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

[agb]

Thanks for the update! A nice variety of systems this week!

 

Last night I put in a 2 hour session on NES Tetris... I imagine there will be at least one or two more of those this week as I try for my first 200,000 point game.

Tetris is by far my fave NES. I imagine I put in 10,000 minutes over the years on that game. Good luck with the 200,000.

[Eltigro]

I haven't played either version in years, but back in the day, I remember renting the Tengen Tetris and preferring it over the Nintendo one... but it seems many people have just the opposite preference. I don't remember now why I liked the Tengen one better... I just remember liking it better... /shrug

[Opry99er]

Right now I consistently hit 80. I've hit 105k once, and I was on a great pace last night to hit big.. I was at 95k with a clear board, and hit a line-piece drought of probably 20 or so pieces. I did the best I could but I had to cover up my right well to stay alive just before the line-piece hit. I was toast after that. Didn't get another line and I topped out at 96k(ish).

Edited July 11, 2018 by Opry99er

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Right now I consistently hit 80. I've hit 105k once, and I was on a great pace last night to hit big.. I was at 95k with a clear board, and hit a line-piece drought of probably 20 or so pieces. I did the best I could but I had to cover up my right well to stay alive just before the line-piece hit. I was toast after that. Didn't get another line and I topped out at 96k(ish).

Good luck in your quest! I've never spent much time playing Tetris on the NES but I've been playing the Game Boy version all my life, since it was the pack in game with the original Game Boy that was my very first game system back in Christmas of '89. My all time high score for the Game Boy version is 107,557 and I actually just got that score last year. Persistence pays I suppose. 200K is way beyond my skill level for sure though. I've only broken 100K twice and I didn't last long after that when I did.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Jin

[Opry99er]

The Game Boy version was always my favorite too... Lately though, all I have is my NES version, and my original GameBoy died in 2015. I had it for 25 years. I still have an Advance SP, but the Tetris cart hasn't been seen since our last move.

 

Watching Jonas Neubauer play in the annual Tetris championships always inspires me to get better. That guy is a breathing machine...

Edited July 11, 2018 by Opry99er

[Opry99er]

My scores for tonight... Pretty typical...

 

Right now I am working on burning lines while waiting for the line-piece... The key is to know when to do it. If you start too early, you lose your chance for a Tetris when the line-piece does come. If you wait too long before starting to burn, you'll screw yourself with holes or you'll have to cover up the well.

 

It's an art form, really. I am a novice, learning my way around a canvas.

[Atarian7]

Tetris is by far my fave NES. I imagine I put in 10,000 minutes over the years on that game. Good luck with the 200,000.

Only 10,000?

[agb]

Only 10,000?

No. Much much more. At one point I was regularly going over 500,000 per game. Hit 599,000 earlier this year.

[+Cafeman]

I played Tokyo Xtreme Racer for 180 minutes. Beat all the rivals for the first time in my life. The 4th Deva Banshee, also Speed team Iceman, were giving me troubles, but finally beat both. To my surprise, now 4 new Rivals have shown up, called the 4 Devils.

[digdugnate]

SNES:

 

Gokujou Parodius -- 66 minutes

Street Fighter II Turbo -- 30 minutes

 

I played through several times and managed to finish Parodius last night. SFII Turbo I got pasted by Vega on I think five or six-star difficulty.

Edited July 15, 2018 by digdugnate

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Missile Command: 10 min

Phoenix: 10 min

Wzard of Wor: 15 min

 

NES

Super Mario Bros: 15 min

 

Not exactly my personal gameplay times - more like "household gameplay times". These games were played together with two neighbour kids (brother and sister, 11 and 9 ) as an introduction to retro game systems. It was fun to watch the two trying to get to grips with a joystick. That device was a totally new sensation to them. Well, not quite. A few minutes into the session I realized the girl tried to use the Competition Pro like an analog stick and I had to tell her to move it till it clicks :-).

 

It was just a spontaneous session between an outdoor waterpistol fight and dinner, and we didn't have much time. Also, the experience was a little hampered by my own 4-year-old boy, who of course wanted to try as well. Usually, my gaming corner is off-limits to him. I am only starting to introduce him to videogames now, very slowly. Trying to limit media consumption in general, and want to take my time especially with videogames. I do, however, believe that retro systems are a good way to introduce him to gaming, because I'm somewhat critical about very young kids getting in touch with highly realistic, immersive modern games.

 

The two were fascinated enough that they want to come back to it soon, hopefully with a little more time. They really liked to play Wizard of Wor co-op.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (July 9th through 15th) on classic systems:

 

Arcade:

Jr. Pac-Man - 132 min. in 4 sessions

Pac'n'Pal - 38 min.

Pacmania - 26 min.

 

Atari 2600:

Amoeba Jump - 132 min. in 4 sessions

 

TI-99/4A:

Munchman - 11 min.

 

This week I played a healthy variety of games... I had an extended session on a new version of the WIP "Amoeba Jump" on the Atari 2600 where at 4000 points you enter a zone which consists of only white, breakable platforms and no springs and lasts until 5000 points. At 7000 points another zone would start containing only blue, moving platforms, but I didn't manage to get that far into the game.

 

Then after last week's run with Mouse Trap, this week, I replayed several Pac-Man variants, most of all "Jr. Pac-Man" in its original version, but also Pac'n'Pal, Pacmania and, last but not least, Munchman on the TI-99/4A. This brings up memories because it was one of the three games we bought with the TI-99 which was my first home computer. Somehow TI put its unique style into each of its game, even if they were arcade ports. Like in TI Invaders, here in each wave you encounter new enemies, and some of them look like the saucers in "Parsec". It seemed to me a bit like TI had its standard shapes which they inserted in every game they fit in, so you ended up playing Munch Man against the same enemies as TI Invaders. And as in TI Invaders, here you get an extra life every 10,000 points, but it's much easier to rack them up here. And "Pac'n'Pal" also contains cameos of characters out of other Namco games like Galaxian, Galaga and Rally-X. In Pac'n'Pal I tried to reach the score of 70,000 points at which the 2nd extra life would be given, but didn't get as far. In Pacmania, it occured to me that you can't corner as in other Pac-Man games, which makes the game harder, as well as the limited field of view.

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

New Atari Game - 22 min.

SNES:

Fever Pitch - 25 min.

Super R-Type - 12 min.

Tetris - 11 min.

Just above detection limit, HSC plus the discussion about Tetris made me want to play some version of the game. Since I hadn't powered on my SNES since October 2016, it was a suitable system to play, though I didn't get as many minutes of Tetris as I first had planned.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 269 minutes

Death Trap - 40 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 27 minutes

 

 

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 16 minutes

Atlantis - 1 minute

Crackpots - 10 minutes

Draconian - 102 minutes

Enduro - 34 minutes

Frostbite - 60 minutes

Missile Command - 242 minutes

OINK - 8 minutes

RealSports Soccer - 7 minutes

River Raid - 4 minutes

Scramble - 18 minutes

Super Cobra Arcade - 2 minutes

The Activision Decathlon - 3 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Baby Pac-Man (WIP) - 25 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK: My recent scores on 2600 Missile Command. In my lastest sessions, I played Games 31-AA, 25-BB, 24-BB and 26-BB, and I had more fun with my ProSystem console.

[agb]

Times for the week are:

Atari 2600 Battlezone. HSC first week of the playoffs. 36 Minutes.

Atari 2600 Solar Fox 178 mimnutes.

[Iwantgames:)]

3DO -

DEFCON 5 - 40min

Pyramid Intruder - 15min

Robinsons Requiem - 55min

 

CDi -

Atlantis The Last Resort - 45min

Christmas Crisis - 15min

Golden Oldies Vol I - 24min

(Guardian - 10min, Invaders - 14min)

Golden Oldies Vol II - 10min

(Blockbuster - 5min, Bug Hunt - 5min)

Jack Sprite and The Crimson Ghost - 10min

Namco Arcade Classics - 50min

(Ms Pac-Man - 25min, Galaxian - 15min, Galaga - 10min)

Tetris - 15min

The Apprentice - 15min

Zeldas Adventure - 5min

 

Sega CD -

Nintendo Game & Watch Octopus - 10min

 

Sega Master System -

Silver Valley - 10min

 

Played a bunch of CD-i,

 

The Golden Oldies games are ports of Atari games with updated graphics, CD soundtracks and crap controls lol only Gaurdian (Defender) is decent.

 

The Namco ports are also not well done. Ms Pac-Man is good and galaxian is ok but Galaga is awful.

 

The Apprentice and Christmas Crisis are really fun platformers. Atlantis is a pretty fun poor mans Wolfenstein type game. And Zelda is different lol but I need to play a bit more before I can say everyone is right and its garbage lol.

 

Jack Sprite is a unreleased game and it shows as its buggy and crashes often.

 

I finally set the 3DO back up and played some Pyramid Intruder, a fun but hard (tho Im not that good at these type games) shoot em up. DEFCON 5, which is a ok FPS with added tower defense element but its hard as heck to figure out where to go lol. And Robinsons Requiem, a really fun adventure game but the controls take a bit to get used too.

 

Finally played some Octopus on Sega CD, a port of the Nintendo Game & Watch game. And Silver Valley, a sidescoller for Sega Master System that I played on Dreamcast via emulator.

 

Next week I think I may work on attempting to beat Atlantis on the CD-i.

[Eltigro]

A little more variety for me this week..

 

2600

River Raid (emulated) - 5 min (I need to mess around with this one more... do your shots always follow your plane or is there a way to make them go straight regardless of how you're moving? I thought there was... anyway, I used to be good at this game, but now it's just a fun bit of nostalgia on occasion. Oh well...)

 

7800

Dig Dug (emulated) - 25 min (The latest Battle of the Ports made me want to go play some Dig Dug. I couldn't get the mame arcade one to work, but I had this one downloaded. Man is it tough. I had a lot of fun, though. Always kinda had trouble with the control on Dig Dug, though since it will only go in a direction based on a grid... like you can up here or here, but not a little in between... also always had trouble juggling more than one bad guy at a time.)

 

NES

Gradius (emulated) - 5 min (Wow... lol... the game has a reputation for being difficult... I need practice, but probably won't get it.)

 

Genesis

Monster World IV (emulated) - 60 min (Played this a little more... almost through the "Stream Sanctuary" I think... gotta keep filling some bucket and putting out campfires. Doing this mostly without a walkthrough, so getting lost some here and there, but it's mostly linear. Still enjoying it quite a bit.)

Vapor Trail (emulated) - 8 min (I need to play this one more. Think what I really need to do is hook my laptop (which is running the emulation) to my TV via HDMI and play it there. There was less lag that way. Whether that will improve my game any remains to be seen. lol)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Due to some joint pain issues in my left hand I didn't play hardly anything this week, but fortunately the misses more than made up for my lack of gaming with a ton of time logged in Parasite Eve for the original PlayStation.

 

 

 

Ineligible
Rampage: Total Destruction (GameCube) - 111 minutes

 

Arcade
Rampage: World Tour (played on Rampage: Total Destruction for GameCube) - 68 minutes

Game Boy Color
Rampage: World Tour (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 11 minutes
Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 13 minutes
Tomb Raider: Starring Lara Croft - 95 minutes

PlayStation
Parasite Eve - 787 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,085 minutes (18 hours 5 minutes) [974 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
PlayStation: 787 minutes
Game Boy Color: 119 minutes
GameCube: 111 minutes
Arcade: 68 minutes

 

 

 

I had two gaming related goals for this past week: Beat Rampage: Total Destruction for the GameCube and Tomb Raider: Starring Lara Croft for the Game Boy Color. The first goal I accomplished without too much problem and had a great time doing it, but the second was stymied but some serious hand and wrist joint pain. I know I'm pretty close to the end of Tomb Raider for the Game Boy Color but every time I picked up my GBC I could only play for 10 or 15 minutes before joint pain overwhelmed my desire to continue playing. I did want to play through the whole game on an actual Game Boy Color, but I think I'll probably end up giving up on playing handhelds until I get this joint pain sorted out and just finish up the game on the GameCube's Game Boy Player next week instead.

 

The only other games I played this past week were a couple versions of Rampage for the Game Boy Color, which I briefly tried out via emulation on the Wii, and thought were pretty darn good ports; Universal Tour in particular. I also played a bit of the original arcade version of Rampage: World Tour on the Rampage: Total Destruction GameCube disc and thought it was a lot of fun; though it didn't hold my interest quite as long as Total Destruction due to the lack of save points (which is understandable being that it's an arcade game) and mission objectives for each level like Total Destruction has. Still a fun game though and I really enjoyed the almost claymation visual style for the monsters. I always play as Ralph the Wolf in every Rampage game and his appearance in World Tour is definitely my favorite of any Rampage game, he just looks so cool in that one.

 

As I mentioned in the header though, the vast majority of gaming time around here this past week was done by the spousal unit. After 8 hours or so of grinding and collecting pieces of Junk to give to the game's gun technician she finally collected the 300 pieces of Junk needed to unlock the game's best weapon, the P90 machine gun. With that gun in her arsenal she totally breezed through the remainder of the game up to the final boss fight and had no trouble taking down the final boss, but unfortunately it seems there's a sequence after the boss fight where you have to run through a maze with the shambling corpse of the defeated boss chasing you; and if you take one wrong turn in the maze the boss catches you and you have to replay the whole half hour boss fight sequence with unskippable cinematics all over again. She was hoping to finish the game last night but after 4 failed attempts at finding her way through the maze after the boss fight and having to do the whole fight over again she eventually gave up and just went to bed.

 

Looking ahead to next week I do plan on finishing up Tomb Raider for the Game Boy Color one way or another, even if my hand and wrist joints are belligerent and I have to use the GameCube's Game Boy Player to do it. I know the misses also plans to continue trying to beat Parasite Eve even if she needs to use a guide to find her way through the maze, so we each have our unfinished gaming business to tackle next week. After that I'm not too sure what I'm going to play but I think I might mix it up a bit and play some GameCube games that I haven't played in a while. With my hand and wrist joints being all out of whack the GameCube controller is about the only game controller I can hold comfortably at the moment, so it seems like a good time to go back and revisit some old GameCube favorites.

 

Until next time, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

The Chessmaster - 297 min.

Titenic [sic] - 4 min.

 

Master System:

Fábrica de Chocolate - 2 min.

Genesis:

Davis Cup Tennis - 175 min.

Davis Cup II - 2 min.

Shadow Dancer - 69 min.

Game Boy Color:

The Muppets - 2 min.

Beat Davis Cup Tennis and Chessmaster on their respective highest difficulty levels, playing against the latter with the Black pieces.

Also had a frustrating run in Shadow Dancer, playing on Hard with no shuriken, and having little trouble until things get ridiculous partway through the last level.

[+thegoldenband]

I've got the stats ready, but will hold things open for a few more hours in case anyone else has times to post (Opry99er?).

[Opry99er]

I have times! Give me 5 minutes

[Opry99er]

Last weeks times (weekday and weekend combined)

 

 

Nintendo:

 

Blades of Steel (30 minutes)

Duck Hunt (45 minutes)

Tetris (120 minutes)

 

 

N64:

 

All star Baseball 99 (150 minutes)

Knockout Kings 2000 (90 minutes)

Mario Kart 64 (330 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Alpiner (40 minutes)

 

 

 

 

Been a crazy week and weekend.... apologies for my late post.

 

I finally got a memory pack for my N64 so I have a baseball season going now. I was fortunate to stumble onto a good trade deal for Mario Kart 64, so my son and I have been playing the crap out of that. My girls have been improving on Duck Hunt, and I still take out my after-work aggression on unsuspecting boxers on Knockout Kings.

 

I can now easily beat any boxer in the game (Slugfest Mode) with the weakest and lightest boxer, (Danny Romero). He is 120 pounds, and I can knock out the heaviest boxer in the game (Butterbean322 pounds) in the first round every time. Muhammad Ali, I can take him out with Romero in usually 2 rounds, sometimes it takes all 3.

 

I dont know if anyone in the world still plays this game.... dont think theres a tournament anywhere, but if there were, I give myself a chance.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Opry99er

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 28, running from July 9 - 15. We logged 4512 minutes of eligible play, playing 71 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. Parasite Eve (PlayStation) - 787

2. Mario Kart 64 (N64) - 330

3. Chessmaster, The (NES/Famicom) - 297

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 269

5. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 252

6. Tokyo Xtreme Racer (Dreamcast) - 180

7. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 178

8. Davis Cup Tennis [aka Davis Cup World Tour] (Genesis) - 175

9. All-Star Baseball '99 (N64) - 150

10. Jr. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 132

10. Amoeba Jump (WIP) (Atari 2600) - 132

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 269

2. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 252

3. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 178

4. Jr. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 132

4. Amoeba Jump (WIP) (Atari 2600) - 132

6. Draconian (Atari 2600) - 102

7. Frostbite (Atari 2600) - 60

8. Death Trap (Atari 2600) - 40

8. Alpiner (TI-99/4A) - 40

10. Pac & Pal (Arcade) - 38

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1229)

2. PlayStation (787)

3. N64 (570)

4. NES/Famicom (516)

5. Genesis (314)

6. Arcade (207)

7. Philips CD-i (189)

8. Dreamcast (180)

9. SNES (144)

10. Game Boy Color (121)

Another week in which Parasite Eve is #1 and a Nintendo 64 game is #2 in the Top 10. However the Atari 2600 lays claim to the other two charts, led as so often by Kaboom (though with Missile Command close behind).

[Opry99er]

Hmmm..... with my new baseball season in full force, this week may very well see a changing of the guard, and maybe not. The N64 has already seen 6 hours of play time this week (totaled up between games) between my son and me... don't know if I'll have a ton of time to commit this week since I have family coming in to town, but I was hoping to get through the series against the Braves this week (6 game series) which is still 2 games away. I'm hopefully about to sweep the Rockies at home in a 4 game series, the I have the Braves for 6 (away) and then a 3 game series against the Cubs at Wrigley.

 

It always makes me cringe playing against my home team (the Rockies) but I live in Wisconsin now and I have to rep my local team...

Edited July 18, 2018 by Opry99er