What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2020 (Season 13)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

This might be one of, if not the, smallest weeks for gaming my household has had all year but there was a still a fair bit of fun to be had. First I finished my play through of the Doom 3 expansion Resurrection of Evil, then I set about refurbishing an old beat up Game Boy Color that a friend gave me for free. I ended up replacing the shell and buttons as well as installing a brand new backlit TFT screen and glass screen protector sized to fit the slightly smaller than usual screen. It came out great and it's been a ton of fun playing Game Boy Color games with it, and I especially like that since it's got a TFT screen rather than an IPS one you can still play it outside under natural light without the screen washing out.

 

As far as the other games played this week go, I think I've kinda lost interest in Animal Crossing at this point but the misses made up for it by logging a couple more hours in Untitled Goose Game. She's almost done with it at this point I think, it seems to be a pretty short game. Looking ahead to next week, I'll be continuing my play through of Tomb Raider on my new Game Boy Color and getting to the current round of Atari 2600 High Score Club games. 

 

That's all the news that's fit to print for this week! Until next time, and as always, happy gaming to you and yours!

 

 

 

Ineligible (All Nintendo Switch)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 15 minutes

Doom 3 - 340 minutes

Untitled Goose Game - 120 minutes

 

Game Boy

Solar Striker - 10 minutes

 

Game Boy Color

Dance Dance Revolution GB - 45 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 25 minutes

Tomb Raider: Starring Lara Croft - 146 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

701 minutes (11 hours 41 minutes) [226 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo Switch: 475 minutes

Game Boy Color: 216 minutes

Game Boy: 10 minutes

 

[Eltigro]

@Skippy B. Coyote I was just messing around with Tomb Raider on the GBC a few minutes ago via emulation.  I didn't even know it existed as I never had a GameBoy Color.  Saw it in a list of games and downloaded it.  Not sure if I'll be spending 146 minutes on it though.  I didn't even make it over the first spike pit.  LOL

[Skippy B. Coyote]

1 hour ago, Eltigro said:

@Skippy B. Coyote I was just messing around with Tomb Raider on the GBC a few minutes ago via emulation.  I didn't even know it existed as I never had a GameBoy Color.  Saw it in a list of games and downloaded it.  Not sure if I'll be spending 146 minutes on it though.  I didn't even make it over the first spike pit.  LOL

 

There's actually two Tomb Raider games on the Game Boy Color, and I've played through and beaten both of them at least a couple times each in years past. One of the things I've always thought was really neat about the Game Boy Color was just how many popular 32-bit / 64-bit series from the era that developers found ways to make work on the little 8-bit Game Boy Color system. From Tomb Raider to Resident Evil, developers found all sorts of clever ways to put out entries on the series that retained the feel and gameplay styles of their home console counterparts on a simple little 8-bit handheld. There's a lot of really cool and interesting games to be found on the system with a little digging.

 

P.S.: My favorite handheld entry in the Tomb Raider series is Tomb Raider: The Prophecy on the Game Boy Advance. It's played from an isometric 3D perspective and is just an all around great game that is really impressive to see running on the GBA!

[+cvga]

My youngest son, my brother and I had a great gaming session Saturday night.

 

Intellivision:

TNT Cowboy - 10 minutes

Anthromophorpic Force (AF) - 8 minutes

 

Atari 2600:

Spaceman Splorf - 20 minutes

 

Note that everyone, including my 70 year old mother, enjoyed this game

 

Sega Master System:

King's Quest - 215 minutes

 

This was pretty awesome as my 14 y.o. was really into it and did most of the "driving". We spent a great deal of time exploring and finding things on our own but I freely admit that we made liberal use of a hint guide that we found online. Feels like this game would literally take forever without it but we were having a great time with our mix of trial and error vs read the guide and finished the game in just over 3.5 hours.

[carlsson]

Here's the summary for Week 32, running from August 3 - 9. We logged 2741 minutes of eligible play, playing 48 games on a total of 14 systems.

Top 10:

 

1. Tee Off (Dreamcast) - 313 min.
2. Castlevania (NES/Famicom) - 285 min.
3. King's Quest (Sega Master System) - 215 min.
4. Pole Position (Atari 2600) - 199 min. (#4)
5. Altered Beast (Sega Master System) - 193 min. (#8)
6. Tomb Raider (Game Boy Color) - 146 min.
7. Dreadnaught Factor (Intellivision) - 143 min.
8. Metroid (NES/Famicom) - 120 min.
9. Block Puzzle (MSX) - 115 min.
10. Phantasy Star (Sega Master System) - 93 min.
 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Pole Position (Atari 2600) - 199 min. (PN#2)
2. Dreadnaught Factor (Intellivision) - 143 min.
3. Block Puzzle (MSX) - 115 min.
4. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 5200) - 90 min.
5. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 65 min. (PN#6)
6. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 60 min. (PN#3)
7. Rescue Terra I (Atari 2600) - 55 min.
8. Stampede (Atari 2600) - 50 min.
9. Astrosmash (Intellivision) - 47 min.
10. Espial (Atari 2600) - 45 min.

 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Atari 2600 (599) (#1)
2. Sega Master System (501) (#3)
3. NES/Famicom (495)
4. Dreamcast (313) (#7)
5. Intellivision (292)
6. Game Boy Color (216)
7. MSX (115) (#9)
8. Atari 5200 (90)
9. Atari 8-bit (34) (#10)
10. Genesis (31) (#4)
 

While it is unlikely that Simon Belmont ever played golf with Dracula, the two games Tee Off and Castlevania end up in the top two places this week. The Roberta Williams classic King's Quest in a version for the Master System is third, followed by Pole Position which also is in the pole position on the pre-NES list. The systems list is a rather even race, where the Atari 2600 comes out on top and the SMS only 6 minutes ahead of NES.

 

None of the 48 games played this week breaks the barrier of 1000, 5000 or 10000 minutes though some come reasonably close.

Edited August 11, 2020 by carlsson

[Steven Pendleton]

It's Monday here again. My SuperGrafx was lonely after about 2 months of not being used. I'm not sure if I am terrible at Aldynes, the game is difficult, or both... Not much else to say this time.

 

SuperGrafx
1941 Counter Attack 4

Aldynes 41

 

 

MD/Genesis
Batman 6

Castlevania Bloodlines 60
Gleylancer 9
Herzog Zwei 55
Virtua Racing 5

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Congo Bongo - 7 min.
Java Jim - 10 min.
Super Zaxxon - 10 min.
Zaxxon - 21 min.

 

MSX1:
Block Puzzle - 18 min.
Relevo's Snowboarding - 10 min.

 

It is mostly a coincidence that two rounds in a row of the A8 HSC are Sega themed, but just as Congo Bongo ended, Zaxxon takes over until the end of August. Also I played some more of the MSXdev games, though I haven't played through them all. Not that it matters anyway since that contest does not have a public poll after it was abused in previous years, only a selected jury will determine the best games.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (August 10th through 16th)...

 

Arcade:

Millipede - 63 min.

 

Atari 2600:

Joust - 4 min.

 

After having played the Atari 2600 version of Millipede lately, this week I played the Arcade version. I played until I surpassed 300,000 points, which is the highest score you can start at, and I managed to reach that bar pretty quickly. It definitely helps if you're able to cope with the many spiders that come at you in the first round after the game continue starts. Shooting them all down will often give you enough points to reach the next extra life, at which point you can't go down with the starting score of the next game anymore. And it's actually easier than on the Atari 2600 where the spiders move a bit more erratic and are harder to hit.

 

Then I played another small bit of Joust on the Atari 2600 (and then continued analyzing its sounds).

 

Apart from that, It's been my first working week after a 3-week break, so there were some things to catch up at work. Also I had a 1-day training, and I did an excursion looking for shared scooters (or bikes) of a new type (Wheels), and I tried to read the coordinates of Bird scooters, but failed at that because at the endpoint I have you get about 10 times as many scooters as there really are, and each time you query the same point on the map, the set of scooters you get varies drastically. Apart from that, I'm also refactoring the code of my private databases. This all didn't leave much time for gaming

[DragonGrafx-16]

Terra Cresta II (PC Engine) 53 mins
Soldier Blade (PC Engine) 52 mins
Final Soldier (PC Engine) 14 mins
Sorcer Striker (Arcade) 43 mins
Gun-Nac (NES) 41 mins
Blasteroids (C64) 10 mins
Power Strike (SMS) 12 mins
Ultimate Doom (PC DOS) 72 mins
Fire Shark (Genesis) 65 mins Beat the first loop my first time playing on easy (default difficulty)

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Condor Attack (for HSC) - 55 minutes

Draconian - 128 minutes

Espial (for HSC) - 29 minutes

Galaxian - 18 minutes

Rescue Terra I (for HSC) - 15 minutes

Squish 'Em - 60 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection - 10 minutes

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) My Draconian gameplay footage - Best score: 402,870 points (Quadrant Beta, Sector 1 and Kids)

 

2) My new high score on Squish 'Em - 200,460 points

Edited August 17, 2020 by oyamafamily

[+thegoldenband]

My time for the week:

 

Master System:
Phantasy Star - 707 min.

 

It's an impressive game, really. I just wish combat were a bit brisker, and that it had some kind of map functionality.

 

Also not so keen on the reliance on dialogue triggers to bring geographical features and hidden items into existence: if you hid the item before you got turned to stone, I should be able to see and retrieve it before I unstone you.

 

(Is there a Narcan for Laconian pot? Flashing blue lights, maybe.)

[+wongojack]

Arcade

Asteroids Deluxe 41

Hang On 9 (played via the Yu Suzuki Game Works on Dreamcast)

 

Dreamcast

D2 121

Gunlord 2

Headhunter 110

Jet Grind Radio 3

Rayman 2 51

Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racer 3

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Condor Attack - 175 minutes

Rescue Terra I - 65 minutes

 

 

[carlsson]

11 hours ago, wongojack said:

Hang On 9 (played via the Yu Suzuki Game Works on Dreamcast)

I added this as Arcade, but I'm not 100% certain the games included in the compilation are exact emulations of the arcade ROMs:

For the most part, they're all fairly accurate conversions/ports as far as I can tell and all play just as you'd expect. There are some oddities though. For example, the car in Outrun is not the usual Ferrari you'd expect to see (pictured below) and the advertising boards in Hang-On say stuff like 'Dobuita' and 'Shenmue.' I'm almost certain that someone out there knows all the minute differences in these versions of popular arcade classics, so if you do please feel free to comment.

http://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2016/12/a-quick-look-at-yu-suzuki-game-works.html

[Skippy B. Coyote]

A good week for gaming, though in spite of my best intentions I never did seem to get around to playing the Atari 2600 High Score Club games for the round this week. Ah well, I've still got another week to play them, and what I did spend a good chunk of time playing was Tomb Raider on the Game Boy Color! My goodness I had forgotten what a long game this was, but it manages to capture the feel of the home console games so darn well that I don't mind putting the time into beating it. I've still got 3 levels left to go, but I'm getting pretty close to the end at this point. 

 

What I did manage to finish this week was the final expansion for Doom 3, The Lost Mission. The misses also wrapped up her play through of Untitled Goose Game on the Switch and put a good bit of time into Final Fight CD for the Sega CD. She was hoping to be able to beat it but the game kept crashing on the second level so I think that one will be going on the back burner for the foreseeable future. 

 

Anyway, that's about all there is to report for this week! Until next time, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

 

 

Ineligible (All Nintendo Switch)

Doom 3 - 190 minutes

Untitled Goose Game - 45 minutes

 

Game Boy Color

Tomb Raider: Starring Lara Croft - 715 minutes

 

Sega CD

Final Fight CD - 120 minutes

 

Sega Genesis

Viewpoint - 10 minutes

 

Sega Master System

Astro Warrior - 15 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

1,095 minutes (18 hours 15 minutes) [860 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Game Boy Color: 715 minutes

Nintendo Switch: 235 minutes

Sega CD: 120 minutes

Sega Master System : 15 minutes

Sega Genesis: 10 minutes

[Eltigro]

My retrogaming for the week...

 

NES

Castlevania - 102 min (Played for just a bit after playing Metroid (see below).  I've been trying to see how far I can get on one life, and so far my max is the hallway/room right before Death.  I've never gotten to Death with the holy water (except when cheating using save states), so I've been trying to do that.)

Metroid - 300 min (Spent right at 5 hrs to get through Metroid.  Used an emulator and save states a few times, so I don't really consider it a legit run through, but...  mainly just used the save states to keep from having to go farm my health and missiles back up after dying.  Killed both Kraid and Ridley first try (although almost died on Kraid), but took me about four tries to get past Mother Brain.  At the end, I just got the "helmet off" ending.)

Edited August 17, 2020 by Eltigro

[agb]

Had extra time for retro gaming this week so I decided to try to master Kaboom, a game I like a lot but am not good at.  It is very similar to Eggomania which I like a real lot and am sort of good at.  My goal was to play 210 games and track my improvement each day.  I only played 150 games and my improvement was minimal  My scores and progress are below.  I could have used that time to play the three High Score Club games this week, but I did not like them too much which is unusual for me.

 

My times for the week are:

All atari 2600

 

Kaboom 304 minutes, top score of 3,855.

Rescue Terra for HSC 38 minutes, a pretty good game

Espial  for HSC 20 minutes.  I find it unplayable.

Condor Attack 42 minutes,  I find it unplayable.

 

Eggomania 70 minutes, always fun.

Solar Fox 115 minutes, always very relaxing.

 

Oyamafamily, that is a great Squish'em score.  I play that a lot and only reached 40,000.  200,000 is great.  My favorite homebrew.  i think I'll play it later.

 

 

 

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
10-Aug	10-Aug	10-Aug	11-Aug	11-Aug	12-Aug	12-Aug	12-Aug
1,703	1,358	1,995	1,702	1,981	1,438	836	1,641
1,575	1,729	1,839	1,231	736	1,615	1,941	1,334
1,849	1,897	1,678	1,503	2,263	2,949	1,741	2,631
1,944	2,888	1,981	1,762	2,608	2,564	2,711	2,221
995	1,897	1,623	1,945	1,739	2,713	1,613	1,753
2,750	2,132	1,900	915	1,590	2,811	2,563	1,639
1,381	1,752	2,743	2,437	968	1,830	3,741	1,854
1,930	2,804	855	1,462	1,932	1,917	2,357	3,405
1,880	1,891	1,483	1,735	1,681	1,673	1,819	814
2,490	2,621	1,897	2,695	1,659	2,120	2,486	1,799
18,497	20,969	17,994	17,387	17,157	21,630	21,808	19,091
1,849.7	2,096.9	1,799.4	1,738.7	1,715.7	2,163.0	2,180.8	1,909.1
			1,871.2				1,992.2
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
13-Aug	13-Aug	13-Aug	14-Aug	15-Aug	16-Aug	16-Aug
1,606	1,918	2,607	2,525	2,965	1,544	1,555
1,429	1,939	2,415	2,547	681	1,993	1,961
1,857	1,616	1,951	1,795	2,679	2,424	1,771
1,793	1,652	2,216	2,422	1,764	1,573	1,559
1,627	2,797	2,554	2,587	2,829	1,412	1,812
2,342	1,951	2,488	1,208	2,440	3,855	2,705
2,916	1,903	1,832	1,873	1,363	1,690	2,684
1,676	1,711	1,477	2,074	2,898	1,991	1,972
1,987	1,909	2,809	1,581	2,602	2,352	2,242
2,125	3,284	2,428	1,763	2,669	1,759	1,969
19,358	20,680	22,777	20,375	22,890	20,593	20,230
1,935.8	2,068.0	2,277.7	2,037.5	2,289.0	2,059.3	2,023.0
			2,079.8			2,123.8

[+wongojack]

5 hours ago, carlsson said:

I added this as Arcade, but I'm not 100% certain the games included in the compilation are exact emulations of the arcade ROMs:

 

 

http://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2016/12/a-quick-look-at-yu-suzuki-game-works.html

I actually found that exact article and opted on the side of Arcade.  It feels like an arcade game when you play it anyway.  What's your thinking?  Is a car re-design and a few changes to billboards enough to log this time for the Dreamcast?

[carlsson]

Nah, I'll keep those games as arcade versions even if there are tiny details changed.

[+Cafeman]

NEO Turf Masters, NEO GEO arcade. (Via compilation on PS2) , 150 minutes. 

[zetastrike]

Just got done sinking some time into Super Hang-On for the Genesis.  I like to warm up on the Africa course, then work my way up.  On my final attempt at the Asia course, I crashed into a sign about 200 feet before the Goal.  I figured that was as good a time as any to turn it off for the night.

[carlsson]

9 hours ago, zetastrike said:

Just got done sinking some time into Super Hang-On for the Genesis.

Feel free to give an estimate for how long you played it, and I'll add it to this week's stats (or next).

[carlsson]

Here's the summary for Week 33, running from August 10 - 16. We logged 4288 minutes of eligible play, playing 50 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

 

1. Tomb Raider: Starring Lara Croft (Game Boy Color) - 715 min. (#6)
2. Phantasy Star (Sega Master System) - 707 min. (#10)
3. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 304 min.
4. Metroid (NES/Famicom) - 300 min. (#8)
5. Condor Attack (aka Galactic) (Atari 2600) - 272 min.
6. Neo Turf Masters (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 150 min.
7. Draconian (Atari 2600) - 128 min.
8. D2 (Dreamcast) - 121 min.
9. Final Fight CD (Sega CD) - 120 min.
10. Rescue Terra I (Atari 2600) - 118 min.

 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 304 min. (PN#5)
2. Condor Attack (aka Galactic) (Atari 2600) - 272 min.
3. Draconian (Atari 2600) - 128 min.
4. Rescue Terra I (Atari 2600) - 118 min. (PN#7)
5. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 115 min. (PN#6)
6. Eggomania (Atari 2600) - 70 min.
7. Millipede (Arcade) - 63 min.
8. Squish 'Em (Atari 2600) - 60 min.
9. Espial (Atari 2600) - 49 min. (PN#10)
10. Asteroids Deluxe (Arcade) - 41 min.
 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Atari 2600 (1138) (#1)
2. Sega Master System (734) (#2)
3. Game Boy Color (715) (#6)
4. NES/Famicom (443) (#3)
5. Dreamcast (290) (#4)
6. Genesis (210) (#10)
7. Arcade (156)
8. Neo Geo AES/MVS (150)
9. Sega CD (120)
10. TG-16/PC Engine (119)
 

In a very close battle for #1, Tomb Raider on the Game Boy Color defeats Phantasy Star on the Master System by a margin of only 8 minutes. Our evergreen favorite Kaboom! is overall 3rd and takes the pre-NES title, though unusually Atarian7 didn't contribute any of those minutes. The HSC game Condor Attack is just over 30 minutes behind. Systems wise the top two are the same as last week, the 2600 ahead of the SMS, which thanks to having another two games tracked is ahead of the GBC.

 

Tomb Raider: Starring Lara Croft (Game Boy Color) becomes member #415 in the 1000 Minute Club with a total of 1336 minutes.

[Steven Pendleton]

Lots of Neo Geo this time to test my unfortunately broken Neo Geo ROM cart that I have to return to get a new not-broken one.

 

MD/Genesis
Gleylancer - 9
Slap Fight MD - 5

^not sure how you're going to record this one. The cover says Slap Fight MD, the spine says スラップファイト without the MD, the Mega Drive Mini calls it Slap Fight, and it has two separate games (Slap Fight and Slap Fight MD), each with their own title screen. I played Slap Fight MD specifically and not Slap Fight, so yeah, not sure.

 

Neo Geo AES/MVS
The King of Fighters '98 - 93
The King of Fighters 2003 - 6
Garou: Mark of the Wolves - 3
Magician Lord - 18
Metal Slug - 7
Neo Turf Masters - 21
Sonic Wings 2 - 1

 

PC Engine
Cotton - 12

 

SuperGrafx
1941 Counter Attack - 41

Aldynes - 14

Edited August 23, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[zetastrike]

Yesterday evening I finally 1 credit cleared Darius Gaiden on the normal difficulty.  It took me roughly 25 minutes.