What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2015 (Season 8)

[Atarian7]

Congratulations on completing ROTK. I don't think I could ever play for over 60 hours in one week.

[karokoenig]

I don't think I could ever play for over 60 hours in one week.

 

I hink it happened to me back in the days when I sank whole days into Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. But that's long ago.

[carlsson]

20-30 hours in a week on the same game perhaps, but 60 probably would be a bit too much for me even if I had the spare time. Of course the game needs to be of the strategy/management type, I would never be anywhere close to 20 hours of an action packed game like Kaboom!

[+thegoldenband]

Well, I wouldn't have thought I could do 60 either! I guess it was a kind of "perfect storm". I wouldn't expect a repeat performance anytime soon, though I did read the manual for ROTK II today...

[carlsson]

Perhaps a new challenge would be 60 (or even 6) hours of Rise of the Robots (ROTR)?

[doomwaves]

Not a whole lot on the front this week.. Didn't really play a lot of anything else.

 

PC

Doom 2 - 180 minutes

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Peter Penguin (aka Frisco): 4 min

Pygmy (aka Lock 'n Chase): 9 min

 

NES

Isolated Warrior: 15 min

 

Not much to say this week. Isolated Warrior is a pretty nice (and rather hard) isometric Zaxxon-like shooter. I wouldn't go as far as calling it a hidden gem, but it looks good and controls well. It's just really really hard... I stumbled across it on a flea market. It's NTSC - quite a rare sight here in Germany. Good that I have disabled my lockout chip :-).

[carlsson]

Guesstimated numbers:

 

C64:

Olympic Skier - 5 min.

Creativision:

Crazy Chicky - 3 min.

Famicom:

Super Mario Bros 3 - 3 min.

PC DOS:

Stunts / 4D Sports - 3 min.

Sord M5:

Step Up - 10 min.

TI-99/4A:

Parsec - 2 min.

... and so yet another retrogaming exhibition has come to a close, thus very few minutes on several systems (although I own all but the TI so I can play the rest whenever I want). When it comes to adding to the collection, I split an auction package with a friend of mine and paid ~$50 for a box with C64 games and peripherals that estimate to ~$170, including EA "LP sleeve" titles such as M.U.L.E. and Worms?, a Handic Superbox, some loose utility cartridges, manuals and a number of packs of used floppy disks, so now I've got even more of the latter.

Edited January 31, 2015 by carlsson

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!- 287 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 24,968

 

 

 

[Iwantgames:)]

MS-DOS -

 

DOOM - 256min

Defeated the minions of hell and returned safely to Earth .... Wait a min is that a severed rabbit head O_O ...

 

Ultima I - 15min

 

 

Non Eligible -

 

Ipaq 210 -

 

Pocket UFO - 15min

Faithful recreation of X-Com: Ufo Defense on the Pocket PC

 

Porta Pinball - 67min

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week (January 26th through February 1st)...

 

Online(non-eligible):

Castaway 2 - 311 min. in 2 sessions

 

I finished Castaway 2 this week. I have no next game planned for the next days, although if I get time, I might try "Perfect Service" if I remember the title right, but that's also a modern PC game which would be non-eligible. Other than that, I'm still working on adapting the setlist for my father's birthday party to my new keyboard, and I've made 22 out of 33 songs by now, but on some of the last, I will have to print the lyrics in order not to screw them up, so that might get a bit more time-consuming.

[BurritoBeans]

Here

 

C64-

Impossible Mission 2 - 194 minutes

Apple II-

Cranston Manor - 53 minutes

SNES-

Wanderers From Ys III - 216 minutes

Atari 2600 - Atlantis - 4 minutes

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

1) JOUST - 125 minutes. Joust is the 3rd game of Season 4 of the NEW 2600 High Score Club. Coming soon: video and statistical tables which present more gameplay details.

 

2) JR. PAC-MAN - 210 minutes in several sessions. Took me many, many attempts and reset games to get my new high score.

Highest score: 70,850 points (Bicycle and 4 ghosts), obtained on 2600 NEW HSC Season 4, Week 2.

 

ATARI 7800:

1) JR. PAC-MAN - 185 minutes in several sessions. Check out the following videos which I recorded.

 

2) PAPA SMURF IN PAC-LAND II (Hack of JR. PAC-MAN) - 20 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:

Phantom Fighter - 75 min.

Platoon - 1 min.

Top Players' Tennis - 19 min.

SNES:

Pocky & Rocky - 108 min.

Super Back to the Future II - 166 min.

Super Battleship - 40 min.

Beat Super Back to the Future II in one sitting. Thoughts on that, and other games I've beaten so far this year, here.

My wife and I also beat Pocky & Rocky on Easy difficulty. Cute game, not extraordinary but reasonably fun for a while.

Otherwise I resumed work on Top Players' Tennis and the SNES version of Super Battleship, and got through the first level of another NES game I haven't played in two decades, the undead-themed Phantom Fighter.

[oyamafamily]

Check out my 2600 Joust gameplay video and statistical table, presented for 2600 NEW HSC Season 4, Week 3 (Points and Times).

 

 

Edited February 2, 2015 by oyamafamily

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 5, running from January 26 - February 1. We logged 2208 minutes of eligible play, playing 27 games on a total of 10 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 287

2. Doom (PC (DOS)) - 256

3. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (SNES) - 216

4. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 210

5. Impossible Mission 2 (C64) - 194

6. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 185

7. Doom II (PC (DOS)) - 180

8. Super Back to the Future II (SNES) - 166

9. Joust (Atari 2600) - 125

10. Pocky & Rocky (SNES) - 108

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 287

2. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 210

3. Impossible Mission 2 (C64) - 194

4. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 185

5. Joust (Atari 2600) - 125

6. Cranston Manor (Apple II) - 53

7. Papa Smurf in Pac-Land II [hack of Jr. Pac-Man] (Atari 7800) - 20

8. Step Up (Sord M5) - 10

9. Lock N Chase (Atari 2600) - 9

10. Olympic Skier (C64) - 5

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (639)

2. SNES (530)

3. PC (DOS) (454)

4. Atari 7800 (205)

5. C64 (199)

6. NES/Famicom (113)

7. Apple II (53)

8. Sord M5 (10)

9. Creativision (3)

10. TI-99/4A (2)

Ah, a welcome return to normalcy: Kaboom's on top, the Atari is too, and all's right with the world. Nice to see several 8-bit computers making the top 10.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Joust: 70 min

Mr. Do!: 10 min

Space Jockey: 9 min

 

NES

Megaman 3: 7 min

 

HSC mostly, and some testing of hardware. I also finally got a copy of Space Jockey for a decent price. Which is great, since it's the original game on which Time Race is based (i.e. out of which Time Race was hacked). And Time Race is one of my three original carts left in my possession from my childhood. I since have tried to get every Time Race clone/hack/pirate out there, which is quite a task :-).

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!- 236 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 19,983

[carlsson]

Odyssey^2 / Philips Videopac G7000:

K.C. Munchkin! - 12 min.

Barely a blip of gaming this week, and the only reason I played this game was because I managed to tune in the TV channel on a Philips Hotel TV that previously I had no remote to access the setup functions.

[Iwantgames:)]

Got a NES toploader this week so been playing a few hours of Nintendo this week

 

NES -

 

Adventures of Bayou Billy - 10min

Game looks pretty decent but after having to punch crocs to death you'd think Billy would be strong enough to climb out the water and not get stuck effectively halting my progress

 

Battle Tank - 40min

Really like this one, maybe my favorite NES game I have so far beside silent service and Mario of course

 

Defender of The Crown - 5min

 

Duck Hunt - 12min

I remember this game being harder back in the day

 

Hydlide - 10min

Seems like it could be fun if I could not die every 30seconds lol

 

Operation Wolf - 12min

 

Pinball - 15min

 

Silent Service - 100min

Sank my first convoy 2 Tankers, a Troop Transport and a Frigate. Never stood a chance against me Death from below

Continued my killing spree in a 30 day patrol, sinking 12 ships for a total 62500 tons sunk

 

Snakes Revenge - 5min

 

Super Mario Bros. - 60min

 

Xenophobe - 5min

 

World Class Track Meet - 5min

 

 

 

Non Qualifying -

 

Ipaq 210 -

 

Empire of The Undead - 57min

Beat the game, was a decent 3Dish sidescrolling beat em up but to short and how are aliens part of the undead horde?? Lol

[+Ripdubski]

Was a good week, well any week that involves classic game playing is a good week.

 

Atari 7800

Donkey Kong - 40

Donkey Kong Jr - 35

Pac-Man Collection - 70

Asteroids Deluxe - 25

 

Atari 800

Dig Dug - 20

Frogger - 10

Galaxian - 15

 

Arcade

Gyruss - 30

1942 - 10

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (February 2nd through 8th)...

 

Online (non-eligible):

Perfect Service - 72 min.

 

TI-99:

Quack - 5 min.

 

Perfect Service is a restaurant simulator where you control your employees by assigning them different tasks. It turned out to be a trial version for a game you have to purchase, otherwise you're stuck after the 10th level. But the game wasn't so hot for me anyway since the simulation aspect falls pretty short, there's only so much you can actually control, but not the restaurant layout or the menu.

 

Quack is an adaption of an X-Basic game I got back in 1984 at the TI-99 Journal Club called "Duck". I renamed it to "Quack" and enhanced it by turning some of the enemy sprites into Pac-Men and adding some music that plays if the player reaches his goal. The game itself is a bit similar to the final stage of Donkey Kong Jr where you have to climb up a vine avoiding things that come flying from the left and right, and the music I put in is "Der Zauberer" by W. A. Mozart, which my cousin Petra Unterberger sang at a local TV show (Guten Abend am Samstag mit Heinz Conrads) back in October 1983. I actually played the game in order to record my TI-99 version of the song to an MP3 after having recorded Petra's version from an old tape.

 

Since this is an unreleased game (as far as I know), I've attached the disk image to this post. "QUACK" is to be run under TI Extended Basic. There are more files on the disk... not all of them programmed by me. The "Load" program is actually TI-Frogger, then there's "AUTORENNEN" and "CAR-RACE", two different car racing games, then "DUCK" the original version, "FUJI" which draws a hi-res picture of Fuji Speedway, but uses @APESOFT Grafic Basic which would have to be loaded first, "KATALOG" listing the directory of the disk, "LONGOLDSIN", a music program playing "Auld Lang Syne" out of the German Book "99 Special", "MISSILE", an attempt to implement "Missile Command" with @APESOFT Grafic Basic, "MUSETTE", a somewhat distorted music program out of "99 Special", "RECHNERSIN" where I paired "Auld lang syne" with a calculation game (how silly is that?), "RIVET", an attempt of mine to do something similar to Donkey Kong in XBasic... I guess the remaining programs are essentially non-functional or incomplete. By the way, the name of the disk "HERRBLEIER" means "Mr. Bleier", which is the name of the dealer where we got our first TI-99 console and many other things for it. To that end, the disk contains programs I once wanted to show him.

 

HERRBLEIER.DSK

 

Other than that, I tried hard to come up with a rule when to use NiMh rechargeable batteries vs. Alkalines. However this is hard to judge because some variables are unknown and can only be guessed, most of all the battery life of the NiMh batteries in years when they only get used for a few cycles a year.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600: Mr. Do! - 105 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

1) Pac-Man Collection - 180 minutes in several sessions. Check out my Hangly-Man gameplay videos which I made for this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAXHyWn690U

 

2) Armor Attack - 130 minutes in several sessions.

Highest Score (Easy) - 20,000 points, for 7800 High Score Club Season 7, Game 16

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Phantom Fighter - 32 min.

Racket Attack - 95 min.

Top Players' Tennis - 481 min.

Beat Top Players' Tennis with Ivan Lendl. I hoped to be done with the game when I reached #1 and won the Australian Open for my fourth consecutive major. But irritatingly, I then had to replay and re-win the next three Grand Slam events because the game's victory condition is apparently for you to win all four Slam events in a single calendar year.

Fair enough, that's the classic definition of a "Grand Slam". However, to qualify for the Slam events you have to earn points at the Asmik Open, which I won twice in a row -- but then the game starts you out at the French Open, which is the second Slam of the year. In other words, the process of qualifying for the majors forces you to miss the Australian Open, so your whole first year of Grand Slam play is essentially irrelevant! Such a stupid design.

I then started work on Racket Attack, which I played through last year but needs to be completed again for the NA "beat-'em-all" effort (which is going at a blistering pace so far: they're closing in on 550 NTSC games beaten, out of 677 total).

This time around I'm playing the women's circuit, which has the virtue of playing best-of-three sets instead of five, and I've won my first three matches (out of seven). Definitely a better and deeper game than Top Players' Tennis, with a much less severe case of "cow on ice" player movement.

I also made it to Level 3 of Phantom Fighter for the NA effort, but someone else finished it in the meantime. So I'll probably drop it since I already beat that one...nearly 25 years ago. Gulp.

[twoquickcapri]

Atari Jaguar:
Zool 2 - 70 min.

Sony Playstation:
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete - 98 min.

Edited February 9, 2015 by twoquickcapri