-'em-all, by defeating the lengthy Campaign mode on Expert difficulty, and made some inroads into Generations Lost and Last Action Hero. In the latter game, I've gotten to the point where I can get through the whole first area without losing any lives, but I can't make much sense of the game's driving level.

[twoquickcapri]

Amiga CD32:
Top Gear 2 - 45 min.

 

Sega Master System:

Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap - 20 min.

[zylon]

Late last night into early morning...

 

A8-

 

Pengon- 1hr 50min (German knockoff of Pengo)

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 45, running from November 4 - 10. We logged 2098 minutes of eligible play, playing 55 games on a total of 15 systems.

Top 10:

1. Legend of the Amazon Women (C64) - 630

2. WarpSpeed (Genesis) - 300

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 261

4. Pengon (Atari 8-bit) - 110

5. Challenge of Nexar (Atari 2600) - 93

6. Last Action Hero, The (Genesis) - 89

7. Generations Lost (Genesis) - 57

8. Joust (Atari 5200) - 50

9. Top Gear 2 (Amiga CD32) - 45

10. Space Rocks (Atari 2600) - 30

10. Frenzy/Berzerk (Atari 7800) - 30

10. Gingerbread Man (Atari 7800) - 30

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Legend of the Amazon Women (C64) - 630

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 261

3. Pengon (Atari 8-bit) - 110

4. Challenge of Nexar (Atari 2600) - 93

5. Joust (Atari 5200) - 50

6. Space Rocks (Atari 2600) - 30

6. Frenzy/Berzerk (Atari 7800) - 30

6. Gingerbread Man (Atari 7800) - 30

9. Chetiry (Atari 2600) - 20

9. Halo 2600 (Atari 2600) - 20

9. Name This Game (Atari 2600) - 20

9. Princess Rescue (Atari 2600) - 20

Top 10 systems:

1. C64 (645)

2. Atari 2600 (497)

3. Genesis (489)

4. Atari 8-bit (110)

5. Atari 7800 (90)

6. SNES (76)

7. Atari 5200 (50)

8. Amiga CD32 (48)

9. VIC-20 (25)

10. Sega Master System (20)

The Genesis had been repeatedly edging out the Atari 2600 recently, but this week the VCS finally managed to pass it by a slender margin of 8 minutes...

...only for both consoles to find themselves fighting for 2nd place, as the C64 takes the top spot on all three charts with buxom beat-'em-up The Legend of the Amazon Women.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Challenge of Nexar: 39 min

Cosmic Ark: 6 min

Name this Game: 146 min

Vogel flieh (German hack of "Dolphin" with bird sprites): 3 min

 

 

NES

Pac Man: 8 min

 

Played on the GBA: NES Classics Edition

 

 

Arcade

Dig Dug: 8 min

Galaga: 28 min

Galaxian: 12 min

 

All three have been played on the GBA (Namco Museum cart)

 

 

Game Boy Classic

Batman the Video Game: 10 min

 

Actually, it's not that bad. I keep returning to it for short runs.

 

 

Game Boy Color

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 5 min

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
M.U.L.E. - 66 min.

 

Creativision:
Crazy Chicky - 4 min.

 

Nintendo Famicom:
Dig Dug 2 - 14 min.
Galaga - 4 min.
Magic Jewelry - 18 min.
Super Mario Bros 3 - 22 min.

 

VIC-20:
Ice - 5 min.
Metagalactic Llamas - 14 min.
Mobile Attack - 10 min.
Money Wars - 7 min.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-136 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: ?? LOL

 

My paddles are officially jittery. Going to buy some new ones.

 

[karokoenig]

 

My paddles are officially jittery. Going to buy some new ones.

 

 

They can be fixed easily. It's so easy, even I managed to do it without breaking anything - and that's saying summat. The youtubes are full of how-to's.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 11th through 17th):

 

Arcade:

Qwak - 37 min.

Ixion - 37 min.

 

Commodore 64:

The legend of the Amazon Women - 122 min. in 2 sessions

 

TI-99:

TI-Scramble - 10 min.

 

I continued to play The legend of the Amazon Women, and now I managed to complete it without cheating. But there still are some tricks to it... if you're running out of time and health, you should play a bit less aggressively so that you run out of time before you run out of health. In this case, on dying you get the full timer and the full health, while if you're dying from lack of health, you only get back health, but no time. This is even advantageous if you make the next checkpoint in time because you get huge bonus points if you arrive there with plenty of time left... a full timer gets you halfway to the next extra life... or lives, because at 1 million points, when the score counter rolls over, you get 4 (!) extra lives. That way I managed to complete all the 10 checkpoints.

 

Then I played TI-Scramble at the TI meeting on Wednesday. Klaus has upgraded his F18A chip so that it now runs flawlessly.

 

As for Qwak, I watched a "making of" presentation of Marble Madness by Mark Cerny, the main creator of the game. In it, he mentions an unreleased arcade game called Qwak which you can play on MAME, and I found it interesting after watching a Youtube video of it, so I checked it out. This is similar to Locomotion in that you shift around pieces in order to help some ducks reach home. Problem is, there are multiple ducks, and there are forks, so on a fork each duck (there are multiple ones) may take a different path, and you have to take care of all of them. Your game is over as soon as you lose all of the ducks, but you get 6 (!) extra ducks at 10,000 and 100,000 points.

 

Finally, I played Ixion after reading that a reproduction of the Atari 2600 version of it, which I've played before, is now coming to the Atariage store. The arcade version, however, has got an additional "spinner" for controlling the orientation of your shots, which I couldn't quite get the hang of. Also, starting on Level 3, there's an additional red ball which removes all the tiles it runs over instead of healing them like the yellow ball does. This red ball isn't present in the Atari 2600 version as well.

[Atarian7]

 

They can be fixed easily. It's so easy, even I managed to do it without breaking anything - and that's saying summat. The youtubes are full of how-to's.

I know how to do the short term fix by spraying some wd 40 into the pot. I tried doing the "permanent" fix on a pair a couple years ago and ruined them. I just prefer to get some from thegoldenax and let someone else fix the ones I don't want anymore. I just looked it up and I bought the ones from him last year in early September. So they lasted over a year of playing a lot of Kaboom! (and a little super breakout )

[zylon]

5200-

 

Joust- 40min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Genesis:

Generations Lost - 28 min.

The Last Action Hero - 212 min.

Beat The Last Action Hero, though I had to practice on an emulator before I could get the hang of the first driving level, the nasty third level helicopter boss, and the tricky final boss. Savestates allowed me to take all three on repeatedly until I found viable patterns -- but when I transitioned to real hardware, the helicopter boss didn't stick to the patterns I saw in the emulator, and it was only with considerable luck that I managed to fend him off.

The rest of the game is easy-ish once you know what to do; at least the bottleneck's only halfway through, instead of near the end.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 46, running from November 11 - 17. We logged 1051 minutes of eligible play, playing 28 games on a total of 12 systems.

Top 10:

1. Last Action Hero, The (Genesis) - 212

2. Name This Game (Atari 2600) - 146

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 136

4. Legend of the Amazon Women (C64) - 122

5. M.U.L.E. (Atari 8-bit) - 66

6. Joust (Atari 5200) - 40

7. Challenge of Nexar (Atari 2600) - 39

8. Ixion (Arcade) - 37

8. Qwak (Arcade) - 37

10. Galaga (Arcade) - 28

10. Generations Lost (Genesis) - 28

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Name This Game (Atari 2600) - 146

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 136

3. Legend of the Amazon Women (C64) - 122

4. M.U.L.E. (Atari 8-bit) - 66

5. Joust (Atari 5200) - 40

6. Challenge of Nexar (Atari 2600) - 39

7. Ixion (Arcade) - 37

7. Qwak (Arcade) - 37

9. Galaga (Arcade) - 28

10. Metagalactic Llamas (VIC-20) - 14

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (330)

2. Genesis (240)

3. Arcade (122)

3. C64 (122)

5. Atari 8-bit (66)

5. NES/Famicom (66)

7. Atari 5200 (40)

8. VIC-20 (36)

9. Game Boy (10)

9. TI-99 (10)

This week's Top 10 was not brought to you by the letters P, V, and Y, since those are the only letters that don't show up in the titles of that Scrabble-tastic set of games. But in a week with lots of ties, Genesis shovelware title The Last Action Hero emerges on top, while cephalopod-centric Name This Game partners up with perennial Kaboom to give the VCS the #1 spot on the system charts.

[carlsson]

Since I'll probably not play any games this Sunday either, I'm again posting my log one day early.

 

Inspired by your Scrabble comment, I decided to put together a list of games A-Z, one game per letter. In order to distribute it evenly among various systems, no system may have more than 6 games. I included some of my favorites, but also some games that I never had played before. If I would redo it, I might replace a few of the choices, but overall it was a fun experience.

 

Amiga:
Amiga Columns - 10 min.

 

This is a game by Roy Sutton, not sure if there exists other Amiga Columns games by others.

 

Atari 8-bit:
Bruce Lee - 43 min.
M.U.L.E. - 65 min.
Pole Position - 16 min.
Up'n'down - 12 min.
Yoomp! - 18 min.
Zaxxon - 12 min.

 

I am sorry to say that Up'n'down was a major disappointment on the Atari 8-bit. While most other games tend to match their C64 counterparts, this flickery mess surprises me that Sega even released. For the letter B, I considered both BallBlazer and Boulder Dash, but finally settled on Bruce Lee which I found just as good as the C64 version, if that is any sign of quality.

 

C64:
Delta - 10 min.
Jammin' - 18 min.
Nebulus - 20 min.
Out Run - 12 min.
Revenge of the Mutant Camels - 10 min.
Viduzzles - 15 min.

 

I seemed to recall that R.M.C. was more fun/playable than it is, actually a bit frustrating or maybe I got ahold of a bugged version. Viduzzles is a jigsaw game for kids, mainly picked as I didn't find anything else on V that tickled my interest, and yes, for a short while I considered playing the graphical text adventure Valhalla. While Out Run is not splendid on the C64, it isn't completely awful after all, the SID versions of the music making up for some of the graphics and gameplay.

 

Famicom:
Elevator Action - 15 min.
Galaga - 15 min.
Xevious - 14 min.

 

What? No Super Mario Bros? Yes, this week I reserved letter S for another game, see below. Instead I discovered Elevator Action, also present on other formats but a game that I never played before.

 

Megadrive:
Sonic 2 - 19 min.
Thunder Force IV - 16 min.

 

... and here is Sonic, for once taking the advantage over Super Mario Bros. I have never really played Sonic 2 before, and frankly I'm not sure how long it'll take before I play it again.

 

MSX:
Knightmare - 10 min.
Hyper Rally - 13 min.

 

I picked up Knightmare earlier this fall, but didn't get to play it until now. I was surprised at how slow it scrolls, but then again I didn't make it very far so perhaps it gets more intense later on.

 

MSX2:
Quarth - 43 min.

 

SG-1000:
Lode Runner - 13 min.

 

I realized that I might need a two button joystick - not sure if the Megadrive controller is compatible/safe with the SC-3000 computer - since the regular fire button only digs holes to the left, while in demo mode the computer player can dig to the right as well. A rather bland, colourless port of a game that didn't spark with colour and amazing graphics in the first place neither.

 

VIC-20:
Cyclon - 17 min.
Frogger '07 - 21 min.
Ice - 15 min.
Witch Way - 13 min.

 

Cyclon is a cartridge game from Boone, as opposed to what I believe is a +8K tape game called Cyclons, being a completely different game. Frogger '07 is an excellent homebrew which gives Intellivision etc a run for their money, much better than both the official Sega port to the VIC and all 3rd party clones from back in the days.

[+thegoldenband]

^Very cool, and glad my comment inspired you!

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Air Sea Battle: 2 min

Blueprint: 1 min

Cosmic Ark: 64 min

Dig Dug: 6 min

Gangster Alley: 4 min

Gefecht im All (aka Time Race): 2 min

Jungle Hunt: 2 min

Planet Patrol: 4 min

Pole Position: 2 min

 

"Gefecht im All" is another addition to my collection of clones/hacks/versions of "Time Race". The game utterly sucks, but Time Race was one of the three carts I rediscovered in a drawer last year. As such, it is a childhood memory, and the core of my collection.

 

 

Game Boy Classic

Balloon Kid: 12 min

Marble Madness: 3 min

Paperboy: 11 min

Probotector: 16 min

Wave Race: 5 min

 

Probotector appears to be regarded as a classic. And it's a mean, unforgiving bastard of a game. Paperboy on Game Boy is a hardly playable mess - just like all other versions I know of.

 

 

PS1

Tekken 3: 10 min

 

Not all that bad. One of the few fighting games I can think of that I actually like. International Karate plus on C64 is still better in my opinion

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-71 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 51,731