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

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (February 16th through 22nd)...

 

Commodore 64:

Bac Pac - 48 min.

Munchy - 36 min.

Rocket Smash - 79 min. in 2 sessions

 

ZX-Spectrum:

Jetpac - 21 min.

 

The first thing I played was Munchy on the C-64, which is a clone of Pac-Man, and a pretty good one at that. Still it could be better... the sounds and the fruit graphics are a bit off, as is the behavior of the blue ghosts (they should slow down more than they do). Also the game speeds up more than in the original version, and the intermissions are missing.

 

Then I tried several versions of "Jetpac" after reading about multiple versions having been made. Bac Pac is actually what I thought to be an official conversion of Jetpac, but it's actually an inofficial one from back in the day (I already played it back in 1985). "Rocket Smash" is a recent one which has been souped up graphically. And then I tried the original ZX-Spectrum version. Compared to the two ports, here the player moves faster and has got more inertia, similar to Sabre Wulf, while it has less inertia on Bac Pac and none on Rocket Smash. To make up for this, in Bac Pac the enemies appear in much greater numbers and the player moves much more slowly.

Edited February 22, 2015 by Kurt_Woloch

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

1) Dolphin - 35 minutes. Highest score: 299,990 points on Game 1A (numbers replaced by the secret message "Amazing!")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3NV5QEr7xM

 

2) Freeway - 20 minutes in several sessions for 2600 NEW High Score Club, Bonus Game on Season 4 / Week 5

Highest scores: 33 (game 1BB), and 24 (game 3BB). Included Games 1AA (31 points) and 3AA (20 points).

 

3) Sky Skipper - 25 minutes. Highest scores: 28,010 (Game 1BB) and 12,000 (Game 1AA).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGDAHr-fHow

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800:

1. Munch-Man Texas (Hack of Pac-Man) - 10 minutes

 

2. Pac-Man III NES (Hack of Pac-Man) - 25 minutes

 

3. Pac-Man VIC-20 (Hack of Pac-Man) - 10 minutes

 

4. Pac-Pollux (Hack of Pac-Man) - 10 minutes

 

5. Snack Attack (Hack of Pac-Man) - 10 minutes

 

6. Snapper (Hack of Pac-Man) - 10 minutes

 

7. Snow Day (Hack of Jr. Pac-Man) - 10 minutes

 

8. Super Pac-Man - 150 minutes in several sessions. Check out my gameplay videos to prove my abilities.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Destiny of an Emperor - 213 min.

King's Knight - 4 min.

Magic Darts - 2 min.

Magic Dragon - 2 min.

Magic John - 2 min.

Metal Mech - 2 min.

Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball - 5 min.

Target: Renegade - 22 min.

PlayStation:

Blasto - 28 min.

The Bombing Islands - 28 min.

Cyber Sled - 5 min.

Cyber Speed - 5 min.

Cyberia - 12 min.

Dragonheart: Fire & Steel - 13 min.

Guardian's Crusade - 134 min.

Kileak: The DNA Imperative - 147 min.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater - 2 min.

V-Tennis - 67 min.

Beat Target: Renegade, rather quickly to my surprise. It's a short game, but I expected to have more difficulty with later levels. Not so, it seems.

My other meaningful NES activity was playing through the first part of Destiny of an Emperor, a Capcom RPG with the same dramatis personae as Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I beat it in emulation about a decade ago, but probably with savestates (not that they'd help much), so this time I'm doing a legit run for the NA beat-'em-all. I also tried to beat it twice as a teenager, but both times the NES blinked and killed off my saved game -- ah, painful memories!

Otherwise it was all PlayStation, all the time. After testing a few new acquisitions, I started getting into Kileak, a very early FPS whose simplicity annoyed reviewers but makes it a good fit for me. I played through the first 5-6 levels and genuinely enjoyed them, but I'm beginning to realize I was too profligate with my ammo. I'm now running quite low, and I'm not sure I'll be able to make up the deficit.

I also picked Guardian's Crusade back up for the first time in a while; made a couple fruitless attempts at beating the Ivo Karlovic-esque final boss in V-Tennis; was underwhelmed by Blasto and Cyberia; and got through a half-dozen puzzles in Bombing Islands.

[twoquickcapri]

Atari Jaguar:
Kobayashi Maru: Final - 45 min.

Sony Playstation:
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete - 40 min.

[+thegoldenband]

What's that? Why, it's the summary for Week 8, running from February 16 - 22. We logged 3307 minutes of eligible playtime, playing 49 games on a total of 12 systems.

Top 10:

1. Frogger (Atari 2600) - 999

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 548

3. Destiny of an Emperor (NES/Famicom) - 213

4. Super Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 150

5. Kileak: The DNA Imperative (PlayStation) - 147

6. Guardian's Crusade (PlayStation) - 134

7. Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder (Arcade) - 90

7. Streets of Rage 2 (Genesis) - 90

7. Magician Lord (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 90

10. Rocket Smash (C64) - 79

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Frogger (Atari 2600) - 999

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 548

3. Super Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 150

4. Rocket Smash (C64) - 79

5. Freeway (Atari 2600) - 61

6. Bac Pac (C64) - 48

7. Pitfall! (Atari 2600) - 42

8. Munchy (C64) - 36

9. Dolphin (Atari 2600) - 35

10. Sky Skipper (Atari 2600) - 25

10. Pac-Man III NES [Pac-Man hack] (Atari 7800) - 25

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1717)

2. PlayStation (481)

3. NES/Famicom (333)

4. Atari 7800 (235)

5. C64 (163)

6. Arcade (90)

6. Genesis (90)

6. Neo Geo AES/MVS (90)

9. Atari Jaguar (45)

10. Amiga (24)

Last week we had just one minute of Frogger VCS; this week, we have 999, and it's our #1 game by a wide margin.

Unsurprisingly, it also joins the 1000-minute club, becoming the 146th member with a total of 1536 minutes to date -- or 2^10 + 2^9. Ones and nines, ones and nines.

[carlsson]

Amiga:

Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge - 164 min.

PC DOS:

Snake [Roar Lauritzsen 1984] - 54 min.

Tandy MC-10:

Flipull - 52 min.

Space Assault - 8 min.

VIC-20:

Digger - 6 min.

Dodgecars - 9 min.

Forbidden Tower - 3 min.

Jet-Pac - 15 min.

League Soccer - 3 min.

Sno-Cat - 65 min.

Speedski - 5 min.

Turtle Bridge [Cascade 50] - 1 min.

A few words on some of the VIC games: Forbidden Tower is one of few games that I have played for more than one minute without scoring a single point. It seems like a nearly impossible platform game. League Soccer is more of a football league simulator than a football management game, as you get to define number of teams, their names and percentage chance that each team would beat the other. Utterly boring, which also goes for the Cascade 50 version of Turtle Bridge that only supports jumping in one direction per run, and in perfect black and white. I rather played Sno-Cat from the COMPUTE! listing, and looked up on the Internet that the author made this game in high school and still today is into the game development business with apps.

[BillyHW]

Arcade:

 

Gun Fight (30 min). From 1975, this is the earliest game that MAME can emulate. It's also a surprisingly fun 2-player game. I like it better than Pong. The concept is so simple, yet it works.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!- 402 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 62,505

 

 

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Frostbite: 12 min

Pitfall: 70 min

Sky Skipper: 40 min

Stargate: 5 min

 

Amazing what the HSC does to you. Usually, I just play a round of Pitfall every now and then to kill some time and relax. The extra bonus point this week for reaching 100k points made me memorize a few of the tunnel shortcuts for the first time ever - and I know this game since I was 10.

 

Mega Drive

Chakan: 15 min

LHX Attack Chopper: 10 min

MIG-29 Fighter Pilot: 2 min

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego: 2 min

 

Geez, Chakan is hard. But pretty badass. I totally suck at it, but that's not a big deal. Even Chakans Death Scream is badass .

 

Found Carmen Sandiego CIB in a used game shop for 3,50 Euro. Decent contition even. Pretty happy with this find. I only had "Where in the World...", and I have soft spot for the Carmen Sandiego games. Sadly had no time to play it some more, since I had to take care of our incontinent illiterate (i.e. our 9-month-old son).

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (February 23th through March 1st)...

 

Online (non-eligible):

Antarctic - 5 min.

Crazy Ape - 7 min.

Defense Unit - 11 min.

Replicator - 7 min.

Swarm - 14 min.

 

Sorry, no classic games this week, although the online games I played are close to classic games. These are Javascript games done by Brent Silby, and they often are a mash-up of multiple classic games...

 

In Antarctic, you play a penguin similar to Pengo's main character who jumps around a set of platforms collecting hearts thrown by the Penguin lady very similarly to the arcade game "Popeye". You are being chased by three "Snow wolves" which look like they've escaped from the game Pooyan and also use their balloons to fly back up to higher platforms.

 

Crazy Ape looks much like the arcade game Son Son, but instead of a human fighter, you play as Donkey Kong Jr. collecting fruit along the way.

 

In Defense Unit, you have a stationary base in a drawn Xevious-like background changing with each level and have to shoot down everything that comes at you.

 

In Replicator, you are in the middle of a screen full of ball-like objects which hatch and then fly around the screen, leaving behind more ball-like objects. Your aim is to fly around as well and, by shooting horizontally and vertically, clear each screen of all objects.

 

Finally, Swarm is a space shooter similar to Gyruss, down to the music which is similar, but not identical to that in Gyruss, although the enemies look more like the ones in Galaga, and this version is devoid of some features that set Galaga apart from Galaxian (most notably, the extra weapons and the challenging stages). To make up for this, you have a kind of diagonal grid in the center of the screen where the formation settles down and crawls around, turning the cells of the grid white. If you hit those white cells with your shots, you get 500 points for each, and they turn back to their original color. However, you have to shoot down the actual aliens in order to advance to the next level.

 

Apart from that, the total playing time has been rather short because I've been busy selecting and purchasing a wireless microphone.

[+Ripdubski]

Atari 2600

Keystone Kapers - 15m

Pitfall - 13m

 

Atari 7800

Dig Dug - 20m

Pac-Man Collection - 40m

Pole Pisition 2 - 20m

 

Atari 8 Bit

Dungeon Hunt (home brew) - 25m

 

ColecoVision

Artillery Duel- 30m

Edited March 1, 2015 by Ripdubski

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

1) Pitfall! - 92 minutes. Highest score 113,873 points, obtained at 2600 NEW HSC Season 4 / Week 6.

 

2) Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns - 70 minutes. Highest score: 196,352 points (I LOST my concentration when I was close to the endpoint of this game).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nagILOXhKgk

 

3) Tom Boy (Pitfall Variant by Rainbow Vision) - 30 minutes

 

4) Sky Skipper - 64 minutes. Highest score 100,000 points (Rolled The Score), obtained at 2600 NEW HSC Season 4 / Week 7.

(Video and Statistical Tables to view more details of my gameplay recorded)

 

ATARI 7800:

Ikari Warriors - 25 minutes. Highest Score: circa 120,000 points on Expert Difficulty.

 

GAMEBOY:

Ms. Pac-Man - 50 minutes. Highest Score: 184,960 points (Fullscreen Mode - "1/2" icon enabled to avoid "bad surprises")

Edited March 1, 2015 by oyamafamily

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Destiny of an Emperor - 298 min.

Orb-3D - 317 min.

Atari Jaguar:

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy - 9 min.

PlayStation:

Assault Rigs - 5 min.

Gunship - 2 min.

Kileak: The DNA Imperative - 406 min.

Dreamcast:

The Grinch - 56 min.

Seaman - 71 min.

Beat Orb-3D and Kileak. Thoughts on those here, along with Target: Renegade from last week.

Otherwise, for most of the rest of the week, my main gaming activity was chipping away at Destiny of an Emperor, and testing out a couple of new PlayStation longbox acquisitions (and my new Jaguar AV cable).

Then today, prompted by the death of Leonard Nimoy, my wife and I finally started a "game" of Seaman, which we've been meaning to try for ages. Nice to hear Nimoy's voice -- though not as often as we might like, since progress is slow to say the least.

And, since the Dreamcast was already set up and it's been snowing, I spent an hour playing The Grinch, a typical 3-D platformer collectathon with that genre's usual irritations.

[twoquickcapri]

Sega Saturn:
Virtua Cop - 65 min.

[Iwantgames:)]

Got some new NES games this week

 

NES -

 

Arkanoid - 5min

 

Cobra Triangle - 7min

 

Dash Galaxy in The Alien Asylum - 3min

 

Demon Sword - 3min

 

Heroes of The Lance - 5min

 

Legacy of The Wizard - 2min

 

Mad Max - 4min

 

Pinbot - 15min

 

Raid on Bungeling Bay - 5min

 

Roadblasters - 20min

 

Shadowgate - 5min

 

Stealth A.T.F - 5min

 

The Hunt For Red October - 7min

 

Time Lord - 5min

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 9, running from February 23 - March 1. We logged 2787 minutes of eligible playtime, playing 55 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kileak: The DNA Imperative (PlayStation) - 406

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 402

3. Orb-3D (NES/Famicom) - 317

4. Destiny of an Emperor (NES/Famicom) - 298

5. Pitfall! (Atari 2600) - 175

6. Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge (Amiga) - 164

7. Sky Skipper (Atari 2600) - 104

8. Seaman (Dreamcast) - 71

9. Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (Atari 2600) - 70

10. Virtua Cop (Sega Saturn) - 65

10. Sno-Cat (VIC-20) - 65

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 402

2. Pitfall! (Atari 2600) - 175

3. Sky Skipper (Atari 2600) - 104

4. Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (Atari 2600) - 70

5. Sno-Cat (VIC-20) - 65

6. Flipull (Tandy MC-10) - 52

7. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 40

8. Gun Fight (Arcade) - 30

8. Tom Boy [Pitfall hack] (Atari 2600) - 30

8. Artillery Duel (ColecoVision) - 30

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (813)

2. NES/Famicom (706)

3. PlayStation (413)

4. Amiga (164)

5. Dreamcast (127)

6. VIC-20 (107)

7. Atari 7800 (105)

8. Sega Saturn (65)

9. Tandy MC-10 (60)

10. PC (DOS) (54)

This week K-----, a game about keeping a madman from blowing stuff up, just edges out K-----, a game about keeping a madman from blowing stuff up.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom!- 427 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 104,367

 

[karokoenig]

Nice, Atarian. Scores are going up again. Here are my times for the week:

 

Atari 2600

Boom Bang: 3 min

Cosmic Commuter: 5 min

Fantastic Voyage: 8 min

Fast Food: 3 min

Polaris: 6 min

Sky Skipper: 115 min

Superman: 30 min

Taz: 5 min

 

Good week in the HSC. I rolled the score in Sky Skipper, and it was even kind of fun. Since the difficulty maxes out pretty early in the game, the rest becomes a bit of a Zen exercise. I enjoyed myself, though.

Apart from Superman, which is this week's HSC game, the others were all given to me for free by a fine fellow who liquidated some of the doubles in his collection. Thanks a lot!

 

Commodore C16/Plus4

Beach Head: 10 min

Control Command: 4 min

Formula 1 Simulator: 8 min

Thai Boxing: 2 min

 

Been finding some C16 game tapes on flea markets recently. Quite unusual. But again, it's getting more and more obvious that the C16 isn't really up to the job. The rendition of Beach Head (one of the C64 superclassics) is utterly pathetic. The only game in the above list that was even mildly interesting was Formula 1 Simulator.

[carlsson]

PC DOS:

Snake [Roar Lauritzsen 1984] - 13 min.

I was much too tired and busy to get more gameplay. On top of it, I catched a bad cold with headache, coughing and significant fever and for the first time in many years took two painkillers within the same day.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week:

 

Online (non-eligible):

Antarctica - 8 min.

Blastoid - 4 min.

Bustn Redzta - 5 min.

Freejack - 46 min. in 2 sessions

Lost hero - 7 min.

Panic Run - 3 min.

Snapple - 10 min.

 

Sorry, no classic games again this week. I wrote about Antarctica already last week. The other games are also Javascript games by Brent Silby.

 

In Blastoid, you are a mothership (actually, the mothership of Space Invaders) in the center of the screen and have to shoot at various attacking aliens by aiming with the mouse.

 

Bustn Redzta is another platformer where you have dragons (actually Fygars from Dig Dug... or do they come from Rock'n'Rope?) roaming around the platforms which you, a Q*bert-like creature, have to jump over, and actually you have to eliminate bubbles by jumping on them.

 

Freejack is pretty much a Bomb Jack clone with some of the patterns changed and animals instead of bombs which get freed if you touch them.

 

Lost hero is a game where Pac-Man does a kind of race trying to gobble up as many dots as possible (think Monaco GP vs. Guitar Hero) while avoiding ghosts that move left and right, up and down. The game time is fixed to the duration of a maxi version of "I don't wanna be a hero" by Johnny Hates Jazz which is the only sound to be heard in this game.

 

Panic Run is a sort-of vertical scroller playing in the desert, but you run down (!) the screen shooting at various creatures haunting you.

 

Finally, in Snapple you have monsters of various colors trying to get at the apples. You can eliminate them by grabbing one monster with the mouse pointer and then hovering over three more of the same color with it, so that all four disappear. The monsters get faster and faster and appear in more and more colors, so eventually they will gobble up every available apple before you get them all, then the game is over.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

1) Cross Force - 10 minutes

2) Space Cavern - 20 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

1) Double Dragon - 109 minutes. Highest Score 111,800 points, for 7800 HSC Season 7, Game 18 (looks like I was SO CLOSE to the endpoint of this game).

 

2) Planet Smashers - 30 minutes. Highest Score 801,850 points on Difficulty Hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNhsOe_RAo8

 

3) Space Invaders - 3 minutes.

[oyamafamily]

One more time to add:

 

ATARI 2600 - Worm War I - 68 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

All-Pro Basketball - 1 min.

Destiny of an Emperor - 395 min.

Dropzone - 2 min.

Heavy Shreddin' - 8 min.

Noah's Ark - 2 min.

3DO:

Battlesport - 77 min.

Snow Job - 90 min.

Dreamcast:

The Grinch - 143 min.

Seaman - 141 min.

Made it through a good chunk of Destiny of an Emperor; raised a surly, hard-of-hearing aquatic creature in Seaman; endured more tedious, "see if you can guess what we want you to do next" 3D platforming in The Grinch; and, after a long hiatus from the game, defeated an opponent in Battlesport.

My wife and I also used a snow day to check out the distressingly un-snow-themed (but still promising) 3DO graphic/FMV adventure Snow Job.

[twoquickcapri]

Atari Jaguar:
Breakout 2000 - 75 min.

Atari ST:
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge - 50 min.
Crazy Cars III (Lamborghini American Challenge) - 10 min.

Philips CD-I:
Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold - 15 min.
Thunder in Paradise (the Game) - 15 min.
Thunder in Paradise (the Episode) - 67 mins.

 

Bought a light gun for the CD-i and tried out a few games. Had trouble getting the gun to calibrate so I didn't play them very long. Also watched the movie that comes with Thunder in Paradise and it was horrible. You know you have a bad movie when Hulk Hogan and the kid from Step by Step are the best actors in it.