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

[zylon]

5200-

 

Joust- 1hr 15min

 

A8-

 

Seaquest- 50min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Genesis:

Blades of Vengeance - 194 min.

Mazin Saga Mutant Fighter - 152 min.

No Escape - 258 min.

P.T.O.: Pacific Theater of Operations - 4 min.

Zoop - 8 min.

Played through Mazin Saga Mutant Fighter on Easy (which doesn't allow you to play the final level), but got hammered on Normal thanks to the utterly broken boss fights. Not sure how soon I want to come back to that one.

 

Then, after a few days off from gaming, I made it about halfway through Blades of Vengeance with my fiancée, and spent some time sorting out the details of No Escape, an oddball little licensed title that combines Prince of Persia-esque platforming with puzzles based on properly combining (and using) various items you find. I think I'm a good ways into it, but certain details are still obscure to me, and either the game is buggy or I'm not understanding why sometimes a successful item combination results in me losing the item.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Sorry, I forgot to post my times for the past week (November 18th through 24th), but here they are...

 

Atari 2600:

Zaxxon - 22 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Angry Birds - 7 min.

Sim Taxi 3D - 2 min.

Bus Contoller - 6 min.

 

As you can see, I didn't play too much last week. I probably spent more time writing posts here on AtariAge than actually playing games.

As for the games, Zaxxon is the Coleco port which has been converted from isometric 3D to a sort of perspectivic 3D view. I don't think it's a bad game though, although it also has been a bit simplified compared to the original. I played this because on the TI-99 programming board, an isometric scrolling demo was posted by RasmusT which looks similar to Zaxxon. Actually, I'd like to see how the original maps and graphics would look like if converted to the perspective shown on the 2600 version while also retaining the original arcade gameplay, save for the change in perspective.

 

Then, some online games... I played Angry Birds because a local supermarket chain, Billa, is giving out Angry Birds made of plush, about 7" big as a prize for collecting 30 points during a 2-month period, where you get a point for each full 10 Euros you spend with them. I played the game to see what the different characters (you can choose from eight of them) actually do in the game.

 

Sim Taxi 3D is another taxi game in 3D. Sadly, it runs on the Unity engine, and there seems to be some controller mismatch going on which makes the up and left key stuck. I read that this comes from built-in XBox controller support although no such controller is present on my system, and I couldn't find a hint on how to correct this.

 

Bus Controller is a game where vehicles come in and have to be guided to the correct parking spot in a way that prevents them from crashing into each other. It's actually a bit like "Kennedy Approach", but on the ground instead of in the air.

[+thegoldenband]

No worries on the late post, and if anyone else has additional times from this past week, feel free to post. The deadline isn't until 3 PM EST anyway, and my laptop's power adapter has croaked so I may not be able to total up the tracker times until I get a replacement (I'm hoping it's tonight). Down to 14% battery as we speak!

[Kurt_Woloch]

Oh... then I'm sorry having wasted your precious battery charge for that kind of posting. Good luck on your replacement adapter!

[carlsson]

A game without save option never becomes more exciting than when it says you are 95% finished and the battery indicator says you have 5% left.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 47, running from November 18 - 24. We logged 1463 minutes of eligible play, playing 50 games on a total of 13 systems.

Top 10:

1. No Escape (Genesis) - 258

2. Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - 194

3. Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter (Genesis) - 152

4. Joust (Atari 5200) - 75

5. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 71

6. M.U.L.E. (Atari 8-bit) - 65

7. Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600) - 64

8. Seaquest (Atari 8-bit) - 50

9. Bruce Lee (Atari 8-bit) - 43

9. Quarth (MSX2) - 43

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Joust (Atari 5200) - 75

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 71

3. M.U.L.E. (Atari 8-bit) - 65

4. Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600) - 64

5. Seaquest (Atari 8-bit) - 50

6. Bruce Lee (Atari 8-bit) - 43

7. Zaxxon (Atari 2600) - 22

8. Frogger '07 (VIC-20) - 21

9. Nebulus (C64) - 20

10. Yoomp! (Atari 8-bit) - 18

10. Jammin' (C64) - 18

Top 10 systems:

1. Genesis (651)

2. Atari 8-bit (216)

3. Atari 2600 (180)

4. C64 (85)

5. Atari 5200 (75)

6. VIC-20 (66)

7. Game Boy (47)

8. NES/Famicom (44)

9. MSX2 (43)

10. MSX (23)

Atop broad charts, digital entertainment for Genesis has it. Joust, Kaboom leading members now on pre-NES. Quietly rising stats, time unprecedented's very warm. X^6 yet! Zounds!

[sandmountainslim]

Golden Axe (GBA) 90 minutes

Street Fighter Alpha (GBC) 30 minutes

Super Mario Brothers (NES) 30 minutes

Adventure (VCS) 25 minutes

Missile Command (VCS) 25 minutes

Super Mario Land (GB) 15 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-385 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 111,957

 

 

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

I want my Mommy: 107 min

M.A.S.H.: 24 min

Oink!: 2 min

 

C64

Battle Ships: 12 min

Kaiser: 35 min

 

Game Boy Classic

Probotector: 12 min

 

High Score Club stuff dominating my gameplay time this week. Who would have ever thought that a bunch of grown-up men - and some women as well - would spend hours playing a title like "I want my mommy". The magic of the HSC.

[carlsson]

Amiga:
Amiga Columns - 29 min.

 

Nintendo Famicom:
Magic Jewelry - 14 min.

 

MSX:
Alibaba and 40 Thieves - 10 min.

 

VIC-20:
VIColumn - 10 min.

 

Very little gaming this week. VIColumn is a Columns game that doesn't recognize diagonals, nor combinations of horizontal and vertical patterns which IMHO makes it less fun to play. Ali Baba is a Sony release which I thought would be fun to play on a Microsoft, err... MSX platform, given the recent console wars between PS4 and XB1.

Edited December 1, 2013 by carlsson

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (Nov. 25th through Dec. 1st)...

 

Arcade:

Alien Syndrome - 119 min.

Paperboy - 25 min.

 

Atari 2600:

D.K. VCS - 24 min. in 2 sessions

 

Commodore 64:

Jammin' - 19 min.

 

TI-99:

Freddy - 8 min.

Tombstone City - 35 min.

 

Alien Syndrome is a game I've played on the Amiga for a long time back in the day, but I never played the arcade original before. I made it through to the 2nd boss, which I think is as far as I got in the Amiga version as well.

 

In Paperboy, I didn't manage to beat my previous high score from a previous session.

 

Just for the record, I consider both arcade games to be post-NES with their FM sound and rich (16-bit style) graphics.

 

D.K. VHS proved to be surprisingly difficult... at the end of the session, I finally completed all four stages.

 

Jammin' came to mind when a mock screenshot of it on the Colecovision was posted in a thread called Colecovision Mock-up Wars. This is another game I haven't played since its heyday. I managed to beat the first level, but not the second one.

 

Finally, on the TI-99 I played Freddy, where I managed to beat the first maze, but not the second one, and Tombstone City, where the whole session was one single game. This game was supplied in source code with the Editor/Assembler package, and subsequently its sound effects got reused, sometimes slightly changed, in multiple other games, most notably The Attack (which has similar gameplay as well) by MB and Protector II by Atarisoft.

 

Apart from that, I analyzed my gaming habits today since gaming is a field where I freely chose what to play.

 

Out of the last 40 games I played, about half of them I've never played before (at least not in this version on this system). Another 10% (four) I've never played since their heyday in the 80's. The remaining 16 (40%) are more or less recurrent games which I've played before since the rise of emulators and the Internet. Their time since I last played them ranges from about one year to six years... for one game it was even only a month. I estimate I'll play about 170 games this year. For this counting purpose, multiple sessions count as one "play", even in different weeks as long as their times got posted in subsequent weeks. Some of the "recurrent" games which I replay from time to time are the arcade games BurgerTime, Turtles and Q*Bert. I think the total number of "recurrent" games would be about 1250.

 

Ali Baba is a Sony release which I thought would be fun to play on a Microsoft, err... MSX platform, given the recent console wars between PS4 and XB1.

Actually, Sony manufactured their own MSX computer, the "Hit Bit", as did Philips (Magnavox). In fact, the MSX computers by Philips and Sony were the only MSX machines available in Austria. By the way, Philips and Sony also developed the CD+G (CD+Graphics) system together which gets used for the lyrics of Karaoke CD's.

[carlsson]

Yes, I am very well aware of the Hit-Bit series.

[zylon]

5200-

 

Missile Command 2hrs 10min

 

A8-

 

Phobos- 1hr 20min

Caverns of Mars- 10min

Caverns of Mars II- 10min

 

7800-

 

Joust- 1hr 5min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Genesis:

No Escape - 398 min.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day - 24 min.

Pocahontas - 8 min.

Skeleton Krew - 5 min.

Beat No Escape twice, getting two different endings. Despite its major flaws, it's got some nice subtleties, and I wrote a bit about it here.

Otherwise I just messed around with the early areas in a few Genesis games of varying quality.

[twoquickcapri]

last week

 

Atari Jaguar:
Raiden - 370 min.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 48, running from November 25 - December 1. We logged 2095 minutes of eligible play, playing 32 games on a total of 15 systems.

Top 10:

1. No Escape (Genesis) - 398

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 385

3. Raiden (Atari Jaguar) - 370

4. Missile Command (Atari 5200) - 130

5. Alien Syndrome (Arcade) - 119

6. I Want My Mommy (Atari 2600) - 107

7. Phobos (Atari 8-bit) - 80

8. Joust (Atari 7800) - 65

9. Kaiser (C64) - 35

10. Tombstone City (TI-99) - 35

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 385

2. Missile Command (Atari 5200) - 130

3. I Want My Mommy (Atari 2600) - 107

4. Phobos (Atari 8-bit) - 80

5. Joust (Atari 7800) - 65

6. Kaiser (C64) - 35

6. Tombstone City (TI-99) - 35

8. Adventure (Atari 2600) - 25

8. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 25

8. Paperboy (Arcade) - 25

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (592)

2. Genesis (435)

3. Atari Jaguar (370)

4. Arcade (144)

5. Atari 5200 (130)

6. Atari 8-bit (100)

7. C64 (66)

8. Atari 7800 (65)

9. NES/Famicom (44)

10. TI-99 (43)

In a very close race among the top 3, Genesis licensed title No Escape manages to hang on for a second consecutive week at #1, while the Atari 2600 and its most august representative regain the top spot on the other charts.

But the big news is that a very, very big milestone is within sight for Kaboom -- which finds us all in the calm before the storm, like Gandalf and Pippin at Minas Tirith, and waiting to find out what will happen when that line is crossed: Jubilation? Mayhem? Somewhere in between?

BTW I agree that Alien Syndrome certainly isn't pre-NES, but Paperboy came out in 1984 and I remember reading about it during the height of the crash. I think it qualifies for the three-way tie at the bottom of the pre-NES charts -- but if you disagree, then subtract the young newspaperman, and add D.K. VCS and M*A*S*H in at a tie for #10 with 24 minutes each.

[karokoenig]

Not all that much gameplay time this week. Just HSC and testing three supercheap flea market pickups.

 

Atari 2600:

M.A.S.H.: 47 minutes

 

Game Boy Classic:

Bomberman GB: 5 minutes

Lion King, The: 3 minutes

Loopz: 5 min

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-487 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 148,823

 

So did I reach 100,000 minutes yet?

 

[sandmountainslim]

Atari 2600

Spider Fighter 30 mins

DKVCS 20 mins

Pac Man 4k 15 mins

Adventure 35 mins

Boxing 20 mins

Reindeer Rescue 30 mins

 

Gameboy Advance

Golden Axe 65 mins

 

 

NES

Circus Charlie 10 mins

Super Mario Bros 25 mins

Rolling Thunder 15 mins

[carlsson]

This week I achieved zero gaming. At one point, I dreamed about playing Pong, but I suppose it doesn't count having dreams about playing games.

[+thegoldenband]

So did I reach 100,000 minutes yet?

 

At the risk of ruining the suspense: yes. You were actually only 71 minutes away from the 100k mark, IIRC (I don't have my spreadsheet in front of me.)

 

This week I achieved zero gaming.

 

Achievement unlocked!

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (December 2nd through 8th):

 

Arcade:

Joust - 3 min.

 

Atari 2600:

Coke wins - 6 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Juice - 130 min. in 2 sessions

 

GameCube (not sure if eligible):

The Simpsons: Hit and run - 5 min.

 

Odyssey^2 / Philips G-7000:

K.C. Munchkin - 4 min.

Q*Bert - 10 min.

 

PC (non-eligible):

Forked up (Prototype) - 30 min.

Kathy Ki-Lin - 4 min.

 

SNES:

Asterix & Obelix - 10 min.

 

Most of the games were played on the "Retro-Börse" which took place today in Vienna. It's a giant flea market for old computers and (mostly) videogames. There were thousands of software titles for various systems and dedicated games to look at and buy and also some systems set up for playing.

 

Joust was played on an emulation running on an X-Box hooked up to an Amiga 1081 monitor.

 

Coke wins is a modified version of Space Invaders. Since it's timed at 3 minutes, and I played two games of it, the total time must be 6 minutes.

 

In K.C.Munchkin, the first time I played it, someone had set up the maze in a way that the maze is divided in two parts which are completely seperated from each other, with the player and all the dots to eat being in one part, and the ghosts being in the other part of the maze (This Pac-Man variant has a feature where you can change the maze by operating the letter and number keys).

 

Asterix & Obelix is a jump'n'run for the SNES by Infogrames. I completed the first level and died on the second one. Actually, I couldn't see Asterix anywhere since Obelix was on his own. But maybe I missed something in the controls which lets you play with Asterix instead.

 

I played Forked-up using Oculus Rift 3D glasses. This is the first time I used such glasses, and it worked great! The game is a 3D game where you control a forklift and have to accomplish plenty of tasks.

 

As for the games I played at home, Juice is a Q*Bert variant on the C-64. It has a time limit, and I gave up after the game ended due to not meeting the time limit, although I still had some lives left.

 

Kathy Ki-Lin is suppposed to be a free 3D game, but on my PC it locked up after playing the intro animation.

 

Finally, I aquired a copy of Q*Bert for the Philips G7000 on the Retro-Börse which I tested afterwards for a few minutes. Thus I now have Q*Bert cartridges for the TI-99, the Atari 2600, the Commodore 64 and the G7000, basically all systems I have which there is a Q*bert cartridge for.

 

I played two more flash games at the Retro-Börse, but I didn't note their names.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Kurt_Woloch

[zylon]

5200-

 

K-razy Shootout- 20min

 

7800-

 

Joust- 35min

 

GBA- Activision Anthology cart:

 

Boxing- 6min

River Raid- 40min

Robot Tank- 25min

River Raid II- 5min

Vault Assault- 20min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Genesis:

Battlemaster - 47 min.

LHX Attack Chopper - 651 min.

Rampart - 37 min.

TNN Bass Tournament of Champions - 34 min.

Wani Wani World - 390 min.

PlayStation:

Jumping Flash - 3 min.

Beat Wani Wani World with my fiancée on the highest difficulty, after gradually building up to it through multiple playthroughs. Comments here, along with comments for The Last Action Hero and No Escape.

In addition, I beat the polygonal helicopter sim LHX Attack Chopper on Very Easy and Normal difficulties (the latter of which suffices for the beat-'em-all campaign at Sega-16). Despite running at about 3-4 FPS, it's actually quite playable, though the missions get repetitive after a while.

Somewhere in there I made a couple abortive attempts at restarting my campaign against Rampart, but messed up early and bailed. I also tried to figure out Battlemaster and TNN Bass Tournament of Champions, but the former is like herding cats and the latter is like...well, like fishing, with all that sport's inscrutabilities and uncertainties. At least I caught my first bass.