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What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2021 (Season 14)


carlsson

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

For the 14th consecutive season, we weekly log which video games we've played and for how long. For the third year in a row, I am compiling the weekly, yearly and sometimes inbetween stats. 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 exact minute (though most of us do), any 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.

 

Note that we track video games here. While you are welcome to post your times on e.g. pinball games, board games, card games etc, those will not be counted. Of course if you play a video game simulating a pinball game or a board game, it counts. One of the few exceptions to this rule is the arcade game Baby Pac-Man (and a few more from the same publisher) which consists of a video game part and a pinball game part.

 

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 afternoon/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 4th season in a row, we will 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, images, 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, which also is helpful to alphabetize).

- 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. If you want a taste of our numbers, you can check some of the latest stats at the end of 2020.

 

One more thought:

If you haven't participated before, or if you did and got busy with other things, consider taking part in 2021! 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.


P.S. Past years of the tracker: 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020

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2 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I thought PS2 discussion in general was getting moved over here instead of being on modern side this year since it turns 20 later this year, but maybe I'm wrong.

PS2 turned 20 last year... Xbox and GameCube turn 20 this year in November

 

Perhaps next year when all three are 20 or older they can start being included? IDK. 

Edited by DragonGrafx-16
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1 minute ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

PS2 turned 20 last year... Xbox and GameCube turn 20 this year in November

 

Perhaps next year when all three are 20 or older they can start being included? IDK. 

lol oops. Have I ever mentioned that I have failed or almost failed every single math class I have ever taken in my entire life? I'm actually kind of proud of that in a weird way. Almost got kicked out of my major in college because of it, and they told me I might have a math disability, which I didn't know existed until then. Now you can see the results of it here.

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Up till now we have not been using rolling definitions of what is retro or classic, but fixed cut-off years. Just like the first post says, any hardware launched up to December 31, 1999 belongs here, and any hardware launched on January 1, 2000 or later belongs in the Modern tracker. While it technically is possible to move entire categories of entries from one Excel sheet to the other, the comparison numbers also get skewed a bit if suddenly 17,000 minutes of PS2 are moved from Modern to Classic, and the same can be said about 12,000 minutes for the original Xbox and 10,000 minutes for the Gamecube. In theory that would be over 39,000 minutes (650 hours of gaming) that over night goes from Modern to Classic.

 

Even worse if we start to dig into PC gaming, as we up to now said any game that is spec:ed to run properly in Windows 98 on a Pentium III or below is Classic, but anything that requires at least 1 GHz, probably Pentium 4 or Athlon, is Modern. If we are rolling 20 years on the console side, we should roll on the PC side too and increase the cut-off to around 1.5 GHz and perhaps Windows 2000. Imagine the trouble going through various PC games to determine which are brand new and which are 15-20 years old...

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Perhaps the logic choice in a few years is to introduce a pre-3DS list in the modern tracker, i.e. for all systems released between 2000-2011.

 

Sure we could start to roll newer systems into the Classic tracker, at least on the console side as that is the easiest to distinguish. Generally the reason why the Sega Dreamcast is considered a classic console but PS2, Gamecube and Xbox aren't, I believe is due to the DC was discontinued so soon and marked the final nail in the console coffin for Sega (though rumours about a Dreamcast 2 have been going around like a bad joke for decades).

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Medieval (Odyssey 1, Pong etc)

Renaissance (Channel F, RCA Studio II, Atari 2600 etc)

Baroque (Intellivision, Colecovision, TI-99/4A etc)

Classic (Atari 8-bit, C64, NES, SMS, TG-16 etc)

Romantic (Genesis, SNES, Jaguar, Saturn, N64, Dreamcast etc)

Modern (PS2 & PS3, Xbox & 360, Gamecube, Wii)

Contemporary (PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, Switch and newer)

 

Another way to treat it is of course to merge both trackers and introduce three individual lists: Overall Top 10, Pre-2000 Top 10 and Pre-NES Top 10 though we quickly see from the posted numbers that rather few Pre-2000 games would make it to the Overall list.

 

Let's keep it as it is for 2021 and during the year we can rethink if we should roll over some of the oldest 2000-2001 systems to the Classic tracker for 2022. It is true that the majority of gameplay in the Modern tracker happens on systems released in 2013 and later.

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Keep the cutoff at 2000. 

 

We can just start calling the "Modern" tracker something else .  Honestly, the generational differences still really aren't 100% there between PS2 and PS5 anyway.  Just wait for the PS2 release of Katamari Damacy to get "remastered" again this year - LOL

 

We will be heading to 3 trackers eventually (if we live that long).  The outlier IMO right now is stuff like the Oculus.  That seems to represent an actual generational shift, but VR gaming in general is blended pretty thoroughly within PC and PS4 so hard to separate when not on its own console.

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Yeah, the Modern tracker has a number of "systems" which can be argued if those really are like if interactively playing a game on Twitch or through Netflix is different from other browser based gaming. Note that Google Stadia has not yet been mentioned in the Modern tracker, but perhaps that type of streamed gaming died in its infancy?

 

Same goes for VR systems, what is a unique format and what is a controller add on, but then again we keep e.g. Jaguar and Jaguar CD separate in the Classic tracker while I assume the later mostly is a matter of increased storage capacity?

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Not much to say this time in general. I do need to calculate all of my times for modern side but I feel lazy and don't want to~ Someone else do it for me~

 

Neo Geo AES/MVS
Metal Slug - 25
Metal Slug X - 12
Neo Turf Masters - 31

 

Genesis/MD
OMG THE RED RINGS (Sonic 1 ROM hack)- 14
Sonic the Hedgehog (prototype) - 28
Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis (Genesis) (Sonic 1 ROM hack) - 19

Yes, the title of this is Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis (Genesis). Remember when I played Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis on the GBA not long before the year ended over on the other side? This is a ROM hack of Sonic 1 that makes it play like the garbage GBA port. Why would I or anyone else want to play this? I don't know, but I did and it was fun and terrible. Its gameplay is very close to the GBA version, but not identical, so be sure to play the actual GBA version if you want to torture yourself and enjoy (?) the authentic unbelievably broken physics.

 

Saturn
Akumajou Dracula X ~Gekka no Yasoukyoku~ - 479

I still don't really like any version of this game much at all for various reasons. Maria is really fun on Saturn, though, and about half of this time is Maria and half is Alucard.
Panzer Dragoon - 36

 

SG-1000
Choplifter - 14

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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ATARI 2600:

Squish ‘Em - 90 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection XM Enhanced - 45 minutes

 

COLECOVISION:

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom - 5 minutes

Burgertime - 1 minute

Dig Dug - 1 minute

Donkey Kong - 55 minutes

Galaxian - 30 minutes

Gorf - 5 minutes

Gyruss - 5 minutes

H.E.R.O. - 15 minutes

Mr. Do - 5 minutes

Pac-Man Collection - 30 minutes

Pepper II - 30 minutes

Roc N Rope - 1 minute

Smurf Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle - 20 minutes

Space Fury - 50 minutes

Squish ‘Em featuring Sam - 20 minutes

Super Cobra - 52 minutes

Super Pac-Man - 20 minutes

Tutankham - 5 minutes

Venture - 127 minutes

 

MSX:

H.E.R.O. - 35 minutes

Edited by oyamafamily
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Atari 2600:
Basic Math (Fun With Numbers) - 3 min.

 

C64:
1943 - 4 min.
Space Trap - 2 min.

 

Yes, despite an extended time period of 10 days, this is about as much gaming as I mustered. The A8 HSC currently is between seasons, and although I had an itch very late at night to play some games for a longer period of time, it never happened. A friend came over with some C64 disks that he wanted to test if those would load and play properly so I put together a setup to test those. While there were some gameplay bugs in some of the original disks, I think it was temporary or due to read errors or faults in my C64 rather than the disk itself. It took a few attempts swapping joysticks to find one that would behave well.

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Here are my times for the last two weeks (December 28th, 2020 through January 10th, 2021) on classic systems:

 

Arcade:

 

Donkey Kong 3 - 7 min.

Elevator Action - 19 min. in 3 sessions

Funky Fish - 9 min.

Hyper Sports - 13 min. in 2 sessions

Jr. Pac-Man - 6 min.

Mario Bros. - 144 min. in 8 sessions

 

Atari 2600:

Ixion - 19 min.

Mario Bros. - 17 min.

Oystron - 13 min.

 

I've returned to playing the arcade version of Mario Bros., but I've also tried the greatly simplified Atari 2600 version. In order to avoid too much flicker, they changed some game elements which would make things easier for the player, so this had to be counterbalanced by making the physics more difficult to master and by sending through more and faster fireballs. I don't really like that version very much.

 

I also played a bunch of other games where there's not much to report. In Hyper Sports, I still didn't manage to complete the triple jump which seems to be picky about when you're really able to jump as far as you should.

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On 1/3/2021 at 2:57 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

lol oops. Have I ever mentioned that I have failed or almost failed every single math class I have ever taken in my entire life? I'm actually kind of proud of that in a weird way. Almost got kicked out of my major in college because of it, and they told me I might have a math disability, which I didn't know existed until then. Now you can see the results of it here.

I hated math. I refused to take it. I failed grade 9 math 3 times. I was literally never there. 

 

I still graduated in 4 years. My very last semester before graduation was terrible. Grade 9 math 1st period, grade 10 2nd, lunch, grade 11 4th period.

 

All the math I tried escaping had found me finally. I had no choice but to sit and learn it. But when faced with the reality of staying back while all my friends graduated, that kicked my ass into high gear.

 

I didnt want to be the dumb ass. Now  a days I dont understand the hate I had for it. Math was kind of fun when it all clicked.

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Apologies......

 

2600

 

Gorf arcade- 60

Galagon-60

Nexion 3D-120

 

ColecoVision

 

GORF-30

LadyBug-20

Rocky-15

 

 

Intellivision

 

Demon Attack- 45

Nightstalker-20

 

 

NES

 

Castlevania-60

Castlevania 2-180

Castlevania 3-45

Captain Skyhawk- 45

CasinoKid-15

Golgo 13-30

TopGun-20

 

Neo Geo

 

3 Count Bout-30

Art of Fighting 2-30

Cyberlip-20

Fatal Fury 3- 45

KOF 2003-60

Nam 1975-20

 

 

Lots to play in a pandemic

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