dogcorn

No. Oooops - sorry. There is a person named Per on another board with such properties, and you are obviously not it. My bad.

Are you the boy named Kristen? Who wants to beat Frank, but can't? Just thought of something. Would it hurt to insert a "yo" every now and then? This isn't text messaging.

That would be interesting, although I'd recommend making the last round worth 2 points, so that if one contestant wins the first two rounds, the show can still go on. Then a name-the-game or trivia question to break the tie. They did this on Name that Tune also, and it worked pretty well. By the way, after tons of obsessive-compulsive research I've updated the scores in my original post to include as many actual scores to beat as I could find on the show. Here is my highly subjective assessment... Easy street: Donkey Kong is ridiculously easy, but the score-to-beat is from the 'old' version of the show. Bagman and Time Pilot (especially the old STB) also seem too low. Cliff Hanger is impossible to screw up if you know the pattern, since the screens never change. (I thought Pengo was easy, but the five-second pattern doesn't work on set 2, which is what the show uses. Now that the STB is 2,466, it seems even harder.) Hard way: I thought Discs of Tron was hard, but Tazzmania is just insane. On Motorace USA, you need some luck to trigger a bug in the program, and must steer as little as possible. If you make the score, it will be with about half a second left on the clock. Too bad: On Show #127, a contestant played Juno First and lost by a tiny fraction of a second. He and his father filed a protest, unsuccessfully. I wish I could help them, but by my watch it wasn't that close; the clock actually started a shade late, IMO.

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Yep, SC and Risk were two of the three Mac games I remember from my first two years in college. The other was Crystal Quest. "Doing!"

Yeah, I'm guessing the "average score" was based on the BEST 20+ players, probably from tryouts for the show. Now, if only 20-30 players tried out in total, the average seems pretty fair. But as the show got more popular, it's conceivable that several hundred contestants tried out. Which would mean the score-to-beat was based on the top 5-10%, making it almost impossible to beat. I don't guarantee that's what the producers did, but I certainly noticed that the bonus round got MUCH harder in the show's final days. The scores on Frogger, Discs of Tron and Star Wars are all from later shows - and are all unbelievably difficult. I agree with your beef on scoring - my co-worker pointed out the exact same thing. It's awful when some guy has a 500-point lead and picks Space Invaders for their last game - the other player can't possibly catch up. Probably what they should have done is scaled each player's scores to the average. So if the average score was 750 and you scored 1500, your score is 200.00% of the average and so you get, say, 20000 points. Or something like that.

Nope, the vertical tunnel thing is a pretty famous glitch. You have to keep trying - jiggle the stick for a while when you go into the bottom tunnel. You'll know you have it when Pac-Man comes down from the top and he sort of "peels" in. The TOP of the Pac-Man actually appears first, and the rest quickly and steadily fills in. It's kind of hard to describe. After a couple of seconds, he suddenly drops down the center of the screen. You can control him up-down, but not left-right. You can even eat the vitamin pills. Keep trying - it's worth the effort! Sorry, we've really gone off topic from the original post....

After 7 months I finally discovered that the Discs of Tron score can, indeed, be broken. I saw it with my own eyes on "QT Quasar's" MAME action replay. Incredible. Unfortunately, that means I have a hat to eat. Any suggestions for seasoning? :/

I swear I don't work for Starcade...but anyways, check out www.starcade.tv - they will start testing the waters by having Episode #59 online between March 1 and March 5. I didn't see a fee, I assume it's just a regular stream. I'm there!

Lately, it's been way less than 5 hours. The weird thing is that for me, time isn't much of an issue - I could theoretically manage to squeeze in 25-30 hours a week, and often did in the past. But for a while now, I've been more interested in random netsurfing than in gaming. I'm not sure why.

While we're on the topic of legit music... *bump* (I assume this is legit because Alligata is no longer in business.)

Don't play the Lynx version then. Once you get to the log level, it's almost impossible to control. Didn't frustrate me as much as Batman Returns, but close.

Yet another bad NES game: Where's Waldo. I rented it at Blockbuster and was sorry I did. Did anyone actually play-test that thing?? Sometimes you click on Waldo a zillion times and the game doesn't register. And every time it doesn't, YOU get hit with a time penalty, for no good reason. Other times I swear there is either no Waldo or more than one, and you have to guess which one the CPU thinks is closest. If you're wrong, too bad for you. If miracle of miracles, you don't run into any time penalties, you get to the subway level, complete with its own underground pervert. (And this is a kids game???) The instant he touches you, the timer runs out and you die. Sorry, not my idea of a good time.

Defender really stands out in my mind. I would insert my quarter at the arcades, last about four seconds and then slap myself for wasting my money. Then my parents got me the 2600 version. Awesome!!! For once I could actually play an actual GAME, rather than "Watch George Disappear." Not quite the same thing, but: I never finished Space Ace in the arcade. Can't say I really hated it. It's just that, after so many allowances down the drain, I got frustrated and gave up. But when I bought the PC version, I played that thing over and over until I finally won. Not having to pop in quarter pair after quarter pair is much less draining on the wallet and the psyche. I think I also set it on Infinite Lives, which is MUCH better than having to start over every time.

Offtopic but can't resist: give yourself 30 seconds and see if you can score 10,000 points. If you can, you've beaten the Starcade score-to-beat. You win your very own arcade game! Congratulations!! Hope all your troubles get zapped.....

FYI the PC version will not run on S3 and some other video chipsets. A patch was apparently "in development" as early as 3 weeks ago, but has not yet been released. Some fans (including myself) are very frustrated. Thanks a lot Sega....

Haha, well, B&G do have a near monopoly on mainstream video game music in the past 25 years. I guess if someone asked "what's your favorite video game music?" you'd get one of two answers: the Pac-Man song, or a confused stare.

Perhaps unrelated, but also neat: after eating a power pellet, if you can manage to get enough ghosts on the screen (say right after the airplanes drop a bunch of mini-ghosts), the 6th one you chomp is worth 7,650 points.

It sucks to holy heaven. The screen on Gauntlet (the one game I really wanted) is butt-small - takes up about 1/9 of the monitor screen - and there's no way to increase the size. I'm very glad I didn't play full price for it. I'll stick to MAME, thank you.

I sorta liked games with lots of secret bonuses. One was Astro Blaster. Basically if you finished a wave in a certain order, or something like that, you got extra points. Another was Gauntlet II where you'd have to perform special tricks to get to the treasure rooms. The only one I remember now is finding a moveable wall and pushing it into the exit.

I have encountered the 7,650 bonus at the "Break Time" at the end of the level. If you jump at just the right place, the screen will end a split-second before Pac-Man lands. That gives you 7,650 points. A little too early and you'll get 1,000. A little too late and Pac-Man just lands, and you get nothing. I wonder what the signifcance of the number is though...very odd for a video game. Sort of like the "27" that is so prevalent in Weird Al songs. (Whoops, sorry, just saw your comment about Namco.)

I remember trying the Space Invaders part a while back. It seemed like they really ran up the difficulty. I can usually polish off a screen pretty quickly, but on the Radica one my shots kept meeting the invaders' shots dead on. Lame. Colony 7 is basically a rip-off of Atlantis by Imagic, I think. Lunar Rescue wasn't worth playing at all.

2600 Popeye has a nice little bug in it. There is a way you can make Bluto throw cans when you're not quite far away enough. I think he has to be just coming off the stairs while you're very, very close to the minimum range. If you time it JUST right and punch one of the cans, you'll get like 111,000 points. Try it!

(from some random cheat site) "You can make Batman invincible with the following steps at the title screen (the one with the Batlogo): press Up 8 times, Down 12 times, Left 15 times, Right 19 times and Option 1 27 times. Press A or B to start the game. Once the action starts, press pause. Then use Option 1 to skip to the next level, or Option 2 for invincibility! Falling can still kill you, however." Yes, you are reading that right. You have to make *81* button pushes (and Oh What Fun it is to do along with the music). If you miss one, you have to start all over again. What's the point of having a cheat code that's as hard as the game itself?? On the other hand, it's a great way to find out how much frustration you can take before you start cussing. It didn't matter for me because I'd fall and die on the last level anyway. At which point I'd often yank the cart out and fling it across the room.