What have you ACTUALLY played tracker - Modern Edition (2021)

[Eltigro]

Continuing with the Suikoden games...  now on to the PS2 games...

 

PS2

Suikoden 3 - 360 min (Never played this one, but apparently there's like three different main characters?  Seeing the story from different perspectives maybe?  Anyway, played the little Prologue to each of them, and then played through Hugo's first chapter.  Next week will play someone else.  Enjoying it so far, but a bit worried about the combat, it's set up quite a bit different than what I'm used to.)

[+wongojack]

PC 

Beholder 113 

Monster Train 100 

 

XOne 

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition 1062 

Monster Train 114 

Walking Dead: A New Frontier 293 

Wheel of Fortune 119 

Xenocrisis 36 

 

I got into Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.  I think it is different enough to track as its own game.  There's a bunch of graphical updates, but also some gameplay changes that make it its own thing.  And of course it isn't an XBox 360 game but a full-fledged XBox One game.

 

I also played through Telltale's Walking Dead: A New Frontier.  I was really tired of TWD a few years ago, but it has been long enough now that I got some distance and really liked this game.  I sort of started playing it on a whim, but I got into it and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I remember not really liking TWD Season II, but maybe if I played it in 2021, I would appreciate it more?

 

Also, Monster Train is great.

[+jgkspsx]

Not much this week.

 

Switch:

Psyvariar Delta - 35 minutes

 

I suck at bullet hell games, but this is pretty fun. I don’t know if I’m getting better at it…

 

DS:

Retro Game Challenge 2 - 75 minutes

 

Nothing on the story mode side. Mostly pretty easy challenges this week, except for the one “kill 500 enemies in GunDuel” challenge again, which I just can’t seem to do. I got to 200 completed challenges, and… nothing?? Thanks, game. I wonder how you unlock the other voices and t shirts.

 

GBA:

Tekken Advance - 15 minutes

 

I don’t think I ever had this before, but I was blown away. It is essentially Tekken 3 on the Game Boy. I know it’s just fancy sprite tricks, but it looks and plays GREAT as a stripped down version.

 

Sega Arcade Gallery - 15 minutes

 

Just played Super Hang On. This is an amazing compilation of the four great classic Super Scalers (SHO, Outrun, Space Harrier, Afterburner II), made more amazing by the fact that the developers behind it had a very middling past. Afterburner is stripped down and not good, but the others are really impressive.

 

Sega Smash Pack - 15 minutes

 

Wow, this has problems. Sound is way off, and Sonic Spinball seems to have more frame rate problems than ever. Golden Axe plays okay, I think, though I am not a connoisseur. I’m afraid to touch Ecco…

[StormSurge]

Xbox One

Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 2: 17 minutes

Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 3: 12 minutes

PUBG: 163 minutes

 

Xbox Series X
MLB The Show 21: 2,492 minutes

 

iOS

Pop! Blitz: 18 minutes

 

A nice, rainy weekend here (perfection), coupled with a massive content drop in MLB The Show led to a bit more playtime than normal. More today!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

games here and there. The highlights of the week for me were Shao-Lin's Road, which is undoubtedly my third favorite classic golden age arcade game (just behind Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede), and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom which I had heard good things about but never played before until this morning. After half a dozen or so games of Shao-Lin's Road I managed to best my all time high score of 230,000 or so with a new personal best of 307,100 and was totally stoked to have made it that far!

 

D&D: Tower of Doom was just an all around amazing game that was simple to pick up and play but really captured the feel of the D&D universe, and it wasn't too difficult to play all the way through... though to be fair I do have my arcade cabinet set to free play and having unlimited continues always helps in any beat 'em up game  I tried out the sequel D&D: Shadow Over Mystara and liked it  quite a bit as well, though the difficulty level felt way higher and the game seemed like it was really designed to be played with 2 or more players. The first game Tower of Doom is definitely a fair and fun single player experience, but I don't think I'd want to play the sequel again without some help from a friend.

 

All in all, a fun week of gaming!

 

 

 

 

Ineligible

Aliens (Arcade) - 55 minutes

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (Arcade) - 98 minutes

Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara (Arcade) - 29 minutes

Frogger (Arcade) - 8 minutes

Galaxian (Arcade) - 4 minutes

Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis) - 26 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 6 minutes

Pirates! Gold (Sega Genesis) - 86 minutes

Samurai Shodown (Neo Geo MVS/AES) - 16 minutes

Scramble (Arcade) - 11 minutes

Shao-Lin's Road (Arcade) - 54 minutes

Space Invaders DX (Arcade) - 16 minutes

Splatterhouse (Arcade) - 16 minutes

Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Arcade) - 20 minutes

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (Arcade) - 17 minutes

Super Space Invaders '91 (Arcade) - 10 minutes

 

Nintendo Switch

Doom II [Classic] - 455 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

927 minutes (15 hours 27 minutes) [455 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo Switch: 455 minutes

Arcade: 344 minutes

Sega Genesis: 112 minutes

Neo Geo MVS/AES: 16 minutes

Edited May 31, 2021 by Skippy B. Coyote

[+wongojack]

23 hours ago, StormSurge said:

Xbox One

Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 2: 17 minutes

Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 3: 12 minutes

 

FYI that I have also been playing these, but because they are basically just emulators, I tend to log the time for the individual games in the classic tracker.  However, if you aren't used to tracking classic time then I can see how that would be a PITA.

 

I have logged time for classic compilations here in the modern tracker before.  Especially Rare Replay, but that has these "meta" elements where they set up challenges for you that weren't part of the original games.  Flashback Classics is really just the games as they were.  I wish it had more of that Rare Replay and NES Remix type meta-gaming, but its not there.

[StormSurge]

20 minutes ago, wongojack said:

FYI that I have also been playing these, but because they are basically just emulators, I tend to log the time for the individual games in the classic tracker.  However, if you aren't used to tracking classic time then I can see how that would be a PITA.

 

I have logged time for compilations here before.  Especially Rare Replay, but that has these "meta" elements where they set up challenges for you that weren't part of the original game.  Flashback Classics is really just the games as they were.  I wish it had more of that Rare Replay and NES Remix type meta-gaming, but its not there.

Agreed. They are certainly far from my preferred way to play those games but I needed to earn three achievements to keep my streak alive for the Microsoft Rewards app, so that’s what I turned to. ?

[Agamon]

PC

Solasta: Crown of the Magister (661 min)

Surviving the Aftermath (169 min)

Worms World Party Remastered (39 min)

Xeno Crisis (10 min)

 

Oculus Quest

Beat Saber (350 min)

 

Not much gaming during the week; I started a game of Surviving the Aftermath, a post-apoc colony builder. It's still in early access, but it's pretty fun. But I found out that Solasta was available on game pass, and decided to check it out and I'm hooked. It's a lot like Divinity Original Sin 2, but with D&D 5e rules (but not the license). It's tough, but I'm having fun.

 

Also played online a little bit with my bro, but it was short-lived, unfortunately. A Worms match and we tried out Xeno Crisis, going to try and get some more online gaming in soon, hopefully.

[TheGameCollector]

I played Pokemon Ultra Sun for 3DS for 60 minutes on Sunday night.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch) 62 mins

[carlsson]

On 5/30/2021 at 5:34 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

PS4
Shin Megami Tensei III HD Remaster - 40

English version. I might actually just go back to the Japanese version for reading practice.

Do you think it is worthwhile to log these two versions separately? I know it varies from case to case whether we combine or separate Japanese (or for that rare case, European) versions from US/international ones. Right now I'm counting those separately but can combine them later.

[carlsson]

Week 21

 

Top games

 

1. MLB The Show 21 (Xbox Series X) - 2492 min. (#1) (6 weeks)
2. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (Xbox One) - 1062 min.
3. Flowers: Les quatre saisons (Switch) - 1022 min. (#6)
4. Solasta: Crown of the Magister (PC) - 661 min.
5. Doom Classic II (Switch) - 455 min.
6. Suikoden 3 (PS2) - 360 min.
7. Beat Saber (Oculus Quest) - 350 min. (#7)
8. Walking Dead: A New Frontier (Xbox One) - 293 min.
9. Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga (PC) - 279 min.
10. Surviving the Aftermath (PC) - 169 min.

 

Top systems

 

1. Xbox Series X - 2492 min. (#2)
2. Xbox One - 1816 min. (#1)
3. Switch - 1574 min. (#4)
4. PC - 1371 min. (#3)
5. PS2 - 360 min.
6. Oculus Quest - 350 min. (#6)
7. 3DS - 210 min.
8. Vita - 112 min. (#5)
9. DS - 75 min. (#8)
10. GBA - 45 min.
 

Total 8463 minutes and 31 different games on 12 different systems.

 

MLB The Show 21 still is playing in its own league (the Major League Baseball?) though the two games battling for second and third places are a mere 40 minutes apart. Quite a number of new entries in the top 10. Systems wise the Xbox Series X is back in the lead with the four first systems all exceeding 1000 minutes and the rest a bit behind. No Xbox 360 but the PS2 clocks in at 360 min...

[Steven Pendleton]

4 hours ago, carlsson said:

Do you think it is worthwhile to log these two versions separately? I know it varies from case to case whether we combine or separate Japanese (or for that rare case, European) versions from US/international ones. Right now I'm counting those separately but can combine them later.

Not for HD. There are 3 PS2 versions: the original, Maniax, and Maniax Chronicle, and those should definitely be separate. The only PS2 version released outside of Japan was the Maniax version, which has quite a few additions to and changes from the original version.

[TheGameCollector]

My total for Pokemon Ultra Sun for 3DS for the last 3 days is 160 minutes.

 

I was near the end and I've minimally beaten the game so next I'll be moving on to finishing off Ultra Moon. I also still have Final Fantasy V to work on.

[Steven Pendleton]

Switch
Arcaea - 147
Flowers -Les quatre saisons- - 1939

In my last post, I was partway through July, I believe. Now I've finished été and also automne and I believe I am now close to the end of hiver. Not sure exactly what the date is now, but it's somewhere between Feb. 14 and April. I am Suou again. Hiver has become unexpectedly dark. So was automne, for that matter, but not the extent of hiver. Definitely not what I expected. Can't say much more, so I won't. Previously, I got all of the endings and CGs in printemps, but I didn't bother with any of the rest; true endings only. Note to my future self: été = 439, automne = 913, hiver = 587.

 

PS4
Wing of Darkness - 97

So yeah, apparently this game is like 2~3 hours long according to people on Steam and I know I'm almost finished with it since I know how many missions there are. I honestly got bored because the enemies take way too long to die, so I didn't finish it. Maybe I'll get to it eventually.

[+jgkspsx]

I think I’m done with RGC2 for now, before I get sick of it. It has made me a lot better at Compile-type shmups, and for that I am grateful.

 

GBA:

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Alucard SOTN hack - 45 minutes. I think this is a lot harder than Aria of Sorrow was, but maybe I’ve forgotten what it was like to not be super powered up.

 

Steel Empire - 25 minutes. It feels a little cramped compared to the Genesis original, but not terribly. What a great game.

 

Iridion 3D - 20 minutes. A fun but kind of frustratingly unpredictable Galaxy Force homage. The unexpected crashes remind me of Narrow Escape 2D hack for the Vectrex.

 

3DS:

Centipede: Infestation - 20 minutes. I wish they had done away with the story and the annoying characters. I want to use the right stick for firing, but no such luck. Odd game. When I rediscovered that WayForward developed it, I thought I should pick it up. Eh.

 

Switch:

 

The Hori ergonomic pads make a world of difference in my comfort playing handheld mode and thus my likelihood of playing it.

 

Graviter - 15 minutes. I expected this to be like Orbital/Orbient but it isn’t at all. Diverting stop-start gravity puzzler.

 

Double Dragon IV - 20 minutes. It’s a lot better than Double Dragon V, at least. I didn’t realize it was an NES romhack or something of that nature.

G-MODE Archives Vol 29 Zanac - 45 minutes. This is a Switch port of a featurephone port of an NES port of the MSX mother of the Aleste series. I can’t find much information about the feature phone release, so maybe it’s best to just record it here.

 

 

G-MODE Archives Vol 25 Topolon - 15 minutes. I don’t know what I expected this game to be, but it wasn’t a Lights Out clone. Kind of interesting but stressful.

[Eltigro]

Just the one game for me again...

 

PS2

Suikoden 3 - 450 min (Played through Geddoe's first chapter.  None of the chapters have been too difficult so far, but it took me a few tries to get past a boss near the end of his chapter.  I tried him probably 3 or 4 times on stream.  Then ended the stream because it was getting late.  Then went back on offstream and tried a couple more times and figured it out.  Because of the whole "team" thing in this one, or whatever it's called, you can only cast one spell per "team."  So if you have both characters with big damage spells in the same team, you can only cast one of them.  I split up those characters so they could both cast their biggest spells right away, and the boss went down much easier.)

[carlsson]

PC Windows:
Hover Bovver 2: Grand Theft Flymo - 10 min.

 

So we're playing Hover Bovver as part of the A8 HSC. Jeff Minter mentioned on Twitter that his Pocket PC version from c:a 2003 had some extra features, so I looked it up on itch.io and downloaded the full version running on modern Windows. Compared to the original, the Grand Theft Flymo version has a bone to throw the dog, moles to run over, sheep that will eat grass, veterinaries and policemen, two extra lawnmowers (belonging to the Queen Mother and Yak himself). It lacks most of the jolly music of the original though.

 

[TheGameCollector]

So far this week I have played

 

Pokemon Ultra Moon - 60 minutes.

 

I'm trying to catch up to my other versions and defeat the Pokemon League but I'm still at the bottom of the mountain. I think most of my team are lower levels this time while my starter for this file, Primarina has a higher level than the rest. I might have to spend more time leveling up in this version.

[+thegoldenband]

Still trying to figure out how best to deal with my browser-based gaming, which I often play as I'm trying to fall asleep or while I'm doing something else, and don't want to count as a "win" when I beat the games because, I don't know, that's kind of weird?

 

But anyway, here's two weeks' worth of approximate times:

 

Browser-based (all at cardgames.io):

Chess - 30 min.

FreeCell - 35 min.

Kings in the Corners - 30 min.

Minesweeper - 85 min.

Scorpion Solitaire - 25 min.

Sea Battle - 20 min.

Solitaire - 15 min.

Spider Solitaire - 80 min.

Sudoku - 100 min.

Triangles - 35 min.

Yahtzee - 65 min.

 

I beat all of these on their toughest options, sometimes more than once, except for Sudoku where I haven't attempted the toughest difficulty yet.

[+wongojack]

PC 

Monster Train 87 

 

XOne 

Lonely Mountains Downhill 87 

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition 876 

Monster Train 168 

Trine: Enchanted Edition 57 

Unruly Heroes 29 

Walking Dead, The: Michonne 236 

Wheel of Fortune 78 

Xenocrisis 48

 

Last Monday was a holiday so that gave me a chance to get a little more variety than I probably would have otherwise.  I started and finished TWD:  Michonne.  I liked that one similar to how I enjoyed playing TWD: A New Frontier last week.  It seems that the appropriate amount of time has passed to allow me to enjoy The Walking Dead again.  Mass Effect Legendary continues to entertain.  I'm still surprised at how much patience I have with a story and characters that I've already spent MANY hours with.  I guess the recent theme for me is that "you can go back again" because both of these are things I thought I had enough of a several years ago.  Monster Train . . . it's good.  I haven't decided if I like it better than Slay the Spire.  There is a different sort of finality to the play sessions with MT.  I usually don't find myself wanting to binge it.  One run is enough.

[StormSurge]

Xbox Series X
MLB The Show 21: 1,474 minutes

 

iOS

Pop! Blitz: 56 minutes

 

Lower totals than anticipated this week. I would have logged several hours on MLB The Show Saturday night, but after 4+ years, I had my first structure fire to fight (just a volunteer). That kept me occupied for nearly all of Saturday afternoon & evening, and most of Sunday. A few more hours of MLB on Sunday, plus the standard PUBG Sunday evening private matches with my boys was nixed thanks to an internet outage in my town that was just resolved this afternoon.

 

Hoping things return to normal this week. ?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Apologies for the late post this week, life has been kinda hectic lately and I somehow managed to completely forget to do my tracker posts yesterday! Much less playtime than usual this past week on account of the real life stuff (my mom is in hospice and doesn't have long) so I just kinda distracted myself a little here and there with some arcade and Neo Geo games. I played a fair number of new games I had never tried before this past week, and my favorites ended up being The King of Dragons arcade game and Garou: Mark of the Wolves for the Neo Geo MVS/AES. I played though and beat both of them and had a pretty great time! The King of Dragons felt a lot like Capcom's later D&D arcade games, but a bit simpler and more fast paced. I tried all the characters and the elf ended up being my favorite, due to their ability to perform long range attacks and move quickly at the cost of taking a lot more damage than the other characters if they do get hit. Thank goodness for having a free play arcade machine and unlimited credits!

 

As far as my other favorite game of the week went, I have no idea why I waited so long to try Garou: Mark of the Wolves, but now that I have I totally get why this fighting game is so beloved by many! The cast of characters are all wonderfully vibrant and expressive, and the gameplay is top notch fun that's really accessible to newcomers but deep and well balanced with a lot of subtle nuances for fighting game veterans to master. The character sprite animations and pixel art backgrounds are also some of the finest I've ever laid eyes in any era of gaming, right up there with The Last Blade 2. I think I'll be coming back to play Mark of the Wolves many, many more times in the future.

 

 

 

 

Ineligible

Dig Dug (Arcade) - 49 minutes

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (Arcade) - 17 minutes

Garou: Mark of the Wolves (Neo Geo MVS/AES) - 42 minutes

Gyruss (Arcade) - 15 minutes

The King of Dragons (Arcade) - 87 minutes

The King of Fighters '98: The Slugfest (Neo Geo MVS/AES) - 39 minutes

The Last Blade (Neo Geo MVS/AES) - 18 minutes

The Last Blade 2 (Neo Geo MVS/AES) - 46 minutes

Mortal Kombat II (Sega Genesis) - 10 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 24 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man [Speed-Up Hack] (Arcade) - 10 minutes

SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos (Neo Geo MVS/AES) - 7 minutes

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition (Arcade) - 16 minutes

Twin Cobra (Arcade) - 33 minutes

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Sega Genesis) - 66 minutes

 

Nintendo Switch

Doom II [Classic] - 155 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

649 minutes (10 hours 49 minutes) [155 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Arcade: 266 minutes

Nintendo Switch: 155 minutes

Neo Geo MVS/AES: 152 minutes

Sega Genesis: 76 minutes

[StormSurge]

So sorry to hear about your mom @Skippy B. Coyote  ?

[Agamon]

PC

Solasta: Crown of the Magister (833 min)

 

Oculus Quest

Beat Saber (314 min)

 

More Solasta this week, and this game is longer than expected. I've got 3 of the 8 gems needed for my stop-the-end-of-the-world crown MacGuffin, so I've got a way to go yet. Man, even Thanos only need 6. Ah well, the journey is fun.