playvectrex

Tuesday at 06:17 PM

15 hours ago, Madwindoman said:

I’d love to but sadly I don’t own galaxy wars. My scramble cart is all ready to go for April. Bring it on cause I suck at scramble!!!

You should seriously consider getting a flash cart so you can play tons of freely available games.
Not to mention you can play Scramble with the infinite lives hack to practice and get better at whatever level you keep dying on.
In no particular order ;-)

VEXTREME
VecFever
PiTrex
VecMulti
VecFlash
BackBit

March 13

Made a walkthrough video on how I play GWSL, and just happened to somehow get my highest score yet, 97,412

March 12

I'll shoot a video later of my game play techniques... it's nothing fancy, but it's worth taking a look.

March 12

I'm really terrible at Protector/Defender, so I'd love to be forced to learn it. I'm also very terrible at Vyrzon, so don't expect any high scores from me there ;-)

March 12

A friendly back and forth between me and Tony L.
You can go a lot further though... there are some good videos on Twin Galaxies making it look easy as well.

March 12

I'm really sorry, but I can't stop playing this game After my post earlier, I thought 100k was possible and almost got there.

94,344

March 11

I think I played a little each night after you mentioned it and had some other high scores but didn't want to post until I achieved the 88k goal. I thought I probably missed the 88k goal when I lost my last two lives on level 22 I think it was, but each time I got the 4k bonus so it pushed me over the top. I was like, "noooo.... " when I died that last time, then like, "YESS!!!!" when I saw it was over 89k. The game is really hard to fly through the stars or whatever they are on the even levels, so by level 22 or so it's so dense it's pretty much a game killer. So the best way to get higher points I'd say is do all of the things I mentioned, and have all 5 lives once you get to about 75/80k points... then get 4k bonus on each life and I guess 100k is possible

March 10

I don't focus on the time bonus at all... it's not that many points when you want to stay alive longer to keep going level after level.

Randomness kills, but you can use the asteroids as shields and strafe with them to avoid being shot... then fly up and at an appropriate angle to hit a UFO. You can also minimize the random shots by making a "hole", and only flying up when the "hole" is above you so you don't fly up into carpet bombing shots.

On the even levels you can also fly up and try not to be directly under the UFOs so you don't get sniped on the way up. Easier said than done though, especially if you are mentally keeping track of where the bonus points will be by the time you get up there.

This run was a combination of that, and knowing when to get the 4k point bonus, and also trying to get the lit UFO's in order for the first 8 levels... then play it safe when needed thereafter.

89,622 ( I think this was like level 21 or 22? )

March 9

Played a couple games this afternoon and finally beat my personal best from years ago which was 71,772. Had all of my lives after 55k, and ended up losing them pretty fast on these higher levels. Got 73,792 this run.

You can get this high of a score without paying any attention to the order of bright UFOs, but this particular run I used a bit of bright UFO game play. The secret is to not let the randomness get the best of you. You can also improve your odds of getting the highest bonus on the even number levels if you know the secret... just pay attention to what is happening an you'll figure it out. You can employ some strategies to lower the chance that you will be randomly hit, but you will inevitably be killed by random shots if you get lazy or unlucky. Unfortunately, now I've seen LimitZer0's score again, so I won't be able to rest until I hit 88k.

March 8

Played some more while listening to TV last night... had a few higher scores from my first, but this was the best -> 71,732
I contemplated waiting until someone beat my original score, but I feel terrible holding onto scores so here it is 🙇
I will keep playing until I beat my personal best from a couple years back.

March 7

GWSL played on Vectrex with VEXTREME multicart and Vectorlink with 8BitDo SN30 Pro controller - 47,914

This is such a great game, and if you take a break and let the music build at the end of each level... a techno rave gets going real fast to pump you up for the next level. It's honestly great!

March 7

On 3/4/2024 at 9:11 PM, JEFF31 said:

So.... shipping has started?

Of course, they said end of February... right?

When they do start shipping though, I'll buy one.

February 28

10 hours ago, hcmffm said:

If some keen people want to post scores at last minute they can do so. It's not really fair...

Exactly... it's a tactical move that someone might employ. The rules don't disallow it, and also... people can feverishly play up until the last minute with no malice intended as well.

Here's one solid idea though... an easy way to make a rule for this: If someone gets beat in the last minutes or hour and does not physically have time to respond with a score, they could submit a "challenge" to the player who beat them. And if the player accepts, there's some negotiated time limit between the two in which one final score can be submitted. That seems the most fair, because it involves a challenge, an accepted challenge, and a mutually negotiated time limit (that probably shouldn't exceed 24 hours). The players at the top know exactly how long it takes to play a round of these really high scores as well. For example, my Mine Storm II score was 90 minutes of game play. A high score of Count Vecula is more like 3 hours.

February 27

@Vorkosigan Even if Mine Storm is not your favorite, at least you are playing it in style! Lookin' good

@TheCurlyBard That's great to hear you are finding my video helpful. I've wanted to make a video for a long time showing my tips and strategies. Really though, Darryl's guide is pretty much everything I have learned to do naturally over the years playing Mine Storm, so best to read that and watch my video since I don't explain what I'm doing so much

Since a good game takes about 1.5 hours to complete, any last minute submissions will be impossible to come back from... so I'll probably try to throw in my best MS1 and MS2 in sometime in the next couple days here before the end. I'll be sure to give at least a 2 hour window for any challengers ;-)

Something to consider for the next game, a proposal... if any tactically late submissions, that upset the top 3 order, come in such that they cannot be attempted to be beaten... maybe a sudden death overtime for those involved at the top can be implemented in some way. Time is extended by 6 hours and 1 final score for all top players may be submitted in that time, or something?

February 25

On 2/23/2024 at 12:45 PM, henkewiman said:

Sea Pup crashes after a short while when I try to run it on my VecMulti. Is there a fix?

I've never seen Sea Pup crash on physical EPROM or on VEXTREME flash multicart. I bet your issue is VecMulti which might need a software update. You'll have to send it back to the creator for that.

February 25

Ahh, ok thanks.... I thought they might have elaborated a bit. Seeing that it's the end of February now... and no updates from anyone... I wonder what happened.

February 21

That's a fun one

February 21

On 2/19/2024 at 8:52 PM, Display Name said:

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I received an update today that shipping is expected to start at the end of the month (February 2024).

Would you please post your update here?

February 14

Oh the touchy subjects to chime in or not to chime in... that is the question.

Making your own well labeled "repro" for your own collection seems okayish, but you'll always know it's not real. I guess whatever... there are different levels of collectors out there. I would definitely not consider myself a collector so don't take my word for it.

But making a repro, documenting the steps and sharing it for anyone to make... goes a bit far in my opinion, respectfully. I wouldn't want to enable the lazy scammers with easy money making opportunities.

I do support open source though... just not for repros of holy grail collector items. I don't see the fun in "printing out" your collection anyways. Actually that's a good idea... just print a photo out of the real deal... and stick it up there on the shelf. Easy!

February 5

On 2/3/2024 at 10:50 AM, 128Kgames said:

Not working for me, takes me to Discord but to a blank page that says "no text channels" ...

Invite: https://discord.gg/jVz9SuNq52

February 5

11 hours ago, hcmffm said:

Thanks for the link, Brett. For some reason I don't know I can't see the webpages (Cloudflare blocks my request/IP).

The Vectrex Game - Mine Storm - John Hall.pdf

February 5

1 hour ago, Madwindoman said:

It plays fine through level 13. After that the bugs set in

Sometimes it will reset after level 13, sometimes it will proceed to 15, 17, etc.. some odd, some even.

Technically speaking, I think it's possible to get more points on Mine Storm I if you can beat a bunch of the invisible mine levels. I've reached level 32 with 1.4M points, vs. my score with MSII level 62 above is only 952k. If you'd like to see the point progression... you can watch my little clip video here, sorry didn't have a tripod setup at that time so I could only record the start of each level. I've never really tried for a high score with MSII before, so that's why I decided to give it a go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaoTtvaV4U0&ab_channel=PlayVectrex

February 5

4 hours ago, hcmffm said:

BTW, is there something like a list of levels and mine combination (e.g. Level 1: Floating mines, only, Level 2: 1xMagnetic mine, Level 3: 1xFireball mine, Level 4: 1xMagnetic fireball mine, ...)?

John Hall himself has a nice website with just the table you seek:
https://roadsidethoughts.com/vectrex/mine-storm.htm

(there's also a bit of history of Mine Storm there)

January 29

I know it doesn't count for this thread, but since it was mentioned in the first post above, I thought I'd mention that I submitted a high score to the Twin Galaxies site for Mine Storm I, capped at level 13 (299,975) https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/minestorm/vectrex

January 24

Level 62 - Mine Storm II - 952960, this time with the standard controller and standard joystick top. Played this on VEXTREME flash multicart. My hands are mush right now

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