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What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2019 (Season 12)


carlsson

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

For the 12th consecutive season, we weekly log which games we've played and for how long. After a long streak of managing the gameplay tracker, thegoldenband finally gets to relax and I take over as the new maintainer. As always, everyone are welcome to contribute - both old-timers, previous participants returning to the tracker and newcomers. Post just one week if you want, post every week if you like.


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 exceptions may occur around New Year. Try to post your times no later than night to Tuesday in your local timezone. I will generally wait until Tuesday evening Central European Time before compiling the stats. If you post after stats have been posted, your times will be counted for the next week. Feel free to indicate in your post which dates your times relate to.

 

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 Nintendo 64, but excludes the most recent systems like PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, et al. The same goes for computers: we count Windows 95/98 games, but not XP; Mac OS 9, but not OS X; and so on.

 

However there is hope for those of you who are stuck in the 21th century gaming! For the second season in a row, we have a Modern gameplay tracker that covers everything the Classic gameplay tracker doesn't, i.e. anything from 2000 or newer goes into the other tracker. The format is identical, the stats are quite similar except for of course there is no point narrowing out pre-NES systems released 25 years after the NES itself was released. :)

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. Thegoldenband has posted summaries and stats for 2018 - starting here - which are well worth a read.

 

One more thought:

If you haven't participated before, or if you did and got busy with other things, consider taking part in 2019! 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. icon_smile.gif

P.S. Past years of the tracker: 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018

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Here's this year's early bird entry to the new tracker, and the first numbers for our new Master to crunch:

 

Atari 2600

Galaxian: 4 min

Moon Patrol: 5 min

Mouse Trap: 3 min

Pac Man: 3 min

 

Sega Master System

Wonder Boy III The Dragon’s Trap: 40 min

 

PC (DOS)

Historyline: 165 min

 

Some free time certainly is good for my tracker times. I played a little bit of Atari with my 4 1/2 year old son. I also played two random maps in Historyline - I keep coming back to this game because it's so relaxing.

Today's big news, however: I finally had enough undisturbed time to finish Wonder Boy III. The boss fight was closer than I would have wished for, mainly because I screwed up big time on the last few enemies. But I made it. A really great game, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good platformer.

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Not sure if I'll get any time to do much tomorrow, as I'll be busy. I'll get this in now.

 

 

Apple IIe:

 

Ultima IV (60 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Ms. PAC Man (3 minutes)

Par Fore! (100 minutes)

TI Invaders (5 minutes)

Tunnels of Doom (40 minutes)

Turmoil (40 minutes)

Wizard's Doom (40 minutes)

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Thanks for the kind words. I believe the preliminary preparations are now done. While the Modern tracker only has existed for one year with 363 games defined so far, the Classic tracker has 11 years of legacy and 8657 games which means a significantly larger spreadsheet to keep updated.

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ATARI 2600:

Elk Attack - 100 minutes

Jr. Pac-Man - 80 minutes

Millipede - 25 minutes

Ocean City Defender [Atlantis variant] - 55 minutes

Pac-Man Plus [hack] - 55 minutes

Worm War I - 60 minutes

 

More infos about Pac-Man Plus: http://atariage.com/hack_page.php?SystemID=2600&SoftwareHackID=151

Great game choices this week! I've always really liked the Pac-Man Plus on the 2600. It's a remarkably good hack! :)

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Here are my times for this past week (January 1st through 6th):

 

Atari 2600:

Chaotic Grill (WIP) - 32 min. in 2 sessions

 

Atari 7800:

Baby Pac-Man (WIP) - 333 min. in 10 sessions

 

I tested a new update of Chaotic Grill for the Atari 2600 which is noticeably better, but still has its flaws. On the Atari 7800, I put in some longer sessiions on Baby Pac-Man due to having this week off from work, in an attempt to "roll the banana", that is, reaching the banana and then completing another fruit, but didn't manage to reach that goal. I also proposed doing a title music for it, but Bob (the main programmer) rejected that proposal.

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NES:

 

Ice Climber -- 30 minutes

Mega Man 2 -- 60 minutes

Mega Man 5 -- 60 minutes

 

I have never really given Ice Climber a fair shake, so that was fun. Mega Man 2 is one of my favorite games of the MM series, but these days it's really a crap shoot if I can get past the beam section of Quick Man's stage. I always end up saving this stage for last because of the sheer irritation factor.

 

(Edit to add:) The reason the game times are round numbers is because these were played in specifically timed chunks of my week :) A lot of times I'll fire up the game right before bed, or when I'm actually not doing something around the house.

Edited by digdugnate
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First time under the esteemed leadership of our new moderator Carlsson times for Jan 1 thru Jan 6 are;

NES Tetris 17 minutes

 

Rest are all Atari 2600:

Beamrider 139 minutes

Breakout 7 mins

Dodge Em 11 minutes

Eggomania 43 minutes

Kaboom 39 mins

Solar Fox 235 minutes

 

 

No high scores but earned patches in beamrider and kaboom.

All fun games.

post-40881-0-47263000-1546819438_thumb.jpeg

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CLASSIC

PS1

Metal Gear Solid 1093

 

SNES

Zelda L2tP 427

 

 

MODERN (ineligible):

DS

Retro Game Challenge 480

Xbox

Morrowind 856

 

XOne

Rise of the Tomb Raider 591

 

 

It was a big week for me as I took off the last few days and focused on my gaming backlog. You may remember from other years that I typically do this in January, and in 2017, I played both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 for the MSX2. Well, this year my rotation of staycation games included Metal Gear Solid.

 

The core gameplay of MGS and the two prequel games is very nice, and the updates in MGS really make it like a cinematic experience, but DEAR LORD THE TERRIBLE WRITING!! This thing comes close to a schizophrenic manifesto. A sample of the rando plot elements (almost all of which are completely unnecessary) include things like:

 

  • Can you fall in love on the battlefield?
  • Gene programming determining your destiny
  • Nuclear disarmament
  • More weird family stuff than a Mexican soap
  • Rampant ridiculous sexism

 

It would be one thing if you could tell they were laughing at their own creation and expecting the player to laugh along with them, but the game takes itself sooo f'ing seriously. I think it would be interesting if someone were to eliminate the voice acting and attempt to hack the game by re-writing all of the text dialog to not sound like it was written by some guy who bunked with Charles Manson in prison. Simply replacing the text with entries from the dictionary might be an improvement.

 

However, I was really impressed with how many ways the game yelled "Snake" when you died - LOL

 

As I mentioned above, I like the gameplay well enough. Sneaking and getting stealth kills is alive and well in games today, and the early Metal Gear games all did that very well. My biggest complaint about actually playing the game is the somewhat unreasonable difficulty of the battle with the Metal Gear robot itself. Wow that took me a LONG time. What really got me hot during that fight was having to switch so quickly between weapons. The inventory switching is kind of a PITA, but it doesn't really bother you during the more slowly paced action in the rest of the game. However when fighting the robot mecha thing, I was constantly picking the wrong item and ending up with the sniper rifle or some other sh!+. It was tense in my house as I was yelling obscenities at the game for not doing what I wanted it to do.

 

Anyone have suggestions about which Metal Gear game to play next? If you were going to play only one MG game (besides the first 3 which I've already played) which would it be?

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Mostly Amstrad CPC 464 gaming for me this week but I did pickup a Coleco expansion module #1 so play a bit of SeaQuest :)

 

2600

 

SeaQuest - 15min

 

Amstrad

 

Chuckie Egg - 120min

Dawn of Kernal - 50min

Deeper Warrens - 20min

Galactic Tomb - 15min

Galaxians - 20min

Golden Tails - 10min

Magica - 20min

Operation Alexandra - 60min

Punk Star - 5 horrible min lol

Rampage - 10min

Star Wars - 15min

Star Wars Empire Strikes Back - 10min

Sub Hunter - 45min

 

Operation Alexandra will most likely see more gameplay in the coming weeks as I try to beat it :)

post-39068-0-13769900-1546866017_thumb.jpg

post-39068-0-83002800-1546866094_thumb.jpg

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No classic gaming for me this week as I'm concentrating on Windwaker. Think I'll probably try switching back and forth between modern and classic while doing this "finish some game" resolution. Probably go back after this and finish up Albert Odyssey as I'm pretty close to the end of it and it wasn't so long ago that I've forgotten where I was.

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It was a fairly small week for gaming around here for the first week of the new year. The misses and I were fighting a lot this past week… we played Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat! It was great! :D

 

FgJ3ek5.jpg


Game Boy
Revenge of the 'Gator - 34 minutes

PC-DOS (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)
The Ultimate Doom - 230 minutes

Sega Genesis
Mortal Kombat - 49 minutes
Primal Rage - 61 minutes
Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 140 minutes
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 173 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
687 minutes (11 hours 27 minutes) [687 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Sega Genesis: 423 minutes
PC-DOS: 230 minutes
Game Boy: 34 minutes

 

 

 

Not being sure what exactly to play for the first game of the new year, I ended up procrastinating on making up my mind for a few days until my wife suggested that we play Street Fighter II together; since it's always been one of her favorite games and we hadn't played any Street Fighter in quite a while. Unfortunately our copy of Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition for the Sega Genesis was lost in the great collection purge of 2016, but our Wii was ready to step in and provide some Street Fighter goodness via emulation while I hunt for a new physical cartridge with a nice label. We also played Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers for the first time, which we actually found ourselves liking quite a bit more than Special Champion Edition even if the music in The New Challengers did sound a little lackluster compared to Capcom's previous effort.

 

After a whole lot of street fighting fun I decided to give my favorite 16-bit fighting game, the original Mortal Kombat, a go and easily cleared the game on Medium difficulty with Sub Zero using only a couple credits. Not to be outdone, the spousal unit then took charge of the 6-button Genesis arcade stick and proceeded to clear the game as Raiden on only 1 credit without ever losing a round. She really gets competitive whenever we play fighting games! :lol: With Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat under our belts I decided to do one more fighting game this week and played a bit of Primal Rage, but unfortunately wasn't able to beat it in spite of my best efforts… probably because I forgot to set the number of continues to the max of 10. Ah well, maybe next week!

 

Outside of the fighting game jamboree the only other games I played this week were half an hour or so of Revenge of the Gator pinball on the original Game Boy, just for nostalgia's sake, and a fair bit the original PC-DOS version of The Ultimate Doom via emulation on the Wii. By the time the week was 3/4 of the way over I still had no idea what I wanted to play for my first big game of the new year, but Doom is never a bad choice and I've been having fun with it. Next week the misses intends to get back to the game of Tomb Raider II that she was playing towards the end of December, but for this week she wasn't in any hurry and felt content to stick to a few fighting games.

 

Well, I think that about covers everything for the first week of the year! Until next week, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours! :)

Edited by Jin
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Sonic Adventure, Dreamcast. 120 minutes.

Sonic Adventure 2, Dreamcast. 240 minutes. Spent an entire hour on Rouge's Security break in stage, and another on her outer space / planets stage which in retrospect seems like an early attempt at Mario Galaxy gameplay. These were somewhat fun to me, because I was in the mood to explore them and try to figure yhem out, but also really tested my patience. But I do enjoy many of the game's stages, to my surprise because my memory tells me I kind of hated this game bitd.

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It was a fairly small week for gaming around here for the first week of the new year. The misses and I were fighting a lot this past week… we played Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat! It was great! :D

 

FgJ3ek5.jpg

 

 

Game Boy

Revenge of the 'Gator - 34 minutes

 

PC-DOS (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

The Ultimate Doom - 230 minutes

 

Sega Genesis

Mortal Kombat - 49 minutes

Primal Rage - 61 minutes

Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 140 minutes

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 173 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

687 minutes (11 hours 27 minutes) [687 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Sega Genesis: 423 minutes

PC-DOS: 230 minutes

Game Boy: 34 minutes

 

 

 

Not being sure what exactly to play for the first game of the new year, I ended up procrastinating on making up my mind for a few days until my wife suggested that we play Street Fighter II together; since it's always been one of her favorite games and we hadn't played any Street Fighter in quite a while. Unfortunately our copy of Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition for the Sega Genesis was lost in the great collection purge of 2016, but our Wii was ready to step in and provide some Street Fighter goodness via emulation while I hunt for a new physical cartridge with a nice label. We also played Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers for the first time, which we actually found ourselves liking quite a bit more than Special Champion Edition even if the music in The New Challengers did sound a little lackluster compared to Capcom's previous effort.

 

After a whole lot of street fighting fun I decided to give my favorite 16-bit fighting game, the original Mortal Kombat, a go and easily cleared the game on Medium difficulty with Sub Zero using only a couple credits. Not to be outdone, the spousal unit then took charge of the 6-button Genesis arcade stick and proceeded to clear the game as Raiden on only 1 credit without ever losing a round. She really gets competitive whenever we play fighting games! :lol: With Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat under our belts I decided to do one more fighting game this week and played a bit of Primal Rage, but unfortunately wasn't able to beat it in spite of my best efforts… probably because I forgot to set the number of continues to the max of 10. Ah well, maybe next week!

 

Outside of the fighting game jamboree the only other games I played this week were half an hour or so of Revenge of the Gator pinball on the original Game Boy, just for nostalgia's sake, and a fair bit the original PC-DOS version of The Ultimate Doom via emulation on the Wii. By the time the week was 3/4 of the way over I still had no idea what I wanted to play for my first big game of the new year, but Doom is never a bad choice and I've been having fun with it. Next week the misses intends to get back to the game of Tomb Raider II that she was playing towards the end of December, but for this week she wasn't in any hurry and felt content to stick to a few fighting games.

 

Well, I think that about covers everything for the first week of the year! Until next week, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours! :)

I have Revenge of the 'Gator... never seen anyone else who had it.

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