What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2015 (Season 8)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Great week summary as always goldenband! It's pretty rare to see Kaboom! not take the top spot, and I was pleased to see the NES gem Faxandu get some play time. It's always been one of my favorite titles on the system.

I do have a question though! Are arcade pinball machines produced before the year 2000 eligible for play time in the Arcade gaming category, or are pinball games only eligible if they're the completely digital variety? Also, if by some chance arcade pinball machines are eligible, would modern digital recreations of those machines (such as the licensed ones from FarSight Studios in their "The Pinball Arcade" multiplatform game) be eligible?

I've just been on a major pinball kick this week and am curious to know if I'll be able to log my playtime on the real machines and digital recreations.

[carlsson]

As far as I remember, we usually don't count actual electromechanical games, but we do count computer simulations of such. There is a borderline case with Baby Pac-Man which is a combination of a pinball and arcade game that we counted as eligible, but I'm unsure about all other pinball games.

[Shift838]

TI-99/4A

 

Munchman ; 83 minutes

Parsec ; 22 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

As far as I remember, we usually don't count actual electromechanical games, but we do count computer simulations of such. There is a borderline case with Baby Pac-Man which is a combination of a pinball and arcade game that we counted as eligible, but I'm unsure about all other pinball games.

 

Yeah, we haven't been counting physical pinball or electromechanical games in general, since -- score displays and such aside -- that gets away from the "video" part of video gaming. I played a ton of them a few years back at the Pinball Hall of Fame but didn't post any. Console versions are welcome, of course!

[Opry99er]

Okay, finally got a VCS hooked up again after a decade of life without one. We took advantage... One night, ALOT of Atari...

 

 

VCS:

 

Ms. PacMan (45 minutes)

GORF: (76 minutes)

Kaboom: (28 minutes)

Enduro: (35 minutes)

Defender: (25 minutes)

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Munchman: (55 minutes)

NeverLander: (40 minutes)

Parsec: (26 minutes)

 

Sega Genesis:

 

Ms. PacMan: (120 minutes)

Tiny Toons (Busters Hidden Treasure): (35 minutes)

 

 

That's it... Unless we get substantial play time in tomorrow, I doubt I will have anything to add.

[Shift838]

Additional:

 

TI-99/4A:

 

MunchMan : 31 minutes

[carlsson]

Amiga:

Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road - 7 min.

Nitro - 10 min.

Skidmarks - 10 min.

Super Cars II - 7 min.

Super Skidmarks - 4 min.

All of these games were for a change played through WinUAE emulation, as part of play testing which games are particularly suited for a gaming competition. In the end, I settled for the last game which I played the least, but has the best options to configure the game for competitive play. More of this possibly to follow later.

COMX-35:

Ahon's Boulderdash - 13 min.

Car Rally - 49 min.

Doolhoof Race - 4 min.

Eet en Wurm - 15 min.

After nearly 18 months in the closet, I dug out my previously near NIB COMX and played some games. It took a while until I managed to load some software, and it loads so slowly that you may have to wait up to 9 minutes before you know if the program even has been detected. Due to a plastic tab had snapped off, I had to open it up and remove, so now it no longer is like new, just lightly used. The loudspeaker also is very loud, and I found the RF connector doesn't work very well, so I had to jiggle the connector a bit to get a decent display. Thus for a moment I resorted to the Emma 02 emulator and played a few games in emulation instead. For those curious, the Boulderdash game clearly is not a licensed First Star release, but a homemade game with most of the graphics copied from e.g. Atari 800 but leaving out gameplay elements such as the ability to push rocks and the fact that rocks will only fall vertically, never expand horizontally. Without having studied it closely, I would estimate that 90% of the library for this computer comes from Dutch user groups back in the day. A few titles were made by COMX or the Dutch importer, but I can't really see any third party commercial software being made for it, a feature it shares with a number of other uncommon home computers of course, since there is no commercial market for a machine that has very few buyers and those who bought already are part of user groups sharing own software with eachother.

Edited August 22, 2015 by carlsson

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Double Dragon: 4 min

Frankensteins Monster: 7 min

 

PC (DOS)

Hstoryline: 90 min

 

Not much to play or say this week. Busy with work and other stuff.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!- 1054 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 339,827

 

 

[carlsson]

Late Sunday additions:

 

Arcadia 2001:

Alien Invaders - 3 min.

 

Atari ST:

Midi Maze - 3 min.

[BurritoBeans]

3DO:

Star Fighter - 92 minutes

 

Atari 2600:

Stampede - 15 minutes

Megamania - 15 minutes

Space Attack - 26 minutes

 

NES:

Uncharted Waters - 79 minutes

 

Sharp X68000

Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania - 112 minutes

Daimakaimura/Ghouls 'n Ghosts - 52 minutes

Cameltry - 37 minutes

R-Type - 22 minutes

Wrecking Crew - 20 minutes

Asteroids - 20 minutes

Jastis - 20 minutes

Ys 1 - 178 minutes

Ys 2 - 237 minutes

Ys 3 - 421 minutes

 

Total play time - 22.1 Hours or 1326 Minutes

 

So recently I picked up another Sharp X68000. I had got one a year or so back - a X68030 Compact - but I didn't realize that many games that I got are on 5.25 floppies while the X68030 Compact has 3.5 floppy drives, that the CPU runs at 25MHz which is a bit too fast for some stuff, and that it has a good amount of compatibility issues. So, I recently bought a Sharp X68000 XVI after reading into it for a while. The CPU runs slower at 10 or 16MHz, it has the 5.25 drives (There is a Compact model of the XVI which has 3.5 drives but I wanted the 5.25 drives) and it came with a MIDI board which I wanted. After replacing the dead PSU like a lot have and getting my Roland CM-500 to work with it, I finally had a working X68000 that didn't have issues with everything and I'm loving it. I may go out of my way to get a floppy emulator for it - Probably a Lotharek HxC (I could use it on a lot of stuff which is appealing) - as the games are expensive to get because of shipping, or I have to use ebay which demands a good $100 each.

 

Other than that, just playing random other games. I'd say it was a good week.

Edited August 23, 2015 by BurritoBeans

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800:

Plutos - 76 minutes

Sirius - 5 minutes

 

ATARI 2600:

Dolphin - 32 minutes

Dragster - 43 minutes

Kabobber - 34 minutes

King Kong - 5 minutes

Off The Wall - 30 minutes

Revenge of Beefsteak Tomatoes - 25 minutes

Robot Tank - 36 minutes

Tennis - 20 minutes

 

VIDEOS OF THE WEEK:

1) Robot Tank

 

2) Dolphin:

 

3) Dragster:

 

4) Kabobber:

[Opry99er]

Late additions:

 

2600:

 

GORF: (28 additional minutes)

Frogger: (30 minutes)

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Munchman: (21 additional minutes)

TI Scramble: (31 minutes)

 

 

That's it for this week

[zylon]

5200-

 

Mr. Do!'s Castle- 10min

 

NES-

 

Tetris (Tengen)- 25min

 

Genesis-

 

Streets Of Rage 2- 40min

[Iwantgames:)]

Amiga

Chaos Engine, The - 380min

Atari 2600

Pac-Man 8k - 15min

Neo Geo Pocket

Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams - 10min

Sonic The Hedgehog - Pocket Adventure - 5min

SG-1000

Star Force - 10min

Sega Master System

Sonic The Hedgehog - 27min

Submarine Attack - 10min

Sega Genesis

Fix It Felix Jr. - 20min

Papi Commando - 20min

Wolfenstien 3D - 67min

Zombies Ate My Nieghbors - 15min

Sega CD

Sonic CD - 64min

Sega 32x

Zaxxon Motherbase 2000 - 10min

TurboGrafx 16

Silent Debuggers - 20min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Taito Grand Prix: Eikou e no License - 3 min.

Famicom Disk System:

Konamic Tennis - 10 min.

Genesis:

The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare - 4 min.

Super Skidmarks - 2 min.

SNES:

Frogger - 208 min.

Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour - 167 min.

PlayStation:

Descent - 2 min.

Got the high score on SNES Frogger but haven't yet cleared Level 8 (the final level before it congratulates you & loops). I also played through the first 5 months of the season in Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour on Intermediate difficulty; I probably should've played on Pro instead since it's been very easy, but eh, I'll see it through.

Other than that, I just futzed with Konamic Tennis some more, glanced at a new acquisition (Descent, which seems primed to give me motion sickness), and briefly tried a couple unfamiliar ROMs.

[Iwantgames:)]

I also just picked up a copy of Decent for playstation

Haven't tried it yet, played it on PC when it came out tho.

[+thegoldenband]

Heh, that's a funny coincidence. I'm not sure if I ever played the Mac version -- I might have -- but 2 minutes with the PlayStation version was enough to tell me that it's likely to be trouble for me. I have a hard time with three-axis corridor games, like Forsaken, or really any game where the camera/POV does a lot of whipping around.

[karokoenig]

I have a hard time with three-axis corridor games, like Forsaken, or really any game where the camera/POV does a lot of whipping around...

 

...especially in these early days when 3D was still "learning to walk". PS1 games always feel kind of clunky and awkward to me. Maybe that's why I really can't find this system apealing at all. Well... that and the asinine voice acting typical for the era. No matter how huge a classic RE1 is, I can't stand playing it for longer than 5 minutes without feeling physical pain.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

 

Yeah, we haven't been counting physical pinball or electromechanical games in general, since -- score displays and such aside -- that gets away from the "video" part of video gaming. I played a ton of them a few years back at the Pinball Hall of Fame but didn't post any. Console versions are welcome, of course!

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, and your reasoning seems perfectly logical. Electromechanical games like pinball machines aren't really video games, so I totally get you reasoning there.

 

As far as my play time this week goes, as the medication I'm on for my thyroid problems has started to work I've had a bit more time and energy to devote to my favorite hobby; so my time spent playing games went up quite a bit this week. Unfortunately, almost none of it was eligible for this tracker! I spent several hours in bars and pizza shops playing a few different pinball machines (The Lord of the Rings was by far my favorite, and I dumped around $15 in quarters into it over the week), but what I spent the most time on was a pinball simulation game on my Android tablet called The Pinball Arcade. In the entire year or so I've had my tablet it was the first game I ever bought for it, since I'm not usually a fan of paying money for any games that don't come on physical media, but this game's digital recreations of real pinball machine tables is so flawless that I didn't mind tossing ten bucks it's way to buy the Bram Stoker's Dracula and Starship Troopers tables. I spent a couple hours on Starship Troopers, but what really consumed the bulk of my gaming time this week was the 15 or 16 hours that I spent playing the Bram Stoker's Dracula table at every available opportunity. I'm still not terribly good at it even after all the practice I put into it over the week, but I was still pleased to have scored over one billion on my best game!

 

I had a ton of fun playing it and I think when I have a little more discretionary funds available I'm going to start picking up pinball video games for some older systems like the Sega Genesis, NES, and PS1; so I'll be able to get my pinball fix and still have my time qualify for the tracker. Pinball is one of those video game genres that has greatly benefited from modern technology being able to accurately recreate the tables of real pinball machines and real ball physics, but I think I'll still have fun playing some older pinball games when I have the spare cash to pick them up. I've already got Midnight Magic and Video Pinball for the Atari 2600, but am still lacking a working Atari 2600 to play them on or the funds to pick one up. Ah well, maybe either I or the misses can scrape together the cash to pick one up next week.

 

For now though, here's my play times for this week!

 

 

 

Ineligible

The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 1,086 minutes

The Pinball of the Dead (Game Boy Advance) - 47 minutes

Arcade

Centipede (played on Atari Anniversary Advance for Game Boy Advance) - 17 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

1,150 minutes (19 hours 10 minutes)

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Android: 1,086 minutes

Game Boy Advance: 47 minutes

Arcade: 17 minutes

Edited August 24, 2015 by Jin

[twoquickcapri]

Sony PlayStation:

Final Fantasy VIII - 1441 min.

 

Spent what felt like half of the time this week drawing magic. Watch a whole episode Star Trek TNG while drawing magic spell flare for each person. The game really knows how to wash your time.

[karokoenig]

 

...as the medication I'm on for my thyroid problems has started to work...

 

Hashimoto or Basedow?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

 

Hashimoto or Basedow?

 

Basedow, though I've never heard it called that before. All the doctors around here call it Graves' Disease. It's really wiped me out and made doing just about anything other than laying in bed watching TV pretty difficult the past few weeks, but I'm getting better slowly but surely.

[+thegoldenband]

Just checking in to say that the weekly summary will be a bit delayed, but I should be able to post it tomorrow (Tuesday) evening.

[karokoenig]

 

It's really wiped me out and made doing just about anything other than laying in bed watching TV pretty difficult the past few weeks, but I'm getting better slowly but surely.

 

Hell yeah, Graves/Basedow is nasty when not treated. My missus has it as well. Be prepared to have a few ups and downs while the medication dosage is fine-tuned. Can take quite a while, but once you're set, you'll be fine. And watch out for iodized salt. Don't know about the US, but it's practically in everything over here.