What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2016 (Season 9)

[sometimes99er]

TI-99/4A

TI Invaders - 110 minutes

Nonogram - 50 minutes

Parsec - 35 minutes

Slymoids - 20 minuttes

Minesweeper - 15 minutes

Arcades

Bomber Man World - 65 minutes

Riot City - 45 minutes

Rampage: World Tour - 45 minutes

Pipi & Bibis - 15 minutes

 

 

[+thegoldenband]

I am curious though, as the tracker goes along and the console generations pass, do you think there may come a point when you start making more years eligible for the tracker? For instance, right now game systems from 2000 to 2004 might not be inarguably "retro", but at some point after another console generation or two passes would there come a point when early 2000's systems would become "retro" enough to consider adding them to the list of tracker eligible systems? Just something I've been pondering lately.

 

That's a very good question! I've thought before about including early 2000s handhelds at the very least, e.g. the Game Boy Advance and WonderSwan Color, and maybe the later handhelds like the DS.

 

OTOH I also think there's merit to bailing out with the Dreamcast, often said to be the last console of its kind and the end of an era. The consoles and games that followed -- PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube -- arguably form the foundation of the style of gaming that's continued until the present day. But, it's debatable.

[+wongojack]

/\/\ And a long debate indeed could be held on that topic.

 

I think there is an argument to be made that the original Playstation actually kicked off the foundation of the current gaming styles/genres which is already included.

 

Best probably to leave the cutoff at 2000. That is a clean date and allows for more than half of all of gaming's history to be included in this tracker as "classic." I know you mention Tennis for Two (anyone ever claimed to have put time in that?), but if we think of gaming as really getting started about 1977, that means we are dealing with about 39 years of real history. Tracking everything before 2000 allows for about 60% of the entire history to be counted as classic/retro in this tracker. Perhaps keeping that balance in play is a good target. 60% of the history of gaming is classic and can be counted as retro. That means when we get to 2019 or 2020 it might be time to move things forward a few years.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

That's a very good question! I've thought before about including early 2000s handhelds at the very least, e.g. the Game Boy Advance and WonderSwan Color, and maybe the later handhelds like the DS.

 

OTOH I also think there's merit to bailing out with the Dreamcast, often said to be the last console of its kind and the end of an era. The consoles and games that followed -- PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube -- arguably form the foundation of the style of gaming that's continued until the present day. But, it's debatable.

I definitely get where you're coming from. Early 2000's handhelds like the Game Boy Advance and WonderSwan Color do have a decidedly retro feel to their game libraries due to the more limited processing power of handhelds compared to the home consoles of the time. The Game Boy Advance is basically a portable SNES, and even the later Nintendo DS from 2004 is pretty much an original PlayStation with a touchscreen in terms of it's graphics and game library.

 

But I also feel the same as you about home consoles from that time period. The PlayStation 2, XBox, and GameCube were the foundation of the modern gaming era, with vividly detailed polygonal graphics and dual analog stick controllers. They just don't feel "retro" to me in the same way that handheld systems from that era do.

 

Obviously what systems are eligible for the tracker is completely up to you since it is your project, but you'd certainly get no complaints from me if you made a few of the early 2000's handhelds eligible at some point.

[carlsson]

Given how dominant the Atari 2600, Intellivision and the others tend to be every week, it might turn out that even if we allow up to modern systems, the lists would be reasonably the same. Or perhaps have a requirement that in order to have newer systems to count, you also need to log at least some classic gaming, just to keep the spirit up. It means when Jin crams in some Game Boy Color gaming in a week, he's entitled to track GBA or even DS times too, but if random newcomer comes and just lists how many hours of Star Wars: Battlefront they played this week without really trying either of the Star Wars games for the Atari 2600 or C64, it still would be ineligible.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Gremlins: 40 min

 

NES

Kickle Cubicle: 12 min

Tiger Heli: 8 min

 

Sega Mega Drive

Sonic Spinball: 10 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 362 min

 

Variatio delectat. Apart from Gremlins, which was played for the 2600 HSC, I made some progress in Silent Hunter and tested a few new flea market finds. Kickle Cubicle is kind of cute. Nice puzzle game.

[Opry99er]

So far:

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Lemonade Stand (100 minutes)

Slymoids (45 minutes)

 

VCS:

 

GORF (30 minutes)

MOTU He-Man (25 minutes)

 

 

Intellivision:

 

Bowling (30 minutes)

MOTU He-Man (65 minutes)

Snafu (100 minutes)

Super Pro Football (20 minutes)

World Championship Baseball (20 minutes)

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is what I logged in for this week.

 

Atari 2600:

 

Gremlins: 40 Minutes

Crackpots: 10 Minutes

 

Intellivision:

 

Skiing: 5 Minutes

 

NES:

 

Mega Man: 30 Minutes

 

Genesis:

 

Outrun: 10 Minutes

Flicky: 10 Minutes

[carlsson]

Atari Jaguar:

Kasumi Ninja - 2 min.

BBC Micro:

Grand Prix - 8 min.

Parachute - 3 min.

The Way of the Exploding Fist - 11 min.

Zap! - 3 min.

MSX2:

Quarth - 12 min.

PC DOS:

Stunts / 4D Sports - 2 min.

Super Cassette Vision:

Kung-Fu Road - 3 min.

Miner 2049'er - 10 min.

Nebula - 37 min.

Wheelie Racer - 5 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week (March 7th through 13th)...

 

Apple II:

Frogger - 5 min.

 

Atari 2600:

Mangia - 76 min. in 3 sessions

 

Online (non-eligible):

Centipede (Atari Arcade) - 10 min.

Asteroids (Atari Arcade) - 10 min.

 

This week I continued to play Mangia, but less than last week. The problem is that even though the game is pretty simple, I can't manage to play it the way it should be played, and mistakes often lead to losing a chance early. I think a bot for playing this should be fairly easy to implement since you only have to watch a few fixed locations (Is the dog in the line of fire? Has the cat just appeared? Is Mama facing left or right or about to turn around? Is the table nearly full?) and throw or eat pasta in the right moment. But I didn't have time to start one yet.

 

Then I tried the Apple II version of Frogger after news broke that the Internet Archive now offers an online emulator with several old Apple II games (as far as I can tell, it's a Javascript version of M.E.S.S.). I was curious how a game with so much smooth scrolling would work on the Apple II. It works fairly well, but the framerate is not as good as on the arcade original, and there are slowdowns when you move your frog.

 

Finally, I tried "Centipede" and "Asteroids", two somewhat updated arcade ports, on Atari's Website where they have an Arcade section with several updated old games. The games are pretty well thought out, but offer no updates in gameplay over the original versions, only updated graphics and sound, and a different screen format.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Kurt_Woloch

[BurritoBeans]

3DO:

AD&D Deathkeep - 32 minutes

AD&D Slayer - 120 minutes

Alone in the Dark - 21 minutes

Battle Chess - 42 minutes

Brain Dead 13 - 20 minutes

Cannon Fodder - 32 minutes

Doctor Hauzer - 42 minutes

Escape from Monster Manor - 210 minutes

Gex - 92 minutes

Immercenary - 13 minutes

Jammit - 20 minutes

Mega Race - 22 minutes

Panzer General - 90 minutes

PaTaank - 24 minutes

Quarantine - 52 minutes

Return Fire - 12 minutes

Snow Job - 10 minutes

Syndicate - 212 minutes

Total Eclipse - 32 minutes

Woldenstein 3D - 120 minutes

 

Sega Saturn:

Virtual Hydlide - 320 minutes

 

Ok, so this week was purely 3DO and Saturn as the Game.com can wait. Why 3DO you ask? Well, goldenband linked to that 3DO ZONE forum, and while I'm still waiting on my account to be activated, I was reading some threads and I have to say that place looks pretty cool as I'm a big fan of my 3DO. I pretty much started off putting time into all the games that I don't play much, like Doctor Hauzer, as I never was that good with Japanese. Monster Manor got a good bit of playime, as I was watching ewhacs playthrough of the game again so I figured I'd pull out my disc and give it a go - I always used to think it wasn't that good, but after playing it again, I like it except for the spiders which always are what kill me. I popped in PaTaank, and well, I say I don't like the game but I honestly don't know what I'm doing. All I know are the controls and that I get points, that's it. With a game that I did learn how to play, there was Syndicate. I used to not know how to play this, but after reading the manual I had a bunch of fun with it. Wolfenstein 3D got played, and I forgot how I used to like the port - I got through an episode, so maybe I'll have to play it more. Gex, with its 92 minutes, was kind-of fun as I only ever played the PS1 version - this one was pretty cool too. I haven't played it in forever as I beat it with the The rest of the games were random, so yeah.

 

Also, Virtual Hydlide actually got played, as I ran through it. I absolutely hate the camera in the cave segment, but other than that, I like the game.

 

So yeah, ~64 hours down the drain on 3DO and Sega Saturn. Do I regret it? Nope, probably gonna play more 3DO for next week. Now to hope the games I ordered come in, and that my account gets activated on 3DO ZONE.

Edited March 13, 2016 by BurritoBeans

[Skippy B. Coyote]

So yeah, ~64 hours down the drain on 3DO and Sega Saturn. Do I regret it? Nope, probably gonna play more 3DO for next week. Now to hope the games I ordered come in, and that my account gets activated on 3DO ZONE.

What an awesome week of gaming! I've never played the 3DO myself, but it does look like a really cool system with a nice little library of games to choose from. And hey, any system with Wolfenstein 3D on it is a keeper in my book!

 

I thought I logged a ton of time this week, but your 64 hours totally blows my times for the week away. It's going to be a late night around here tonight so I'll be getting my household's times posted around midnight. That way I won't end up oversleeping tomorrow and missing the cutoff.

[Opry99er]

Wow... That is some big time 3DO playin'. Nicely done.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 5200:

1) Countermeasure - 1 minute

2) Galaxian - 3 minutes

3) Gyruss - 55 minutes

4) Keystone Kapers - 35 minutes

5) Mario Bros. - 30 minutes

6) Ms. Pac-Man - 35 minutes

7) Pole Position - 2 minutes

8 ) Space Dungeon - 3 minutes

9) Super Cobra - 20 minutes

10) Vanguard - 10 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

1) Armor Attack 2 - 30 minutes

2) Asteroids-VE - 44 minutes

3) b*nQ - 12 minutes

4) Beef Drop - 35 minutes

5) Dugeon Stalker - 52 minutes

6) Space Invaders - 45 minutes

7) Super Cobra - 35 minutes

8 ) Tower Toppler - 30 minutes

9) Waka Waka [hack of Pac-Man] - 65 minutes

10) Worm! - 85 minutes

[zylon]

5200-

 

Kangaroo- 35min

 

2600-

 

Missile Command- 1hr

[+thegoldenband]

@BurritoBeans: So glad you're enjoying the 3DO, and the forum! Let me know if you need any help activating your account (I'm not admin but I can PM them if need be).

 

Meanwhile, here are my times for the week:

 

Genesis:

(Disney's) TaleSpin - 322 min.

Dreamcast:

The Grinch - 73 min.

Worms World Party - 239 min.

Beat TaleSpin on Normal and Hard, managing a 1CC on the latter. It's a bad game.

Otherwise I completed the main goals for the third area of The Grinch (out of 4), and split my Worms World Party time between matches vs. my wife (she won the tiebreaker) and clearing the Time Attack/Scenario missions in 1P mode (all but two beaten).

[twoquickcapri]

Sega Genesis:

Crusader of Centy - 200 mins.

 

So I just happen to walk into a local used music store and took a look into their discount bin. The first game was Arnold Palmer Golf(CiB), don't really care, second game was Shining Force (cart only). I was like wow haven't seen Shining Force in a store for sale in along time. Then I went to look at the third genesis game they had and it was Crusader of Centy. I look at it and say "what" to myself. I'm like it can't be, it must be something else like Light Crusader but I look at it again and for sure it was Crusader of Centy. Turned the cart around and it had a price tag of $7.99 on it. It was cart only but totally worth it.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Time for a really big weekly post from my household! Not quite as big as BurritoBeans' 3DO extravaganza, but still one of the best weeks we've had in a while in terms of both overall play time and tracker eligible time.

 

 

Ineligible

Call of Duty: Black Ops (Nintendo DS) - 86 minutes

Clubhouse Games (Nintendo DS) - 54 minutes

Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) - 160 minutes

Dementium II (Nintendo DS) - 85 minutes

Doom (Game Boy Advance) - 69 minutes

Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS) - 25 minutes

Ōkamiden (Nintendo DS) - 508 minutes

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Nintendo DS) - 142 minutes

Arcade

Ms. Pac-Man (Played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 8 minutes

Game Boy

Boggle Plus - 29 minutes

Game Boy Color

Monopoly - 192 minutes

NES

Castlevania (Played on Classic NES Series: Castlevania for Game Boy Advance) - 91 minutes

Xevious (Played on Classic NES Series: Xevious for Game Boy Advance) - 15 minutes

PlayStation

Doom - 192 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

1,656 minutes (27 hours 36 minutes) [527 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo DS: 1,060 minutes

Game Boy Color: 192 minutes

PlayStation: 192 minutes

NES: 106 minutes

Game Boy Advance: 69 minutes

Game Boy: 29 minutes

Arcade: 8 minutes

Oh man, this was such a big week for my household that I hardly know where to start! I think the best place would be with the silver colored DS Lite pictured above, since that is what the vast majority of my gaming took place on this week. While I've been waiting for my new in box crimson & black DS Lite to arrive in the mail from Canada, one of my good friends ended up gifting me his old silver DS Lite as a belated birthday present towards the beginning of the week. Now that I finally had a system that was small and light enough for me to comfortably hold for long periods of time, and didn't have to borrow my wife's DSi XL to play DS games anymore, I dived back into Ōkamiden and some of my other recent DS favorites. I finished off Dementium II, then for nostalgia's sake I decided to go back and play through the original Dementium: The Ward to see how it compared. While definitely not as polished and refined as Dementium II, it's still a great game and I've been having a ton of fun playing through it again. I also put the DS Lite's GBA port to good use with several different titles, most of which were actually tracker eligible due to being direct ports of games on older platforms. I had an awesome time playing through and beating Castlevania again, Xevious is always fun, and Ms. Pac-Man is one of those games that just never really gets old to me; even on the small screen.

The one GBA game that wasn't eligible though was my old favorite Doom, and after hearing the sounds from me playing Doom on the GBA for half an hour or so the misses felt inspired to get out the original PlayStation port of Doom and spend some time playing it again herself. So, we've got two different ports of Doom to list time for this week but only one ends up being tracker eligible. The other game that my other half spent a fair bit of time with this week was Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords on her DSi XL, which she's still enjoying quite a bit and will probably be playing for many weeks to come. And, as usual, I ended up playing a good 3 or 4 games of Monopoly on the Game Boy Color as well as a little Boggle Plus for the original Game Boy during smoke breaks. Just like Ms. Pac-Man, I'm starting to think those are two games that I'll just never get tired of playing.

That about covers it for this week!

Edited March 14, 2016 by Jin

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 111 minutes

Gremlins - 263 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 155,693

[BurritoBeans]

One more submission, as I got more time in.

 

3DO:

AD&D Slayer - 62 minutes

Immercenary - 30 minutes

 

Game Boy:

The Castlevania Adventure - 31 minutes

 

Saturn:

Enemy Zero - 122 minutes

 

Just stuff from last night and the bus to/from school. Slayer is a great game, love the randomness, so I gave it a while longer. Immercenary I never understand, but whatever, I can get my rank up pretty high before I die so that's all cool. Enemy Zero was just for the heck of it, as it's my only other Saturn title (May get some more tonight if there's no 3DO or 32X at the shop) so I play it a good bit. The Castlevania Adventure is a funny little game, I have it via Virtual Console on my 3DS and while I have trouble with it, I still play it in the mornings and on the bus ride home.

[Opry99er]

Man.... I need to get a 3DO now.

[Opry99er]

So, if this gets in under the wire, great. If not, it will apply to next week's totals, I guess.

 

 

GBC:

 

Mickey's Racing Adventure (140 minutes)

Inspector Gadget (30 minutes)

 

 

Intellivision:

 

AD&D Cloudy Mountain (45 minutes)

Snafu (additional 40 minutes)

 

 

NES:

 

Faxanadu (100 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Tunnels of Doom (80 minutes)

[jfitzenr]

NES - Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat - ~200 minutes

 

INELIGIBLE - Stardew Mountain - Way too much time

[+wongojack]

Only one tracked game for me this week. Pinball Spectacular on the C64 at 377 mins

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 11, running from March 7 - 13. We logged 6533 minutes of eligible play, playing 98 games on a total of 21 systems.

Top 10:

1. Pinball Spectacular (C64) - 377

2. Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 362

3. Gremlins (Atari 2600) - 343

4. Disney's TaleSpin (Genesis) - 322

5. Virtual Hydlide (Sega Saturn) - 320

6. Worms World Party (Dreamcast) - 229

7. Syndicate (3DO) - 212

8. Escape from Monster Manor (3DO) - 210

9. Crusader of Centy (Genesis) - 200

9. Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat (NES/Famicom) - 200

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Pinball Spectacular (C64) - 377

2. Gremlins (Atari 2600) - 343

3. Snafu (Intellivision) - 140

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 111

5. TI Invaders (TI-99/4A) - 110

6. Lemonade Stand (TI-99/4A) - 100

7. Worm! (Atari 7800) - 85

8. Tunnels of Doom: Quest of the King (TI-99/4A) - 80

9. Mangia (Atari 2600) - 76

10. Waka Waka [Pac-Man hack] (Atari 7800) - 65

10. Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-man (Intellivision) - 65

10. Slymoids (TI-99/4A) - 65

Top 10 systems:

1. 3DO (1310)

2. Atari 2600 (655)

3. Genesis (552)

4. NES/Famicom (456)

5. TI-99/4A (455)

6. Atari 7800 (433)

7. C64 (377)

8. PC (DOS) (364)

9. Game Boy Color (362)

10. Intellivision (325)

Pinball Spectacular edges out Silent Hunter on the individual charts, and the 3DO takes the system charts by a wide margin, in a week with plenty of diversity (21 systems! 98 games!) and good, strong numbers that would've qualified for the all-time top 10 in years past.

But the biggest news is Kaboom dropping out of the main Top 10 for the first time since giant aardvarks roamed the earth, and ending a very, very long streak of Top 10 appearances. At least it's still in the upper half of the pre-NES top 10, preserving some sense of normalcy in these troubled times.

Though the 3DO is an outlier, the other striking thing about this week is how evenly distributed total times are, for both systems and games. Our #1 game, Pinball Spectacular, has less than double the minutes of the two games tied at #9. And our #2 system, the Atari 2600, has almost as small a margin over #10 Intellivision.

This overall parity also leads to close "races" in the charts: in five cases, adjacent games or systems are separated by margins of only 1-2 minutes.

Otherwise, no new entrants into the 1000-minute club this week either, though two games are closing in on the 5000-minute club and a third is creeping towards the 10000-minute club.