What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2017 (Season 10)

[carlsson]

Mea culpa!

 

Well then, it brings Atarian7's contribution for 2017 to 98.9% and the numbers are correct. Actually he has during the last 46 months played almost as much (96999 mins) as he did in the first 62 months (97419 mins), accounting for that the 2008 season didn't start until mid October.

Edited October 31, 2017 by carlsson

[Atarian7]

Thank you very much thegoldenband and carlsson for accounting for all that time.

[Eltigro]

I love the dedication to the hobby, AtariAge, and this thread that you guys have. Some amazing numbers and some amazing people.

[agb]

I wont be playing this weekend so my times for the week are:

All Atari 2600

Worm War 1 - 15 minutes

Basketball. 4 mins

Solar Fox. 149 minutes

Phoenix. 18 minutes

Video Pinball. 8 minutes.

 

No high scores. No good scores.

[karokoenig]

Amiga 500

Pac-Mania: 9 min

 

Atari 2600

Scramble: 32 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 163 min

 

The interesting part of this week's playtime is the few minutes of Amiga. We have a new special exhibition about electricity in the museum where I work. The exhibition contains a small section about the history of technology - and a fully functional Amiga 500 comes with that, as an example of an early personal computer. It has a good old Competition Pro hooked up and is set to autostart Pac-Mania for the visitors to play. I'm not the biggest fan of the game, but hey... I got access to an Amiga - I'll take it :-).

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Demon Birds - 10 min.

A little after 6 PM on Sunday evening, I realized I haven't spent a single minute on playing games this week! So I took a stab at one of the HSC subgames where I at least temporarily regained the highest score. We'll see if next week will be better for gaming.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (October 30th through November 5th)...

 

Arcade:

Burger Time - 67 min. in 2 sessions

Naughty boy - 71 min.

Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory - 124 min. in 2 sessions

 

Atari 2600:

Atari Video Cube - 26 min.

Burger Time - 224 min. in 4 sessions

 

Commodore 64:

Burger Chase - 15 min.

 

Intellivision:

Burger Time - 69 min.

Burger TIme New Level Hack - 23 min.

 

Non-Eligible:

Stockstream - 382 min. in 9 sessions

BurgerTimes - 24 min.

 

TI-99/4A:

Burger Time - 14 min.

 

This week I mainly played various versions of Burger TIme.... the Atari 2600, Arcade and Intellivision version, also a PC conversion based on the Intellivision version called BurgerTimes and a C-64 clone named Burger Chase.

 

On the arcade version, I didn't make it through all 6 patterns in the first session, but I made it in the second one. I also made it through all 5 patterns on the Atari 2600 version although it suffers from some problems... sometimes you collide with an enemy on a ledge immediately above or below you, and enemies may spawn right on top of the player instead of coming in from the sides (or top, or bottom).

 

The Intellivision version has got different mazes and a problem where your chef always moves by 8 pixels, only then you can stop or turn around. BurgerTimes copies this behavior, but still feels a bit smoother. I also tried the new level hack of the INTV version which changes around the mazes, but actually seems to be a bit easier overall.

 

The TI-99 version is fairly close to the arcade, but has totally different, simpler patterns which are easier to complete. It also gives you lower scores, however, especially for letting enemies fall down on the burger parts.

 

Finally, Burger Chase has got mazes that are closer to the arcade version than the official Burger Time conversion (which isn't good at all), but only 4 out of 6 patterns are represented, and the enemy AI is quite different... they are as fast as the player, but they wander around pretty aimlessly and often turn around on the spot for no apparent reason.

 

I also continued to play the sequel Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory and managed to beat all 8 patterns.

 

Apart from that, because I played around with Rubik's Cube again last week, I tried Atari Video Cube, which is a variation on that.

 

Then I played Naughty Boy on the arcade where you play a boy throwing stones at ghosts, flags and other enemies. For 1982 it has got a pretty bad color scheme.

 

Finally I spent a total of over 6 hours in Stockstream again. The time in that doesn't seem that long until you add up the minutes you spent.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 145 minutes

Scramble - 25 minutes

Space Invaders - 10 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Beef Drop - 48 minutes

Donkey Kong - 35 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

New scores on 2600 Asteroids (written on my identification paper), played with my ProSystem Console. It's very FUN!

[BurritoBeans]

Arcade:

Splatterhouse - 200 minutes

 

COSMAC ELF:

Space Invaders - 30 minutes

 

PC-98:

Shizuku - 92 minutes

 

TI-99/4:

Hunt the Wumpus - 30 minutes

 

ZX Spectrum:

Jet Set Willy - 50 minutes

 

Well, not the most exciting week... nevermind, I can't say that, the COSMAC ELF made an appearance!

 

So yeah, even if it's not got the most playtime I absolutely love the ELF. If you don't know the ELF, well it's a little computer that originated based around the RCA 1802 microprocessor, all of 256 bytes of RAM, eight switches plus four for toggling in instructions and running them, and then a ton of hobbyist and a few official revisions that added things like graphics via the RCA 1861 PIXIE, more RAM, keypads, serial/parallel I/O and more. It's a very, very simple machine by the original design but as it went on it turns into a fairly capable computer that supports TV-out, an ASCII keyboard, storage, and BASIC. The game I played was wrote in 1980, and you can still find the source code online if you have some time to punch in code. In the end sure it's just Space Invaders on a 64x32 pixel display, but hey it's pretty cool to run. I keyed this one in on an arduino-based ELF that I built at work using breadboards - I'm planning on making a more advanced ardunio-based one myself, or even get an 1802 Membership Card which is a fully functioning ELF with parallel I/O that fits in an altoids tin for about $80 or whatever boards and parts costs you.

 

The game with the second most time this week was my last full-plathrough horror game of the "horror month", Shizuku... talk about a lame way to end the month. This isn't the most exciting of games but I guess at least it was mildly entertaining at times? It's about a guy who sees one of his classmates go mad and investigates the source, turns out there's some cult and whatever... I don't know, it's a decent enough story with the detail but I honestly couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters so I didn't even bother retrying the game to see about getting the good ending.

 

The game with the most time was Splatterhouse, my favorite arcade game. This one was played through a few times - once at home on the MAME machine, once at school on my phone using a keyboard so I could control it, and twice at work (once to show to someone who didn't believe that I could clear it on one life and the second time just for fun) hence taking up 200 minutes. I don't know what I can say about the game that I haven't said before - I love it and that's about it.

 

TI-99 showed up this week, I brought it out for some Hunt the Wumpus... did I ever mention how I hate the keyboard on my TI-99? I'm fairly sure I did, but if I haven't - I hate the keyboard on the 99/4. I know, the 99/4A has a nice keyboard, but both 99s I own are 99/4s and I have never seen a 99/4A apart from ebay in my life. Past that little rant... well, it's Hunt the Wumpus - what is there to say? Classic game, simple but fun.

 

Finally, the Spectrum pops out again for some Jet Set Willy. Speaking of keyboard I hate, the Spectrum keyboard is a load of crap... well, everyone who tries to type on the 16/48K Spectrums knows that (it's not as bad as the ZX80/81 but whatever) so it's nothing new. The issue I had is that I couldn't find my joystick interface anywhere, so I had to play using the keyboard... I would say "whoever defined the key layout is a complete masochist" but it's usually bad so I can't blame them - just nice when they actually let you chose ones you want so it's not uncomfortable. Still, even with that frustration, at least the game is fun... I've never beat it (edit, take that back - I think I did a year or two ago?) but it's always enjoayble.

 

So yeah, Horror Month is over. Woohoo, back to non-scary games... looking back at my times, I really didn't pick many great games - no Silent Hill, no Resident Evil, etc. but at least I did pick some very obscure ones that most people wouldn't even consider or know of. For November there's going to be nothing special going on - I'm considering doing something like "handhelds only" for december or the start of next year but I'd really need to beef up my collections for Game Boy/Game Gear as all I have for the most part is Japanese stuff or never stuff that couldn't count on here so I'm not 100% on that but it is floating around in my head.

Edited November 6, 2017 by BurritoBeans

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 28 minutes

Hunchy II - 13 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 55,947

 

 

 

[zylon]

C64-

Centipede- 25min

 

5200-

Centipede- 30min

 

Arcade (via XBL)-

Galaga- 30min

Scramble- 20min

 

XBL(ineligible)-

Harwood Spades- 1hr 5min

Zombie Strippers Ate My Brains- 2hrs

[Eltigro]

Played a little old school stuff this week! lol... I mean, really... a little...

 

Saturn

Darius Gaiden - 12 min (I really like SHMUPS, but haven't had the patience to get really good at one since I was in high school. Beautiful game, great music that I call Space Fish Opera, and the only SHMUP I have for the Saturn. Watched Saturnology on Youtube do a stream of it and decided to play a bit myself.)

Edited November 6, 2017 by Eltigro

[+cvga]

SNES - Final Fantasy III - 362 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

SNES:

Hyper Iria - 1 min.

Super Battleship - 305 min.

Super Final Match Tennis - 60 min.

Two more missions to go in Super Battleship. The antepenultimate one is such a hassle; glad to be done with it.

[Iwantgames:)]

Hopefully Im not too late :/ anyways not much times

 

Sega CD

 

Devastator - 20min

 

Game Gear

 

Pac-Man - 10min

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a good week for the Wii around here this week (or is it "Wiik"?) as the misses and I both wrapped up the games we were playing for Halloween, but we still managed to get in some tracker eligible time with a classic Atari 7800 game and the arrival of a new system to our retro gaming center.

 

 

 

Ineligible
Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil (Nintendo Wii) - 290 minutes

Sonic and the Secret Rings (Nintendo Wii) - 34 minutes
Sonic Unleashed (Nintendo Wii) - 744 minutes

Atari 7800
Donkey Kong (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 163 minutes

PC-DOS (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Doom II - 117 minutes

Sega 32X
Doom - 171 minutes

Virtua Racing Deluxe - 57 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,576 minutes (26 hours 16 minutes) [508 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 1,068 minutes
Sega 32X: 228 minutes

Atari 7800: 163 minutes

PC-DOS: 117 minutes

 

 

I started off the week by playing a good bit of Donkey Kong for the Atari 7800 High Score Club, and I was having so much fun with it that I decided to make a

for Donkey Kong to help out those who weren't doing quite as well in this round of the Atari 7800 HSC. Once I was pretty pleased with my score in Donkey Kong I moved on to finishing up my Halloween play through of the remake of the original Resident Evil on the Wii, which was tons of fun even though I've probably played through that game well over a dozen times in the past.

 

After Resident Evil was finished I didn't play a whole lot else this past week, that is until Saturday when I stumbled on the first 32X I've ever seen in a local game store in the 6 years or so that I've been into retro gaming. It was in great shape and included the connector cable and spacer for a Model 2 Sega Genesis (which is the model I have) along with the original power supply and a super nice set of heavy duty gold plated composite cables. The store owner wanted $70 for it, which seemed like a great price to me so I ended up bringing it home along with copies of Doom and Virtua Racing.

 

I've been enjoying both games great deal and I actually did a full play through of all 17 levels of Doom on the 32X from beginning to end on Ultra Violence difficulty without using any cheats as soon as I got the system home. Being able to play a pretty respectable port of Doom on my Sega Genesis kinda blows my mind, so I think I'm going to nickname the 32X the "Doom Shroom"; since it's a strange mushroom shaped device that allows you to play Doom on your Sega Genesis. Virtua Racing was quite cool as well and the 3D polygon graphics garnered some rather stunned looks from the misses when she saw what system it was being played on.

 

Speaking of the misses, the only game she played this week (aside from joining me for a few rounds of Donkey Kong on the 7800) was Sonic Unleashed for the Wii. She spent a few hours every evening on it and just wrapped up this surprisingly good Sonic game late last night. I sat next to her and watched the last few levels and man does that game ever have one heck of a spectacular ending, and the rest of the game looked like a lot of fun too so I might have to give it a play through myself at some point. In the meantime I did score a copy of Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii as a freebie from the same local game store when I bought the 32X, so maybe I'll give that a go next week. The motion controls in Secret Rings felt like they were going to take some time to get used to during the brief time I've spent playing it so far, but we'll see how it goes.

 

Until next week, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

Edited November 6, 2017 by Jin

[+Darrin9999]

Odyssey 2:

 

1. K.C.`s Escape - 45 min

2. Pick Ax Pete - 245 min

3. UFO - 80 min

 

 

Neo Geo AES:

 

1. Aero Fighters 2 - 55 min

2. King of Fighters 99 - 35 min

3. King of Fighters 2002 - 25 min

4. Puzzle Bobble - 65 min

5. Gunlord - 145 min

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 44, running from October 30 - November 5. We logged 3825 minutes of eligible play, playing 51 games on a total of 20 systems.

Top 10:

1. Final Fantasy III (VI) (SNES) - 362

2. Super Battleship (SNES) - 305

3. Pick Axe Pete (Odyssey^2) - 245

4. BurgerTime (Atari 2600) - 224

5. Splatterhouse (Arcade) - 200

6. Donkey Kong (Atari 7800) - 198

7. Doom (Sega 32X) - 171

8. Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 163

9. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 149

10. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 145

10. Gunlord (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 145

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Pick Axe Pete (Odyssey^2) - 245

2. BurgerTime (Atari 2600) - 224

3. Donkey Kong (Atari 7800) - 198

4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 149

5. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 145

6. Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory (Arcade) - 124

7. UFO (Odyssey^2) - 80

8. Naughty Boy (Arcade) - 71

9. BurgerTime (Intellivision) - 69

10. BurgerTime (Arcade) - 67

Top 10 systems:

1. SNES (728)

2. Atari 2600 (697)

3. Arcade (512)

4. Odyssey^2 (370)

5. Neo Geo AES/MVS (325)

6. PC (DOS) (280)

7. Atari 7800 (246)

8. Sega 32X (228)

9. Intellivision (92)

9. NEC PC-9801 (92)

Our #1 game this week, Final Fantasy III, leads the SNES to a slim victory over the VCS on the system charts, and also becomes the 306th member of the 1000-minute club with 1215 minutes logged to date. Meanwhile Pick Axe Pete takes the pre-NES charts, edging out one of the many versions of BurgerTime logged this week.

But once again Kaboom is the big news -- this time through absence as, in a very rare event, it drops off the charts only a week after it reached the 200K milestone. Will this be the end of the bomb-dropper's run? Will, say, Silent Hunter eventually catch it for the #1 spot? Only time will tell...

[karokoenig]

Will, say, Silent Hunter eventually catch it for the #1 spot? Only time will tell...

 

That would be geological time, if at all :-).

[karokoenig]

Amiga 500

Pac Mania: 12 min

 

Atari 2600

Berzerk: 35 min

 

Pinball

Hayburners II: 3 min

 

Most notable, albeit not eligible for this tracker, I had the opportunity to have a very quick go at a really ancient pinball machine. Hayburners II is a Williams Pinball machine made in 1968. It was standing in the Münster Horse Museum, which is located in the city zoo. I was there for a meeting, and during the coffee break, I had a few minutes to try it. It's a relentless son of a bitch!

 

[+Cafeman]

Genesis

 

Jurassic Park, 2 hours.

Super Hang On, 1 hour.

NHL 94 CD , 2 hours. SEGA CD of course.

[carlsson]

PC Engine:

Bombarman '93 - 14 min.

Gomola Speed - 7 min.

Puzznic - 27 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 6th through 12th)...

 

NES:

Burger Time - 51 min. in 2 sessions

Mario Bros. (Classic) - 58 min. in 2 sessions

Mario Bros. (Original) - 24 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Burger Time (Flash) - 40 min.

Hanna in a Choppa - 27 min.

Rainbow Block - 11 min.

Stockstream - 315 min. in 11 sessions

 

TI-99:

Burger Builder - 26 min.

Tombstone City - 52 min.

 

I continued to play various versions of Burger Time. On the TI-99 there's another version called "Burger Builder", but it relates to Burger Time about like the Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong relates to the original version (especially the rivets screen where on the Atari 2600 the enemies only move horizontally and erratically).

 

While on the TI-99, I also replayed "Tombstone City" for one more time. That 52 minutes really was a single game since I've pretty much perfected my playing strategy in this game. And while on the NES whose version of Burger Time I also played, I played two different versions of "Mario Bros.". I hope I used the correct names for them... the "original" version was made in 1983 (or 1984?), and the "Classic" version is from 1993 (if I remember right).

 

I also played the Flash version of Burger Time which basically has the original mazes, but plays a bit differently. It generally seems to work faster than the original since you don't have to walk all the way through in order to let a burger part fall a little. In general the collision detection has bigger hitboxes than the original, which means you can get killed more easily, but also you can kill the green guys by letting a burger part fall next to a ladder they're on, which doesn't work in the original version.

 

I played two other real online games. In Hannah in a Choppa, you fly around caves trying to overcome some obstacles until you reach the flag which is the goal for each level.

Rainbow Block is a puzzle game somewhat similar to Columns just that there is no actual horizontal interaction of the blocks I could see. Finally, I continued to play Stockstream where I try to get my realized returns back up to $155 after they dropped by about $8 because some stocks were sold in order to get another player's stock holdings down to the new allowed limit of $5K.

[oyamafamily]

Only 1 game I played this week

 

ATARI 7800 - Beef Drop - 180 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

Beef Drop gameplay footage, presented for 7800 HSC Season 2017-2018 Round 6. In this video I used the "grouping enemy food" technique to reach my astronomical score on Normal Mode - 1,045,200 points. This technique I used on Levels 1, 3, 7, 13 and 19.

Edited November 12, 2017 by oyamafamily

[zylon]

5200-

 

Beamrider- 35min

 

C64-

 

Beamrider- 45min

 

Xbox- ineligible

Blitz: The League- 2hrs 20min