Skippy B. Coyote Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 (edited) First off, a belated Happy Halloween to all my fellow tracker participants! I hope that you and yours had a nice holiday weekend. This week was a fairly typical one for my household, both in terms of time logged and games played. Before I get into the details though, here's my household's times for the week: Ineligible The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 34 minutes Tomb Raider: The Prophecy (Game Boy Advance) - 172 minutes Arcade Arkanoid - 31 minutes Centipede - 15 minutes Donkey Kong - 15 minutes Frogger - 39 minutes Galaga 3 - 3 minutes Lady Bug - 22 minutes Millipede - 68 minutes Ms. Pac-Man - 14 minutes Pac-Man - 18 minutes Pinball Action - 4 minutes Shao-Lin's Road - 20 minutes Space Invaders - 36 minutes Super Breakout - 34 minutes Game Boy Alleyway - 108 minutes Boggle Plus - 245 minutes The Castlevania Adventure - 33 minutes Qix - 19 minutes Game Boy Color Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 14 minutes PlayStation Deathtrap Dungeon - 98 minutes Silent Hill - 336 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,378 minutes (22 hours 58 minutes) Individual System Play Times This Week PlayStation: 434 minutes Game Boy: 405 minutes Arcade: 319 minutes Game Boy Advance: 172 minutes Android: 34 minutes Game Boy Color: 14 minutes With Halloween approaching, this week my wife decided to start playing through Silent Hill on the PS1 and I began my second delve into the perilous depths of Deathtrap Dungeon to get in the holiday mood. The misses is still playing through Silent Hill in her free time, but I'm not sure how soon I'm going to get back to Deathtrap Dungeon since I quickly got distracted by one of my favorite handhelds: The Game Boy Color. Rather than play The Pinball Arcade on my Android tablet during smoke breaks this week, I filled most of my "a few minutes here and a few minutes there" game time with Boggle Plus for the Game Boy. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure Boggle Plus has been the best $3 I've ever spent on a game, since I couldn't even begin to count how many hours of entertainment it's brought me over the years. It's one game that I can always go back to have just as much fun playing it as the first time I picked it up. Since I got more than a little distracted by the Game Boy Color I also ended up popping in The Castlevania Adventure for a half an hour or so on Halloween night, and as per usual I made it to the third stage before powering it off due to a nasty case of "Game Boy thumb" beginning to develop. I have beaten it once before, but man does that third stage ever put some wear and tear on your thumbs! In spite of the Game Boy Color occupying most of my gaming time this week, the household multicade wasn't neglected and the misses and I both played our usual rotations of arcade games a fair bit. She topped her previous high scores in Donkey Kong and Frogger, and I ended up getting an especially pleasing new high score of 148,846 in Millipede at one point. All in all it was a pretty good week around here. Good games were played, good times were had! Edited November 2, 2015 by Jin 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atarian7 Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Thanks Jin. We had no trick or treaters so now I have a bunch of chocolate to eat. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted November 3, 2015 Author Share Posted November 3, 2015 I won't be tabulating the times until tomorrow, probably around 1:30 EST. So if any of our regular posters who haven't posted yet (or any newcomers, for that matter) want to post times from last week, go for it! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BurritoBeans Posted November 3, 2015 Share Posted November 3, 2015 I won't be tabulating the times until tomorrow, probably around 1:30 EST. So if any of our regular posters who haven't posted yet (or any newcomers, for that matter) want to post times from last week, go for it! Oh sweet, more time? Well then, I may as well post times (I was too busy sleeping to bother last night) Atari 2600: Air-Sea Battle - 10 minutes Blackjack - 20 minutes Kangaroo - 45 minutes Apple II: Ultima 2 - 78 minutes NES: Air Fortress - 20 minutes Sweet Home - 75 minutes PC-9801: Dead of the Brain - 90 minutes Policenauts - 102 minutes Ys II - 162 minutes Well, there's my times I guess. I picked up my NES again and played a bit of Air Fortress which is a pretty fun game, and some Sweet Home because I haven't touched that cart in a while. Other than that, just some Ultima II and some random Atari stuff and PC-98 stuff. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted November 4, 2015 Author Share Posted November 4, 2015 Here's the summary for Week 44, running from October 26 - November 1. We logged 7559 minutes of eligible playtime, playing 94 games on a total of 22 systems. Top 10: 1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 880 2. Stay Frosty 2: Stay Frostier (Atari 2600) - 605 3. Sword of Vermilion (Genesis) - 580 4. Phantasy Star II (Genesis) - 396 5. Bouncy (TI-99/4A) - 370 6. Silent Hill (PlayStation) - 336 7. Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 273 8. Micro Pinball (TI-99/4A) - 270 9. Boggle Plus (Game Boy) - 245 10. Re-Volt (Dreamcast) - 240 Pre-NES top 10: 1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 880 2. Stay Frosty 2: Stay Frostier (Atari 2600) - 605 3. Bouncy (TI-99/4A) - 370 4. Micro Pinball (TI-99/4A) - 270 5. Frenzy (ColecoVision) - 200 6. Tower of Doom (Intellivision) - 188 7. Q*bert (Atari 2600) - 147 8. M.U.L.E. (Atari 8-bit) - 140 9. Q*bert (TI-99/4A) - 119 10. Minesweeper (TI-99/4A) - 107 Top 10 systems: 1. Atari 2600 (1859) 2. TI-99/4A (1355) 3. Genesis (976) 4. PlayStation (434) 5. Game Boy (405) 6. Arcade (361) 7. NEC PC-9801 (354) 8. PC (DOS) (353) 9. Intellivision (258) 10. Dreamcast (240) And it's another one for the record books, as Week 44 joins the all-time list of biggest weeks at #7. By joining the all-time list, it knocks off Week 37 of 2015 -- the former #10 -- which had been the only remaining Top 10 week with less than 7000 minutes. Moving down from #9 to #10 is Week 6 of 2010, which is now the only remaining Top 10 week which isn't from 2015. One more record-breaking week and it'll be all 2015! Otherwise it's another strong week from the TI-99/4A, but the one-two punch of Kaboom and Stay Frosty 2 holds the line across the board for the Atari 2600. Behind them are two Genesis RPGs, two games about being silent, something bouncy, something tiny, something racy, and something boggly. Stay Frosty 2 also becomes #178 in the 1000-minute club, with 1116 minutes worth of tea in the Royal Doulton with the hand-painted periwinkles. In fact, five of this week's top games are 1000-minute club members, and several of these are rapidly moving up the ranks. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiLic0ne t0aD Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 (edited) I think I easily logged another 10 hours of Re-Volt on Dreamcast over the past couple days. I love this game so much, very underrated.. easily my favorite racing game on the system. Edit: Forgot to mention trying to beat the Platinum Cup is what ate up the majority of the time.. this game is brutal in the later stages! Edited November 4, 2015 by SiLic0ne t0aD85 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 Good week, all... The TI continues to rock and roll!! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted November 7, 2015 Share Posted November 7, 2015 Sord M5: Drops - 8 min. Jumping Jack - 5 min. Pooyan - 8 min. Real Tennis - 6 min. Super Cobra - 9 min. Another week of nearly no time for gaming, so every minute is a gift. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oyamafamily Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 (edited) ONLY 1 GAME THIS WEEK: Midnight Mutants for Atari 7800 - 27 minutes Highest score: 9,999,990 points in 27 minutes and 03 seconds, using MESS and playing faster. Why 1 game this week? The confirmation came last Thursday (November 5th) on 2600 NEW High Score Club Season 4 Gold Medal Tournament Finals. S.BAZ said: "It looks like just an unexplained anomaly in the scoring that happens here & there. (Northcoast has also said it looks legit). So, the score is no longer in question" My opponent Northcoastgamer said: "Yes, my apologies. I have never notice that before and I've played many hours oF HERO." It refers to H.E.R.O. for 2600. Check out the video below which I was forced to share (ScoreGround - Atari 2600 - H.E.R.O.: 166,070 - User: Metaljesusrocks) and pay attention in the following detail. Metal Jesus played on Atari 2600 Jr hardware with joystick, and used a Video Cassette to record. At 3:53 mark in the video below, you will see 52,240 on the score (Level 9). After Metal Jesus used a stick of dynamite (75 points), the score jumped to 52,365 points when the correct should be 52,315! The dynamite was next to the wall in order to explode. Therefore, it's an anomaly as S.BAZ said. On the Gold Medal Tournament Finals, I won 2 of 3 games: H.E.R.O., with 567,515 points in one life and Game 5, and Stay Frosty 2, with 153,284 points (regular lives). With the final score of 2-1, I defeated the powerful Northcoastgamer (winner of 2600 NEW HSC Season 4) and conquested the Gold Medal. Edited November 8, 2015 by oyamafamily 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister-VCS Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Space Cavern, Obelix, Bugs Bunny (2600 HSC) Carnival Massacre (Atari XL) 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karokoenig Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Space Cavern, Obelix, Bugs Bunny (2600 HSC) Carnival Massacre (Atari XL) Nice to see you post in the tracker, Mister :-). Got an idea about the times you played those games? If none is mentioned, thegoldenband will asume 5 minutes each. I have a suspicion you played more, at least on the 2600 games :-). Here are my times, by the way. Not a lot of variety, I'm afraid: PC (DOS) Silent Hunter: 185 min 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister-VCS Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 i forgot following Atari XL-games: Pole Position, Moon Patrol, Donkey Kong Junior - 15 min. each I don't like DK JR. XL- the 7800 version is much more fun! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atarian7 Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Atari 2600 Kaboom! - 613 minutes High score of the week: 234,971 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Here are my times for this past week: Arcade: Q*bert - 34 min. Game Boy: Q*bert - 181 min. Gameboy Color: Q*bert - 37 min. Online (non-eligible): Nonogram of the week - 110 min. PC (DOS): J-Bird - 125 min. in 3 sessions This week, aside from solving the Nonogram of the week, I tried various versions of Q*Bert. On the Arcade version, I made the goal of reaching 100,000 points. Then I tried the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance ports, which are both enhanced in that each level presents a different layout than the original pyramid, and all levels are bigger than the visible screen. While the Game Boy version is quite good, I found the Game Boy Color version pretty confusing and not so well thought out. On the GB the scrolling is smooth, but on the GBA it hops up and down with Q*bert, and it's hard to see if there's an additional row of cubes below the current one. Also, when you enter a spinning disc and kill Coily, the enemies don't disappear, and you get carried to a pretty random place on the level, so it happened to me multiple times that I hopped off from the spinning disc right into an enemy that killed me. It doesn't help that you can't clearly see where Coily is and if she has already hatched. Maybe she's only one cube away waiting to bite you, but you can't see her... Anyway, I also tried the PC clone called "J-Bird" which I saw back in summer of 1983 on a computer show. It is from 1983, yet it still runs nearly flawlessly on Windows XP, with the exception of the screen flashing after you jump into the green (or cyan) ball, which doesn't occur under XP (I guess here a hardware register gets changed to achieve this effect). This version is a bit different to Q*bert in that it never speeds up, and the enemies have been converted to various animals... Slick and Sam are now cats (and jump in a slightly different pattern) and Wrongway is a frog. All the objects are bigger than in the original game. Still the scoring has mostly been kept from the original version with the exception of extra lives being issued at 8,000 and then every 12,000 points, meaning you have to wait for 8,000 points until the 1st extra life, but only 4,000 more for the 2nd one. The game gets pretty hard near the end of Level 4 with many cats jumping around, but I finally managed to reach the goal of 100,000 points here as well. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BurritoBeans Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 (edited) Atari 2600: Raiders of the Lost Ark - 25 minutes Superman - 10 minutes NES: The Bards Tale - 70 minutes The Magic of Scheherazade - 40 minutes PC: Pool of Radiance - 192 minutes Curse of the Azure Bonds - 18 minutes Sharp X68000: Cameltry - 20 minutes Well, not too much for playtimes this week. I had to spend all week teaching people how to play D&D as I'm going to DM sessions for something that some people are getting started at school, and I had to DM ones for this weekend for two friends. I did play a bit of NES finally, and I got the SSI AD&D Gold Box Pool of Radiance series thing on PC so that's cool I guess. Edited November 9, 2015 by BurritoBeans 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iwantgames:) Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 TI-99/4A - Alex Kidd - 5min Black Hole - 5min Crossfire - 710min Jedi Gauntlet - 5min Lobster Bay - 10min Mouse Attack - 15min Dodgy Dealer - 60min St. Nick - 20min CoCo 2 - Polaris - 5min Spidercide - 5min Win 95/98 - DopeWars - 20min Caught one-more-itis with crossfire on the TI, and didn't play much else except got a good hour of drug dealing on the TI and also on win95 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted November 9, 2015 Author Share Posted November 9, 2015 My times for the week: Intellivision: Tower of Doom - 23 min. PC Engine: Atomic Robo-kid Special - 27 min. Blazing Lazers - 11 min. Davis Cup Tennis - 2 min. Final Match Tennis - 10 min. Fire Pro Wrestling 3: Legend Bout - 2 min. Fire Pro Wrestling Combination Tag - 2 min. Lady Sword [translation] - 2 min. Magical Chase - 2 min. Momotarō Katsugeki (Peach Boy) - 2 min. Photo Kid [translation] - 2 min. World Court Tennis - 18 min. Game Boy: Master Karateka - 29 min. No points for guessing what console I recently picked up. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 5200- Beamrider- 25min Genesis- Sword Of Vermillion- 10hrs 7min 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 VCS: GORF (25 minutes) Turmoil (20 minutes) TI-99/4A: Crossfire (360 minutes) Henhouse (120 minutes) Parsec (15 minutes) Reading On (60 minutes) TI Scramble (70 minutes) Lemonade Stand (30 minutes) Mad Marvin's Great Escape (30 minutes) NeverLander (40 minutes) St. Nick (20 minutes) **weird f'n game, man 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iwantgames:) Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 St. Nick (20 minutes) **weird f'n game, man Yes I tried this one out looking for a good holiday TI game but Idk about this one 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 I have it on cart... One of my prized Funware carts. I played it a couple years ago and thought it was weird then, but MAN!!! It REALLY seems weird now. Holy cow. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iwantgames:) Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 I have it on my game cart #2 along with crossfire and some others trying to decide on a good competition game in case I win thought a holiday game would be good but idk Lol I got a few choices but narrowing it down isn't easy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 Nope... But there is ONE game on that cart that raises all ships. Hint..... see my Avatar. It starts as a leisurely day.... tending chickens on a farm and hunting some quail for dinner. Nice, easy relaxing day on the farm. It does not stay that way for long, let me tell you. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skippy B. Coyote Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 (edited) Arcade Arkanoid - 30 minutes Centipede - 9 minutes Donkey Kong - 14 minutes Donkey Kong Junior - 11 minutes Frogger - 8 minutes Galaga - 7 minutes Millipede - 31 minutes Ms. Pac-Man - 10 minutes Ms. Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 14 minutes Pac-Man - 10 minutes Qix - 9 minutes Shao-Lin's Road - 26 minutes Space Invaders - 4 minutes Super Breakout - 22 minutes Game Boy Aerostar - 21 minutes Boggle Plus - 234 minutes Double Dribble: 5 on 5 - 28 minutes Kirby's Block Ball - 46 minutes NBA Jam: Tournament Edition - 19 minutes Space Invaders - 12 minutes Game Boy Color Battleship - 236 minutes Bionic Commando: Elite Forces - 42 minutes Duke Nukem - 332 minutes Mario Golf - 10 minutes Shanghai Pocket - 21 minutes PlayStation Command & Conquer - 282 minutes Final Doom - 375 minutes Silent Hill - 209 minutes Total Play Time This Week 2,072 minutes (34 hours 32 minutes) Individual System Play Times This Week PlayStation: 866 minutes Game Boy Color: 641 minutes Game Boy: 360 minutes Arcade: 205 minutes This turned out to be the second biggest week ever in terms of my household's time logged for the tracker, and it's pretty obvious which games made up the vast majority of our time logged. I spent most of my free time this week playing a couple original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games whenever I had a few spare minutes, which included my old favorite Boggle Plus along with the newly acquired Duke Nukem and Battleship. I had read some pretty poor reviews of Duke Nukem for the GBC before I picked it up, but remembering how much I loved the original Duke Nukem DOS game from Apogee Software and seeing how similar this game looked to that one made me just have to pick it up. Luckily I can safely say that I don't agree with the negative reviews that I had read of this game and have been having a great time playing through it; and I've still got three levels left to go! Battleship was one of several new GBC games this week that I ended up picking up from $1 games bin at a local game store, and I've definitely been getting way more than $1's worth of fun out of it. What impressed me the most this week though was just how long the rechargeable AA batteries in my Game Boy Color have lasted! Every Game Boy and GBC game that I played this week was played on the Game Boy Color, and even though I haven't changed the batteries in over a week they're still going strong after more than 16 hours of play time; and most of that time was spent with a Nyko Worm Light connected to the GBC to boot. It really is amazing the kind of battery life some of Nintendo's older handhelds have. As far as the misses's gaming time this past week goes, she dedicated almost all of it to a few games on the PlayStation. She ended up finishing her Halloween play through of Silent Hill—getting the secret UFO ending to unlock the bonus Hyper Blaster weapon on her next play through—then moved on to beating all the Master Levels in Final Doom on Ultra Violence difficulty, which was the last of the three game chapters that she had yet to beat. It never ceases to astound me how proficient she is playing games like Doom with an arcade stick controller, so I had a lot of fun too just watching her play. After that she decided to try out a real-time strategy game, since she had never played one before and was curious how they played, so she dug Command & Conquer out of the PS1 game drawer and started in on it. She's been having a real blast with it and is enjoying the GDI missions immensely, so there may be a few more RTS genre games coming her way this holiday season. Well, I think that about wraps it up for this week! Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have a game of Battleship to get back to. Edited November 9, 2015 by Jin 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 Wow... Impressive week, Jin!!! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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