What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2013 (Season 6)

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-299 minutes

 

 

High score of the week:146,702

[+cvga]

More MLB. I also pulled out our World Championship Baseball cart to take a look at the changes (there are quite a few). He didn't like that version as well though.

 

Intellivision:

MLB - 40 minutes

World Championship Baseball - 15 minutes

[carlsson]

For a long time, I thought this week would be devoid of any retro gaming, but finally I squeezed in half an hour on Sunday evening...

 

MSX

Baseball Craze - 2 min.

Bomberman Special - 14 min.

 

Those two are Bee-Card games that I recently obtained but didn't get to try before. The baseball game may require a Japanese MSX computer and a dual button joystick to be played properly, I gave up after two minutes. The Bomberman game seems to be single player only. While playable, not the same kind of gaming experience as on latter PC Engine/SNES etc editions of the series.

 

VIC-20

Ice - 6 min.

Money Wars - 7 min.

Witch Way - 5 min.

 

Next weekend, I'm supposed to put most of my collection to storage for two weeks, so I'll see how retro gaming I'll fit in for the next weeks.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (September 9th through 15th)...

 

Commodore 64:

Serpentine - 146 min. in 2 sessions

 

Online (non-eligible):

Minecraft (Demo) - 100 min.

Minecraft Classic - 38 min.

Minecraft 4K - 58 min.

 

I finished Serpentine using the Unlimited Lives cheat. After finishing the 20th round, the game becomes very hard in that the enemy snakes are nearly as fast as you. However, I noticed that this game induces stress, and my eye doctor said I should avoid stress, so I've decided to leave such stressy games alone in the future. So I searched for a more peaceful game...

 

which is Minecraft, a game I have heard much about. I tried the demo which runs for exactly 100 minutes, the Classic and the 4K version. The Demo has the most features, but is limited in time (you can purchase the full game for about 20 Euros though). The classic version is free but basically has no game elements which would really put the character at risk and also no way to get achievements or such. The 4K version is similar to that, but even simpler in that you can only build one kind of block. I put all Minecraft versions as online games since they run as a Java applet.

[zylon]

A8-

 

Satan's Hollow- 40min

[twoquickcapri]

Atari Jaguar:
Raiden - 93 min.

 

SNES:
The 7th Saga - 130 min.

Playstation:
Krazy Ivan - 50 min.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

NES:

Quattro Sports - 5 min.

Genesis:

Doom Troopers - 7 min.

Rampart - 2 min.

RBI Baseball 4 - 107 min.

Game Boy:

Dr. Franken II - 2 min.

Maru's Mission - 2 min.

3DO:

Burning Soldier - 62 min.

Psychic Detective - 249 min.

Sega Saturn:

Fighting Vipers - 2 min.

Soviet Strike - 2 min.

Virtua Fighter 2 - 3 min.

PlayStation:

Army Men: Air Attack - 2 min.

Blaster Master: Blasting Again - 4 min.

Motocross Mania - 2 min.

Tetris Plus - 5 min.

Beat Psychic Detective with my fiancée, by getting the best ending. We also beat Burning Soldier on Normal difficulty, which was absolute murder on our hands thanks to all the rapid firing necessary to make it past the last few levels.

Otherwise, I mostly tested out new acquisitions, and also played a couple more games of RBI Baseball 4 only to realize that, unless I want to slog through 25 more games, I'll probably have to restart from scratch. I picked the long season option, and somehow hoped that it wouldn't force me to play all the historical teams before taking on the hidden Tengen team.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 37, running from September 9 - 15. We logged 1637 minutes of eligible play, playing 32 games on a total of 14 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 299

2. Psychic Detective (3DO) - 249

3. Major League Baseball (Intellivision) - 242

4. Serpentine (C64) - 146

5. 7th Saga, The (SNES) - 130

6. RBI Baseball 4 (Genesis) - 107

7. Raiden (Atari Jaguar) - 93

8. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Game Boy) - 85

9. Burning Soldier (3DO) - 62

10. Krazy Ivan (PlayStation) - 50

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 299

2. Major League Baseball (Intellivision) - 242

3. Serpentine (C64) - 146

4. Satan's Hollow (Atari 8-bit) - 40

5. Centipede (Atari 2600) - 25

6. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 15

7. Bomberman Special (MSX) - 14

8. Spiderdroid (Atari 2600) - 10

9. Money Wars (VIC-20) - 7

10. Ice (VIC-20) - 6

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (334)

2. 3DO (311)

3. Intellivision (257)

4. C64 (146)

5. SNES (130)

6. Genesis (116)

7. Game Boy (101)

8. Atari Jaguar (93)

9. PlayStation (63)

10. Atari 8-bit (40)

...and this week it's two baseball games, two Russian-themed games, two shooters, two RPGs, and two games whose names can be combined into an anagram for "O, in an OK September..."

Which, as every schoolchild knows, is the first line of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Mad Bomber":

O, in an OK September,

Keep on a brimstone,

A timbre spoke none,

"Take be," opines Norm.

Take be, indeed.

[+cvga]

Another day, another game of MLB. We also played some more World Championship Baseball including a game where the computer played itself and we "announced". The Reds scored in the top of the first and went on to beat the Blues 1 - 0.

 

Intellivision:

MLB - 41 minutes

World Championship Baseball - 45 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!-302 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 133,982

[carlsson]

Amiga CD32:
Dennis - 3 min

 

Fairchild Channel F:
Tetris - 2 min

 

Genesis / Megadrive:
Truxton (Tatsujin) - 6 min

 

NES:
Track & Field - 20 min

 

Odyssey^2 / Philips G7000:
Dynasty! (Samurai) - 3 min

K.C. Munchkin! - 2 min

Sega SG-1000:
Safari Race - 12 min

 

Spectravideo SVI-328:
Spectron - 3 min

 

VIC-20:
Protector - 8 min

 

A bit of everything this week, many systems but few minutes on each. Most of this is console testing preparing for a retro gaming event in two weeks from now, which also means a reasonable amount of my collection is now locked away in a storage, prepared for the event.

Edited September 22, 2013 by carlsson

[zylon]

5200-

Moon Patrol- 20min

 

A8-

Satan's Hollow- 5min

The Dreadnaught Factor II- 45min

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600:

- Lady Bug: 25 min

- Super Breakout: 4 min

- Texas Chainsaw Massacre: 9 min

- Toyshop Trouble: 20 min

 

Game Boy Classic:

- Pokemon Blue: 90 min

Edited September 23, 2013 by karokoenig

[twoquickcapri]

SNES:
The 7th Saga - 90 min.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Atari 2600:

Mr. Postman - 2 min.

Nightmare - 3 min.

TI-99/4A:

Alpiner - 6 min.

The Attack - 5 min.

BurgerTime - 2 min.

Car Wars - 2 min.

Parsec - 6 min.

NES:

Astro Robo Sasa - 12 min.

Genesis:

Asterix and the Great Rescue - 188 min.

Columns III - 43 min.

The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants - 32 min.

Star Control - 86 min.

3DO:

The Daedalus Encounter - 336 min.

Beat Asterix on Normal, got frustrated by poorly-documented The Daedalus Encounter, spray-painted some things red in the Simpsons game, played a brutal series of head-to-head games against my fiancée in Columns III (at one point she won five in a row!), and got annoyed by games with weird concepts of gravity.

Oh, and I also enjoyed trying out my new Atari-to-TI joystick adapter, which does great things for Alpiner and Parsec. For some reason a TAC-2 makes a lot of sense for the system, though it's not normally my preferred controller when playing Atari.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Oh, and I also enjoyed trying out my new Atari-to-TI joystick adapter, which does great things for Alpiner and Parsec. For some reason a TAC-2 makes a lot of sense for the system, though it's not normally my preferred controller when playing Atari.

Be careful with diagonal movements though because some games like Jungle Hunt don't support them, assuming that you'll never make it to make diagonal movements with the original TI joysticks.

 

Anyway, here are my times for the past week (September 16th through 22nd, 2013)...

 

sorry, no gaming at all. On Monday and Tuesday I was very busy, and on Wednesday morning I had an eye examination at the hospital which went a bit wrong since I passed out immediately after the 1st stage of it. They said this could have been an epilectic attack, so they decided to keep me here at the hospital to examine it further. I don't have any games installed on my laptop, and Internet access via WLAN is shaky at best... during the day you have only a slim chance to get in, and if you do, you're likely to lose connection again in a matter of minutes. It gets better in the evening, though... but by 9 p.m., everyone in the room is sleeping, so I shouldn't operate my laptop that late.

[carlsson]

As a side note, a friend of mine yesterday showed his Atari joystick adapter for the TI-99/4A. He built his inside the base of a broken Suncom Slik Stik joystick, so where the stick should protrude, he had two (?) DB9 connectors, and then the female DB9 cable to connect to the TI.

[karokoenig]

Not great, those news. You take good care of yourself, ok? Especially no games with lots of flicker.

 

I had an eye examination at the hospital which went a bit wrong since I passed out immediately after the 1st stage of it. They said this could have been an epilectic attack, so they decided to keep me here at the hospital to examine it further.

[+thegoldenband]

Be careful with diagonal movements though because some games like Jungle Hunt don't support them, assuming that you'll never make it to make diagonal movements with the original TI joysticks.

 

Interesting! Do you mean that for some games, keyboard control is the only way to get diagonals?

 

As a side note, a friend of mine yesterday showed his Atari joystick adapter for the TI-99/4A. He built his inside the base of a broken Suncom Slik Stik joystick, so where the stick should protrude, he had two (?) DB9 connectors, and then the female DB9 cable to connect to the TI.

 

Interesting! Mine is a non-homemade unit (don't know what brand) that I got in a trade with an AA member. BTW I'm having a hard time finding a TI-99/4A game that uses the 2P joystick -- nothing in my collection of commons seemed to support it -- so I haven't been able to test that side yet.

 

Not great, those news. You take good care of yourself, ok? Especially no games with lots of flicker.

 

Agreed. I hope these problems abate soon, Kurt -- and no VCS Pac-Man for you!

[carlsson]

Aha, now I remember that the TI handles both joysticks in one connector. Thus the need for two Atari DB9.

 

I also would like to express my best wishes to Kurt's well being. If you had been part of an accident and was in a trauma, I'd order you to play some Tetris but I don't know if any game would have medical abilities for this cause.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 38, running from September 16 - 22. We logged 1478 minutes of eligible play, playing 34 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. The Daedalus Encounter (3DO) - 336

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 302

3. Asterix and the Great Rescue (Genesis) - 188

4. Pokemon Blue Version (Game Boy) - 90

4. 7th Saga, The (SNES) - 90

6. Star Control (Genesis) - 86

7. Dreadnaught Factor II (Atari 8-bit) - 45

7. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 45

9. Columns III (Genesis) - 43

10. Major League Baseball (Intellivision) - 41

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 302

2. Dreadnaught Factor II (Atari 8-bit) - 45

2. World Championship Baseball (Intellivision) - 45

4. Major League Baseball (Intellivision) - 41

5. LadyBug (Atari 2600) - 25

6. Toyshop Trouble (Atari 2600) - 20

6. Moon Patrol (Atari 5200) - 20

8. Safari Race (SG-1000) - 12

9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Atari 2600) - 9

10. Protector (VIC-20) - 8

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (365)

2. Genesis (355)

3. 3DO (336)

4. Game Boy (90)

4. SNES (90)

6. Intellivision (86)

7. Atari 8-bit (50)

8. NES/Famicom (32)

9. TI-99 (21)

10. Atari 5200 (20)

An unusually close race between the top 3 on the system charts, with the Atari 2600 just coming out ahead. Meanwhile a 3DO FMV PITA takes the #1 individual spot (but not on the maximum fun chart, I tell you what), while Kaboom takes #1 on the pre-NES charts.

[Kurt_Woloch]

I also would like to express my best wishes to Kurt's well being. If you had been part of an accident and was in a trauma, I'd order you to play some Tetris but I don't know if any game would have medical abilities for this cause.

Well, I'm out of the hospital now, and I was actually not feeling bad at all, only a bit weak in the hours immediately following the breakdown. They still wanted to keep me there because they were afraid I could have another epileptic attack... and of course to make some more examinations. There subjected me to CT, EEG, a short EKG, Ultrasonic and finally MRT. The MRT took most of the time, since after the ultrasonic, I had to wait for the CMT for two more days, and for two further days (until today) to get told the outcome of it.

 

Funny you should mention Tetris... actually, a special version of it was used to cure "lazy eye", which is a condition I actually have, where the two eyes don't sync up very well, but rather work independently of each other. I can sort of "switch" if I want to see with the left eye or the right one, and the left eye is generally weaker (possible just because of the condition that was examined), so mostly the input of the right eye gets used if I don't take care of it.

 

In the study I mentioned, carried out by McGill University in Canada, they let persons play a special version of Tetris on googles (Google eye?) that show two independent pictures to the left and right eye. On one eye, you could only see the "pit", and only the falling blocks on the other. Study attendants playing this version for an hour a day for two weeks found the lazy eye condition to improve drastically by forcing the two eyes to work together. I asked the doctors at the hospital about that kind of treatment, and they said it wasn't done here.

 

Now I thought of how this treatment could be brought to the "masses", as I certainly would like to try this. There are many homebrew versions of Tetris for various systems (and maybe even someone who has done one is reading this), and there are various systems of glasses actually made for providing 3D view which could be used for this. The simplest ones are the red/blue or red/green 3D glasses which should be supported by every color system, but there are also more specialized ones like the NVIDIA 3D system or the shutter glasses for the Sega Master System. So I think it shouldn't be hard to adapt a Tetris variant to display the blocks in the manner I mentioned, for use with a suitable 3D glasses system. I know that if I ever finish a Tetris variant (I think I started one for the C-64 and for the Odyssey^3, respectively), it will have a "lazy eye" mode providing for this kind of display.

 

Interesting! Do you mean that for some games, keyboard control is the only way to get diagonals?

No, probably not. Those games which don't support diagonal jostick movements, to my knowledge, also don't support diagonal keyboard movements.

Edited September 24, 2013 by Kurt_Woloch

[carlsson]

Yes, I've programmed at least two Tetris implementations, first in C++ for Windows and then in 1 kB of 6502 machine code for VIC-20. The idea with coloured glasses is cool, but doesn't the palette on the TV need to match to make it work? Never mind, it is pretty much off-topic for this tracker unless one is willing to write a such program for you so you can report back how many minutes of eye training you got this week.

[+cvga]

Atari 2600:

 

Berzerk - 7 minutes

RealSports Boxing - 4 minutes

Kool-Aid Man - 5 minutes

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Carnival: 5 min

Challenge: 2 min

Dark Chambers: 7 min

Surfing: 3 min

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: 19 min

Toyshop Trouble: 82 min

 

High Score Club and a few test runs of some games I picked up recently...

 

SNES

Final Fight 3: 7 min

Flashback: 3 min

F-Zero: 3 min

International Superstar Soccer Deluxe: 5 min

Jimmy Connors Tennis: 4 min

Pilotwings: 5 min

Street Fighter II: 3 min

Street Fighter II Turbo: 7 min

Super Bomberman 3: 5 min

Super Mario World: 7 min

Super Mario World II - Yoshi's Island: 8 min

Zelda - A Link to the Past: 10 min

 

Guess who's got a new toy...?

 

Mega Drive

World Class Leaderboard Golf: 25 min

 

22 above par... It was more a game of "drop depth charges into the water", but it was my first try of the game. I like it. It reminds me a lot of Leaderboard on the good old C64. Just slightly harder.

 

Game Boy Classic

Zelda - Links Awakening: 33 min