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

[carlsson]

Turned it on to play one race and that was it. A couple of minutes.

 

So basically you played F-Zero for 2 minutes, give or take? That is how we normally report times over here, how many minutes combined we've spent on each game in a week.

Edited January 29, 2018 by carlsson

[Trinity]

 

So basically you played F-Zero for 2 minutes, give or take? That is how we normally report times over here, how many minutes combined we've spent on each game in a week.

Yeah. A couple minutes.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a big week for gaming around my household this past week, and almost all of it was on classic systems.




Ineligible
Metroid Prime (Nintendo GameCube) - 56 minutes

Atari 2600
Battlezone - 163 minutes
Time Pilot - 65 minutes
Wizard of Wor - 20 minutes

Nintendo Game Boy
Tetris - 17 minutes

Sega 32X
Doom - 208 minutes
Star Wars Arcade - 26 minutes
Virtua Fighter - 82 minutes
Virtua Racing - 272 minutes

Sega CD
Brutal: Paws of Fury - 107 minutes
Ecco the Dolphin - 791 minutes
Ecco: The Tides of Time - 539 minutes
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure - 8 minutes
Samurai Shodown - 24 minutes
Wolfchild - 16 minutes

Sega Genesis
Kid Chameleon (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 74 minutes
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Played on 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Nintendo 3DS) - 153 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
2,621 minutes (43 hours 41 minutes) [2,565 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Sega CD: 1,485 minutes
Sega 32X: 588 minutes
Atari 2600: 248 minutes
Sega Genesis: 227 minutes
Nintendo GameCube: 56 minutes
Nintendo Game Boy: 17 minutes



With so many games played in my household this past week where do I even begin? I suppose the beginning of the week is as good a spot as any, so I started off the week by playing the one ineligible game that I spent time on: Metroid Prime for the GameCube. Having beat Metroid Prime on Normal difficulty last year I decided to try it on Hard this year, and over the past weeks I put a good number of hours into it. Unfortunately though I hit a major wall this week on Metroid Prime's Thardus boss, trying to beat the boss over half a dozen times and never being able to knock more than 50% off it's life bar off before dying horribly. The idea of giving up on the game after putting 7 hours into it was pretty disheartening, but my reflexive abilities just weren't up to the task of handling this mid-game boss so back on the shelf Metroid Prime went.

After giving up on Metroid Prime I wasn't really sure what to play next, so I bounced around between fighting games and old Sega favorites for much of the week. Being a fan of the Genesis originals I loved the enhanced Sega CD versions of Brutal: Paws of Fury and Samurai Shodown, and I'm just as fond of every game I own for the 32X; all of which I played this week. That was pretty much it for me up until Friday, which ended up not being a very good day. After spending much of the morning in the Emergency Room with some really severe abdominal pain it was determined that I had a nasty case of diverticulitis, which is an extraordinarily painful infection of the colon. People with this condition are often hospitalized but I lucked out and was just sent home with two weeks worth of antibiotics and the strict order to eat or drink nothing other than clear liquids for 2 days, then spend at least week resting in bed or sitting down as much as possible.

With not much to do other than sitting or laying in bed and feeling lousy, and with real food off the menu, I decided I needed some video game comfort food. With that in mind I played the most comfort foodie games I could think of, which for me were Doom on the 32X, Sonic 2 for the Genesis (which I played on my 3DS while laying in bed), and Kid Chameleon for the Genesis emulated on the Wii; because for some inexplicable reason I've never re-bought an original copy of this fantastic platformer from my childhood. In addition to all the Sega goodness I also spent some time playing a few Atari 2600 games for the High Score Club, but I think that about covers it for my gaming this past week.

The misses was the one who actually did the most gaming in the household this past week, the majority of which was spent on two particular games that got her really excited about playing our recently acquired Sega CD. She did play a little Star Wars Arcade, Battlezone, and Time Pilot with me but once she discovered Ecco the Dolphin she quickly fell in love with it's unique side scrolling swimmer and puzzle solving gameplay, as well as it's wonderful soundtrack composed by Spencer Nilsen who also did the soundtrack for Sonic CD. The only thing she didn't like about Ecco the Dolphin was how insanely difficult the last two levels were, to the point that she remarked that she may require grief counseling if she ever managed to beat the game.

She stuck with it though and after six hours of trying over and over to beat the last two levels (and you have to start back from the beginning of the second to last level if you die anywhere along the way) she did finally finish the game; then promptly passed out for about 9 hours as soon as the credits finished rolling. Upon waking, and after having a bit of breakfast, she immediately started in on the sequel Ecco: The Tides of Time and has been playing it every day since; so in spite of all her laminations over the last two levels she definitely enjoyed the original Ecco. She's been having a lot of fun with the sequel too and has remarked several times how much nicer the difficulty curve is in Tides of Time, though she's still got a ways to go so we'll have to wait and see how the last couple levels in this game work out for her.


Well, that's about it for this week I think! I hope you've all been having a lot of fun with your gaming activities and until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Jin

[zylon]

 

Is that in the last part of the game? I haven't encountered any save points yet except in towns/castles, but I know there's one in an area near the end, though IIRC you get HP/MP there too. I also seem to recall that you can get an item that lets you save anywhere, but I don't have it.

 

I think I'm about 80-85% done, as I have all the Crests, the Eye of Malroth, etc. so I'm hitting the final stretch of the game. I beat DW2 back in the early 2000s with savestates but this time I'm playing legit. I'd like to try the GBC port sometime.

 

My Mom had acquired the item you speak of and got herself stuck by saving at a bad time. 2 other perks are being able to stash or bank your $, also able to hold more items. GB port allows an extra page of them. I played through it on Super GB long ago.

[Opry99er]

Was able to get a little extra time in last night before I knocked out.

 

To add:

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Aperture (20 minutes)

Werewolves and Wanderers (additional 60 minutes)

 

 

TRS-80:

 

Dungeons of Daggorath (50 minutes)

[oyamafamily]

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Polyvox cartridges which I used to play Atari 2600 games via console, including my new acquisition - Galaxian.

 

2) My scores on 2600 Game Programs which I repaired

OINK - 25,128 (Game 1-BB)

 

Spacemaster X-7 (named in Brazil as Space Tunnel) - 329,600

 

Frostbite - 218,650 (Game 1-BB)

 

Dishaster (named in Brazil as Mr. Chin) - 110,550 (Game 2)

 

3) More 7800 Pac-Man Collection video footages

 

[digdugnate]

good game session last night-

 

2600

 

Missile Command 30 minutes

Asteroids 30 minutes

Edited January 30, 2018 by digdugnate

[Opry99er]

I have a video somewhere on YouTube of rolling the score 3 times on Asteroids, then shutting it off with a full complement of ships because I was out of play time.

[BillyHW]

Hey folks,

 

So I finally got a new computer (Mac) and so I can finally play around with OpenEmu. It's pretty cool. Never heard of this game before yesterday, when I heard of the Todd Rogers high score scandal. My best time so far is 6.84. Game is pretty hard. Took me many attempts before I could even keep from blowing the engine.

 

Atari 2600

 

Dragster (40 min).

 

[Eltigro]

Dragster was in the 2600 High Score Club a while back... here's what participants got. (And I trust all these times more than Todd Rogers.)

 

5.64 Scrabbler15

5.67 nads

5.74 snakeboy

5.74 Northcoastgamer

5.91 Lauren Tyler

5.94 oyamafamily)

5.97 Jin

5.97 Diamonds

5.97 TheHoboInYourRoom

6.07 Vocelli

6.11 Micheloni2600

6.14 keilbaca

6.14 darthkur

6.17 CapitanClassic

6.17 Eltigro

6.21 AtariWarlord

6.21 agb

6.24 Atarian7

6.27 Cynicaster

6.34 Tony Danger

6.41 S.BAZ

6.44 classicgamer_27330

6.57 RaccooneyDave

6.68 troff

7.14 bugcatcher88

7.18 Piggles

7.51 roadrunner

7.88 karokoenig

7.91 Gorfy

9.35 RJ

10.92 jblenkle

I need to get back into participating in this HSC. At least it's still active. The TurboGrafx one seems dead.

[+wongojack]

I've never made it to the end of the course. Blowout every time . . .

[digdugnate]

I've never made it to the end of the course. Blowout every time . . .

Same. That game drives me nuts, lol

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 4, running from January 22 - 28. We logged 7529 minutes of eligible play, playing 76 games on a total of 27 systems.

Top 10:

1. Ecco the Dolphin (Sega CD) - 791

2. Dragon Warrior II (NES/Famicom) - 623

3. Battlezone (Atari 2600) - 603

4. Chrono Trigger (SNES) - 540

5. Ecco: Tides of Time (Sega CD) - 539

6. Werewolves and Wanderers (TI-99/4A) - 420

7. Dragon Warrior IV (NES/Famicom) - 305

8. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 300

9. Virtua Racing Deluxe (Sega 32X) - 272

10. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 209

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Battlezone (Atari 2600) - 603

2. Werewolves and Wanderers (TI-99/4A) - 420

3. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 300

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 209

5. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 140

6. Q*bert's Qubes (C64) - 129

7. Bally Pin (Bally Astrocade) - 126

8. TI Trek (TI-99/4A) - 120

9. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 117

10. Bigfoot (TI-99/4A) - 100

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1623)

2. Sega CD (1485)

3. NES/Famicom (928)

4. TI-99/4A (850)

5. Sega 32X (588)

6. SNES (542)

7. Atari 7800 (300)

8. Genesis (232)

9. Bally Astrocade (230)

10. C64 (222)

Big numbers -- and near-record levels of diversity -- in Week 4, as the Sega CD version of Ecco the Dolphin swims its way to #1.

Meanwhile Battlezone gets times from a bunch of different posters to take the top pre-NES spot, and help earn the system crown for the VCS.

Battlezone also becomes the 317th member of the 1000-minute club with 1478 minutes logged to date -- and this week's #8 game, Pac-Man Collection, is the newest member of the 10000-minute club with 10074 minutes logged so far. That's a lot of Pac!

[Opry99er]

Very nice diversity this week! 7 different systems represented in the Top 10.

 

Cool!!

[carlsson]

Out of curiosity, I went through the 1000 minute club + newest arrivals and compiled a list of systems with most entries on that list. The top 4 perhaps are no surprises, and IMHO no super obscure system has yet found its way to the club.

 

Atari 2600: 69

PlayStation: 29

Genesis: 28

NES/Famicom: 25

Arcade: 19

Atari 7800: 15

Intellivision: 13

TI-99/4A: 13

SNES: 11

Atari 5200: 10

Game Boy: 10

DOS: 8

Dreamcast: 7

Windows 95/98: 7

N64: 6

C64: 6

Atari Jaguar: 5

Atari 8-bit: 4

Game Boy Color: 4

ColecoVision: 4

MSX2: 3

Mac OS Classic: 3

Sega Saturn: 3

NEC PC-8801: 2

Neo Geo AES/MVS: 2

Sega 32X: 2

Sega CD: 2

3DO: 2

Sega 32X CD: 1

Sega Master System: 1

TG-16/PC Engine: 1

CoCo 1 & 2: 1

Amiga: 1

[Eltigro]

Is this from the lists Goldenband put up at the end of the 2017 tracker? I'm looking to try to push some games over the 1000 minute threshold to add to those lists... (Galaga '90 for the TurboGrafx should be pretty close, already played more this week. )

[carlsson]

Yes, based on the list he published at the end of the year + the latest three (?) entries to the list.

 

Edit: Mine Storm on the Vectrex and Shamus on the VIC-20 are very close to enter the club, as far as I can tell. Both would be the first entries for respective system.

Edited February 1, 2018 by carlsson

[BillyHW]

I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of this game. You can add these minutes to my previously posted minutes.

 

Atari 2600

 

Dragster (35 min).

 

[Eltigro]

5.49 huh....

[Opry99er]

Tomorrow I am heading to Chicago for a computer User Group meeting. Ill undoubtedly be playing more games during that outing, but I wanted to get these times down before they go away to the vacuum of my receding memory threshold.

 

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Bigfoot (40 minutes)

Old Dark Caves (90 minutes)

Super Demon Attack (60 minutes)

Tunnels of Doom (30 minutes)

Werewolves & Wanderers (420 minutes)

 

 

Atari 2600:

 

Dragster (8 minutes)

 

 

 

Lots of work on W&W again this week. Official release is tomorrow in Chicago.

[agb]

Only 2 games this week. Both Atari 2600.

 

Solar Fox. 259minutes

Wizard of Wor. 63 minutes. First time I ever played this game as part of the high score club. Fun game.

[Opry99er]

To add:

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

JetPac (120 minutes)

Piranha (10 minutes)

Werewolves and Wanderers (additional 40 minutes)

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Bowling - 7 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Qix [Atari 8-bit version] - 373 min.

MSX:

Dragon Slayer - 8 min.

Exciting Baseball - 28 min.

Exciting Jockey - 9 min.

Four Battle Mah-Jong - 3 min.

Real Tennis - 6 min.

MSX2:

The Cockpit - 1 min.

So a huge chunk of HSC this week. We're playing the original Atari 8-bit cartridge version of Qix, as opposed to the Atari 5200 version that already back in the day was adjusted to run on Atari 8-bit computers as well. Apart from that, I went through the MSX games I bought last week except for Hole in One Special that I failed to get running despite swabbing the contacts with alcohol. Unfortunately I don't care much for flight simulators, baseball games, quirky horse racing games, Mah-Jong, pastel coloured tennis games or crappy role playing games, which means these will be shelf warmers for a while but hey, the price was right.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week (January 29th through February 4th) on classic games:

 

Arcade:

Q*bert's Qubes - 78 min. in 2 sessions

 

Atari 2600:

Gauntlet (Hack of Dark Chambers) - 14 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Q*bert's Qubes - 70 min.

 

This week I had another go at the C-64 prototype of Q*bert's Qubes, and I think I've beaten it now. Last week I didn't manage to beat Level 6 where you have to do 3 tic-tac-toes with cubes that misalign again if you jump of them again after they're aligned. After that Level 7 and 8 call for 4 Tic-Tac-Toes, but now the cubes stay put again although the level intro for Level 8 tells otherwise. Level 9, however, is pretty much a kill screen. The level intro is unusually long with Q*bert jumping off the cubes, off screen and backwards, while in the process corrupting part of the characters. Eventually the level intro ends, but now the qubes look like Swiss Cheese, and it's impossible to finish the next round because it says you need "-" tic-tac-toes, and actually I aligned the whole board and the round still didn't finish. So that seems to be one more area which hasn't been completed in the prototype.

 

For a good comparison, I played the original arcade version afterwards, but didn't get as far as I hoped I would.

 

Finally I tried the Gauntlet hack of Dark Chambers on the Atari 2600 which I saw in a Youtube video about hacked Atari 2600 games. It somewhat feels like the arcade version although there are at most 4 enemies on screen at once.

 

In other news, my mother left the hospital on Wednesday, but they couldn't help her too much. Seems like the infusions only help her for a short time... on going home, she was in pain again, and yesterday she visited the hospital again for another infusion. Her talking has become somewhat slow and unclear, so I'm working on getting myself together and getting my life in order, which means less gaming because there are more important things to do.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Beamrider - 72 minutes

Missile Command - 146 minutes

Time Pilot - 5 minutes

Wizard of Wor - 6 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Asteroids - 76 minutes

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) My scores on Missile Command, games 4 and 5 / Difficulty B

 

2) My initial score on Beamrider, for 2600 NEW HSC Season 7, Week 4 (Activision Rounds)

 

3) Asteroids video footage, advanced skill, for 7800 HSC Season 2017-2018, Round 11