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

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Pole Position [Marius PAL] - 60 min.

 

Nothing extra, just one more round of HSC. I managed to finish the 8 lap race at highest difficulty.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this part week (May 3rd through 9th)...

 

Arcade:

Pengo - 14 minute in 2 sessions

 

Commodore +4:

Pengo - 31 min. in 2 sessions

 

Commodore 16:

Airwolf 2 - 22 min.

Airwolf Commodore 16 - 2 min.

Airwolf 16 - 40 min.

Artic - 36 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Action Fighter - 30 min.

Super Pipeline - 20 min.

 

This week I took at the look at the C-64 version of Action Fighter which, unlike the Amiga version, offers smooth gameplay at 60 FPS, but I couldn't quite figure out how to beat the 1st "boss" (3 submarines). The home versions are similar to one another, but quite different to the arcade version, where you play on one big map and some air stages unlike the separated levels of the home version. As for the smoothness, there are actually many games which were silky-smooth on the C-64, but had a lower framerate on the Amiga, in part due to them being derived from the Atari ST version which has to do without all the hardware supporting smooth graphics on the Amiga. While at it, I also played Super Pipeline on the C-64.

 

Then I took a look at some Commodore 16 games, which are usually severely watered down compared to other versions because of memory limitations. Those weren't so bad on the VIC-20 which had most of its software on cartridges, but the C-16 software mainly came on tapes, so they had to share the 16K RAM with the screen memory and the character set which doesn't leave to much room for the game, in addition to the fact that the C-16 has no sprites.

 

"Airwolf Commodore 16" is actually written in BASIC and somewhat similar to Fort Apocalypse, but has only one non-scrolling screen. "Airwolf 16" by Elite is set in a cave system comprising 9 screens where you have to rescue men. Sadly, the collision detection is hairy and often leads to multiple deaths without the player being able to do much against it.

"Airwolf 2", as on the C-64, is a clone of Nemeis, of course also watered down on the C-16.

 

Artic is a story of its own, it's actually an Italian version of Colosoft's Pengo which was also ported to the C-16. The game actually plays pretty well although it's rather slow and the snow bees are flickering. They also took out the possibility of freezing the enemies by pushing against the outer wall.

 

There is another, newer version of Pengo for that system, but it needs more than 16K, so it's actually for the Commodore +4. It's praised for being very polished, but I found it rather frustrating. I also played the arcade original to compare it to those versions, and the original version has got several points making it less frustrating over the newer version:

- The Snow-Bees stop for a split second before changing direction

- They also slow down while melting cubes.

- After a player death, the game restarts with them being reset to the corners of the map, while on the C-16 they stay where they are, often causing repeat deaths of the player. The Colosoft version solves this problem by entirely restarting the level each time the player dies.

The newer version of Pengo also incorrectly builds the maze, which is strictly a maze on the other versions, created by an appropriate algorithm.

 

 

[Eltigro]

Wow, some great games played by you guys this week! 

 

Only one game for me this week, and a bit of a guess on the time... 

 

PS1

Suikoden 2 - 480 min (I played about 5 1/2 hours on stream and then played about another 3 hours off stream, so I'm just gonna say it was around 8 hours.  Got the "hero" from Suikoden 1 and did went to the fake peace treaty...  not sure exactly what's coming up.  I've been kinda referring to a guide, but I may just wing it from here on out.  I've been playing this a long while and I'm ready to get it over with.  I mean, it's a great game, but I've spent so much time on it.)

[DragonGrafx-16]

Star Parodia (PC Engine CD) 54 mins I actually got to the final boss and then got a game over. I wasn't expecting a sort of racing course at the beginning of the final stage either.
Seirei Senshi Spriggan (PC Engine CD) 32 mins The power up system in this game kind of confuses me but I still managed to get to the end of stage 5 before before giving up and moving on to a different game.
Cyber Core (PC Engine) 23 mins
Layer Section (Saturn) 15 mins
Shienryuu (Saturn) 8 mins

[+wongojack]

Arcade 

Asteroids Deluxe 62 

Dig Dug 11 

Pac-Man 11 

 

A2600 

Barnstorming 11 

Basketball 6 

Battlezone 52 

Berzerk 15 

Blueprint 10 

Bowling 28 

Boxing 7 

Bump n Jump 23 

Carnival 19 

Casino 18 

Centipede 25 

Chopper Command 22 

Circus Atari 23 

Cosmic Ark 11 

Dark Cavern 15 

Dark Chambers 4 

Demolition Herby 17 

Demons to Diamonds 17 

Dig Dug 20 

Dodge 'Em 12 

Donkey Kong 11 

Ms. Pac-Man 36 

Night Driver 32 

Pac-Man 10 

Robot Tank 29 

 

Still going with a focus on actual physical Atari 2600 games that I own.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:
Sky Kid - 69 min.

 

Game Boy:

Double Dribble: 5 on 5 - 107 min.
Elevator Action - 1 min.
Un Indien dans la Ville - 129 min.

Monster Truck - 88 min.
Shaq-Fu - 20 min.

The Smurfs’ Nightmare - 156 min.

 

Beat a bunch of Game Boy games: Shaq-Fu on Normal and Hard difficulties, the latter without losing a round; Double Dribble, on the middle and top difficulties, with a larger margin of victory on the harder setting; and Monster Truck and Un Indien dans la Ville, two out-of-region games with varying amounts to offer.

 

 

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 118 minutes

M*A*S*H - 15 minutes

Solar Fox - 21 minutes

 

 

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I played a little handful of games a few minutes here and a few minutes there this past week, but the overwhelming majority of my gaming time for the week was devoted to Ori and the Blind Forest on the Switch. A friend gifted me physical copies of both Ori games for the Switch this week and I wasted no time diving into the first game, and then spent all of my free time for the rest of the week doing pretty much nothing other than playing it  It was well worth the time investment though, and I can safely say that for me Ori and the Blind Forest is one of those rare perfect 10 out of 10 games; right up there with Ocarina of Time, the original Doom, and Alien: Isolation.

 

It's a darn challenging game that asks a lot of the player, but having now completed the game I can safely say that it never felt unfair or cheap in it's difficulty. The story was one of the most emotionally engaging stories I've ever encountered in a video game, the graphics were easily some of the most beautiful I've seen on the Switch (or pretty much anywhere for that matter), the musical score was fantastic, and the length and pacing of the game felt just right. There's honestly nothing bad I could say about Ori and the Blind Forest, so it's a 10/10 for me! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play the sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps! 

 

 

 

Ineligible (All Nintendo Switch)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 15 minutes

Doom (Classic) - 145 minutes

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition - 1,320 minutes

Ori and the Will of the Wisps - 25 minutes

Outlast: Bundle of Terror - 15 minutes

Tetris 99 - 5 minutes

 

Arcade

Ms. Pac-Man - 7 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (Speed-Up Hack) - 13 minutes

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition - 17 minutes

 

PlayStation

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 189 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

1,751 minutes (29 hours 11 minutes) [226 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo Switch: 1,525 minutes

PlayStation: 189 minutes

Arcade: 37 minutes

Edited May 10, 2021 by Skippy B. Coyote

[agb]

Only two games this week, both Atari 2600.

 

MASH for HSC 35 minutes

Solar Fox 134 minutes

 

I need more variety.

 

 

[+wongojack]

4 minutes ago, Skippy B. Coyote said:

I played a little handful of games a few minutes here and a few minutes there this past week, but the overwhelming majority of my gaming time for the week was devoted to Ori and the Blind Forest on the Switch. A friend gifted me physical copies of both Ori games for the Switch this week and I wasted no time diving into the first game, and then spent all of my free time for the rest of the week doing pretty much nothing other than playing it  It was well worth the time investment though, and I can safely say that for me Ori and the Blind Forest is one of those rare perfect 10 out of 10 games; right up there with Ocarina of Time, the original Doom, and Alien: Isolation. It's a darn challenging game that asks a lot of the player, but having now completed the game I can safely say that it never felt unfair or cheap in it's difficulty. The story was one of the most emotionally engaging stories I've ever encountered in a video game, the graphics were easily some of the most beautiful I've seen on the Switch (or pretty much anywhere for that matter), the musical score was fantastic, and the length and pacing of the game felt just right. There's honestly nothing bad I could say about Ori and the Blind Forest, so it's a 10/10 for me! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play the sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps! 

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed Ori BF when I played it on XOne a few years ago.  I agree with everything you said - it is a great game.  However, the thing that kept it from being perfect for me was one stage where you had to escape rising water from below.  The difficulty spike right there was higher than at any other moment in the game.  I think they even added some additional checkpoints and an "easy" mode that changed that section, but it was baffling to me that there could be such an imbalanced point in an otherwise almost perfectly balanced game.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

1 minute ago, wongojack said:

I really enjoyed Ori BF when I played it on XOne a few years ago.  I agree with everything you said - it is a great game.  However, the thing that kept it from being perfect for me was one stage where you had to escape rising water from below.  The difficulty spike right there was higher than at any other moment in the game.  I think they even added some additional checkpoints and an "easy" mode that changed that section, but it was baffling to me that there could be such an imbalanced point in an otherwise almost perfectly balanced game.

 

It's funny because a friend of mine I was talking to about the game earlier in the week said the exact same thing, that the flood sequence was the only point in the game where he got frustrated and nearly gave up. Weirdly I didn't have any problem with that part at all, I breezed through it on my second try, and the only part in the game where I ever got a little irritated at the difficulty was the final escape from the volcano sequence. Of course I found out after I beat it that it was the end of the game, so the high difficulty level seemed totally acceptable in retrospect considering that it was the final challenge.

[carlsson]

Here's the summary for Week 18, running from May 3 - 9. We logged 3732 minutes of eligible play, playing 91 games on a total of 22 systems.

 

Top 10:

 

1. Suikoden II (PlayStation) - 480 min. (#3)
2. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PlayStation) - 189 min. (#1)
3. Smurfs' Nightmare, The (Game Boy) - 156 min.
4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 155 min.
5. Un Indien dans la Ville (Game Boy) - 129 min.
6. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 118 min. (#7)
7. Double Dribble: 5 on 5 (Game Boy) - 107 min.
8. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 100 min. (#9)
9. Thunder Force IV (Sega Saturn) - 90 min.
10. Monster Truck (Game Boy) - 88 min.
 

Pre-NES top 10:

 

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 155 min. (PN#5)
2. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 118 min. (PN#2)
3. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 100 min. (PN#3)
4. Asteroids Deluxe (Arcade) - 62 min.
5. Astronomer (Atari 2600) - 60 min.
5. Pole Position (Atari 8-bit) - 60 min. (PN#1)
7. Battlezone (Atari 2600) - 52 min.
8. M*A*S*H (Atari 2600) - 50 min.
9. Airwolf 16 (Commodore 16 & Plus/4) - 40 min.
10. Artic (Commodore 16 & Plus/4) - 36 min.
10. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 36 min.

 

Top 10 systems:

 

1. Atari 2600 (901) (#2)
2. PlayStation (683) (#1)
3. Game Boy (566)
4. Sega Saturn (348)
5. Arcade (205)
6. Game Gear (150)
7. Commodore 16 & Plus/4 (131)
8. Atari 7800 (100) (#7)
9. TG-CD/PC Engine CD (86)
10. Game Boy Color (75) (#3)

 

Suikoden II is back as the most played game in a week with rather low competition. Even last week's leader Symphony of the Night is almost 5 hours behind and the last two on the overall list didn't even exceed 100 minutes each. Pre-NES it is Solar Fox ahead of Kaboom! again, with a few less frequent entries for the C16 & Plus/4 which in the tracker are grouped. This puts that system into 7th place in the systems list, which though is headed by the Atari 2600 which has 32 games out of 91 on the list.

 

Two new entries to the 1000 Minute Club:

 

#446 Hexcite: The Shapes of Victory (Game Boy Color) with 1016 minutes

#447 Sky Kid (NES/Famicom) with 1054 minutes

 

Also, the total number of games in the tracker has now exceeded 9900! A few are placeholders with 0 minutes logged but at least 99.9% games were actually logged with some playtime.

Edited May 11, 2021 by carlsson

[Eltigro]

IT'S OVER 9900!!!

[carlsson]

Yeah. Despite it is stored as xlsx which has built-in compression that makes files 50% smaller than the older xls format, the document currently is 1,419,849 bytes. That can be compared to a 3.5" HD floppy disk which had a theoretical capacity of 1,474,560 bytes minus some overhead for the block map, directory etc. Basically we're close to exceeding the capacity of a 1.44 MB disk, even though the stats for previous years are concatenated as a yearly total for respective game.

 

Interestingly when thegoldenband ran the tracker, the xls files grew by 100-150 kB per year. Then I took over and for some reason the file grew by 1 MB in a year before shifting format to xlsx. It probably is due to my formulas for automatically detecting 1000, 5000 and 10000 minutes, which means adding 2-3 formulas per row to a file almost doubles its size, compared to just storing 52 numbers per row. Not that I'm short of disk space, but an interesting observation about Excel files.

[Eltigro]

Just one game for me again this week... I know... so boring...

PS1

Suikoden 2 - 431 min (I now have all 108 recruitable characters and I'm moving on with the game.  Just liberated Greenhill, and I think Rockaxe is coming up soon.  I'm sure I'll be grinding some characters to increase levels and make sure everyone is ready for whatever.  I made a video of me fighting the Bone Dragon boss in Greenhill...  it took a while because I wasn't really prepared properly for it.)

 

 

[Steven Pendleton]

Not much to say, so here are my times.

 

Saturn
Akumajou Dracula X ~Gekka no Yasoukyoku~- 193

Abandoned this playthrough to play the US PS4 version, which I then abandoned to play the Japanese PS4 version. Not having ridiculous and unwarranted slowdown on every screen is nice. Still not particularly fond of any version of this game, however.
Layer Section - 14
Thunder Force III - 18
Thunder Force IV - 54
Thunder Force AC - 123

 

Mark III
Aleste - 9

 

Game Gear
GG Aleste 3 - 55

 

G/MD
Thunder Force IV - 38

A failed no miss attempt on the Sega Nomad. Final miniboss killed me = insta-power off. Sadness. I was so close on the stock Nomad. Whoever says that this game, or anything else for that matter, is unplayable on the stock Nomad because of its bad screen is wrong.

 

Neo Geo AES/MVS
Neo Turf Masters - 9

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Pole Position [Marius PAL] - 19 min.

 

Last attempts in the HSC, though I didn't improve my scores.

 

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (May 10th through 16th, 2021) on classic games:

 

Arcade:

Jr. Pac-Man - 61 min. in 3 sessions

 

Channel F:

Pac-Man - 86 min. in 3 sessions

 

Colecovision:

Steamroller - 20 min.

 

This week, asides from having another go at Steamroller on the Colecovision, I played 2 variants of Pac-Man - the Channel F version of the original and the original Arcade version of Jr. Pac-Man. For Jr. Pac-Man, it's actually hard to get tired of ir... it's always a challenge to lead the ghosts around in circles and executing a strategy avoiding being circled in by them, and I like the more open space you have for executing your strategy compared to Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. I didn't get farther in the game than usual though... I also haven't played it for some time before this week.

 

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection - 87 minutes

 

COLECOVISION:

Keystone Kapers (for HSC) - 12 minutes

 

NES/FAMICOM:

Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen License) - 115 minutes

[DragonGrafx-16]

Bio Hazard Battle (Genesis) 26 mins

[+thegoldenband]

My time for the week:

 

MC-10:
4 Mile Island Adventure - 123 min.

 

Completed this text adventure -- a conversion from the Tandy Color Computer, I believe -- with my wife.

[+jgkspsx]

I mostly concentrated on new games for old systems this week.

 

Atari Lynx:

 

Centipede (Songbird edition) - 25 minutes. A really solid and enjoyable completion of the old prototype even if the spiders seem a lot harder to deal with than I’m used to. Amazing music outside of the game and sound effects during the game.

 

Game Gear:

 

Arcade Classics - 15 minutes. Played for a baseline of what a portable version of Centipede was like back in the day. Centipede is probably the worst of the ports - playing the sound of the flea falling slows the system to a crawl. Not awful, but not nearly as good as the Lynx version.

 

Out Run - 20 minutes. It makes me happy to hear that music coming out of my Game Gear. It’s not the best way to play it, but it’s better than many Game Gear racers. Weird that it never came out in the US.

 

Game Pack 4 in 1 - 15 minutes. Played the racing game to compare it to Outrun. It’s not great, not awful.

 

GP Rider - 20 minutes. I have struggled to get the flow of this since I was a kid trying to get my sister to play it with me with the link cable. I think we did once, for five minutes. The only time we used the link cable, lol cry. I still crash constantly. At one point I was okay at it, but not anymore. It is a beautiful game, with a World Tour that is essentially Super Hang On.

 

And for something COMPLETELY different:

 

Moldorian: Hikari to Yami no Sister (english translation) - 20 minutes. RPG. Kinda slow, kinda generic, but very pretty. I probably should work on Royal Stone or one of the Phantasy Star games that are actually on my list of things to play, but sometimes you just want to try something new. Plus the name is funny and always makes me think it’s a shmup.

 

Pinball Dreams - 15 minutes. Wizard Pinball blows this away, as do many Game Boy pinball games, but it’s pretty decent. Just slow and a little too unmanageable.

 

I played short bursts of Power Drive (no not the real cartridge lol), Berlin no Kabe, Marble Madness, Kawasaki Superbike Challenge (ew), Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP II, and maybe some others too. I just felt like playing the Game Gear a lot this week. Possibly to reassure it after all the Game Boy time.

 

Game Boy:

 

Vattle Giuce - 20 minutes. I asked my wife if she had seen my Vattle Giuce. She is inured to strange questions from me but that one nonplussed her.

 

Game Boy/Color:

 

Hexcite - 90 minutes. Yeaaaaaaa boyeeeeeeee:

 

 

I am 3/7ths of the way to Grandmaster. Guess I’ll go all the way...
 

PC Engine:

 

Override - 20 minutes. Feels somewhat Aleste-ish with the power crystals, but with options. Interesting game. Seems really hard but I like it so far.

 

Turbografx CD/Super CD:

 

Jessie Jaeger in Cleopatra’s Curse - 20 minutes. Played the demo until my CD comes. This is one of the most polished homebrew games I’ve seen for any system, and especially for the Turbo/PCE/CD. It’s beautiful, fun, interesting, and has great music. It’s clear this is a must-buy - don’t miss it! Download the Super CD and Genesis demos here: 

This game will be the exact same on the HuCard except the music... how should it be tracked?

 

Space Ava 201 - 25 minutes. Imagine Chip’s Challenge but turn based, with some reflection puzzle minigames. This is a very professionally done and funny production, and it’s only available for a donation of your choice through the developer’s itch.io page: https://nicole-express.itch.io/space-ava-201

 

I did have an issue with saving. Either I didn’t save my real game or I overwrote it with a new game, which was somewhat dispiriting after putting a half hour in.

 

I hope this gets a pressed CD release. It deserves it.

 

Atari Jaguar:

 

reBOOTed - 150 minutes. Tons of great games on here. I got at least onto the leaderboards for all of them. Downfall OG plus and Rocketeer Redux are really amazing on the “just one more time!” front.

 

Last Strike - 60 minutes. This is such a great game. I am getting better but I’m pretty far back on the leaderboards.

 

Sega 32X:

 

Some real high quality action this week.

 

Brutal: Above the Claw - 20 minutes. Okay, I have been a little too mean to this game in the 32X vs Jaguar thread. It’s not THAT horrible. The art is bad, the frame rate is terrible, the animations are stilted, and the idea of earning special moves is kind of cool and kind of dumb, but I do like how it analyzes the matches and I do like how it maps personality styles to characters. It is the worst fighting game on the 32X but realistically probably has more going for it than Fight for Life.

 

Corpse Killer - 90 minutes. I finally got to play the copy that @NeonSpaceBeagle kindly sold me for a lower than eBay price. It is surprisingly fun (I know, my standards are pretty low these days) and it features one interestingly modern advancement for a lightgun shooter. You have a map of the island and have a main goal and sidequests. The sidequests get you closer with your associates, and some sidequests let you earn better weapons and essentially grind for resources to take on the final gauntlet.
 

It’s hard to play with a control pad, but with a lightgun I feel like the display port would be too small to aim from very far away. (The 32X version’s viewport is about 50% larger than the poor Sega CD’s. Not sure how you’re supposed to shoot at 20% of your CRT screen.) Enemies often take a LOT of hits to go down, and you have to take a lot of hits from enemies. The worst are these tiny creatures that look like the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt. They need special rare bullets to kill them and I never seen to have them, so I just lose tons of health whenever they pop up.

 

Still, the performances, though hammy and at times problematic for modern eyes, are really entertaining. It’s not the worst plot, either. At least it makes more sense than Resident Evil’s overarching narrative.

 

Toughman Contest - 45 minutes. I remember renting this game, being helplessly beaten to a pulp, finding the codes in a GamePro back issue, and using the “caffeinated mode” code “HYPER” to get through the game all the way to Butter Bean, who I could never beat. Same thing this time. I cannot get anywhere without the cheat.

 

 

It’s not awful, but it’s just so fast and hard to understand compared to the Punch Out series it wants so badly to be that it comes off not so well. Funnily enough EGM did a head to head comparison and said this was better than Super Punch Out. They were probably in EA’s pocket.

 

The mechanic of giving hyper speed when punches miss exacerbates the odd pacing. On the plus side, the special moves are pretty cool. The fighters do span a lot of different global backgrounds and despite some terrible fake Chinese and Arabic names there are not a lot of racist stereotypes on display in the bios or visual representations of the fighters. Good for them.

 

(totally not Kurt Cobain)

 

The backgrounds have a lot going on, but they made the bizarre decision to have you fight all of the fights in the career mode in your hometown and then all of the semifinals and finals in Las Vegas. Okay, it’s realistic, but that means you only see two stages! Apparently they removed funny background animations that were in the Genesis version, making this the worse of the two. Also the “enhanced detail” of the 32X backgrounds were done by artists of questionable skill at best and at worst are kind of terrifying:

 

 

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

I only ever played the Game Boy port of Centipede. I know it's considered kind of a bad port but the title screen music is awesome. 

 

[Atarian7]

jgkspsx,  feel free to elaborate next time. 

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

California Games BMX - 12 minutes

Kaboom! - 149 minutes

Mountain King - 5 minutes

Solar Fox - 45 minutes

Spike's Peak - 20 minutes

 

I finally got past the first screen on Spike's Peak and the second screen.  Now that I can play I think I will put in some time on this one this week.