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

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 49, running from December 4 - 10. We logged 4054 minutes of eligible play, playing 49 games on a total of 12 systems.

Top 10:

1. Shining Force II (Genesis) - 1034

2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 339

3. Shining Force (Genesis) - 268

4. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 248

5. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 230

6. Final Doom (PC (DOS)) - 199

7. WarpSpeed (SNES) - 174

8. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 156

9. Zippy the Porcupine (Atari 2600) - 112

10. Air Assault (Odyssey^2) - 95

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 339

2. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 248

3. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 230

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 156

5. Zippy the Porcupine (Atari 2600) - 112

6. Air Assault (Odyssey^2) - 95

7. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 90

8. Burgertime (C64) - 75

9. Mobile Suit Gundam (Emerson Arcadia 2001) - 75

10. Alien (Atari 2600) - 74

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1427)

2. Genesis (1302)

3. Atari 7800 (282)

4. Emerson Arcadia 2001 (245)

5. SNES (213)

6. PC (DOS) (199)

7. C64 (146)

8. Odyssey^2 (137)

9. Atari 5200 (35)

10. Sega Master System (30)

Hmmm, I wonder if Shining Force II has reached the 1000-minute club? If it has, it would be member #312. But I just can't seem to figure it out, somehow. It must be all that "shining".

(Whoops, sorry, Atarian7 -- I mean "shinning"! Don't want us to get sued...)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

If Jin’s not gonna do the modern games tracker I might be willing to run one if nobody else wants too

 

Out of curiosity, are you still thinking about doing a modern gaming tracker next year? I ask because I've abandoned my somewhat crazy idea of playing nothing but Atari systems in 2018 (partially because I'm just way too fond of the Wii and partially because My Budget < Atari Jaguar) so I have been once again considering doing a modern gaming tracker next year, but I'm still a bit hesitant about it since I know with my medical situation there would be times that I might not be able to get the weekly times compiled and posted on time. I'll still give it a go if no one else wants to do it, but I figured I'd ask you first since you seemed interested in doing it and might be in a better position than I am for updating the tracker reliably.

[Iwantgames:)]

 

Out of curiosity, are you still thinking about doing a modern gaming tracker next year? I ask because I've abandoned my somewhat crazy idea of playing nothing but Atari systems in 2018 (partially because I'm just way too fond of the Wii and partially because My Budget < Atari Jaguar) so I have been once again considering doing a modern gaming tracker next year, but I'm still a bit hesitant about it since I know with my medical situation there would be times that I might not be able to get the weekly times compiled and posted on time. I'll still give it a go if no one else wants to do it, but I figured I'd ask you first since you seemed interested in doing it and might be in a better position than I am for updating the tracker reliably.

I was still planning to but as it was your idea originally if you want to do it I will obviously let you do so instead

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:
Bowling - 4 min.

Atari 8-bit:
Battle Eagle - 15 min.
International Karate - 7 min.
Kikstart - 5 min.
Trailblazer - 9 min.

C64:
Archon - 15 min.
Pitstop II - 10 min.
Trailblazer - 2 min.

CP/M:
Ladder - 22 min.

Famicom:
Arkanoid - 4 min.
Gradius - 5 min.

PC Engine:
Puzznic - 3 min.
Yokai Dochuki - 7 min.

RCA Studio II:
Bowling - 3 min.
Pinball - 5 min.

 

A bit of everything, after I hosted our local Christmas party with a bit of gaming. Many of the times are estimates rather that clocked exactly.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Ghost Manor: 4 min

Koolaid Man: 2 min

Pick ‘n Pile: 5 min

Spike’s Peak: 3 min

Spitfire Attack: 7 min

 

Testing new stuff, sadly with very little time to do so.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (December 11th through 17th)...

 

Android phone (non-eligible):

Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 61 min. in 6 sessions

Pac Man (Google) - 4 min.

 

Apple II:

Burger Time - 25 min.

 

Arcade:

Burger Time - 20 min.

 

Colecovision:

Burger Time (Mattel Prototype) - 20 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Stockstream - 185 min. in 7 sessions

 

This week I continued to play Stockstream and Crazy Taxi: City Rush. In Stockstream, the rules have been amended to strongly discourage you from selling stocks others have bought (which now even can get you banned in some cases). In Crazy Taxi: City Rush, I'm making some progress, but I'm still playing the Beach part.

 

Then I tried to look at other Android games I could play, and to my surprise, I found Pac Man already installed, that is, Google's version of it changing the maze to a variant of the Google logo. In this version, you play by swiping in the direction you want Pac Man to go, which somewhat hinders the experience because Pac Man doesn't move until the swipe is completed.

 

Then I played 3 different versions of Burger Time. The Mattel prototype has implemented some features a bit incorrectly in that letting the villains fall down doesn't always work, and the game runs at an inconsistent speed, expecially the burger parts fall at very inconsistent speed, depending on what's going on on screen. The steering also somewhat borrows from the Intellivision version in that your chef continues to move for a bit if you let go of the controller. But at least this version has got the original maze patterns, albeit a bit shrinked down.

 

The Apple II version also runs at an inconsistent speed, mostly due to the sound sometimes slowing down the game. The villains are much faster in the original and get faster than the player by the 3rd level. But still the game doesn't seem to be much harder than the original arcade version.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 25 minutes

Space Invaders - 60 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection - 97 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

My Pac-Man Collection gameplay videos, presented for 7800 High Score Club Season 2017-2018, Round 8.

[Iwantgames:)]

I havent had much retro time lately but I squeezed a tiny bit in this week.

 

NES

 

Clu Clu Land - 5min

Dr. Chaos - 25min

[zylon]

5200-

Pacman- 18min

 

Genesis-

Shining Force II- 18hrs 31min

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 97 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 70 minutes

 

 

Kaboom!: 112,767

 

Hunchy 2: I almost made it to level 14. Just one or two errors to correct.

 

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Apple II:

The Ancient Art of War - 3 min.

Donkey Kong - 3 min.

Frogger - 3 min.

The Halley Project - 6 min.

Moon Patrol - 3 min.

The Oregon Trail - 67 min.

Swashbuckler - 5 min.

Temple of Apshai - 3 min.

[agb]

For the week:

PS one Tetris 12 minutes

PS one Galaxian 47 minutes lots of fun

 

Atari 2600:

Turmoil 25 minutes tied my high of 59,680

Ms. Pac-Man 17 minutes high score of 66,740

Dig Dug. 40 minutes few times over 120,000

Solar Fox - 235 minutes a few times over 3 million

Edited December 18, 2017 by agb

[agb]

For the week:

PS one Tetris 12 minutes

PS one Galaxian 47 minutes lots of fun

 

Atari 2600:

Turmoil 25 minutes tied my high of 59,680

Ms. Pac-Man 17 minutes high score of 66,740

Dig Dug. 40 minutes few times over 120,000

Solar Fox - 235 minutes a few times over 3 million

Edited December 18, 2017 by agb

[+thegoldenband]

PS one Galaxian 47 minutes lots of fun

 

I'm not familiar with that one -- is it Galaxian 3, or is it the emulated version of the original Galaxian on the Namco Museum disc?

[agb]

 

I'm not familiar with that one -- is it Galaxian 3, or is it the emulated version of the original Galaxian on the Namco Museum disc?

It is the museum Galaxian. Thank you updating every eeek. It is fun to follow what everyone plays.

[+wongojack]

Arcade

Dig Dug 79

N64

Legend of Zelda, The: Ocarina of Time 225

​I went back to OoT after almost 11 months off. Hoping to finish it before I start my annual "staycation" later this month.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

For the first week in quite some time this week ended up being an Atari-free week for my household, which is quite surprising considering that we just got a Harmony Encore cart in the mail last week! I guess it just goes to show how easy it is to get sucked into a more recent game with a good story and adventure to be had.

 

Ineligible
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo Wii) - 839 minutes
Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Nintendo Wii) - 106 minutes
Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil (Nintendo Wii) - 270 minutes

PC-DOS (Emulated on Nintendo Wii & DOSBox)
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: The Adventures in Nimnul's Castle - 14 minutes
Final Doom - 255 minutes

PlayStation
Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown - 51 minutes
Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins - 306 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,841 minutes (30 hours 41 minutes) [626 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 1,215 minutes
PlayStation: 357 minutes
PC-DOS: 269 minutes

 

 

 

To start off the week I finished up Chris's story in the remastered version of the original Resident Evil on the Nintendo Wii, and managed to finish the game in 3 hours and 58 minutes; which I was particularly pleased about since you can unlock a special weapon for your next play through if you beat the game in under 4 hours. Deciding I had played enough Resident Evil for this year though I got back to Final Doom for PC-DOS, since I had been hoping to beat the game before the year's end and was just over halfway through at the start of the week. Unfortunately though I think I've finally met my match when it comes to a Doom game and it doesn't look like I'll be finishing Final Doom this year. I was able to beat the original Doom and Doom II on Ultra Violence difficulty with no problem, and in spite of some difficulties I did manage to get through the first of the two chapters of Final Doom on Ultra Violence, but the second chapter is starting to prove to be a bit too much for me to handle difficulty wise.

 

Feeling fairly defeated on the Doom front I decided to refocus my efforts to finish the other game I wanted to complete by year's end: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. Every year for the last couple years I've started playing Twilight Princess, made it about 20 hours in, then lost interest and never finished it; but this year I'm determined to see the story through to the very end like I did when this game first game out a decade or so ago. I made a lot of good progress and had a ton of fun playing Twilight Princess this week, and I think I may be able to finish the game by the end of next week.

 

Moving on to the misses' week in gaming, she started off the week by finishing up the female character's story in Muramasa: The Demon Blade with great satisfaction. By the end she said it was a tossup between Muramasa and Resident Evil 4 for her favorite game of the year and that she definitely plans on playing through the entire game again and some point in the future. Once Muramasa was complete she went back to a game she had started playing earlier in the year but never got very far in: Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown on the original PlayStation. Unfortunately she quickly remembered why she quit playing it the first time around, as the jerky controls and inconsistent frame rate made it a really difficult game for her to get the hang of. Not feeling all that happy with Duke Nukem she decided to stick with the theme of Muramasa and play another ninja-centric game that had been sitting on her "to play" shelf for a few months: Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins. She loved the original Tenchu and has been having a great time with the sequel so far, so it looks like she'll be sticking with this one.

 

As far as my gaming time for next week goes I think I'll be focusing mainly on trying to complete The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but I'll see if I can get in some Atari time as well just to have some tracker eligible time to contribute. I might explore a few DOS games as well, since I did finally get around to installing DOSBox on my computer this week and it seems to be working fine so far based on the few minutes I spent testing it out with my childhood favorite Chip 'n Dale game. The Incredible Machine sounds like a fun and relaxing diversion from my Zelda adventure if I need to take a break now and then, but we'll see how it goes.

 

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

Edited December 18, 2017 by Jin

[Eltigro]

Not much for me this week...

 

Genesis

Strider - 7 min (I always think, "Man, I really want to play Strider." Then I start playing it and I get annoyed with the controls and button layout and stop. Oh well.)

Thunder Force II - 23 min (This one has always seemed so much more difficult than Thunder Force III and I think I'm not alone in that assessment. I did manage to get past stage one though! lol)

 

Ineligible

XBox One - Witcher III - several more hours... (I did a few more question marks on the map and a little further in the main story line. Reloaded a save once because I missed a quest objective and didn't want to fail it. Felt really bad when I decided not to kiss Triss at the masquerade party... she was obviously hurt afterwards... wait... it's just a game... right? lol)

Edited December 19, 2017 by Eltigro

[BurritoBeans]

DOS:

Waxworks - 600 minutes

 

So due to still having to clean stacks of records becoming mildly annoying, I sat down with a game I've wanted to try for a long time - Waxworks - but haven't until now. Let me just say, this one is interesting - it's a horror dungeon-crawler type game in which you play as a dude who goes to a waxwork run by an uncle with each work showing something that happened related to your family.

 

So the plot gets funky because in each waxwork it shows one of the two twins from that time and what they were known for (Some Egyptian dude, Jack the Ripper, a mutated half-man half-plant thing, and a necromancer with zombies) due to some curse placed on the family by a witch because they cut off one of her hands and she made it so one of every set of the twins will work for the devil. So, after going through all that you get onto gameplay... I was playing on a bare minimum of a 12MHz 286, no soundcard (just a beeper) and 4MB of RAM - this means that gameplay is slow and all their cool mod files can't be heard because I can't play them back. Pretty much you have a massive map for each in which you need to solve puzzles which lead up to a fight with the evil twin... Egypt is a standard dungeon crawler, the graveyard is fights every 10 steps but the zombies go down quick (you kill them by chopping off their arms and head), the Jack the Ripper scene has no fights until Jack himself but involves running from cops and mobs, and finally the mine involves dodging evil plants and spore-dudes. There's not too much horror to the game itself, but where it comes in is the deaths - they're usually pretty detailed, and some like the hanging vines in the mine give animated scenes of your head and arms being ripped straight off the body complete with blood, muscles, tendons, etc. to make it look more "realistic" or whatever - past that there's not a ton apart from some random traps and jumpscares. After getting through all of those scenarios, saving a million and a half times (it's really trial and error gameplay at times) and watching your guy die in every way they have possible, you finally get a fifth waxwork in which you have to appear and properly finish off the witch using things scattered in the scene - this took me forever to figure out what to use when, so I got a "your family is screwed" screen a good 20 times at least. In the end, I really did like the game - I'm going to keep it on the hard drive as even if it is frustrating it's a ton of fun.

 

So yeah, no Ultima... oh well, I really didn't think of playing it. I've got a week off for next week apart from going into work a few times so I'm thinking this christmas break will just be a lot of practicing guitar/synth lines and games unless I come up with a better project to start up.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 50, running from December 11 - 17. We logged 3736 minutes of eligible play, playing 55 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. Shining Force II (Genesis) - 1111

2. Waxworks (PC (DOS)) - 600

3. Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins (PlayStation) - 306

4. Final Doom (PC (DOS)) - 255

5. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 235

6. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - 225

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 97

7. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 97

9. Dig Dug (Arcade) - 79

10. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 70

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 235

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 97

3. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 97

4. Dig Dug (Arcade) - 79

5. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 70

6. Oregon Trail, The (Apple II) - 67

7. Space Invaders (Atari 2600) - 60

8. Galaxian (Arcade) - 47

9. Dig Dug (Atari 2600) - 40

10. BurgerTime (Apple II) - 25

10. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 25

10. Turmoil (Atari 2600) - 25

Top 10 systems:

1. Genesis (1141)

2. PC (DOS) (869)

3. Atari 2600 (591)

4. PlayStation (369)

5. N64 (225)

6. Arcade (146)

7. Apple II (118)

8. Atari 7800 (97)

9. NES/Famicom (39)

10. Atari 8-bit (36)

Week 50 looks a lot like Week 49, with Shining Force II still atop the main Top 10 and Solar Fox taking the pre-NES. The only difference is that the Genesis, which was last week's #2 system, rules the roost this time around.

[karokoenig]

Amiga 500

Ghosts ‘n Goblins: 3 min

 

Sega Master System

Asterix and the Secret Mission: 8 min

Ayrton Senna’s Siper Monaco GP: 5 min

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse: 3 min

Super Tennis: 10 min

The Cyber Shinobi: 4 min

The Lucky Dime Caper starring Donald Duck: 8 min

Wonder Boy: 6 min

Wonder Boy in Monster Land: 10 min

World Soccer: 3 min

 

Interton VC 4000

Cartridge 1 (Car Racing): 8 min

Cartridge 3 (Paddle Games): 14 min

Cartridge 4 (Tank-Air Battle): 5 min

Cartridge 12 (Hunting): 15 min

Cartridge 38 (Hyperspace): 12 min

 

Testing the Amiga in our exhibition again, because you never know if a microswitch in the joystick might have failed or something.

 

I scored a Sega Master System game lot on ebay that flew under the radar due to stupid auction timing by the seller. Glad I paid so little, because those carts were extremely dirty. Nicotine, tar, and some sticky stuff. Took me a lot of scrubbing to get them in shape, but they all work fine. Additionally, I got "Super Tennis" CIB from my AtariAge Secret Santa, which I tested as well. Played one set, got my ass kicked - as in all Tennis games I ever tried :-).

 

I also acquired a few more games for my Interton VC4000, which is a "Made in Germany" console from 1978. I took this opportunity to dig out the console, set it up and play my other games as well. I have a really soft spot for this little console. It has even less RAM than the Atari 2600 - 37 Bytes (!) I believe. The whole system is robust, I like the controllers. They do take a little time to get used to, however. If I ever have a gameroom, I will definetly set up this system permanently and try to go for a complete set of games, which is just 37.

[carlsson]

Karokoenig: I don't know if you do multicarts at all but if you do, you might be interested in Rolo's cartridge system for the TRS-80 CoCo/Dragon computers with separate adapters for the Vectrex, Videopac G7000, Interton VC-4000 and 1292 based systems. With a such setup and a pre-programmed ROM you'll get instant access to all known/dumped VC-4000 games, though not original of course.

[karokoenig]

Thanks for the tip. Usually, as long as cartridges are concerned, I'm a bit more of a vintage hardware guy. If I ever have room to set up computers, I'd probably go for some SD tech, because floppy disks and tapes have so much more bit rot...

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Bowling - 15 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Archon - 50 min.

CBM-II:

Roadrace - 7 min.

Snakes - 4 min.

I've played one session of midnight bowling, two sessions of Archon and then tried to find some games for the CBM-II (B-Series) of computers which involve the US models B128/B256 and European models CBM 610/710/720. The latter is not so easy, as despite user groups have leaved a library of some 130+ disks up to 1 MB each, very little are games and often dull type-in based stuff. Some is ported from the PET line, which seems like a veritable gaming computer in comparison.

Merry Christmas!

[Iwantgames:)]

No Retro gaming for me this week, should have some for the year finale tho as I'm planning a Vectrex filled Christmas