+thegoldenband Posted July 27, 2015 Author Share Posted July 27, 2015 My times for the week: Famicom Disk System: Konamic Tennis - 42 min. Game Boy: Top Rank Tennis - 36 min. N64: All-Star Baseball '99 - 119 min. Chopper Attack - 155 min. South Park - 634 min. Beat South Park, which sports one of the more frustrating final bosses I've encountered in recent memory. Next, a quickie victory for NintendoAge over All-Star Baseball '99. Playing as the Yankees on Veteran difficulty, I skipped the regular season and went straight to the World Series against the Expos...with 1-inning games. If I didn't score immediately it went to "extra" innings, though, so I restarted the game if I either fell behind or, in Games 3 & 4 (when I was the visiting team), didn't score in my initial set of at-bats. I also played through the first 5 levels of Chopper Attack on Normal difficulty. I messed around with the game's training mode a while ago, but found it confusing; however, the game itself is considerably more appealing, if fairly superficial. Once I clear the two remaining levels of Normal, I'll have to beat the whole thing again on Expert, as there's an eighth, secret level exclusive to that difficulty. Finally, I played the last Game Boy tennis game I haven't beaten, and messed around with a Famicom Disk System tennis game I hadn't heard of until this week (and am trying my hand at translating from the Japanese). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skippy B. Coyote Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 It was yet another good week for gaming around here! The misses and I both logged a fair amount of gaming time this week, and here's the figures: Atari 2600 Centipede - 39 minutes Frogger - 11 minutes H.E.R.O. - 195 minutes Ms. Pac-Man - 40 minutes Princess Rescue - 98 minutes Stargate - 53 minutes Game Boy Color Frogger - 6 minutes Sega Genesis Castlevania: Bloodlines - 116 minutes Truxton - 108 minutes Sony PlayStation Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - 697 minutes Total Play Time This Week1,363 minutes (22 hours 43 minutes)Individual System Play Times This Week Sony PlayStation: 697 minutes Atari 2600: 436 minutes Sega Genesis: 224 minutes Game Boy Color: 6 minutes In our household the PS1 really dominated the the charts this week. My wife spent a whole heck of a lot of time playing through Resident Evil 3 and the side games several times to unlock everything in the game, and I spent a good couple hours pitching in to help her rack up some money in the Mercenaries side game and unlock a few extra weapons for her. I spent much of my gaming time this week playing some recent Genesis acquisitions, Castlevania: Bloodlines and Truxton. I've been enjoying both a lot, and while I still haven't managed to get past level 4 in Castlevania I was able to beat Truxton just last night! Princess Rescue and H.E.R.O. on the Atari 2600 were also big hits this week, with both my wife and I logging a fair bit of time in H.E.R.O. (she's currently in the lead in our little household high score contest, with a score of 74,335 topping my 71,330) and me finally managing to beat Princess Rescue after months of trying. Lastly, this week I finally figured out an effective way to play Stargate on the Atari 2600! Having to use the button on the second controller to drop bombs was always cumbersome at best, but with a little creativity I managed to come up with an effective and practical solution for how to manage both controllers at once! As strange as it looks, I swear it works great! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 A good way to play Stargate is to use a rubber band or two to hold second stick under the first one and you can just bump the directions on second one with your knee. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WispFollower Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 Intellivision Lock 'n' Chase - 450 minutes This game is maddeningly addictive. I'm getting closer to my old high score. My times this week were only from two play sessions. When I play this game, I keep thinking, "One more round!" Before I know it, hours have gone by. Very few games grab me like this these days. Not a classic game, but Rocket League on PS4 has the same hold on me right now. It has five minute matches, the perfect length to keep thinking of going one more round. It's hard to stop! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 My times for the week: N64: All-Star Baseball '99 - 119 min. . My favorite baseball game of all time. I have pitched 4 perfect games and 8 non-perfect no-hitters. I once re-bought an N64 JUST for this game. Resold it later... Reading this post has me wanting to do it all over again. LOL!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 27, 2015 Author Share Posted July 27, 2015 My favorite baseball game of all time. I have pitched 4 perfect games and 8 non-perfect no-hitters. I once re-bought an N64 JUST for this game. Resold it later... Reading this post has me wanting to do it all over again. LOL!!! Nice! I only played for a couple hours, as you can see, but it seemed to play very well and was easy to pick up, and with some nice strategic elements (especially the pitching). BTW do you get the same one-screen ending for every mode (full season, straight to playoffs, straight to WS) or difficulty? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 Remember, your pitchers have 8 pitches... Not just 4. Z button is your friend. Regular season games end one way, playoff games end another, and (IIRC) WS games are different altogether. It has been a few years. R. Clemens is a beast... Hit the bottom left corner of the strike zone with the Forkball and youre money. I love the pitching because you can start pitches anywhere and drop em out of the zone... Spitballs are ridiculous. Build your own pitcher with a fast fastball, slow change, and 3-4 wicked breakers and a slider thrown in. Money 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 28, 2015 Author Share Posted July 28, 2015 Here's the summary for Week 30, running from July 20 - 26. We logged 7247 7262 minutes of eligible playtime, playing 68 games on a total of 20 systems. Top 10: 1. Phantasy Star III (Genesis) - 1090 2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 1070 3. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PlayStation) - 697 4. South Park (N64) - 634 5. Lock 'n' Chase (Intellivision) - 450 6. Mangia (Atari 2600) - 294 7. Chaos Engine, The (Amiga) - 275 8. H.E.R.O. (Atari 2600) - 195 9. Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure (Genesis) - 180 10. Chopper Attack (N64) - 155 Pre-NES top 10: 1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 1070 2. Lock 'n' Chase (Intellivision) - 450 3. Mangia (Atari 2600) - 294 4. H.E.R.O. (Atari 2600) - 195 5. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 120 6. Princess Rescue (Atari 2600) - 98 7. Obelix (Atari 2600) - 90 8. Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (Atari 2600) - 61 9. Defender II / Stargate (Atari 2600) - 53 10. Sky Jinks (Atari 2600) - 50 Top 10 systems: 1. Atari 2600 (2181) 2. Genesis (1804) 3. N64 (908) 4. PlayStation (697) 5. Amiga (583) 6. Intellivision (450) 7. PC (DOS) (140) 8. Vectrex (120) 9. Arcade (65) 10. Game Boy Color (56) I thought last week was big, but this one is bigger: Week 30 of 2015 is our biggest week of all time, with more minutes logged than ever before! Wow! The game count and system diversity may not be quite as high as last week, but some major heavy hitters still pushed us to the all-time record. While Kaboom and the VCS take the #1 spot on two of three charts, the Genesis RPG Phantasy Star III manages to edge it out on the Top 10 by only 20 minutes -- a margin of less than 2%! It's no surprise that Phantasy Star III also gets an instant trip to the 1000-minute club, with 1135 minutes to date -- but astonishingly, three other games do too: the N64 FPS South Park (1121 minutes), the PlayStation survival horror title Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1508 minutes), and the well-regarded Atari 2600 racer Enduro (1018 minutes). All of these become members #159-162 -- and if things keep up like this, it's going to become a crowded club! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 Incredible numbers! It got me curious to look into who contributed to all those minutes, but I'm getting the total even higher, 7262 mins? The number of games and systems are the same though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 28, 2015 Author Share Posted July 28, 2015 Aha, good catch, thanks for that! I found the error -- I put in zylon's Wolfenstein 3D Jaguar time as 5 minutes instead of 20. And on that note, here's an updated list of our 10 biggest weeks: 1. 2015, Week 30 (7262) 2. 2010, Week 6 (7157) 3. 2012, Week 18 (6762) 4. 2015, Week 29 (6610) 5. 2010, Week 8 (6473) 6. 2012, Week 1 (6451) 7. 2010, Week 5 (6230) 8. 2010, Week 10 (6198) 9. 2015, Week 28 (5901) 10. 2014, Week 27 (5780) The threshold is getting closer to 6000+ minutes. I wonder if we'll ever break 10,000 in one week? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karokoenig Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 The threshold is getting closer to 6000+ minutes. I wonder if we'll ever break 10,000 in one week? Don't give people ideas, hehe. There is some folk around that would happily sacrifice a week of real life for such a record. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 28, 2015 Author Share Posted July 28, 2015 No kidding -- we have some weirdos around who'll play a game for 60+ hours in a single week. I mean, how messed up would you have to be? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karokoenig Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 As someone who spent 10 hours in one week on Atari 2600 Bowling (!), I'm not gonna point fingers at anyone :-). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 Tiny Toons pushed it over the top!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 Guilty of Phantasy Star III That was my favorite one and I have gotten all 4 endings. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skippy B. Coyote Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 I thought last week was big, but this one is bigger: Week 30 of 2015 is our biggest week of all time, with more minutes logged than ever before! Wow! That's awesome! I am honored to have been able to contribute to the biggest week in the history of the tracker! I always love reading through this thread every week to see what games people around here are playing, because it often reminds me about games I have in my own library that I haven't played in a while and should revisit. This week got me thinking about Pitfall II and Wolfenstein 3D, both of which are great games that I should play more often. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever played Wolfenstein 3D past the 4th episode; so maybe I'll have to go back and give it another try sometime this week. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atarian7 Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 No kidding -- we have some weirdos around who'll play a game for 60+ hours in a single week. I mean, how messed up would you have to be? 3600 minutes? I don't think I could play Kaboom! that much in a week. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 If I understood Thegoldenband correctly, ROTK is a low maintenance game that you need to check up on every now and then, not an action packed game like Kaboom! where just one second of lost concentration will have fatal consequences. On a similar note, I reengaged with Premier Manager on the Amiga yesterday evening and easily sank 3,5 hours into it while chatting on IRC and watching TV at the same time. A minute is a minute, but many of the simulators, management and other types of games will take much less of your concentration than action games do. Actually I can imagine playing two different, slow paced games simultaneously which would make it possible for you to play more minutes than there are in a week, or perhaps the tracker prefers if people only play one game a time? :-P 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 29, 2015 Author Share Posted July 29, 2015 If I understood Thegoldenband correctly, ROTK is a low maintenance game that you need to check up on every now and then, not an action packed game like Kaboom! where just one second of lost concentration will have fatal consequences. Exactly. There's no action element whatsoever to ROTK -- it's all turn-based -- and I was using a very cautious, methodical, low-risk strategy to boot. For example, you have the option of delegating control of states to your governors, but I maintained manual control of almost all of them so that I could have them spend 1 gold per turn to slowly improve land values. Had I been less of a micromanager I could've saved some time. On a similar note, I reengaged with Premier Manager on the Amiga yesterday evening and easily sank 3,5 hours into it while chatting on IRC and watching TV at the same time. A minute is a minute, but many of the simulators, management and other types of games will take much less of your concentration than action games do. Actually I can imagine playing two different, slow paced games simultaneously which would make it possible for you to play more minutes than there are in a week, or perhaps the tracker prefers if people only play one game a time? :-P Ha! Once or twice I've multitasked, especially with chess games where the CPU can think for an hour or more, so I might have a chess game going on an emulated SNES while playing a different game on real hardware. As long as one isn't simply on pause while I play the other one, why not? And yeah, strategy games can go remarkably well with TV watching, talking on the net or phone, etc. I need to find another Koei game to play while I watch TV with my wife! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 Last night... Age of Empires II and TecmoBowl (emulated)... Split screen on my PC. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 Someone needs to make a turn based version of Kaboom! so Atarian7 can join in on the multitasking gameplay fun! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karokoenig Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 (edited) Might as well post today, since the weekend will be too busy to play games. Family visiting roundtrip... Atari 2600 Bugs Bunny: 11 min Obelix: 5 min Xevious: 6 min PC (DOS) Historyline 1914-18: 975 min Played a little for the High Score Club, plus Xevious, a proto of which has recently been discovered. A more than okay game considering the hardware limitations, but it's not gonna keep me entertained for longer. The big number is coming in from World War I. Unable to do anything useful due to a cold and with lots of help from my parents who took care of my kid for the time, I was finally able to tackle the last three maps of the French campaign in a huge marathon. I took longer than I needed to, actually. In the biggest map of all, I made one mistake. It wasn't fatal, but it led to beating the map at least 2 hours later than "normal". I was so pissed off at myself and the game that instead of just taking the enemy's HQ, I deliberately chose to take the tedious route and went for total crushing victory by destroying all remaining enemy units. That added another hour to the map. Unnecessary, but satisfying . Anyway. After playing this game for the first time more than 20 years ago, I finally consider it beaten. Thegoldenband, would you be so kind and tell me the total playtime I have accumulated since I started HL some weeks ago? That way, I could make a rough estimate on how much lifetime I spent overall on this game. Edited July 31, 2015 by karokoenig 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 31, 2015 Author Share Posted July 31, 2015 Thegoldenband, would you be so kind and tell me the total playtime I have accumulated since I started HL some weeks ago? That way, I could make a rough estimate on how much lifetime I spent overall on this game. 4,391 minutes! Or if you prefer: 3 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes. At the moment that would make it #8 on the all-time list, with Silent Hunter at #7 BTW. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karokoenig Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 4,391 minutes! Or if you prefer: 3 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes. At the moment that would make it #8 on the all-time list, with Silent Hunter at #7 BTW. Thanks so much for the info. That's roughly 73 hours for one campaign. And that's with experience on how to beat the maps as quick and efficint as possible. All in all, I would estimate that I spent a total of about 200 to 250 hours on this game since it has been released. The same (or probably even more) goes for Silent Hunter. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skippy B. Coyote Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I won't be ready to submit my usual weekly report until Sunday night, but in the meantime I do have some rather sad news to report. This week the Vader model Atari 2600 that I have been playing all our Atari 2600 games on ever since I got back into Atari as an adult has died. The modulator along with at least one or two capacitors fried and the console is as dead as doornail. Because of this my video game play time for the week will be substantially lower than usual, but I do have a new Sears Video Arcade II on the way that should arrive mid next week to take the Vader's place. I'll still be holding onto the old dead Vader in the hopes that I can find someone on the AtariAge forum that would do the needed repairs for me if I mailed them the board and paid them for the parts and labor, but with any luck the SVA II will make a good replacement system until I can get the Vader fixed up. Rest in peace Vader, I knew thee well. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.