What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2018 (Season 11)

[+thegoldenband]

tl;dr: Play games (from 20th-century systems) and post your times!

Once more we've reached a new year, and with that it's time to move from the old thread to the new. Astonishingly, we're now in the 11th season of our gameplay tracker, and coming up on its 10th anniversary. We're still going strong -- but new members are always welcome: the more the merrier, quite literally.

So what is this?

The basic idea is to post what games you played during each week, and for how long. You don't have to time it down to the minute (though some of us do), and reasonable estimates are acceptable. Then, at the end of the week, the statskeeper (that's me) totals everything up and we find out which games and platforms are seeing the most action.

Each week, we have top 10 lists for consoles/computers and for individual games. We also have a separate top 10 list for games released on platforms that predate the US release of the NES (i.e. roughly the tail end of 1985). That way, arcade-style vintage gaming doesn't get totally lost in the shuffle of RPGs, collectathons, and other games that take 10+ hours to complete.

However, our all-time #1 game and system are Kaboom and the Atari 2600 -- by a huge margin on both counts -- so the old consoles and computers are more than holding their own!

Guidelines:

1. Be sure to list the system, the name of the game, and the length of time you play. Please note if the game has any alternate titles by which it's better known (i.e. Air Sea Battle vs. Target Fun). If you list multiple games, please group them by platform. If you play on a backwards-compatible system, e.g. Atari 2600 games on the 7800 or SMS games on the Genesis, the game should be listed under the older platform's name.

2. Each week runs Monday through Sunday (at midnight), though the first and last week of the year sometimes vary. The deadline for posting stats is now 3:00 PM (EST) on Mondays to allow for different time zones. I may accept times posted after the deadline, but please do try to post before Tuesday morning. If you post late on Monday or early on Tuesday, please make it clear that you're posting times for the previous week.

3. Playing on actual vintage hardware is preferred, although emulators are certainly allowed. In some cases (homebrews in development, rare arcade games) the may be no alternative to using an emulator.

4. Our cutoff year is 2000. That is, eligible consoles and computers have to have been released (in the US) before 2000. This includes Dreamcast and N64, but excludes the most recent systems like PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, et al. The same goes for computers: we count Windows 95 and 98 games, but not XP; Mac OS 9, but not OS X; and so on.

New in 2018: now all those modern systems from 2000 and beyond can be posted over at the brand-new What Have You Actually Played - Modern Edition Tracker!

5. Arcade games up to A.D. 2000 are permitted. So are emulated compilations of arcade games for modern systems, as long as they're not rewritten or otherwise massively "updated" versions. If you play 45 minutes of Robotron via Midway Arcade Treasures for the XBox, those 45 minutes are counted towards the arcade game. When you're playing arcade compilations, be sure to list each game separately (don't just put "Midway Arcade Treasures - 45 min.")

6. You don't just have to post a bare list of times -- comments, stories, gripes, and helpful hints are always encouraged! If you're struggling with a level, got a new high score, or have some thoughts about what's great or what stinks about a particular game...well, that's the kind of stuff that makes this fun to read.

How to make the statskeeper's life easier:

- If you post a big list of games, please consider alphabetizing them first (after grouping them by platform).

- Posting your times in minutes, rather than hours + minutes, makes things a little simpler.

- Even if you don't know the exact time, it's better to post a specific number and say it's an estimate. If you say you posted a bunch of games for "between 20 minutes and an hour", I'll just average everything out to 40 minutes, but it's much better to have a sense of which games you played more and which ones you played less.

- If there's room for confusion or ambiguity, please address that in advance so I don't have to research it myself. Non-US releases, homebrews in progress, alternate titles, and expanded re-releases can get especially tricky.

That about covers it. I've just posted the summary for 2017 (starting here), including the all-time top games, so those who like stats are welcome to check that out.

One more thought:

If you haven't participated before, or if you did and got busy with other things, consider taking part in 2018! You may find that it has some interesting side effects -- I've found that keeping a log dramatically changes how I think about my own gaming, and mostly for the better.

P.S. Past years of the tracker: 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017

[Opry99er]

I will be ice fishing all weekend, so here we go...

 

 

NES:

 

Blue Marlin (35 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Bigfoot (40 minutes)

Henhouse (30 minutes)

Honeycomb Rapture (5 minutes)

Legends (30 minutes)

Old Dark Cave (20 minutes)

Star Trek S.O.S. (30 minutes)

TI Trek (50 minutes)

Video Vegas (10 minutes)

Werewolves and Wanderers (190 minutes) //technically a BBS door game, running on a TI

 

 

On Werewolves, I wasnt sure where to put it. It has been a long time since I posted to the tracker and I wasnt sure how we were handling the Door Games.

 

 

Thanks, and happy 2018 to everyone!!!

[karokoenig]

Amiga 500

Gravity Force: 3 min

Pac-Mania: 8 min

Xenon: 2 min

 

Atari 2600

Tennis 3D: 3 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 97 min

 

Starting off 2018 with some more maintenance on the Amiga in our current exhibition. It is a very cool exhibit, and kids love it as much as their parents - who get all nostalgic when they see it.

 

Tennis 3D is a Bb homebrew I stumbled across here in the forums. It's clunky, to say the least, but it does have some sort of 3D effect going on.

 

Two patrols in Silent Hunter, still very early into the Pacific War. Got a surface search radar now, which makes it considerably easier to find something to shoot at.

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Bowling - 39 min.

CBM-II:

Artillery - 10 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week, January 1st through 7th, concerning classic systems (the modern systems will be posted on the modern tracker from now on):

 

Commodore 64:

Space-Pilot II - 172 min. in 4 sessions

 

MS-DOS:

J-Bird - 119 min. in 4 sessions

 

non-eligible:

Rubik's Cube - 90 min.

 

As for classic games, I continued to play J-Bird until I made a personal high score of over 130,000 points, beating Level 5. Then I rediscovered Space-Pilot II, but I'm not too good at it at the moment, only got to Level 5 out of 8 and can't seem to improve beyond that.

 

Then I watched a video on Rubik's Cube presenting a new kind of strategy for it which is pretty simple. It consists of only 4 move combinations, which in itself are rather repetitive and thus easy to remember. The downside is that they take a bit longer to execute than the combinations I'm used to, and they also work on smaller portions of the cube so you have to do more of them to solve the cube.

 

The other times which I posted here last year as "ineligible" will be posted on the modern tracker from now on, except for Rubik's Cube which is still ineligible, but falls into the time frame of classic games (it came out in early 1981 as far as I remember).

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 115 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 71 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 126,435

 

Hunchy 2 : Still on level 14.

 

[zylon]

5200-

Missile Command 2hrs 12min

Kaboom!- 10min

 

2600-

Kaboom!- 35min

Missile Command- 48min

Battlezone- 55min

Othello- 3hrs 2min

 

Lol, I've found I can't play these anywhere near as good on modern TV's. They look great, but something's amiss. Kaboom for either console, I get easily 10k on old TV, but barely reach 2k on newer ones. battlezone has many of the player shots missing from view. Even a dropoff in Missile Command. Only Othello seemed unscathed. Almost not worth playing the rest if only modern TV's available.

[BurritoBeans]

Apple II:

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar - 200 minutes

 

 

Hey, I did something that I said I would!

 

So yeah, all that I got in for this week (for this tracker) is Ultima IV... well that's good. So yeah, if you haven't played IV but have played the rest and go into IV then you'll find it mildly different because the whole goal is just to become an Avatar instead of defeating some ultimate evil or whatnot. All you do is try and become the shining example of good-ness or whatever by going around doing stuff... I really don't have a better way to put it anyways. This one may be up there a bit more than III for me as I never really took the time previously to realize how similar it is to III while just adding so much more - the world is larger, you have more interaction, time is constantly running, and you don't have to deal with anything like fetch quests - it's just you and the world.

 

So yeah, exciting enough start of the week or so I'd say. Next week is going to be the last of the Apple II Ultima series, Ultima V, and then past that I honestly have no clue what to play on the II - I guess I'll find something.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Atari 2600:
Bouncin' Baby Bunnies - 1 min.
Extra Terrestrials - 2 min.
Good Luck, Charlie Brown - 2 min.
Red Sea Crossing - 3 min.
Rescue Terra I - 13 min.
Ski Run - 2 min.

NES:
Bad Dudes - 2 min.
Bonk's Adventure - 2 min.
Circus Charlie - 43 min.
Dig Dug - 16 min.
Felix the Cat - 82 min.
Little Samson - 141 min.
Overlord - 15 min.
Penguin-kun Wars - 21 min.
Section Z - 190 min.
Star Voyager - 46 min.
Wacky Races - 70 min.

SNES:
Lost Vikings - 24 min.

 

Beat Wacky Races, Overlord, Felix the Cat, Star Voyager, Little Samson, and Section Z, and reached the threshold set by NintendoAge's yearly competition/effort for victory in Dig Dug (Round 15) and Circus Charlie (one loop on Game A).

 

Otherwise I played around with a few VCS games and restarted work on Lost Vikings.

[+Darrin9999]

Odyssey 2 / Videopac :

 

1. Attack of the timelord - 75 min

2. Ants! - 45 min

3. Exojet - 45 min

4. Fatso! - 30 min

5. Flash Point - 20 min

6. Jungle Girl - 25 min

7. Laser War - 6 min

8. Monkeyshines - 62 min

9. Neutron Star - 22 min

10. Thunderball/Flipper - 5 min

 

 

Emerson Arcadia 2001 :

 

1. Cat Trax - 29 min

2. Escape - 58 min

3. Space Attack - 55 min

4. Tanks A Lot - 33 min

 

 

Sega Dreamcast :

 

1. Last Hope : Pink Bullets - 126 min

 

 

Neo Geo AES:

 

1. Alpha Mission II - 20 min

2. Aero Fighters 3 - 15 min

3. Metal Slug - 88 min

4. Metal Slug 2 - 110 min

[Iwantgames:)]

 

I decided this week aside from my PS4 gaming to focus solely on spending more time playing my Videopac G7200 (Odyssey 2 ) so Wendsday morning after work, I fired up Astrododge planning on just a quick round or two. This quickly became the better part of an hour as I tried to get a less demonic score (666) but although I reached it twice I just couldn’t seem to get past.

 

Thursday morning I decided I’d try to best my high score on Attack of the Timelord, I currently hold the record on the O2 high score competition but my position is getting threatened lol. Unfortunately I just couldnt seem to break the 1,000 point barrier this week :/

 

Friday I played a couple quick rounds of Killer Bees, another of my favorite O2 games didnt get up to my previous high score but I atleast got up over 10k

 

I also bought a couple more Videopac games that never got released here in the states so you can expect to see gameplay times for those in the future

 

 

Odyssey 2/Videopac

 

Astrododge – 45min

Attack of the Timelord – 40min

Killer Bees – 20min

 

[agb]

My times for the week 1/1-1/7/2018 are;

 

PS1 Space Invaders 10 mins

Arcade Galaxian using PS1 namco museum 17 mins

 

Atari 2600 times are:

Demon Attack 35 mins

Ms. Pac-Man 68 mins

Solar Fox 231 mins

Turmoil 19 minutes

 

No high scores. No good scores. All fun games.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

This week my household kicked off the new year with the biggest week in terms of overall gaming time that we've ever had with a whopping 51+ hours of gameplay! Having spent 41 of those 51 hours spent just on the newest Pokémon game it appears that playing Pokémon was my full time job this past week.

 

 

Ineligible

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo 3DS) - 37 minutes
Pokémon Ultra Sun (Nintendo 3DS) - 2,478 minutes

Sonic Colors (Nintendo Wii) - 453 minutes

StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 12 minutes

 

Atari 7800
Asteroids - 31 minutes
Centipede - 25 minutes
Donkey Kong Junior - 6 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 13 minutes
Xevious - 19 minutes

 

 

Total Play Time This Week
3,074 minutes (51 hours 14 minutes) [94 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo 3DS: 2,527 minutes
Nintendo Wii: 453 minutes
Atari 7800: 94 minutes

 

 

 

While the system and game list was pretty short this past week, the time spent on them was certainly not. The Atari 7800 got the short end of the stick with only an hour and a half or so of gameplay logged, but the misses and I still had a good time parking it on the couch for some two player fun in a few arcade classics. The overwhelming majority of my gaming time this past week though was dedicated to Pokémon Ultra Sun, which is actually the first Pokémon game that I've played since Pokémon Black on my old DS Lite many long years ago. To say that I love all the improvements they've made since then would be a massive understatement.

 

This newest Pokémon game feels so much more approachable and engaging in more ways than I have the space to list here. There's simple little tweaks like putting a little on screen note next to which attacks are effective, super effective, or ineffective against pokémon that you've battled before so you won't have to memorize the rather enormous attack effectiveness chart, and also major improvements that change the entire feel of the game. The new Pokémon Refresh system that allows you to feed, groom, and play with the pokémon in your party goes a long way towards making your battling companions feel like real living creatures with their own wants and needs rather than just statistic crunching battle machines.

 

The only criticism I could really make about Pokémon Ultra Sun is that while the story is likely the most complex and engaging story to grace any Pokémon game that I've played, at times—and particularly in the side quests—it takes a few rather dark and disturbing turns that don't seem very suitable for children. One part in particular that stood out to me involved rescuing an abused Vulpix (which is an adorable little fox pokémon, for the uninformed) and then having to go visit the poor traumatized creature at a rehabilitation clinic every day for most of a week to help it begin to overcome it's fear of humans and start doing basic things like eating and going outside again. There's a lot of really sad and emotionally charged storytelling in the game like I've never seen in a Pokémon game before, and while I applaud the writers for the more mature storyline I'm not sure some of it is appropriate for their target audience. Melancholy moments aside though, Pokémon Ultra Sun really is a wonderful game and I've been having a fantastic time playing through it.

 

As far as the misses' gaming time for the past week, aside from a bit of Atari 7800 the only game she played was Sonic Colors on the Wii. She got a copy of it in the mail early on in the week and spent a little time every evening playing a few levels here and and there until she got to what appears to be the final level last night. She's not quite done with the game yet but I imagine she'll probably finish it up next week, seeing as how it looks like she's pretty close to the end. So far her overall impression of Sonic Colors is that it's a beautiful and mostly well designed game (vastly better than Sonic and the Secret Rings, for sure) but there have been some major difficulty spikes here and there that left her pretty frustrated and annoyed, mostly due to the game asking you to do sequences of very precise platform jumping with not-so-precise controls. With that in mind, Sonic Colors has been a mixed bag for her so far. Not quite as good as good as Sonic Unleashed but definitely a major improvement over some of Sonic's other more recent outings.

 

Looking ahead to next week I think it's pretty safe to say that the misses will be finishing up Sonic Colors and I'll be logging a good bit more time in Pokémon Ultra Sun, though I should play some Tower Toppler for the Atari 7800 High Score Club as well. I know the spousal unit seems pretty keen on trying out Tower Toppler too, so maybe we'll sit down and play some Atari 7800 together again next week between our modern gaming sessions. Until next week, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

Edited January 8, 2018 by Jin

[+wongojack]

Astrocade
Brickyard 86 / Clowns 6
Cosmic Raiders 15
Dog Patch 5
Grand Prix 5 / Demolition Derby 4
Gun Fight 9
Space Invaders 10 (aka Astro Battle)


Hey, it's all Astrocade in the tracker this week for me. First, Space Invaders should be exactly the same as Astro Battle. I believe the game was quickly renamed for obvious reasons but the two differ in name only.

 

We'll have to make a decision if games that are different but released on the same cartridge like Brickyard & Clowns and Grand Prix & Demolition Derby should be tracked individually or together. My view is that the games should be tracked individually. Because of the way the Astrocade works, you are presented with the software available from the main startup menu. Inserting a cartridge simply adds additional entries to the menu where you can select an individual title. This means that you have to make a conscious choice to play Brickyard vs Clowns before each and every individual game. Anyway, the tracking team will need to decide how it wants to track these.

 

I also recently played through Grim Fandango, but I played the re-mastered edition which I don't believe should be eligible in THIS tracker. It added several variations for control as well as re-mastered textures, a director's commentary, and it is of course natively compatible on "modern" computers.

 

I'm still deciding if I'll be tracking time in the modern tracker. Most likely, I will NOT just because it seems less fun to track all my gameplay (where does it end?!) - we'll see.

[Eltigro]

Didn't get in a lot of retro gaming this week. Spent a lot of time on Bioshock Infinite (see the modern tracker for info on that one) but I did take my Atari Flashback Portable on a trip this weekend...

 

Atari 2600 (all on Flashback Portable)

Asteroids - 15 min (Should just know by now that if I turn on my portable, at some point I'm going to play Asteroids...)

Atari Climber - 2 min (Didn't really know what I was doing... seemed pretty simple, but difficult. I made it to the third level I think?)

Centipede - 5 min (Again, can't really play these well without a trackball, but it's still pretty fun.)

Frog Pond - 5 min (Interesting little game... not sure what causes a game over... haven't read up on it. Is it just timed or is it after you miss so many bugs? Anyway, I think my score was in the low 400s... is that good?)

Millipede - 5 min (See above for what I said about Centipede...)

Missile Command - 2 min (Again, I've never been good at this, but it's fun to try.)

Pac-Man - 2 min (This is the upgraded version, not the original bonk bonk bonk bonk version... anyway, as I've said before, looks like it could be great, but there's too much flicker on the ghosts for them to be seen easily on this small screen.)

 

 

At some point I need to get an SD card and put Keystone Capers and some others on here...

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 15 minutes

Space Invaders - 20 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection - 140 minutes

 

FIRST EVIDENCES OF NEW SEASON: My Pac-Man Collection video footages

[+thegoldenband]

We'll have to make a decision if games that are different but released on the same cartridge like Brickyard & Clowns and Grand Prix & Demolition Derby should be tracked individually or together. My view is that the games should be tracked individually. Because of the way the Astrocade works, you are presented with the software available from the main startup menu. Inserting a cartridge simply adds additional entries to the menu where you can select an individual title. This means that you have to make a conscious choice to play Brickyard vs Clowns before each and every individual game. Anyway, the tracking team will need to decide how it wants to track these.

In general my policy with multi-game, single-media-volume releases is: if the games got standalone releases, they're tracked separately; if they were only released together, then they're tracked together. The Odyssey² is one system where this comes up regularly, since it has so many combo carts, but it's also how I've handled things like Action 52.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 1, running from January 1 - 7. We logged 4215 minutes of eligible play, playing 91 games on a total of 19 systems.

Top 10:

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 231

2. Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar (Apple II) - 200

3. Werewolves and Wanderers (BBS Door Games) - 190

3. Section Z (NES/Famicom) - 190

5. Othello (Atari 2600) - 182

6. Space Pilot II (C64) - 172

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 150

8. Little Samson (NES/Famicom) - 141

9. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 140

10. Missile Command (Atari 5200) - 132

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 231

2. Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar (Apple II) - 200

3. Othello (Atari 2600) - 182

4. Space Pilot II (C64) - 172

5. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 150

6. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 140

7. Missile Command (Atari 5200) - 132

8. Attack of the Timelord (Odyssey^2) - 115

9. Brickyard/Clowns (Bally Astrocade) - 92

10. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 71

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (995)

2. NES/Famicom (663)

3. Odyssey^2 (440)

4. Atari 7800 (234)

5. Neo Geo AES/MVS (233)

6. PC (DOS) (216)

7. TI-99/4A (215)

8. Apple II (200)

9. BBS Door Games (190)

10. Emerson Arcadia 2001 (175)

Our inaugural week has lots of games played in the 2-4 hour range, and the top of that heap is Solar Fox on the Atari 2600, with a triple crown on all three charts.

We also get a new VCS member in the 1000-minute club, as Othello becomes badgeholder #315 with 1157 minutes logged to date.

[Opry99er]

Very neat!!

 

So glad the tracker is entering 2018 strong!

[leods]

It's last year's, but I played through Super Mario Brothers for the first time. I never played more than 10 minutes here and there in the past. Having played through the entire game I have to say, as much as it's a step forward for the genre, it's not that great of a game. Still I find it important to get to know it, so I played through the thing. I did use emulation and save states at the beginning of levels, and didn't finish the last castle, because I saw no reason to.

 

Playing Super Mario 2 (US) or specially Super Mario 3 (the real successor to the series) It's amazing how much better these games are. They controll better, and the level design is way more advanced and varied, adding tons of depth to those games. So now I've been playing MArio 2 and 3, concentrating more on Mario 2 (again, Mario US, Toki Doki Panic in JP).

 

To be honest, I think Mario Brothers is overall a much better game than Super Mario Brothers. Just because it scrolls doesn't mean SMB is better.....

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Burgertime: 10 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 50 min

 

The Atari 2600 High Score Club 2018 has started. And the war beneath the waves goes on.

[Iwantgames:)]

Not much classic time at all this week Im afraid, but I did just buy a Arcadia 2001 so plan to see that here in a week or two

 

Sega Genesis -

 

I got a Mega Amp modded system this week and just tried it out and its definitely clearer sound quality

 

 

Mercs - 15min

[Mister-VCS]

INTELLIVISON: Venture and Tutankham (20 minutes each)

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Atari Climber - 8 min.

Shield Shifter - 5 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Bosconian - 10 min.

CBM-II:

Dragon - 3 min.

Froggie - 4 min.

Solitaire Super - 5 min.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600

BurgerTime - 30 minutes

Missile Command - 170 minutes

 

ATARI 7800

Pac-Man Collection - 112 minutes

Tower Toppler - 5 minutes

Edited January 14, 2018 by oyamafamily