What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2010 (Season 3)

[Kris Snyder]

Genesis -

Gaiares: 32 min.

 

This one's going to take a lot of practice...

[StanJr]

Last you'll get from me for two weeks, going out of town. I might squeeze in some emu games and maybe a Gameboy game here and there...

 

Quick Step! (VCS) 15 mins.

Riddle of the Sphinx (VCS) 45 mins.

Laser Gates (VCS) 30 mins.

Moonsweeper (VCS) 10 mins.

No Escape! (VCS) 10 mins.

[Kris Snyder]

Genesis -

Gaiares: 27 min.

 

Slowly but surely, my skills are improving! At least it's not one of those games that I have to worry about breezing through almost as soon as I started playing it though...

[pinball22]

2600:

 

Amidar 10 mins

Air Raid 5 mins (this doesn't work right at all emulated on my PSP)

Atlantis 15 mins

[Sonic R]

for 5-21-10

 

Sega Master System

Marble Madness - 40 minutes

 

NES

Marble Madness - 15 minutes

 

Turbo Grafx-16

Victory Run - 45 minutes

 

I'm really getting into Victory Run! not the best game, and as a child I never really got into it, but it's coming together well now…

[StanJr]

Dragon's Lair (GBC) 30 mins. (Part of my airport survival kit...)

[accousticguitar]

2600

Jawbreaker - 7 min

MissAdventure Revised - 30 min

Klax - 309 min

 

Wow, Klax is addicting.

[JayWI]

NES

 

Super Mario Bros. - 25 minutes

1942 - 15 minutes

Pac-Man - 10 minutes

 

My wife and I decided to play a few games tonight. I got the farthest on one life in Mario than I have ever done before getting to world 5-3. Suffice to say my wife was a bit bored watching me play. When it was her turn she didn't last very long. She's never been very good at games that require a lot of jumping. I believe she made it to 1-4 before cashing out.

 

1942 was one of my favs in the arcade (or was that 1941? 43? ah hell whatever). My wife went first and cleared the first board before losing her first turn. My first turn was horrible, I think lasting all of 15 seconds. I ran right into an enemies bullet. After that I cleared 2 boards before losing again.

 

Had to play some Pac-Man. I spent yesterday evening looking for an original coin-op to play but no luck. I didn't do very well but after the button mashing that is 1942 I pretty much wanted to put the games down for a bit.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-90 minutes

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (May 17th through 23rd)...

 

Actually, I didn't play any classic games that would be eligible for the Top 10 this week, only online games...

 

Robot wants Puppy... 152 minutes in 2 sessions

Mushroom Madness 2... 151 minutes

Great dungeon in the sky... 28 minutes

Chain Factor... 16 minutes

 

Robot wants Puppy is a 4-way scrolling game set in one big level where you have to find terminals and extras to gain access to certain doors and special abilities. The main innovation is the Kitty you carry with you. You cannot fire, instead you throw Kitty at an enemy which will destroy the enemy in a matter of some seconds. After that you have to pick Kitty up again in order to be able to throw it at another enemy.

 

Mushroom Madness 2 is a game playing on static screens where you have to defend the mushrooms from various incoming animals by shooting them with your mouse. There are several extras, and each screen offers 3 challenges whose completion is rewarded with badges. There are multiple play modes, and some of the later levels of some modes have to be unlocked by achieving a certain number of badges. You can also upgrade your weapons over time by using the coins you gain by playing the levels.

 

Great dungeon in the sky is another jump-and-run playing in several levels. Unique about this game is that at the start of each level, you can select the character you play, and each type of enemy you kill gets available for playing a level in subsequent rounds. The characters are pretty small at only about 8x8 pixels each.

 

Finally, Chain Factor is a puzzle game similar to Tetris, but with a new twist... you get to place numbered plates, and each time a plate displays the number of tiles in the row or column it's in, it disappears.

 

Even though I only played modern games, I considered what hardware would be required for the games I played. I think Robot wants Puppy, Mushroom Madness 2 and Great dungeon in the sky would need a 16-bit system such as the Amiga or Sega Mega Drive in order to run satisfactorily and with good color depth. Maybe Great dungeon in the sky would work on a NES or SMS too with its small sprites. However, Chain Factor could be implemented on a far simpler system, actually on any character or bitmap based system. The Atari 2600 or the G7000 / Odyssey^3 wouldn't quite fit unless you change the graphics drastically, but I could see it working on the Intellivision, Colecovision, Bally Astrocade, Odyssey^3, Channel F and pretty much any home computer and any video game system that came after those mentioned.

[+thegoldenband]

Times for the week:

 

NES:

Marble Madness - 2 min.

 

Genesis:

Decap Attack - 60 min.

Golden Axe 3 - 5 min.

Greendog - 6 min.

Gunstar Heroes - 155 min.

Pit Fighter - 32 min.

 

SNES:

AD&D: Eye of the Beholder - 175 min.

Street Fighter II: Turbo - 50 min.

Super Mario RPG - 12 min.

 

Dreamcast:

Worms World Party - 119 min.

 

Brief notes:

 

Finally dove into a few Genesis games I'd neglected, none of which particularly grabbed my interest. Decap Attack is an OK platformer, but I'm not too smitten with the "feel" of the game -- not that the controls are bad, but the hero is just a bit sluggish -- nor with the game's habit of hiding enemies inside powerup boxes. Gunstar Heroes is technically impressive, but it's a little over-the-top for my tastes; I prefer the cleaner/crisper approach of a game like Contra. Still, it's a good game for co-op, though you do start to see major slowdown in two-player mode, belying the myth that the game has none. Finally, Pit Fighter is an ugly but entertaining game, again well-suited for co-op, but undermined by the shallow and repetitive gameplay.

 

I don't remember how far I got in SFII: Turbo back in the day, but so far I've beaten the game up to six stars of difficulty (out of eight). E. Honda remains my character of choice, with lots of cheap Hundred Hand Slap attacks to bemuse the computer. Opponents without projectiles, like Balrog and Zangief, seem especially confused by this.

 

Finally, just as Pilotwings (my main game last week) was a kind gift from an Atariager, so too is AD&D:EOTB, and it seems to have pulled me in. So far the difficulty curve is pretty easygoing, though the mazes are a bit of a headscratcher; at the end of Level 2, I eventually resorted to downloading a map just so I could retrace my steps. For reasons that remain mysterious even to me, I created a Golden Girls-themed party, which if nothing else makes it easy to remember which of my characters is which. Plus somehow it's entertaining to imagine Estelle Getty, aka SOPHIA the halfling thief, throwing rocks at oncoming monsters while DORTHY [sic!] holds the fort up front...

Edited May 24, 2010 by thegoldenband

[zylon]

SMS: Marble Madness 20 min

[pinball22]

2600:

Atlantis 15 mins

Atlantis II 3 mins (long enough to lose twice)

 

NES:

 

Solomon's Key 15 min

Kung Fu 20 mins

 

C64:

 

Mr. Robot 30 mins

[Tr3vor]

Got 2 new NES games and played them over the weekend

 

 

NES:

Tetris 3 hours (horribly addicting)

Excitebike 1 hour

[pinball22]

C64:

 

Ninja 15 mins

Burgertime 10 mins

Gridrunner 5 mins

Gauntlet 20 mins

Bruce Lee 10 mins

[pinball22]

C64:

 

Space Taxi 30 mins

 

Some game I don't know the name of, 10 mins... you're a rat in a sewer being chased by some shoes, and you pick up glowing fruit for energy and can throw glue to make the shoes stop. Anyone know what game this is?

 

(I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one left in this thread!)

 

EDIT: Ok, some googling helped me determine it's apparently called Roland's Rat Race. I haven't found instructions yet, though... I'm confused about the pieces of a door you're supposed to pick up. It seems like I can only have one at a time?

Edited May 28, 2010 by pinball22

[psquare75]

2600:

 

Video Olympics (Pong Sports). Ugh! Had an all out war with my girlfriend for about 2 hours (!!) Played most of the variations. I didnt even remember some of them (Volleyball? wow).

 

I took a shower and I come back to see her (on her own) playing Beanie Bopper.

Edited May 29, 2010 by psquare75

[StanJr]

2600:

 

Video Olympics (Pong Sports). Ugh! Had an all out war with my girlfriend for about 2 hours (!!) Played most of the variations. I didnt even remember some of them (Volleyball? wow).

 

I took a shower and I come back to see her (on her own) playing Beanie Bopper.

 

 

You is lucky man. Don't blow it! Any girl that will sit down and play all the variations of Video Olympics is a real keeper.

[accousticguitar]

2600

Klax - 226 min

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-104 minutes

[Sonic R]

for 5-29-10

 

Sega Master System

After Burner - 45 minutes

 

Jaguar

Tempest 2000 - 1 hour

Defender 2000 - 45 minutes

 

Lynx

Rygar - 15 minutes

 

I'm getting back into my Jaguar… I just purchased some games that should arrive within a few days so I will be playing alot more when they get here. I think I'll order myself a better cable as RF isn't cutting it lol! the games I have coming include: Alien vs Predator, Wolfenstein, Iron Soldier, Trevor McFur, and Raiden… I may hit a shop later too and see what they have… I got the itch for Jaguar and I'm taking the time now to build on my collection… finally… I'm thinking of ordering Missile Command 3-D and seeking Breakout 2000 as well.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (May 24th through 30th)... though I'm slowly starting to wonder how long I'll keep doing this if the times don't actually get added together and put into charts anymore. At least this hasn't happened for the last 2-3 weeks.

 

Anyway...

 

The classic games (eligible for the Top 10):

 

Turtles (Emerson Arcadia)... 61 minutes

Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Arcade)... 59 minutes

Superbug (Emerson Arcadia)... 34 minutes

Malzak (Arcade)... 30 minutes

Astro Wars (Arcade)... 5 minutes

TI Farmer (Assembly version) (TI-99/4A)... 1 minute

 

The non-classic games (non-eligible for the Top 10):

 

Castaway (Online game)... about 660 minutes

Mushroom Madness 2 (Online game)... 77 minutes

 

As you can see, I picked another version of Turtles which I hadn't played yet... OK, I had played it once briefly some years ago when trying out all the Emerson Arcadia games (and eating raw Mangos and Kiwis while doing so). It has some differences in gameplay to the arcade version... the enemy turtles (or beetles) have turned to trucks, and they make awful noises when stunned. You only have to collect the kidturtles from their houses, but not to bring them into houses... only at the end of the level you have to make it to the exit on the upper right. The bombs have turned to an energy bar which starts at 16 units at the start of a level or each time you lose a life, and each bomb you lay gets deducted from that. You can't replenish them during a level, but you can lay multiple bombs at once. However, in later levels, after having laid a bomb, you have to wait some seconds before you can drop another. The trucks get stunned by a bomb for much longer than in the arcade, but all of them home in on you from the start while the enemy turtles in the arcade start very dumb, running around aimlessly and then get smarter after some time. It appears that you aren't climbing from floor to floor, but transported by an elevator. Collecting a kidturtle gets you 20 points, and completing a level gets you huge bonus points... 200 for the 1st, 300 for the 2nd floor, 400 for the 3rd and so on. Bombing the trucks doesn't get you any points, however!

 

In the end, they included the ending scene where the saved kidturtles exit the hotel which is also seen in the arcade, but not in any other port I've seen (wait! I haven't tried the Tomy Tutor version yet!). However, after that the game doesn't continue from Floor 1 again, but instead the Game Over message appears! So the game actually ends after the 8th floor. This essentially drops down the replay value to about zero, together with the fact that the amount of points in each level is pretty much fixed since you can't get any bonus points for bombing the trucks.

 

Then I played Wonder Boy in Monster Land for about an hour. There's nothing much to say to that, other than I played it in the arcade back in the 80's, and also on the Amiga 500.

 

Superbug is another game for the Arcadia 2001, I think it's even a homebrew. You play a bug on a static screen and have to collect 1 or 2 items per screen while being chased by two other bugs and a time limit. There are 5 different screens, consisting of free room, barriers and shootable barriers. You can pretty much predict what the enemies do and when and where they respawn after being shot... there's one spawning position slightly to the right of the center, but it switches to being on the left close to your entrance / exit after you have picked up all the items on one screen.

 

Malzak basically is a bad Scramble clone working with a Signetics 2650 CPU. They converted all the background and sprites to being monochrome, so it looks much worse than the original, and the sound is also sparse. In addition to that, there are errors in the collision detection... your shots don't always hit what they're supposed to, and your ship sometimes blows up when close to an enemy although you didn't collide with it. They even managed to screw up the high score list... I made the top score after having scored worse before, but that top score got listed on the #2 position with the lower score on #1!

 

Astro wars seems to be a clone of the arcade game "Astro fighter", also running on a Signetics 2650 CPU, which isn't as badly done as Malzak, but I couldn't figure out how you have to shoot the "boss" ship at the end.

 

And I tried the assembly version of "TI Farmer" which is a new homebrew for the TI-99/4A, but I couldn't make much sense of it.

 

As for the modern games, I played a great deal of Castaway, which is a kind of action adventure where you run around an isometric playfield along with your pet (!) and fight various monsters, for which you get XP, gold and various other items you can use in various ways. There are 6 levels in total, in addition to an introduction, and each of them connects to a kind of "hometown" where you have two shops for weapons and other items which you can both buy and sell, a home where you can rest and save your game, and to centres that give out quests for you to fulfill. In order to unlock subsequent levels, you have to beat one level by stepping on the "generator" which is at the far end of the level and usually guarded by some particularly nasty enemies.

 

Apart from that, I continued to play "Mushroom Madness 2", which I think I already explained last week.

Edited May 30, 2010 by Kurt_Woloch

[pinball22]

C64:

 

Space Taxi 30 mins

Mr. Robot 30 mins

Beamrider 15 mins

 

psquare, Volleyball has always been my very favorite of the games on Video Olympics!

[+thegoldenband]

Times for the week:

 

Sega Genesis:

Castle of Illusion - 30 min.

Curse - 162 min.

Marble Madness (Tengen) - 94 min.

Golden Axe 2 - 100 min.

[pinball22]

Hey, cvga, if you're out there and just need someone to take over compiling the stats, please let us know!