carlsson Posted March 27, 2022 Author Share Posted March 27, 2022 Atari 8-bit: Tail of Beta Lyrae, The (w/ Gravity Balls) - 33 min. The latest round of the HSC features this Scramble-esque game which among its unique features includes so-called gravity balls, which pull your ship forward or backward at high speed, unless you manage to shoot those in time. Apparently there are a couple of bugged versions around which have disabled those, so the HSC allows us lower ranked players to play a version without the balls, and with two extra lives to begin with, but I'm not sure if it really will make the game that much easier since there are enough obstacles to kill you and once you shoot the balls those give you the really big points. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 Here are my times for this past week (March 21st through 27th, 2022) on classic games... Atari 2600: Pizza Boy (32K) - 4 minutes Pizza Boy (16K) - 1 minute 1942 - 6 minutes Contrary to my expectations, I did try out some new homebrew games for the Atari 2600 this week, but not for long... Pizza Boy is a game where you play a pizza boy on a bicycle who picks up Pizza and delivers it to customers. In the 32K version, at your destination you get to enter the house and deliver the pizza to the people living on the floors. Sadly, at this point the game is (yet?) unfinished in that there's a final customer on the highest floor, but when you try to deliver your last piece there, nothing happens. The 16K version is by a different programmer and only shows the scene on the street. In principle, I think it shows that both versions have been written in Batari Basic because that language tends to create bloatware. Judging from the complexity of those games, I think coding in Assembler, you could implement the 16K version in 4K, and the 32K version in 8K (at most). But this is not the first game where this happened, and it also happened before Batari Basic was around... I can still remember the C-64 version of Missile Command by Interceptor software which wasn't just pretty big in size, but also slow as hell. Then I tried 1942 which I think is quite a decent conversion, although, like many 2600 ports, it adapts the elements of the original version rather freely, that is, the formations and the backgrounds are not the same as in the original, but the game principle is there. An added bonus is the title music which was lifted from the C-64 version (633 Squadron), but loops after a while (even at an unexpected point) though it is nicely done, along with some graphic trickery on the title screen. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atarian7 Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 Atari 2600 Aardvark - 21 minutes Hunchy 2 - 12 minutes Kaboom! - 144 minutes Solar Fox - 132 minutes Stratovox - 46 minutes 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oyamafamily Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 ATARI 2600: Asteroids - 59 minutes Pole Position - 6 minutes Super Breakout (for HSC) - 20 minutes ATARI 7800: Midnight Mutants - 55 minutes NES / FAMICOM: Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing - 115 minutes EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK: 1) My Pole Position VCS gameplay footage - Fastest Qualifying Lap 2) My Al Unser Jr. gameplay footage - West Germany / Time Trial Mode B (Single) / several tracks 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agb Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 Atari 2600 Eggomania 46- HS of 154,786 Kaboom 29 HS of 3756 Solar Fox 80 Super Breakout for HSC 122 all fun. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonGrafx-16 Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 C64: 465 mins total ------------------------------- Zeta Wing - 98 mins Neutron - 21 mins The Great Giana Sisters - 27 mins Blastopia DX 9 mins Get Em DX - 14 mins Space Firehawk - 21 mins Nemesis - 19 mins - this game needs another button really badly. Galencia - 29 mins Soul Force - 26 mins (hands down the best shmup I have played on the C64) Aviator Arcade II - 42 mins Beamrider - 23 mins Lode Runner - 19 mins Gateway to Asphai - 29 mins Centipede - 11 mins Jumpout - 21 mins Graviton - 19 mins Thunder - 15 mins Luma - 22 mins NES: --------------------------------- The Guardian Legend - 22 mins 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jgkspsx Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 A middle of the road kind of week. Arcade: Canyon Bomber - 32 minutes I've never played this before that I know of. I felt bad about not yet playing the Evercade Atari Arcade Collection 1, so I slotted it in and tried this out. It's way more fun than the Atari 2600 version by my lights, even if it is 100% less colorful. The way the blocks fall down really foreshadows far future puzzle games, and that's kind of neat! Atari 2600: Aardvark - 75 minutes for HSC Improved my score a lot but not enough to get in the top 10. Raptor - 85 minutes for HSC Improved my score but haven't earned a patch yet. Stratovox - 35 minutes for HSC Finally getting the rhythm, but not enough to really do well. Atari 7800: Scrapyard Dog - 65 minutes for HSC. I never liked this game and I appreciate it much more now. Chalk one up for HSCs! Atari Jaguar: Raiden - 45 minutes for HSC that was already over Atari Lynx: Unseen - 65 minutes. Killed the batteries again. Milton-Bradley Microvision: Pinball - 126 minutes I have seen the very soul of this game, and it's pretty good. It's one of the few Microvision games where there is a real reason to play different paddle sizes and speeds. Sega SG-1000: Another week of working through all of the SG-1000 library I'm interested in playing. Q*Bert - 25 minutes A truly fantastic port for the Othello Multivision. Safari Race - 20 minutes You will never curse a gas pump more. It's pretty fun, though, and it looks pretty great. Also, gotta love the iconic Sega Rally car appearing in such an early game! The Sindbad Mystery - 55 minutes This is one of my favorite Pac Man derivatives. People hate on it but I don't know why. Space Invaders - 20 minutes This is the earliest authentic home console port of the arcade classic. It feels a little harder than the arcade, but it's darn good. Sega Genesis: Romeow and Julicat - 105 minutes. It looks cute, but this is a brutal puzzle game, especially when the additional piece shapes come into play. I finished level 4 of 6 after a dozen tries. SNK Neo Geo: Over Top - 65 minutes Played this on Switch Arcade Archives. I felt bad that I didn't revisit it after all the recent time spent with World Rally Championship. It's still a great time, though I've never figured out which of the wildly different cars is my favorite. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGameCollector Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 This week I played Pokemon Blue Version for Game Boy - 601 minutes Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge for SNES - 82 minutes Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64 - 72 minutes Defender for Arcade (via Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits for SNES) - 46 minutes I'm not quite sure if the SNES version of Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits is close enough to arcade perfect to count as the Arcade version or not. I'll leave it up to you, but I'm listing it as Defender so you know which game I played and have the option of putting the minutes where you want them. The SNES version does have the ability to set dip settings for the difficulty and extra life bonuses which I took advantage of. Progress: Pokemon Blue - obtained more Pokemon thru in-game trades and evolution via leveling up. Spider-Man/X-Men - completed the game Super Smash Bros. - played 1 player easy mode then normal mode with the 3 lives limit as Mario to unlock Ness. Played 1 player very easy mode as Luigi then Captain Falcon. Defender - played a few times on default settings and didn't get very far. I changed the dip settings to max starting lives, most frequent bonuses, and difficulty going up each level. Made it to level 47 by abusing smart bombs. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digdugnate Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 I really didn't play much this past week in the Classic Tracker. Arcade: Donkey Kong - 15 minutes Moon Patrol - 15 minutes Rolling Thunder - 15 minutes 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skippy B. Coyote Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 It was a pretty easy going week for me this week. I played some more Alien: Isolation on the Switch and a bunch of Atari 2600 games for the high score club, and... well, that's pretty much it! Ineligible Alien: Isolation (Nintendo Switch) - 715 minutes Atari 2600 Aardvark - 112 minutes RAPTOR - 83 minutes Stratovox 2600 - 60 minutes Super Breakout - 313 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 1,283 minutes (21 hours 23 minutes) [568 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Nintendo Switch: 715 minutes Atari 2600: 568 minutes 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onlyinajeep Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 Arcade (via MiSTer) Pirate Ship Higemaru - 20 minutes Pole Position (via Jakks Pacific Ms. Pac-Man Plug and Play) - 40 minutes Tandy Color Computer 2 Juno - 130 minutes Mire Mare - 150 minutes Tandy Color Computer 3 Zero Hour - 110 minutes 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 My times for the week: CoCo 1/2: 5 Player Poker - 10 min. 3D Space Wars - 9 min. Draconian - 5 min. Dunkey Munkey - 8 min. Fire Force - 3 min. Jetpack Challenge - 6 min. Klendathu - 4 min. Spidercide - 4 min. Syzygy - 2 min. Tennis - 5 min. Zaxxon - 2 min. NES: Baseball - 12 min. Plush Dog - 4 min. Sky Kid - 72 min. Game Boy: Migrain (JPN) - 10 min. Pokonyan! Yume no Daibouken (JPN) - 2 min. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unbeliever Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 So this week I played (sorry, last week as of this writing): SNES Yoshi's Island - 30 minutes Super Mario World - 20 minutes Ms. Pacman - 60 minutes (just couldn't seem to stop hitting reset) Space Invaders - 20 minutes (I need some major practice) Genesis/Megadrive Sonic the Hedgehog - 10 minutes Altered Beast - 5 minutes (did not go well and completely out of practice) Earthworm Jim - 10 minutes Shining in the Darkness - 30 minutes Atari 2600 Phoenix - 10 minutes Pitfall! - 15 minutes Space Invaders - 10 minutes Spider Fighter - 5 minutes 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wongojack Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 This weekend was the Texas Pinball Festival. This show has been cancelled the past 2 years, so it was good to be back. I spent my time there with my brother and nephew, and we also took the time to visit the National Video Game Museum which is nearby. Normally, I just roam around the convention floor playing at my own pace, so sticking with my family made this a bit of a different experience. I played the various arcade games and pinball machines a shorter duration than I would have on my own, but I probably played more individual machines as a result. One game I did take my time on was iRobot. I had never seen an example of this machine in person before, so I took the time to play about 5 or 6 games. I enjoyed the gameplay and will probably try to emulate it soon. I wonder why it hasn't made it onto any of the recent Atari compilations? Arcade Atari Video Pinball 2 Battlezone 3 iRobot 17 Journey 8 MJ Moonwalker 5 Space Invaders, Deluxe 2 Super Breakout 2 Tron 2 Atari Jag Tempest 2000 2 Colecovision HERO 1 Intellivision Burger Time 3 NES (for HSC) Life Force 202 Ti99 Munch Man 2 Vectrex Berzerk 1 Ineligible Pinball Alien Astro Avatar Bally Target Zero (Electro-Mechanical Arcade Game) Big Guns Black Knight 2000 Break Shot Cactus Canyon Centigrade 37 Comet Cosmic Cart Raing U CSI Dirty Harry Dr Who Fireball Genie Gorgar Harley Davidson Heads Up U Jack Bot Kiss Lexy Lightspeed Escape Earth U Mandalorian Primus Prospector Revenge Mars Simpsons Six Million Dollar Man Sharkey's Shootout Sorcerer's Apprentice U Super Star Sweet Hearts T2 Tron Legacy Weird Al's Museum . . . U Wing Ding World Cup Soccer Zissou Those marked with a U are from the Mulitmorphic company that builds add-ons for their base system. An interesting and innovative idea, and they had a much bigger presence this year than they have had in the past. Their headlining add-on this year is called Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity. There was a long line to play it, but I got to play a couple games. Always a highlight is seeing the one-off machines that people make where they re-do the art or make a very special machine for a small audience. Examples of these are the Steve Zissou machine that came back this year as well as small run machines like Primus and The Big Lebowski. A new addition to this list was Billy Madison which I never got to play, but did watch a few games of other players. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted March 29, 2022 Author Share Posted March 29, 2022 Here's the summary for Week 12, running from Mar 21 - 27. We logged 5658 minutes of eligible play, playing 117 games on a total of 23 systems. Top 10: 1. Pokemon Blue Version (Game Boy) - 601 min. (#1) 2. Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 455 min. 3. Akumajou Dracula (Castlevania Chronicles) (Sharp X68000) - 225 min. 4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 212 min. (#5) 5. Aardvark (Atari 2600) - 208 min. 6. Life Force (NES/Famicom) - 202 min. 7. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 173 min. (#10) 8. Raptor (Atari 2600) - 168 min. 9. Mire Mare (CoCo 1 & 2) - 150 min. 10. Stratovox 2600 (Atari 2600) - 141 min. Pre-NES top 10: 1. Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 455 min. 2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 212 min. (PN#1) 3. Aardvark (Atari 2600) - 208 min. (PN#9) 4. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 173 min. (PN#2) 5. Raptor (Atari 2600) - 168 min. (PN#10) 6. Mire Mare (CoCo 1 & 2) - 150 min. 7. Stratovox 2600 (Atari 2600) - 141 min. (PN#6) 8. Juno (CoCo 1 & 2) - 130 min. 9. Pinball (Microvision) - 126 min. (PN#5) 10. Zeta Wing (C64) - 98 min. Top 10 systems: 1. Atari 2600 - 1531 min. (#3) 2. Game Boy - 613 min. (#1) 3. Arcade - 563 min. 4. C64 - 465 min. 5. NES/Famicom - 427 min. (#2) 6. Genesis - 367 min. (#4) 7. CoCo 1 & 2 - 338 min. 8. Sharp X68000 - 267 min. 9. SNES - 258 min. (#8) 10. Microvision - 126 min. The overall list is unusually Atari 2600 heavy, those Pokemon Blue Version maintains its first place by 2.5 hours ahead of the most played pre-NES game Super Breakout. Not surprisingly the Atari 2600 also becomes the most played system. Pokemon Blue Version also enters the 5000 Minute Club with a total of 5048 min, overtaking 13 games on the all-time list. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonGrafx-16 Posted March 29, 2022 Share Posted March 29, 2022 (edited) oops I forgot to mention that I played like 19 mins of Gyruss on C64. It would not change the overall rankings any though. Edited March 29, 2022 by DragonGrafx-16 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted March 30, 2022 Author Share Posted March 30, 2022 I'll add that to next week, as well as any other late posts. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Pendleton Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 Lots of time on the MiSTer, but I also went to the arcade again. My Kyuukyoku Tiger performance at the arcade was absolutely shameful, but I also wasted some money on stupid, broken games like Tatsujin Ou and the 1P version of Same! Same! Same!. Neo Geo AES/MVS Andro Dunos - 17 Reat Bout Fatal Fury Special - 17 Arcade 1941 Counter Attack - 12 Hellfire (2 player version) - 5 Hishouzame - 8 Kyuukyoku Tiger - 10 Out Zone - 22 Same! Same! Same! - 10 Same! Same! Same! (2p version) - 69 Tatsujin - 96 Tatsujin Ou - 10 V-V - 10 I have never played the arcade version of this before, but I did this time and it's incredible. Slap Fight's sequel-ish thing and a very early pre-bullet hell that was designed by one of the guys that made CAVE after Toaplan died, so CAVE's games have a lot of similarities to this one, like the ultra tiny hurtbox. Play this one if you see it. Saturn Layer Section - 5 G/MD Slap Fight MD - 4 Sonic 3 & Knuckles - 2 Sonic 3 Complete (ROM hack) - 3 If you go to the arcade, don't play this one ^ and definitely RUN FAR AS HELL AWAY from this one ^ but definitely play this one ^ and absolutely don't pass over this one ^ 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted April 3, 2022 Author Share Posted April 3, 2022 Atari 8-bit: Tail of Beta Lyrae, The - 48 min. It slowly grew on me, though not more than one session in a week is enough. Of course it is just as much due to I have so much else to attend, so I don't play any video games at all during rest of the week. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oyamafamily Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 ATARI 2600: Guardian (for HSC) - 15 minutes ATARI 7800: Food Fight (for HSC) - 20 minutes Midnight Mutants - 25 minutes Pac-Man Collection - 90 minutes NES / FAMICOM: Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing - 70 minutes 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 No playtime for this week! Maybe next week, or the week after that. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 Here are my times for this past week (March 27th through April 3rd, 2022) for classic AND modern systems... Sorry, no gaming this week. And it will probably continue this way... my father is now slightly going mad. He insists that he wants to go on a vacation, and I should go along with him (and he's 87 and very slow at walking and breaks down if he has to walk more than a quarter mile consecutively), so... I guess I won't have any time for gaming for the next years to come if things go on this way (which they probably will). If I don't post anything in the future here, it simply means I haven't played anything, so please don't wait for me to post something every week! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eltigro Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 Got some "classic" stuff I played this week, but not much... Arcade (MAME) 1943 The Battle of Midway - 10 min (I really like this series. But man this is hard. I played a TON of 1943 for the NES back in the day. A game that really needs the NES Advantage.) Knights of the Round - 30 min (Hack and Slash beat em up kind of game... with Arthur, Percival, and... Lancelot I think? I played Percival. Guy with a big Axe. Kind of the basic, walk to the right and kill bad guys game play, but done well I think.) Pac-Man - 2 min (So hard to play these without a proper joystick. One day...) Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon - 15 min (Actually a pretty fun beat-em-up. I tried out each of the characters available (I think) and had some fun. When you do their special, a large version of the character pops up and does something (a kick or a scream or whatever) in a very anime looking version. Thought it might be fun to have those animations with a clear background as something to put on my stream.) Robotron 2084 - 10 min (An arcade favorite. I think I recently wrote about it in here from when I played it at the NVM.) 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atarian7 Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 Atari 2600 Kaboom! - 90 minutes Solar Fox - 44 minutes Super Breakout - 423 minutes 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agb Posted April 4, 2022 Share Posted April 4, 2022 Atari 2600 Eggomania 24 Guardian 15 HSC Kaboom 12 Solar Fox 192 Super Breakout HSC 88 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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