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High Score Competition (March: The Mine)


arcadeshopper

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On 6/8/2020 at 9:54 PM, fimbulvetr said:

I need more practice! I keep getting myself in a spot where if I crash into something, because the game re-spawns the ship almost where it last crashed, I keep instantly crashing after re-spawn until all my ships are gone.

 

 

6E860EE5-5335-4D01-A5E4-CF2156BE7AD4.jpeg

but look at that sweet monitor!   i bet you could play all day on that official TI Color Monitor!

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Okay, I think this is my top score.  This took a while.  It gets pretty crazy in the later levels.  A lot of firing enemy ships during the main phase of play and a lot of mines.  And since sprite limits make it impossible to display shadows for all of them, it's hard to tell how high they all are. 

 

image.thumb.png.739346392bc6abad239d4c3b6f46e3b0.png

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June 2020

Arcturus

1.       111620 pixelpedant

2.       57670 globeron

3.       34410 jwild

4.       8070 roadrunner

5.       7100 fimbulvetr

6.       6200 jblenkle

Congratulations to pixelpedant and thank everyone for playing!

Pixel, would you like to select a game for July?

 

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Okay, here's my proposition for next month's game: the second, completed but unreleased, prototype of Wing War. 

 

Available on JS99er via Software->more->Wingwar

 

Available in the WHT FinalGROM archive under /GAMES/ and here:

 

phm3223C.BIN

phm3223G.BIN

 

Speech is present and significant.  No other requirements. 

 

I prefer to play with a joystick, but keyboard control provides an additional control feature (acceleration of descent) not available via joystick. 

 

Modern manual based on the Colecovision materials but with all content modified to describe the TI-99/4A version is available here:

 

Wing War Manual.pdf

 

image.png.a6645db165df081c7b4f48849f18d32d.png

 

I can confirm that all included treasures/objectives (named in there) can be successfully acquired and returned to the lair for the according reward.

 

I've recorded gameplay for it in the past which is on YouTube, but I don't know if I actually advise watching it, if you haven't played it before.  Exploring the world is most of the point of the game, as I see it, though high score is naturally an objective.  So I don't really see all that much point in playing it via walkthrough.  As much as that might get you to a high score quicker. 

 

The manual is probably enough, as far as explaining in general how things work and what's in the game. 

 

Due to the nature of the game (with destructible environments and the ability to find or create new paths between areas), I wouldn't be surprised if folks are able to "break" the game in such a way as to accrue arbitrarily high scores.  But extra lives via eggs are not a feature of this version, which I think was a sensible design move.  So that opportunity isn't trivially available. 

 

Programmer for the game is unknown, as far as I'm aware.  Principal game art is attributed to Imagic's Karen Elliot.  This does not appear to have been farmed out to Western Technologies like Demon Attack and Moonsweeper were.  Probably ported in-house, but not by anybody of consequence.  Which was the case for CV Wing War and TI Fathom as far as I can tell.  The big names at Imagic were Atari and Mattel guys first and foremost.  Rick Levine did TI-99 Microsurgeon since it was his pet project.  Conceivable Levine likewise handled the (both of them unreleased) INTV and TI-99 Wing War versions, too?  He had a habit of leaving easter eggs in his INTV games, so it sure would be cool if one turned up here. 

 

 

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Further Wing War trivia:

 

It was originally announced as Flap! at Summer CES 1983.  Which seems like a really lame name for a game in which you're a dragon who destroys its enemies with dragonfire.  But Imagic had already released Dragonfire the previous year.  So they might have felt a bit constrained by that.  The Wing War name change was announced in September 83 (at the same time as renames for Tarantula and Hop To It).  Imagic had earlier that year renamed Escape from Argos to No Escape!  So a bit of an issue for them, at the time - announcing then completely rebranding titles.  Anyway, Wing War has a little more spice to it than Flap! at least.  Michael Becker (art director at Imagic, at the time) mentioned in an interview that they had another (unreleased) project called Web War being worked on during this period.  So there might have been some interest in name synergy, there.  Footage and publicity screenshots survive of the Intellivision version, but the game itself does not.  The 2600 version is very rare and PAL only.  The CV version got a proper release, but in the very last days of Imagic's involvement in the console market, making it fairly rare itself. 

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I love learning new games. This one is challenging me so far. I’m with Vorticon at 0.

So bring crystals back to the lair (starting room?). Drop them anywhere? My score seems to stay at zero doing that. Wash them first? I did that (color of fountain matters? I did hear a chime when I got close to the fountain). Still zero. I think I saw a little bag icon on the bottom of the screen after dropping a crystal once.

I’m tempted to watch the video but I’m holding off.

I’ve explored a bit and that’s pretty cool.

The order of being crystals back is also interesting. I’m just not sure I really know if I’m bringing them back correctly.

Not sure I should ask for hints... but if you’re feeling generous...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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So, perhaps watching a demonstration of the core gameplay is advisable, after all:

 

 

I do think the intended gameplay is "Zeldaish" in that it kind of expects you to wander around sort of just trying things, until you learn how the world works. 

 

But for the sake of high score competition, this shows the basic crystal (and treasure) collection process, and one place (not the only place) to find each crystal type.

 

Note, as per the manual

 

1) that crystals must be collected in the order

 

Water->Air->Fire

or

Fire->Air->Water

 

But the prior makes more sense, since water crystals are everywhere, while fire and air crystals are harder to come by.

 

2) that crystals and treasures must be purified in the three fountains which are on the way to the dragon's den.

 

 

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score284.png.28c72e408f9f17f35c4b3d0a3862bdde.png

Made two super crystals, but couldn't get another air crystal back to the lair safely after the cave closed off.  Do they really intend for you to dig thru the ground with fireballs every time you go outside?  Or is it subtly nudging you to look for the treasure instead?

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