What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2016 (Season 9)

[oyamafamily]

VIDEOS OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Pitfall II Lost Caverns, Perfect Score of 199,000 points

 

2) Ms. Pac-Man for 7800 NEW HSC, Opening of Season 1

[carlsson]

C64:

International Tennis - 4 min.

NES:

Bubble Bobble - 25 min.

Super Mario Bros 1 - 8 min.

SNES:

Fever Pitch - 4 min.

Super Cassette Vision:

Elevator Fight - 2 min.

Gamecube (ineligible):

Super Smash Melee - 4 min.

A mixed bag of testing and playing at events. I tried a PS1 controller on the C64 using the PSX64 interface, but using analog joysticks doesn't really anything when the input is converted to digital signals anyway.

[karokoenig]

PC (DOS)

Historyline 1914-18: 105 min

 

Another surprisingly quick and easy map on my way to finally conquering this game.

[BurritoBeans]

Well, I got a bit more time in.

 

Arcade:

Arkanoid - 10 minutes

Galaga - 20 minutes

Ghosts 'n Goblins - 40 minutes

Ghouls 'n Ghosts - 40 minutes

New Rally-X - 30 minutes

Pengo - 20 minutes

Qix - 60 minutes

Viewpoint - 20 minutes

 

TI-99

Parsec - 30 minutes

 

Alright so yeah more arcade stuff. We dragged the massive thing into the basement which took a lot of lifting, and so that's got a good bit of playtime. For those games I don't have much to say about - they're all just kinda fun. I also broke out the TI-99 to play a bit of Parsec, I always liked that game but I don't use my TI-99 that much really so I don't play it all that much. So yeah that's all, noting crazy really.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (October 3rd through 9th)...

 

MS-DOS:

Mario's Cement Factory (Simulator) - 25 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Hexagonal 2048 - 10 min.

 

PC/Windows (non-eligible):

Mario Bros. (Simulator by Madrigal) - 28 min.

Too much cement - 23 min. in 2 sessions

 

This week I continued playing simulators for Mario Bros. and Mario's Cement Factory. Too much cement is another simulator for Mario's Cement Factory (but the tabletop version, not the handheld version) programmed in FreeBasic. Sadly, it has no sound, and fullscreen doesn't work. It also doesn't seem to be terribly accurate.

 

Then I played Madrigal's Mario Bros. simulator, another simulator for the handheld game. I got a bit over 600 points, and then I programmed a bot in VB5 which plays the game automatically. It got over 1000 points, which reveals a bug in the simulator, a sort of kill screen where he game stops putting up more boxes, so the player can't score any more points.

 

Apart from that, I replayed Hexagonal 2048 for a quick session, but didn't achieve the 2048 tile.

[Atarian7]

@oyama I wish I had drawn Pitfall II for the second round.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 380 minutes

Mario Bros. - 98 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 222,961

 

 

[zylon]

5200-

Megamania- 45min

 

Classic games on Xbox 360-

Doom (original)- 50min

Millipede- 20min

[+wongojack]

I played the X360 version of Ikaruga for like 10 mins. Other than that, I played Shadows of Mordor on XOne for double digit hours this week. I also played Earth Defense Force 2017 on X360 for about 45 minutes.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Family Circuit - 3 min.

Heavy Shreddin' - 3 min.

Turbografx-16:

Chew Man Fu - 12 min.

Davis Cup Tennis - 7 min.

Double Dungeons - 166 min.

Keith Courage in Alpha Zones - 5 min.

Lady Sword - 51 min.

Moto Roader - 64 min.

Sonic Spike: World Championship Beach Volleyball - 36 min.

Toilet Kids - 8 min.

Vigilante - 24 min.

World Court Tennis - 21 min.

Yo Bro - 37 min.

 

In the course of various Turbografx-16/PC Engine explorations, I beat Vigilante, and also completed three dungeons in Double Dungeons.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

While not the biggest week in terms of play time, this week marked by far the biggest change to my household's retro gaming center this year. On Wednesday we sold our 60-in-1 Centipede multicade arcade machine, and used a good portion of the money to begin rebuilding the Atari 2600 collection that I foolishly sold around this time last year. Welcome to the gaming center Light Sixer!

 

 

 

Ineligible
Dead Space: Extraction (Nintendo Wii) - 98 minutes

Atari 2600
Asteroids - 32 minutes

Battlezone - 19 minutes

Breakout - 116 minutes

Centipede - 134 minutes

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (Played on Activision Anthology for Game Boy Advance) - 23 minutes
River Raid (Played on Activision Anthology for Game Boy Advance) - 11 minutes

​Space Invaders - 7 minutes

Starmaster - 12 minutes

 

PlayStation
Resident Evil 2 - 331 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
783 minutes (13 hours 3 minutes) [685 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Atari 2600: 354 minutes
PlayStation: 331 minutes

Nintendo Wii: 98 minutes

 

 

Along with the Light Sixer and a small assortment of games, this week the misses and I also purchased a Harmony Encore cartridge to give us access to the full Atari 2600 library and allow me to compete in the Atari 2600 high score club next season while I rebuild the old collection, a new in box CX-80 Trak-Ball courtesy of a generous Kaboom! fan, a whole slew of parts to finish the custom Atari 2600 arcade stick project I've been planning for the last couple months, and quite a few controllers from Best Electronics. From Best I picked up a CX-78 joypad, one of their very nice Atari light guns, and a set of of upgraded paddle controllers with lifetime warrantied S5 super pots. Needless to say it was not an inexpensive week around here.

 

After picking up most of the hardware to being rebuilding my old Atari 2600 collection I then had to find a new CRT TV, since the coaxial port on the old one went out and stopped working the same day we picked up the Light Sixer. It took a few days to get sorted out, but eventually I did find someone on my local Craigslist giving away a similar model of Sony Trinitron to the one that I have been using for the past several years. I picked it up this morning, brought it home, hooked it up, and quickly discovered that even though it was only made one year prior to my last CRT TV (in 1991 as opposed to 1992) the visual quality wasn't nearly as good and it had a pretty awful sounding mono speaker that made a strange ultra high pitched noise like an almost inaudible dog whistle and made the ears of everyone in the household who came near it start aching and feeling like they were under a heavy load of pressure within seconds of approaching the TV. The high pitched noise was so strong that it even made the wax in my ears begin to melt! Needless to say the new TV went out to the dumpster pretty quickly, and the next hour or so was spent moping about having all this great new Atari stuff and no decent looking TV to play it on.

 

It was at that point the misses asked if there was any way to remove the coaxial port from the new and strangely defective TV and put it in our old one. I had no idea whether or not it would work since I had never opened up a tube TV before, but I went out and brought the auditory abomination back inside, opened it up, and low and behold it was actually really simple to remove the coax connector. So, I took the connector out of that TV, swapped it out with the broken one in our old TV, and voila! The old TV was good as new and played Atari perfectly again!

 

After that the rest of the day was spent making up for lost time playing Atari again, and it was just a ton of fun all around. I discovered that I really love the CX-78 joypad and find it way more comfortable to use than the standard CX-40 joysticks, that the Best Electronics upgraded paddle controllers are absolutely phenomenal and worth every penny (for the first time in my life I actually beat Breakout thanks to them, a feat which I couldn't get even remotely close to with stock paddle controllers), and that my better half can and will still thoroughly kick my ass in Centipede. Even after a year without practice she can still break 200,000 no problem, which just kinda blows my mind since I rarely ever make it past 100k even though I've been playing this game since I was a kid. She also had a good bit of fun rolling the score in Asteroids on A difficulty tonight, which is another gaming accomplishment that I've never managed to pull off.

 

The rest of the week's gaming time was filled by me finishing up my play through of Dead Space: Extraction and the misses doing multiple speed runs through Resident Evil 2 to unlock all the extras, and I imagine she'll be doing the same for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis next week if the trend continues. As for me, the only gaming plans that I've got lined up for next week are Atari, Atari, and more Atari! Man is it ever good to have a 2600 again.

Edited October 10, 2016 by Jin

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

My times for the week.

 

Magnavox Odyssey 500: 15 Minutes

 

Arcade/Mame:

 

Mario Bros: 60 Minutes

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 41, running from October 3 - 9. We logged 2637 minutes of eligible play, playing 52 games on a total of 14 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 380

2. Resident Evil 2 (PlayStation) - 331

3. Double Dungeons (TG-16/PC Engine) - 166

4. Centipede (Atari 2600) - 157

5. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 120

6. Breakout (Atari 2600) - 116

7. Historyline 1914-1918 (PC (DOS)) - 105

8. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 102

9. Mario Bros. (Atari 2600) - 98

10. Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (Atari 2600) - 68

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 380

2. Centipede (Atari 2600) - 157

3. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 120

4. Breakout (Atari 2600) - 116

5. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 102

6. Mario Bros. (Atari 2600) - 98

7. Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (Atari 2600) - 68

8. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 60

8. Qix (Arcade) - 60

10. Megamania (Atari 5200) - 45

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1059)

2. TG-16/PC Engine (431)

3. PlayStation (331)

4. Arcade (300)

5. Atari 7800 (180)

5. PC (DOS) (180)

7. Atari 5200 (45)

8. NES/Famicom (36)

9. TI-99/4A (30)

10. Neo Geo AES/MVS (20)

And Kaboom goes back to the top! (Kaboom goes the dynamite?)

Meanwhile, with 1080 minutes logged to date, Ms. Pac-Man for Atari 7800 becomes member #239 of the 1000-minute club.

[karokoenig]

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 85 min

 

What little time I had was spent mostly underwater. One more patrol, in several sessions saving in between.

[carlsson]

Famicom:

Bump 'n Jump - 11 min.

Magic Jewelry - 56 min.

Super Cassette Vision:

Doraemon - 5 min.

Nebula - 20 min.

Super Golf - 12 min.

Super Mahjongg - 2 min.

Yay, three new SCV games. Unlike Milky Princess which I haven't listed previously because I don't know Japanese and know a squat what the game says, at least I gave Super Mahjongg (note the double G) a try although I don't know squat about the game itself. The others were easier to understand.

I set myself a new PB on Magic Jewelry, at least when it comes to points with 617215 pts. I have scored more jewels and reached one level further before, but then had a lower score. The main reason for playing the Famicom though was to determine if a Family BASIC cartridge should start at all without the keyboard plugged in. I'm still unsure if it should, because mine doesn't and neither does it start on a keyboard equipped Famiclone. I have cleaned the connector with both alcohol and pencil eraser to no change, took it apart and visually inspected the PCB which looks OK. Perhaps it busy waits for a genuine Famicom keyboard, perhaps my cart is a dud.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week:

 

Atari 2600:

Scramble - 16 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Drawception - 114 min. in 4 sessions

 

TI-99:

The attack - 156 min. in 4 sessions

Tombstone city - 49 min.

 

This week I played two old TI-99 games, The attack and Tombstone city, which are somewhat similar to each other. On Tombstone City, I think I reached the maximum level there is (after which it doesn't get any harder anymore), while on The Attack, I managed this on the easiest level and now have tried two other difficulty levels while still not having played the hardest one. The lower three aren't too different from each other though.

 

Then I tried the Atari 2600 version of Scramble by Nathan Strum, which is pretty good. I didn't manage to beat it though.

 

Most of all, I discovered a new online game called Drawception. It's a multiplayer game where the first player usually sets the topic for the game, then the second player attempts to draw what has been described, the 3rd player describes what the 2nd player has drawn, the 4th player draws what the 3rd player has described, and so on... it's some kind of telephone game. It's very funny to see a finished game with at least 12 involved players which somewhat evolves from what first has been described. And there are very absurd things being drawn like a presidential candidate as a bug, potato cowboys, Grape Wars (Star Wars but with grapes instead of men) etc.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Crackpots - 16 minutes

Missile Command - 24 minutes

Pac-Man - 55 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Ms. Pac-Man - 15 minutes

Pole Position II - 15 minutes

 

Bronze Medal Tournament Finals on 2600 NEW HSC Season 5 is close to the end. Next week, I will tell who will be the winner of Bronze Medal.

My new high score obtained on 2600 Crackpots is 112,970. Many surprises can occur tomorrow!!

And I played one more session of 2600 Pacman on my console, using Master System Controller and reaching approximately 31,000 points on Game 6, Difficulty BB. Also I had more fun with Missile Command and Pole Position II on original cartridges and Super 78 Joystick.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 497 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 233,676

 

Back to Kaboom! only most of the time until the season 6 of HSC starts.

 

 

[oyamafamily]

TO JIN:

Next year in June, keep your eyes open for the Activision Patches Summer Quest Contest! :)

The last edition started in June and ended on September 5th this year.

Visit the special topic to know how it works: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/253779-the-2016-activision-patches-summer-quest/

Edited October 17, 2016 by oyamafamily

[zylon]

5200-

Up 'N Down- 20min

 

Genesis-

Sonic 2 (via Sonic's UGC for 360) 25min

[Skippy B. Coyote]

TO JIN:

Next year in June, keep your eyes open for the Activision Patches Summer Quest Contest! :)

The last edition started in June and ended on September 5th this year.

Visit the special topic to know how it works: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/253779-the-2016-activision-patches-summer-quest/

Thank you for the link Oyamafamily! It does look like a fun contest, but right now I'm not sure whether or not I should play in high score competitions. The problem I'm having is that so far I've only competed in 3 high score club rounds and every time it started off being fun but then I always end up getting really angry at the game when my scores aren't as good as I want them to be. I don't normally get mad when playing video games, only when I am trying to get a high score, so I'm trying to figure out how to play for high scores without getting angry. Games are supposed to be fun, and it's hard to have fun when you get so angry at the game that you get an upset stomach.

 

You are the best video game player I know, so I wanted to ask you how you do it. How do you avoid getting angry when your scores aren't as high as you want them to be? I do want to keep trying to get better and have fun playing in the high score clubs, but I always end up getting angry at the games when I'm trying to get a high score and then it's just not fun anymore.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Another one in the books.

 

Atari 2600:

 

Pac-Man: 15 Minutes

 

NES:

 

Super Mario Bros 3: 165 Minutes

 

Sega Master System:

 

Hang-On: 20 Minutes

 

Arcade/Mame:

 

Gorf: 10 Minutes

Battlezone: 5 Minutes

Jungle King: 6 Minutes

Tempest: 7 Minutes

Missile Command: 20 Minutes

Turbo: 10 Minutes

Ms. Pac-Man 11 Minutes

 

 

Turbo Grafx-16:

 

Splatterhouse: 10 Minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:

Magic Block - 7 min.

Motor City Patrol - 5 min.

Star Voyager - 354 min.

Stealth ATF - 3 min.

Super Mario Bros. - 10 min.

Turbografx-16:

Davis Cup Tennis - 120 min.

Moto Roader - 40 min.

Game Boy:

Megalit - 63 min.

Ultima: Runes of Virtue - 15 min.

Towards the start of the week I played some Turbografx-16, winning the Normal course in Moto Roader, and the Wimbledon -- er, I mean "Great Britain" -- tournament in Davis Cup Tennis. I also cleared two levels in Quest mode in Megalit on the Game Boy, and futzed around a bit with Ultima: Runes of Virtue, which seems sort of like a cross between Taskmaker and Chip's Challenge.

The rest of the week was all NES, including a rare & brief stint on real NES hardware, testing with Super Mario Bros. to do some lag measurements. What I discovered was astonishing, in that the normal ways I play NES games -- via emulator, either on my Mac laptop or via my Dreamcast -- had at least 60-70ms of lag (more like 100-110ms in the case of the Dreamcast), which is much more than I would have expected. The real thing was much crisper, with fireballs that shoot instantaneously instead of the slight but now-noticeable delay of my emulators.

However, any charm to real hardware was quickly quashed by my NES's lousy 72-pin connector, crashing my game of SMB early on. So it was back to emulation, where to my surprise I beat the notoriously difficult game Star Voyager within 24 hours of starting work on it. Guidance from the Internet helped, and it takes a bit of luck to beat it, but I just don't think the game is really that hard to begin with, especially for a veteran of games like...

...well, the similar VCS game of the exact same name.

(Actually Starmaster and Star Raiders are a better match for the gameplay in NES Star Voyager, but it's still bizarre: two unrelated space shooter/sims under the same title? How on earth did the lawyers allow that?)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was mixed bag of fun and frustration for gaming around here this week, but a good amount of play time was logged and it was all 100% tracker eligible to boot!

 

 

 

Arcade

Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum Vol. 1 for PlayStation) - 36 minutes

 

Atari 2600

Battlezone - 43 minutes

Centipede - 157 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 113 minutes

​Space Invaders - 24 minutes

Starmaster - 135 minutes

Atari 7800

Ms. Pac-Man (emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 116 minutes

Pac-Man Collection (emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 8 minutes

PlayStation
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - 628 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,260 minutes (21 hours 0 minutes) [1,260 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
PlayStation: 628 minutes

Atari 2600: 472 minutes

Atari 7800: 124 minutes

Arcade: 36 minutes

First off, don't ask me how that Asteroids cartridge snuck into the weekly picture because I have no idea. I suppose that's what happens when I do the weekly tracker post right before bed when I'm half awake and struggling to keep my eyes open. Anyway, it was a mixed bag of fun and frustration for gaming around here this week, but I already discussed the frustration (which involved playing both the Atari 2600 and 7800 versions of Ms. Pac-Man for the Atari 7800 high score club) at fairly good length in my last post a little ways up the page; so for this post I'll just stick to the fun.

As predicted last week, this week I played nothing but Atari all week. A lot of it was for the Atari 7800 high score club, but I also spent a fair bit of time just relaxing and enjoying a few games like Battlezone, Starmaster, and Centipede for no reason other than my personal enjoyment. This week marked the first time that I ever managed to beat Starmaster on it's namesake difficulty setting and—while testing out a work in progress custom arcade stick that should be finished this afternoon—I did manage to set a new personal best score of 276,483 in Centipede! I also played a good hour or so of Centipede using the Atari CX-80 trackball that arrived in the mail (and brand new in box no less) this week. I don't think I ever scored better than 60,000 or so with the trackball, but that's alright. The original Atari 2600 version of Centipede never did play very well with a trackball, but I still enjoy playing it that way even if I don't do nearly as well as when I use a joystick.

In regards to the misses' gaming time this week, the vast majority of it was spent doing two complete play throughs of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (the first on hard mode with no special items and the second time using unlimited Gatling Gun and Rocket Launcher unlocked via the Mercenaries mini-game) but she also got in some Atari time while helping me test out the yet-to-be-revealed work in progress custom joystick that I've been building. With the new stick she managed to roll the score in Space Invaders and got pretty close to her all time high scores in Centipede and Battlezone as well. At some point during the week she also took a break from the Resident Evil marathon to play the original arcade version of Pac-Man on the PlayStation, and I seem to recall that she was pretty pleased with her scores in that game too.

Looking forward to next week there's probably a lot of Atari 2600 time in my future, since not only will the last of the parts for the aforementioned custom joystick be arriving this afternoon but my Harmony Encore cartridge will finally be showing up in the mail today too! With the full library of Atari 2600 games and a new custom joystick at my disposal I think I'll be spending a lot of time with the good old VCS next week. I imagine the spousal unit will probably want to play around with the new toys a bit as well, but I know now that she's finished Resident Evil: Director's Cut, Resident Evil 2, and Resident Evil 3 this month she'll be moving on to Resident Evil: Survivor to wrap up the Resident Evil series on the original PlayStation; so that may consume most of her gaming time for the coming week.

Until next week, happy gaming to you and yours!

Edited October 17, 2016 by Jin

[+wongojack]

Lynx
Shadow of the Beast 81

GameGear
SONIC 2. 52
Smurfs 13

Gameboy
Revenge of the Gator 38

 

I have never really given Shadow of the Beast a chance. I remember playing it with my friend on his Amiga bitd. It is kind of hard to remember a time when games were very rarely designed to attract adults, and I think SotB was going for that. Has a kind of gruesome feel and features "The Beast" who turns you into a "Demon." Those are definitely adult topics in my part of the world. Anyway, I like it - the puzzle solving aspect is kind of nice (go here before there and get this after that). I didn't really play this genre in the 16-bit era very often, so it is kind of new to me.

 

I got a GameGear and fired up a couple games it came with. Gator was just in the GBA

 

 

I also played Shadows of Mordor (XOne) for double digit hours this week.