What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2014 (Season 7)

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (Sept. 1st through 7th)...

 

Atari 2600:

New Pacman (WIP) - 21 min. in 2 sessions

 

TI-99:

Blasto - 11 min.

 

New Pacman is a new homebrew port of Pac-Man which is even more true to the arcade than Pacman 4K (especially in sound!) and still stays in the 4K which were used for Atari's original Pac-Man port. Actually I don't know if I gave it the correct name... here is the thread where it originated:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229152-new-pacman-for-atari-2600/page-7?do=findComment&comment=3067174

 

I tried to post a better version of the dying sound in that thread, but it doesn't fit into the 4K as of now. I'm pretty sure in 8K all of this could be pulled off pretty much perfectly, including intelligent flicker.

 

Blasto is another game similar to Tombstone City and The Attack on the TI-99. There are no enemies this time, only a minefield you have to clear in the most efficient ways. Each time you hit a mine, and other mines are adjacent to it, they will explode too as part of a chain reaction. The game is timed with a round taking at most 2 minutes, and there are some variations, but not too many, so in the 11 minutes I played, I think I say pretty much everything the game has to offer.

 

I didn't play more because I had some training in programming in .NET, and currently I'm trying to develop at least one private app in this while having some difficulties with the database access. Since the pack-in SQL Server is pretty much overkill for private purposes, I'm now trying SQLite.

[oyamafamily]

MY WEEK - September 1st-7th:

 

Atari 2600:

1) Dark Cavern - 25 minutes

2) Dragonfire - 15 minutes

3) Laser Blast - 470 minutes in 4 sessions

4) Robot Tank - 47 minutes (for 2600 NEW HSC Season 3 / Week 27)

 

Season 3 of the new 2600 High Score Club will finish on September 14th, 2014, with the game Dragonfire. Currently, I'm on the 9th place and I've already decided to try the Silver Medal Tournament, which will be less difficult than Gold Medal at my own discretion.

 

This week, I played Laser Blast in all 4 game variations (Cadet / Easy, Lieutenant / Intermediate, Captain / Advanced and Commander / Expert). I calculated how long does it take to reach 1 Million Points in Laser Blast: 5 hours in Cadet Level, 3.5 to 4 hours in Lieutenant Level, 3 hours in Captain Level, and approximately 3 hours in Commander Level. Today (September 7th, 2014), I reached 1 million points in Commander level (Game 4), spending 2 hours and 44 minutes approximately. Tomorrow, I will provide my Laser Blast gameplay videos (all game variations), and when you watch my Game 4 match, you will see my pattern which I used and followed to obtain a significant score, and you will know what happens when the score reaches 1 Million points.

Edited September 8, 2014 by oyamafamily

[BillyHW]

Sega Genesis

Streets of Rage 2 (2 hours). Great soundtrack!

 

Atari 2600

 

E.T. (1 hour). I read the instruction manual and would like to finish a round at least once.

Edited September 8, 2014 by BillyHW

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Days of Thunder - 3 min.

Thunder & Lightning - 12 min.

Times of Lore - 2 min.

Game Boy:

Hatris - 137 min.

Pipe Dream - 386 min.

Radar Mission - 476 min.

Tennis - 58 min.

Genesis:

Budokan - 30 min.

The Humans - 30 min.

LHX Attack Chopper - 2 min.

Thunder Force III - 8 min.

32X:

Tempo - 27 min.

Nintendo 64:

Automobili Lamborghini - 18 min.

Diddy Kong Racing - 38 min.

Monopoly - 66 min.

Rat Attack - 10 min.

Beat Hatris, and re-beat Tennis, on their highest difficulties.

I also beat Game A of Radar Mission on the highest difficulty, but have only beaten Normal on Game B -- Hard is still elusive. Similarly, I beat Pipe Dream on lower difficulties, but haven't yet cracked difficulty levels 3 or 4.

[doomwaves]

Didn't play much this week.

 

Arcade (Midway Arcade Origins - PS3)

Gauntlet 2 - 90 Minutes

Vindicators 2 - 20 minutes

 

Gameboy

Gauntlet 2 - 20 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 36, running from September 1 - 7. We logged 3144 minutes of eligible play, playing 65 games on a total of 15 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 573

2. Radar Mission (Game Boy) - 476

3. Laser Blast (Atari 2600) - 470

4. Pipe Dream (Game Boy) - 386

5. Hatris (Game Boy) - 137

6. Streets of Rage 2 (Genesis) - 120

7. Gauntlet II (Arcade) - 90

8. Monopoly (N64) - 66

9. Robot Tank (Atari 2600) - 62

10. E.T. (Atari 2600) - 60

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 573

2. Laser Blast (Atari 2600) - 470

3. Robot Tank (Atari 2600) - 62

4. E.T. (Atari 2600) - 60

5. Barrage (TI-99) - 35

6. Dark Cavern (Atari 2600) - 25

6. Slymoids (TI-99) - 25

8. New Pac-Man (WIP) (Atari 2600) - 21

9. Ms. Pac-man (TI-99) - 20

9. Video Vegas (TI-99) - 20

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1232)

2. Game Boy (1077)

3. TI-99 (236)

4. Genesis (214)

5. N64 (132)

6. Arcade (110)

7. VIC-20 (29)

8. Sega 32X (27)

9. Creativision (26)

10. NES/Famicom (17)

Two games with hats, two with radar, two with mixed-gender combat, two with water management, and two with prominent UFOs: that's our top 10 for the week. Old King Kaboom takes up its accustomed place at #1, while a game about bombarding enemy vessels from a distance just edges out another game about bombarding enemy vessels from a distance.

[oyamafamily]

CHECK OUT MY LASER BLAST VIDEOS - Marathon divided in 4 sessions

 

1) Game 1 - 300,060 points / 93 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ebpIAqHaVM

 

2) Game 2 - 500,040 points / 109 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNtsY_W1NpE

 

3) Game 3 - 630,000 points / 105 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtb9hFbY484

 

4) Game 4 - 1 Million points / 163 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-393 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 39,680

 

 

 

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Air Sea Battle: 3 min

Fun with Numbers: 2 min

Golf: 7 min

Haunted House: 5 min

Master Builder: 3 min

Video Pinball: 5 min

Zaxxon: 6 min

 

Testplay of a lot I bought on ebay. Seemed to have slipped under the radar, because I got it all dirt cheap.

 

Game Boy

Smurfs: 18 min

 

Testing an original gameboy I picked up on a flea market, that game included. Works fine, and the game is a fun little platformer

 

SNES

Final Fight 3: 10 min

 

N64

Destruction Derby 64: 7 min

Extreme G XG2: 2 min

 

Shame I didn't have more time. I picked up those two games for a few bucks today on a flea market. XG2 wasn't my cup of tea, but Destruction Derby seems kinda fun. I will surely try to get my nephew in front of the TV with me and get my ass handed to me :-).

[Iwantgames:)]

Played a bunch of TI games; beat my Barrage high score, finished a round of Tunnels of Doom on easy, got stuck in pirates adventure and tested a couple other games.

Then I played some Riddick on Xbox

 

TI-99 -

 

Ambulance - 6min

 

AsTIroids - 5min

This game moves too fast for me lol

 

Burgertime - 25min

 

Barrage - 135min (465,610 points)

 

Chisholm Trail - 10min

 

Ms. Pac-Man - 10min

 

Pirates Adventure -100min

 

Star Fort - 5min

 

Star Wars - 10min

 

Tunnels of Doom: Quest of the King - 240min

Took me 25 min to figure out how to play but then it's a awesome old school RPG =D

 

 

Non qualifying times -

 

Xbox -

 

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay - 20min

[Iwantgames:)]

N64

Destruction Derby 64: 7 min

Extreme G XG2: 2 min

 

Shame I didn't have more time. I picked up those two games for a few bucks today on a flea market. XG2 wasn't my cup of tea, but Destruction Derby seems kinda fun. I will surely try to get my nephew in front of the TV with me and get my ass handed to me :-).

I have Destruction Derby on Sega Saturn, fun game :-)

[carlsson]

Creativision:

Chopper Rescue - 22 min.

Famicom:

F1 Race - 12 min.

Tengen Tetris - 33 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

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

 

Atari 2600:

Kangaroo - 14 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

McDonalds Waste Game - 7 min.

 

I briefly played the Atari 2600 version of "Kangaroo" after having heard a song about a kangaroo on the radio. It roughly captures the feel of the arcade version, but essentially reduces it to what's being done on its first two screens... the apes are always climbing up and down on the right, the apple on top hops in and isn't thrown by another ape, and the additional twists of stages three and four are missing completely. No punching down apes stacked on each other, and no apes that climb above you and throw down their apples. Oh, there are only three screens instead of four.

 

I don't know how McDonalds' waste game is really called in English since I played the German version of it. This is an online game where you have to throw waste into waste bins when the arrow in front of you reaches the correct direction in order to reach the correct bin because the waste is separated into fractions. Now comes the silly part... only certain bins are open at a time, but you get waste that belongs into bins that are currently closed, and which bin is open doesn't change until you've thrown a piece of waste, so you're forced to throw some pieces of waste into incorrect bins, earning you negative points.

[Iwantgames:)]

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

Its December??

[oyamafamily]

MY WEEK - September 8th-14th:

 

Atari 2600:

1) Dragonfire - 4 minutes

2) Mario Bros. - 22 minutes

 

Atari 7800:

Mario Bros. - 287 minutes (6 sessions for 7800 HSC, Season 7 / Round 10 - Standard Skill)

 

My goal set on 7800 Mario Bros. is to roll the score (1,000,000+ points). It took me 6 attempts to reach this ultimate score.

Coming soon - my 7800 Mario Bros. Gameplay video and my stats table which I made via Microsoft Excel.

 

Tomorrow, the Medal Bracket Tournament will start on 2600 NEW HSC Season 3. See the link below to learn how it works.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229642-season-3-hsc-medal-bracket-challenge-starts-september-15-2014/

Edited September 15, 2014 by oyamafamily

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

SG-1000:

Ninja Princess - 10 min.

Game Boy:

The New Chessmaster - 558 min.

Pipe Dream - 817 min.

Portable gaming invites multitasking. Hence, The New Chessmaster, wherein I only had the Game Boy in hand when it was my turn. Otherwise I could do, well, anything else -- clean the house, write emails, throw llamas out of windows -- while waiting for the CPU to move. I beat the computer with the Black pieces on Levels 5, 9, and 13, the last of which is the game's highest non-infinite difficulty level: ergo, New Chessmaster delenda est.

OTOH, Pipe Dream demanded my full engagement, especially as I struggled to beat its two highest difficulties (Levels 4 & 5) which are tough as nails. But at least I could half-watch TV or listen to music in the background -- though the latter is trickier, since I soon realized that the game's monotonous tune actually serves an in-game function, going up 1/2 step when danger is nigh. Still, as I said to my wife, it's not so much that I watched TV while playing Pipe Dream, but that I played Pipe Dream while watching TV...and many people watch 12-14 hours of TV per week, right?

Either way, I took down Level 4 pretty quickly (beating Stages 29-36 to complete the game), but Level 5 took literally dozens of attempts, if not hundreds. I got close to victory many times, but kept falling just short; sometimes I was in the zone, sometimes it was clear that I was out of sorts. (I found myself thinking of Atarian7's Kaboom quest, and maybe understanding it better than I ever have; I've thrown myself at tough games before, but this was different somehow.)

Today, I finally beat the game, completing Stage 36 on Level 5 by the skin of my teeth. No special ending, no great fanfare, just the same sequence as always.

But I did get one hell of a lot of satisfaction from it, probably the most I've gotten in some time. Unlike some other games I've beaten recently -- say, Death Trap for VCS -- the basic mechanic of Pipe Dream is fun and straightforward, yet it demands creativity and improvisation. What you see is what you get, and to beat the game, you play it as it's meant to be played -- no tricks, no hacks, no AI-breaking. You just have to play it well.

And, in the end, I did.

(Note: no llamas were harmed in the making of this post)

[Kurt_Woloch]

Its December??

Oh, sorry... I meant September, not December. Somehow this one even slipped past my proofreading...

[BillyHW]

Atari 2600

 

E.T. (1 hour). Still trying to finish a round. Came pretty close. Found all three pieces and was looking for the phone home zone when the FBI guy came and ruined everything.

[twoquickcapri]

PC (Win9x):
MechWarrior 4: Vengeance - 100 min.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 37, running from September 8 - 14. We logged 2946 minutes of eligible play, playing 34 games on a total of 10 systems.

Top 10:

1. Pipe Dream (Game Boy) - 817

2. New Chessmaster, The (Game Boy) - 558

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 393

4. Mario Bros. (Atari 7800) - 287

5. Tunnels of Doom: Quest of the King (TI-99/4A) - 240

6. Barrage (TI-99/4A) - 135

7. MechWarrior 4: Vengeance (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 100

8. Pirates Adventure (TI-99/4A) - 100

9. E.T. (Atari 2600) - 60

10. Tetris (Tengen) (NES/Famicom) - 33

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 393

2. Mario Bros. (Atari 7800) - 287

3. Tunnels of Doom: Quest of the King (TI-99/4A) - 240

4. Barrage (TI-99/4A) - 135

5. Pirates Adventure (TI-99/4A) - 100

6. E.T. (Atari 2600) - 60

7. Burgertime (TI-99/4A) - 25

8. Mario Bros. (Atari 2600) - 22

8. Chopper Rescue (Creativision) - 22

10. Kangaroo (Atari 2600) - 14

Top 10 systems:

1. Game Boy (1393)

2. TI-99/4A (546)

3. Atari 2600 (524)

4. Atari 7800 (287)

5. PC (Windows 95/98) (100)

6. NES/Famicom (45)

7. Creativision (22)

8. SG-1000 (10)

8. SNES (10)

10. N64 (9)

Some weeks it's close, and some weeks it's a runaway. This time it's the latter, as the Game Boy sweeps the top two spots on the Top 10 by a huge margin. It takes the crown on the system charts as well, with a resurgent TI-99/4A at #2 just edging out the Atari VCS.

Meanwhile the console's port of the puzzle game Pipe Dream becomes the 135th member of our 1000-minute club, with 1203 minutes logged to date.

[oyamafamily]

Check out my 7800 Mario Bros. 1-Million gameplay video (Standard Mode)

(My YouTube account named Wilson Oyama has been verified sucessfully on September 15th, 2014)

 

And check out my 7800 Mario Bros. Stats Table which I created via Microsoft Excel, and shows more details about my gameplay recorded in the video above.

[BillyHW]

 

Creativision:

Chopper Rescue - 22 min.

Famicom:

F1 Race - 12 min.

Tengen Tetris - 33 min.

 

 

Do you have a real Creativision? Or are you running an emulator? (If so, what is the emulator?)

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Millipede: 48 min

 

Game Boy Classic

The Smurfs: 8 min

 

Plus a few minutes of testing around on a bunch of not eligible GBA games. One of them was a remake of the original Mario Bros, but it was slightly different to any version I know of.

 

Meanwhile I have a huge backlog of stuff I need to clean, restore and test. Among those: two Pong consoles, a heap og G7000 carts and some 16 bit stuff. No time right now to revive it all. Too much work this month...

[carlsson]

Do you have a real Creativision? Or are you running an emulator? (If so, what is the emulator?)

Yes, I own two Creativision units - one complete in box, one loose. Both are equipped with the Moving-Key Keyboard add-on and tape recorder. I have also got a mostly boxed VTech Laser 2001 computer, obviously both the Multicart (from where I played Chopper Rescue), Diagnosticart, about 15 boxed games of which some are duplicates, a few loose carts, both original 16K RAM expansion for the 2001 and a recent homebrew version, demo tapes and tape games both for the Creativision BASIC and 2001 (which have different tape formats, even if they're hardware and cartridge compatible). Hmm, that probably sums it up.

 

On the emulation side, you have FunnyMu, CvEmu2, MESS and last year a new emulator called creativisionemulator was launched. It possibly offers the most efficent emulation yet, but is launched from a command shell.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/creativisionemulator/

 

Anyway, this week I let the Creativision rest and mostly play-tested some other systems:

 

Colecovision:

Mouse Trap - 2 min.

 

Sega Master System:

Hang-On - 4 min.

 

SNES:

Cool Spot - 5 min.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-515 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 94,474