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STUNT CAR RACER - Atarimania Suspicious Ranking / Score


abbotkinneydude

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Hello everyone,

 

I previously did comment about the lousy score of STUNT CAR RACER on ATARIMANIA.

 

But now... STUNT CAR RACER is down to 5.8 on Atarimania which makes absolutely no sense.

 

I don't know if we're dealing with C64 bots who want to undervote that version (or some programming rivalry going on) but SCR deverses a much better score / ranking.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-stunt-car-racer_32294.html

Edited by abbotkinneydude
typo fix
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6 hours ago, www.atarimania.com said:

We're going to look into this, the rating was really high not that long ago so it's suspicious to say the least.

Additionally, if you look, everything of Fandal's has been voted way down on your site, recently. I just remembered this morning, I had seen this several months ago. Some of these are titles that had good ratings on them for years until that happened. So, it looks like someone might have something against Fandal himself.

 

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1 hour ago, MrFish said:

Additionally, if you look, everything of Fandal's has been voted way down on your site, recently. I just remembered this morning, I had seen this several months ago. Some of these are titles that had good ratings on them for years until that happened. So, it looks like someone might have something against Fandal himself.

 

 

That's bad.

 

If you look at the discussion on the SCR AtariMania thread, another user (J2P) compared Fandal's A8 128K port to the more recent 128K BBC Master port by the BitShifters.

 

For a moment, I thought the Bit Shifters may have been behind this but, now that all of Fandal's catalog is affected (based on your post), it's probably someone in the Atari 8-bit community.

 

I'm reprinting the whole discussion here:

 

 

 

AbbotKinneyDude - 04/08/2020
A 7.6 rating? Seriously? No love for STUNT CAR RACER? This is an amazing port which brings to the 8-bit one of the 1980s masterpieces. We should feel so lucky this is finally available for the ATARI 8-Bit. Kudos to Fandal and Irgendwer for porting it. It would be amazing if they could bring more of the missing Microprose titles to the system such as Sid Meier's PIRATES!


Steve - 06/08/2020
@ AbbotKinneyDude I agree dude. 7.4 is an unworthy score for this amazing 8 bit port. The Atari XL version is the best of the 8bits. Fastest, smoothest. A travesty for such an amazing port.


J2P - 07/08/2020
@Steve You are wrong. Latest BBC port is much much faster...


AbbotKinneyDude - 08/08/2020
@J2P @Steve - J2P is actually right. The BBC Master port from the Bit Shifters (which happened recently) is actually faster but, remember, the ATARI 8-bit runs @ 1.79 Mhz when the BBC Master runs @ 2Mhz so I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison. Here's the video from Chinny of the BBC version where he mentions the 130XE port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVAMrDciMwI


Steve - 09/08/2020
Conflating the catalyst for the initial comment. My point being, Stunt car Racer does not warrant a 7.4 score here, that's my point. Slight discrepancies between the BBC and A8 speed are negligible. The BBC seems slightly smoother, not faster IMO, if anything. I prefer the colors on the A8 too. The Atari deserves a better score than 7.4.


AbbotKinneyDude - 10/08/2020
@Steve. I couldn't agree more with you. Stunt Car Racer easily deserves a 8.5-8.8 rating to my eyes. I only pointed out the BBC Master version because it came out AFTER Fandal's port and J2P made a point with it. However, I need to restate again that the BBC Master runs @ 2MHz vs the ATARI which runs at a lesser 1.79/1.77 MHz (NTSC/PAL) so, of course, if properly coded the BBC version will run faster. As a reminder, the C64 runs at 1.023/0.985 MHz (NTSC/PAL) and does a pretty good job with only 64Ko. At the end of the day, we all love our classic machines and, personally, I am super grateful to Fandal & Irgendwer for porting this gem to the ATARI. As I said earlier, we need more of those Microprose/Microstyle conversions and Sid Meier's Pirates! HAS to happen. Not only the ATARI 800 was Sid Meier's first machine but, technology wise, it doesn't seem super complicated. BTW- If you want to have a ball, check out the Stunt Car Racer discussion on YouTube (ATARI ANDRE Comment), it'll take you back to that über sterile C64 vs. ATARI 8-Bit debate of the eighties (which is moot as the 2 architectures were released 3 years apart). Here's the link but get a Mojito first, you'll need it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eRoMjirS3s

 

 

 

And here's the most recent BBC Master port (128K) reviewed by Chinny:

 

 

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2 hours ago, MrFish said:

Additionally, if you look, everything of Fandal's has been voted way down on your site, recently. I just remembered this morning, I had seen this several months ago. Some of these are titles that had good ratings on them for years until that happened. So, it looks like someone might have something against Fandal himself.

 

 

If this is true, then the person who did this is a real sad and pathetic person. What a world we live in... what world. Sigh.

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It's also a reason I never trust scores, I've played low scoring games that I really liked and high scoring games where I could not understand how it was high scored. In general scoring can be a fair mark of the game but then people like this idiot go and screw with it. I have to admit that I play SCR more on the Amiga BUT the Atari version was a tremendous feat and plays super well.

 

Hopefully some logs can trace who the idiot was and ban him or her, our community does not need people like these in any way possible.

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If this is about some real mass downvoting from few IPs, with <5 scores then sure, it's worth investigating.

 

But I see above a discussion questioning somebody's rating of 7.6, which is a perfectly reasonable score. No matter how brilliant the port is, not everybody has to absolutely love SCR and give it only top scores. Calling it a "travesty" is a little bit silly.

 

Also, unelss you can really identify some malicious intent, it's like baktra says - you will never know whose vote is real and whose isn't. Eg, I often upvote games which are considered crap, which could also be seen as "crazy" yet isn't - it's my honest opinion.

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46 minutes ago, emkay said:

Possibly a lot of bad votes are based on the used loading system. 

While it's fine, if people know about the real thing, people with expansions for the Atari were angry about not using their particular expansion. 

 

 

I know about the Xbios complainers but, this seems far fetched that voters would vote down just because of that.

 

It's still a stellar port.

 

Also, last time I checked, SCR was running fine on my stock 128K Secam ATARI 130XE with just less colors (obviously).

 

 

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Interesting discussion and thanks for the kind words.

However the "votes" are likely to let my head shake in amusement and don't really hurt.

Here is another funny one:

Perplexity: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-perplexity_35110.html

Depending on the votes this title is "Incredibly poor" which is even funnier than SCR being "Average".

 

But taste differs, I still wonder why "Spindizzy" isn't in the top 25, while "Beyond Castle Wolfenstein" is.

IMHO the exploration is more entertaining in Spindizzy, but I think the spinning Pyramid misses a beard... ;-)

 

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On 9/5/2020 at 10:08 AM, www.atarimania.com said:

We're going to look into this, the rating was really high not that long ago so it's suspicious to say the least.

The same happened for ST last year. Many popular games were downvoted and someone 'maintained' his favourite list in our top 25.

Not sure if there's protection against this kind of hackers. I suspect Amiga evangelists but can't say for sure. I would have hoped that people would have grown up by now. Sadly not...

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/6/2020 at 11:55 AM, marakatti said:

The same happened for ST last year. Many popular games were downvoted and someone 'maintained' his favourite list in our top 25.

Not sure if there's protection against this kind of hackers. I suspect Amiga evangelists but can't say for sure. I would have hoped that people would have grown up by now. Sadly not...

 

Well, for sure, some people have not grown up.

 

I was commenting extensively on Chinny's recent review of Rescue of Fractalus and an "atari fan" started to get agressive against Amiga owners.

 

After he posted this:

 

 

can't wait .as an ATARI fan I think I'm right . From my opinion the ST AND the AMIGA are BOTH ATARI computers . Just sayin so to P.O. the AMIGA fans .

 

I decided to no longer respond.

 

You can find the whole discussion in the Yar Pic comment thread below Chinny's review.

 

Some people are just really sad.

 

 

 

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