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

[+thegoldenband]

Not much for me this week:

 

Game Boy:

The Chessmaster - 9 min

Marble Madness - 4 min.

The New Chessmaster - 9 min.

Tennis - 41 min.

Beat Marble Madness and Tennis again, as well as lower levels of both chess games, all for the annual NA Game Boy effort.

[+Darrin9999]

Not much for me

 

Intellivision:

 

PBA Bowling - 155 min

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Time to get back in the swing of things! I actually got enough sleep last night and woke up early enough today to do a proper weekly tracker post for the first time this year.

 

 

 

 

Ineligible

Clubhouse Games (Nintendo DS) - 216 minutes

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS) - 302 minutes

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (Nintendo DS) - 153 minutes

Arcade

Centipede - 7 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 4 minutes

Game Boy Color

Monopoly - 120 minutes

Sega Genesis

Raiden Trad - 39 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

841 minutes (14 hours 1 minute) [170 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo DS - 671 minutes

Game Boy Color - 120 minutes

Sega Genesis - 39 minutes

Arcade: 11 minutes

This week's gaming time around my household was largely dominated by my wife's recently acquired Nintendo DSi XL. She spent a fair bit of time playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and when she wasn't using the system I was borrowing it to play games of darts and mahjong solitaire in Clubhouse Games. I also ended up starting a play through of Resident Evil: Deadly Silence on her system yesterday afternoon while I wait to get my own DS system (which will be a crimson & black colored DS Lite, for those curious) next week. Not wanting to find myself with no eligible time to post this week though I did take a couple hours to feed my seemingly insatiable Monopoly addiction on the Game Boy Color, and get in a few games of my two favorite arcade games on the household multicade. I also spent the better part of an hour blasting my way through Raiden Trad on the Genesis yesterday afternoon, because, well, it's Raiden! And it's on the Genesis! What's not to love?

That's all the gaming news that's fit to print from my household this week. If I had to venture a guess I'd say that next week's game lineup will look fairly similar, since I'm only halfway through Resident Evil: Deadly Silence at this point and my wife has who knows how many hours left to go in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I would like to make a little more time to replay some old Genesis favorites though, because it's just such a cool system and it definitely deserves to be played more often.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Jin

[BurritoBeans]

Heh, I just remembered I haven't posted yet - someone remind me not to go off listening to a Men At Work album before I go to do some "work" like post here...

 

Atari 2600:

Video Olympics - 30 minutes

 

Game.com:

Duke Nukem 3D - 45 minutes

Lights Out - 20 minutes

Resident Evil 2 - 45 minutes

Sonic Jam - 50 minutes

 

Neo-Geo Pocket Color:

Dark Arms: Beast Busters - 210 minutes

Gals Fighter - 40 minutes

Metal Slug 2nd Mission - 50 minutes

The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny - 60 minutes

 

Sharp X68000:

Cameltry - 75 minutes

 

Well, this week was a strange one. Cameltry got a big amount of playtime from me, at 1hr.15min./75min. as I just got caught up in it. The dreaded Game.com got taken out of storage, and man I forgot about that thing. I bought the system and all the games sealed in their packaging and a few loose copies for around $100, (That's $100 more than I should've spent...) a hefty amount of money a while back and never played it, so I brought it out and played it. Soo many issues with the thing... the lighting is terrible, the screen "works" but is a pain to use, and the modem is just silly. For games, Duke 3D was OK but lighting and screen issues alongside the funky-robot duke voice the speaker gave off made it "ehh" to me. Lights Out is a good puzzle game, but nothing too special. Res-Evil 2 was confusing to me, and half the time I got eaten within a few minutes and dropped it. Finally with the game.com, there was Sonic Jam which is just Sonic with a bad screen to me.

 

Getting off of that, I had to "cleanse myself" so I debated handhelds to play... Sorry Game Boy lineup, but I just picked up the NGPC and gave it some time. Dark Arms: Beast Busters is a fun little RPG that I really enjoyed, you use your gun to capture souls to make and upgrade other guns and it plays great to me. Gals Fighter is a recent pickup, and it's decent - I've been liking all the NGPC fighters a good bit. Metal Slug 2nd Mission is just awesome, portable run 'n gun that plays great, and I found myself playing it on the bus with a wormlight to see the screen, heh. And The Last Blade, well, I just like that for a fighter.

 

So yeah, it was a good week for me. I may open the tiny little Game.com library up and play through every game for the heck of it, but I don't know if I could handle it... Also, next time I'll try to remember not to get into an album, but dang - Cargo by Men At Work sounds pretty friggin' great throughout the whole album to me, and Seven Nation Army/Good To Me is my first 45 in the collection so I was enjoying that too.

Edited January 26, 2016 by BurritoBeans

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 4, running from January 18 - 24. We logged 2752 minutes of eligible play, playing 31 games on a total of 13 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 770

2. Bowling [aka PBA Bowling] (Intellivision) - 295

3. Dark Arms: Beast Buster 1999 (Neo Geo Pocket Color) - 210

4. Food Fight (Atari 7800) - 180

5. Blue Marlin (NES/Famicom) - 140

6. Mario Bros. (Atari 2600) - 135

7. Monopoly (Game Boy Color) - 120

8. Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) (NES/Famicom) - 119

9. Turtles (Arcade) - 103

10. Cameltry (Sharp X68000) - 75

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 770

2. Bowling [aka PBA Bowling] (Intellivision) - 295

3. Food Fight (Atari 7800) - 180

4. Mario Bros. (Atari 2600) - 135

5. Turtles (Arcade) - 103

6. Parsec (TI-99/4A) - 50

7. Donkey Kong (Atari 2600) - 47

8. Video Olympics (Atari 2600) - 30

9. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 25

10. Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 12

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (982)

2. Neo Geo Pocket Color (360)

3. Intellivision (295)

4. NES/Famicom (259)

5. Atari 7800 (205)

6. Game.com (160)

7. Arcade (141)

8. Game Boy Color (120)

9. Sharp X68000 (75)

10. Game Boy (63)

The week's most notable feature is the strong showing from handhelds, which take four of 10 spots on the system charts, including a rare Top 10 appearance from the Game.com and a best-ever #2 rank from the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

Otherwise, a quiet week, in which our previous #1 and #2 games retain their spots.

[Opry99er]

Eerily quiet week!! But fun, nonetheless.

 

I will try to step my game up this week and play more games on more systems... This past week was hectic with the storm and craziness at work.

[carlsson]

We've been spoiled (?!) by last year's record numbers. As noted in the yearly summaries by Thegoldenband, the number of minutes per year:

 

2013: 122,621 minutes / 52 weeks = average 2358 minutes/week

2014: 157,873 minutes / 53 weeks = average 2979 minutes/week

2015: 267,265 minutes / 53 weeks = average 5043 minutes/week

 

So by the old standards, last week was average but compared to the past year, it was a slow week...

[BurritoBeans]

Well, I accepted a stupid challange to play through the system library, so... More game.com times coming from me for a good while! Woohoo? Nah, I'm not expecting it to be too fun but heck, I'm going to try doing it.

 

Also, yeah slow-ish week by the average, and by what week 4 was last year, a whole 2774 minutes behind the 5526. Still, pretty good times.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Haven't had a chance to game much lately but I got some time in tonight

 

Knightmare - ColecoVision ~ 4 Hours

Piggy Bank - Intellivision ~ 2 hours

Bowling - Intellivision ~ 25 minutes

[Opry99er]

So far!!

 

 

NES:

 

Blue Marlin (40 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Aperture (20 minutes)

Parsec (35 minutes)

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Super Pro Football (70 minutes)

World Championship Baseball (50 minutes)

Bowling (45 minutes)

[carlsson]

Another retro gaming expo is finished (only cleaning remains) and here are my combined times for the past week, as I assume I won't have any play time on Sunday anyway:

 

Atari 8-bit:

Mogul Maniac - 12 min.

C64:

Hat Trick - 14 min.

Micro Hexagon - 22 min.

Tandy MC-10:

Flagon Bird - 4 min.

VIC-20:

Sword of Fargoal - 25 min.

I'm getting quite good at playing Mogul Maniac with a dance mat, slightly hunching forward and hopping a quarter turn in either direction. My friends laugh at me, but at the competition held, I was by far the fastest "skier" of 13 competitors with this technique, although I played outside of competition since I also was the arranger of the competition.

Other than that, I really got addicted to Micro Hexagon, and so were a lot of other people. Just about everyone - young, old, guys, girls, computer people and console people who normally wouldn't even look twice at a C64, were mesmerized by this implementation of Hexagon. In particular when played on a projector and a big PA system with booming speakers, it was something extra. We definitely will play this more and probably hold some kind of competition on a later expo, since it was a huge play magnet.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

1) Donkey Kong - 2 minutes

2) Donkey Kong VCS [homebrew] - 10 minutes

3) Donkey Kong Junior - 5 minutes

4) The Activision Decathlon - 7 minutes

Donkey Kong Contests on 2600 NEW HSC Season 5. I posted small scores (exceptionally without videos) just to demonstrate DK and DK Jr. are NOT my favorite games on 2600 platform.

 

NES / FAMICOM:

Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) - 120 minutes. Video of the week to check out!

 

ATARI 7800:

1) Donkey Kong Junior - 35 minutes. Highest score: 158,500 points on Expert.

The 7800 version of Donkey Kong Junior is BETTER than the 2600 - more differentiated scoring and better graphics in my opinion.

 

2) Food Fight - 27 minutes. I got my new record on Advanced for 7800 HSC Season 8, Game 7 - 570,700 points.

Video and statistical table included to check out!

 

3) Galaga - 16 minutes

 

4) Pac-Man Collection - 17 minutes

 

 

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is what I played this week.

 

Atari 2600:

 

Donkey Kong: 50 Minutes

Pitfall: 10 Minutes

 

NES:

 

Super Mario Bros. 2: 70 Minutes (completed without warping)

 

Turbo Grafx- 16:

 

Bonk's Revenge: 30 Minutes

 

Wii:

 

Wii Sports: 20 Minutes

[oyamafamily]

Atari 7800 - Donkey Kong Junior - Additional 109 minutes

Highest score on Standard mode: 231,000 points. My goal is to surpass Liduario's personal score - circa 215,000.

 

[Opry99er]

Final posting for me this week:

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Parsec (additional 30 minutes)

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Bowling (additional 30 minutes)

World Championship Baseball (additional 50 minutes)

Super Pro Football (additional 45 minutes)

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Donkey Kong: 13 min

Donkey Kong VCS: 5 min

WalRush: 2 min

 

Game Boy Classic

Dynablaster: 5 min

Who framed Roger Rabbit: 5 min

 

Well, somewhere around detection limit for me this week. The DK games were for the HSC, the game called WalRush is a WIP batari basic homebrew I stumbled across in the forum. Nothing to get overly excited about...

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (January 25th through 31st)...

 

Online (non-eligible):

Nonogram of the week - 253 min. in 3 sessions

 

Sorry, I didn't play any classic games this week... I only attempted to solve the Nonogram of the week three times. After failing the first two times, I took special care the third time, but reached a state where there was no way to a proper solution, so I finally gave up.

 

Other than that, I had two eye examinations... the left eye seems to be stable with a bit of liquid disappearing after the Photodynamic Therapy of last summer. And I continued to examine the ROM of the Game & Watch game Mickey & Donald. So far I spotted the loop that runs immediately after ACL and looks for any buttons being depressed. Unfortunately, such an event leads to another page of code which I haven't disassembled yet.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 575 minutes

Donkey Kong - 770 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 219,835

 

 

I got hooked on Donkey Kong for the HSC. I played up until 8PM on January 31.

 

 

[+Darrin9999]

Intellivision:

 

1. PBA Bowling - 55 min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:
Action 52 - 130 min.
Elevator Action - 153 min.
Genghis Khan - 4 min.
Jimmy Connors Tennis - 71 min.
Jordan vs. Bird: One On One - 67 min.
Shingen the Ruler - 10 min.
Top Players' Tennis - 68 min.

Beat two games without proper endings, Elevator Action and Jordan vs. Bird. In Elevator Action, I made it past Level 4 (the game's loop point), which is no easy feat unless you use a trick that resets the game's aggression counter. In Jordan vs. Bird, I beat the CPU on its highest difficulty, and also won the slam dunk and 3-point contests. Bird is so deadly on 3-pointers that there's no reason to ever challenge Jordan inside the line -- just let him have his twos, and you'll outscore him by 33% (EDIT: Or really, 50%).

I also beat Jimmy Connors again on a lower difficulty -- come to think of it, that game doesn't really have a proper ending either -- and spent a frustrating session or two with Top Players' Tennis.

Finally, I beat four of the minigames in Action 52 -- once again, no endings: just "GAME OVER", a glitchout, or a loop back to Level 1. So I guess that's the theme this week?

[Opry99er]

Don't know if is too late to add,,. If so, I will post these to next week.

 

Last night I got in some hard sports time.

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Bowling (additional 30 minutes)

World Championship Baseball (additional 90 minutes)

 

 

NES:

 

Tecmo Bowl (102 minutes)

 

 

 

Spooooooooorts!!!!!!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

 

 

Ineligible

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Mobilized (Nintendo DS) - 24 minutes

Clubhouse Games (Nintendo DS) - 241 minutes

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS) - 264 minutes

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (Nintendo DS) - 189 minutes

Arcade

Centipede - 26 minutes

Donkey Kong - 6 minutes

Frogger - 8 minutes

Lady Bug - 7 minutes

Millipede - 12 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 27 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (Speed-Up Version) - 8 minutes

Pac-Man - 5 minutes

Shao-Lin's Road - 10 minutes

Super Breakout - 15 minutes

1942 - 9 minutes

Game Boy Color

Monopoly - 92 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

943 minutes (15 hours 43 minutes) [225 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo DS: 718 minutes

Arcade: 133 minutes

Game Boy Color: 92 minutes

It was another really good week for gaming around here, with lots of time logged on the misses' DSi XL by both she and I, and a fair bit of tracker eligible playtime logged to boot! I finished up and beat the Rebirth mode in Resident Evil DS with Jill, played quite a bit of Clubhouse Games (and a few minutes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Mobilized) on the bus, and my better half is still making her way through The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I think she's about 3/4 of the way done with the game at this point.

In terms of eligible playtime, my wife and I both sat down in front of the multicade and took turns playing a variety of arcade games over the weekend. It had been a while since I spent any serious amount of time playing arcade games so I had forgotten just how frazzled I always end up feeling after long play sessions of them. Don't get me wrong, I still love arcade games in general (Centipede and Ms. Pac-Man especially), but I think I'm starting to get old enough that my brain just can't handle the high-speed, frenetic, twitchy gameplay of arcade games for more than a few minutes at a time without leaving me feeling exhausted afterwards. That said, I did manage to top my previous high score in Centipede with a new score of 64,848 and I had an absolutely awesome time doing it. The misses beat one of her previous high scores too, setting the new household record of 623 in the Cavity mode of Super Breakout.

Lastly, just to round things out, I got in two games of Monopoly on the Game Boy Color this week and had just as much fun as ever playing it. Next week I expect to be logging a whole ton more time on the Nintendo DS, since I finally managed to snag a new in box authentic crimson colored DS Lite on eBay last night and it should arrive in the mail later this week. As soon as it shows up I can stop borrowing my wife's DSi XL all the time since I'll finally have a DS system of my own to play (which I'm sure she'll be grateful for lol), and the first game I'm going to play through on it will be the copy of Okamiden that I've had sitting on the DS game shelf for the past month or so; just waiting for me to get my own DS to play it on.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Jin

[BurritoBeans]

Better put my few times in before it's too late...

 

Game.com:

Batman & Robin - 200 minutes

Centipede - 240 minutes

Duke Nukem 3D - 325 minutes

 

Sharp X68000:

Cameltry - 50 minutes

 

 

Yeah, not too much for the week. My Game.com quest started, and well, it's been OK for the games. To start off I ran through Batman & Robin, a "Beat 'em Up" that feels more like luck and mashing buttons to me. The backgrounds look pretty cool and the sprites are nice, but sadly the blur/ghosting/bad lighting of the screen made it a bit worse, as sprites were fairly small If the screen was better and lit, and the game had a bit more to it for moves and stuff, I feel that this could've actually been ok. Overall, from start to finish, it's not all that great but it could've been better. Next up after that was Centipede, the good 'ol arcade again. This time the game is pretty darn good, and I found myself picking it up just for the heck of it every now and then. I don't think you can beat Centipede being an arcade game, so I just gave it a good four hours and said that's good enough. This may be a game I come back to, yeah the screen is an issue, but that's the issue with every game. It plays just fine compared to the other ports, and I liked it a good bit. While not on Centipede for Game.com, I got around to Duke Nukem after Batman & Robin was done. This version of 3D is strange, and I don't exactly know if I like it or not. You're always facing forward and cannot turn, just move in a straight grid, unless you hit a corner where it plays a small animation of you going around it. Buttons are fairly simple, enemies look pretty nice, and while it doesn't sound all that great, dukes voice is there. It's definitely a strange one for a FPS game, but it's not terribly bad and I didn't mind playing through it.

 

Apart from that, Cameltry got some time in. I would've played more, but the Game.com took up a good bit of gaming time and I kept going to the music store to get more records and CDs so I burned a good bit of time laying in front of the speakers and just listening to some music. Good week for games I'd say, and I think 1/7th of the Game.com library is out of the way.

Edited February 1, 2016 by BurritoBeans

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 5, running from January 25 - 31. We logged 4580 minutes of eligible play, playing 53 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. Donkey Kong (Atari 2600) - 835

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 575

3. Duke Nukem 3D (Game.com) - 325

4. Knightmare (ColecoVision) - 240

4. Centipede (Game.com) - 240

6. Batman & Robin (Game.com) - 200

7. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 190

8. Bowling [aka PBA Bowling] (Intellivision) - 185

9. Elevator Action (NES/Famicom) - 153

10. Donkey Kong Jr. (Atari 7800) - 144

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Donkey Kong (Atari 2600) - 835

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 575

3. Knightmare (ColecoVision) - 240

4. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 190

5. Bowling [aka PBA Bowling] (Intellivision) - 185

6. Donkey Kong Jr. (Atari 7800) - 144

7. Piggy Bank (Intellivision) - 120

8. Super Pro Football (Intellivision) - 115

9. Parsec (TI-99/4A) - 65

10. Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 27

10. Food Fight (Atari 7800) - 27

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1449)

2. NES/Famicom (835)

3. Game.com (765)

4. Intellivision (610)

5. ColecoVision (240)

6. Atari 7800 (204)

7. Arcade (133)

8. Game Boy Color (92)

9. TI-99/4A (85)

10. Sharp X68000 (50)

It may only have two levels vs. the arcade's four, but the VCS port of Donkey Kong owns the charts this week. It comes in at a strong #1, pursued by a pack of other games with K's in their names.

Unsurprisingly the 2600 also takes the system charts, while the Game.com jumps up to #3, less than 10% behind the NES.

Finally, Tengen's port of Ms. Pac-Man for the NES earns spot #194 in the 1000-minute club, with 1043 minutes logged so far. Only six games left until we reach member #200!

[Opry99er]

Very cool.

 

Thanks for this week's compiled list, thegoldenband.

 

Interesting, the amount of variation from week to week... The SHARP X68000 and the Game.com are interesting systems to see on the list from time to time...

 

I would love to see more posted games from other classic computer systems like the C64, Tandy CoCo, etc... Seems like we are missing entire libraries of excellent games here.