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

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 672 minutes

Breakout - 57 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 297,384

 

 

[+wongojack]

Coleco

Jumpman Jr 47

Carnival 18

 

SMS

Golden Axe Warrior 42

Golvellius 38

My Hero 4

Wonder Boy 3 Dragon... 35

Power Strike II 8

Super Monaco GP 2

Chase HQ 10

Montezuma's Revenge 8

 

Game Gear

Power Strike II (Aleste II) 16

 

Travelling this and next week so most of my gaming will be done on my GP2x Wiz. I did a little tour of SMS games to see if any would be right for continuing through my trip, still deciding.

[oyamafamily]

ARCADE:

Ms. Pac-Man (from Namco Museum 50th Anniversary on GBA Emulator) - 25 minutes

 

ATARI 2600:

1) Missile Command (from Atari 7800 Console) - 20 minutes

2) Pac-Man (from Atari 7800 Console) - 40 minutes

 

ATARI 5200:

Space Invaders (from Altirra Emulator) - 20 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Fatal Run (from MESS Emulator) - 260 minutes

 

SNES:

Ms. Pac-Man (from ZSNES Emulator) - 70 minutes

[oyamafamily]

VIDEOS AND PHOTOS OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Missile Command via Atari 7800 Prosystem Console

 

2) Space Invaders Game 3, for 5200 HSC Season 9, Round 8

 

3) Fatal Run for 7800 HSC Season 8, Round 14 (video and statistical tables)

 

4) Namco Museum 50th Anniversary: Ms. Pac-Man on GBA

 

5) SNES Ms. Pac-Man

 

[BurritoBeans]

Apple II:

Choplifter - 50 minutes

 

Dreamcast:

Vigilante 8: Second Offense - 82 minutes

 

PC (Windows)

Daikatana - 332 minutes

 

Nothing crazy this week, been working on other stuff really. First off, being a bit of an idiot, I found that I do have S-Video input on my stuff, so I finally got to test my Dreamcast on S-Video and man it looks so much nicer than RF does. Because of this I ran some Vigilante 8, it's just a fun vehicle combat game - the only issue I really have is that I have to use the joystick on the DC controller to control it. Choplifter on Apple II got more time also, I'm trying to master the awkwardness known as paddles to simulate a stick and it's a pain but fun to do. Finally, Daikatana got some playtime, as I wanted to run through this game again. A tip to anyone who wants to play this - dear god please download the unofficial 1.3 patch and install it. One of the major reasons this game is panned is because the AI sidekicks Superfly Johnson and Mikiko are both complete idiots. They shout at you for looking at them, shoot you in the back because they want to hit something in front of you, and can't move around a map unless you sit there and wait for their slow walking while they fail to turn the simplest of corners. With 1.3 a good bit of this stuff is fixed up as they are actually workable, and if you want you can even disable the sidekicks and blast through the game yourself (Yeah some of the cutscenes will show them but you never actually have to worry about them) which makes the game a good bit more enjoyable. The only other issue I can find with the game apart from the occasional stutter which leads me to explode into gibs and the AI is that the later levels are just a bit boring, I have trouble sitting through some of 'em and just want to exit the game to go play something else - overall it's not terrible when you patch it up but there are a few issues you can find.

 

So yeah, that was the week. Most of the time has gone into working on side projects, I have a tape deck (Yamaha KX-R430) which needed fixing as the door was jammed and wouldn't open, and the oboe is being a pain again for me so I'm working on my reeds. I'll be finishing up the last episode of Daikatana for next week and I'm hoping to get back to finishing the Game.com here soon so I don't have to pick it up again for a while.

Edited May 30, 2016 by BurritoBeans

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD: 5200 Ms. Pac-Man from Altirra Emulator - 20 minutes

Highest Score on Banana Level: 82,030 points. It was more irresistible to play!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeXW9uAsiKs

[+cvga]

Haven't had much time for games in awhile but took advantage of the long weekend to play DK II for the Intellivision (75 minutes). Both games on the cart are incredible.

[+thegoldenband]

^Is that D2K Arcade, I presume? (Or D2K Arcade SE?)

[+davidcalgary29]

Jaguar: 'Elansar', 118 minutes

 

Yes, yes -- don't mock: it took me almost two hours to finish (with hints).

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Atari 8-bit:

The Spectre of Castle Doomrock - 5 min.

Game Boy:

Shisenshou: Match Mania - 6 min.

SNES:

Adventures of Mighty Max - 216 min.

Air Cavalry - 317 min.

Beat Mighty Max on Practice difficulty -- which gives you fewer levels, more lives, and an abbreviated ending -- and then on Normal, which is the only other difficulty setting, and wasn't too much tougher. I beat the Genesis version in 2013, but I'm not sure if it had the same number of levels.

After that I started playing Air Cavalry, a very weak helicopter action game whose Mode 7 visuals are about all it has going...and they aren't that great. There's basically nothing of substance about the game on the Internet -- no walkthroughs, no playthroughs on YouTube -- and it was hard to believe a game like this offers neither passwords nor battery save, but that's the case.

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to beat the Middle East campaign on real hardware, I decided to play through the entire game with savestates to figure out how it's structured -- especially, whether the game's three campaigns interconnect in any way (they don't), and how many levels each one has (exactly 12, contrary to one reviewer's claim that there are "8 to 10").

I'll go back and beat the Middle East campaign legitimately, and maybe Central America too. But I'm not sure I have the patience to put up with the irritating search-and-rescue missions that bog down the Indonesia campaign, which is the game's equivalent of Hard mode, I suppose.

[karokoenig]

After that I started playing Air Cavalry, a very weak helicopter action game whose Mode 7 visuals are about all it has going...and they aren't that great. There's basically nothing of substance about the game on the Internet -- no walkthroughs, no playthroughs on YouTube -- and it was hard to believe a game like this offers neither passwords nor battery save, but that's the case.

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to beat the Middle East campaign on real hardware, I decided to play through the entire game with savestates to figure out how it's structured -- especially, whether the game's three campaigns interconnect in any way (they don't), and how many levels each one has (exactly 12, contrary to one reviewer's claim that there are "8 to 10").

I'll go back and beat the Middle East campaign legitimately, and maybe Central America too. But I'm not sure I have the patience to put up with the irritating search-and-rescue missions that bog down the Indonesia campaign, which is the game's equivalent of Hard mode, I suppose.

 

 

What a coincidence. I bought that game less that 16 hours ago when I finally was able to sneak off to a flea market again (lots of work and my 2-year-old mostly prevented this recently). So the game's not all that spectacular, eh? Ah welI, I paid 4 Euro for the cart only, and it is in really great condition. Prices for SNES are usually higher over here. Even for the most stupid sports titles, anything under 5 Euro can be considered a steal. I guess that's not so bad then. The lack of a save feature is a huge disappointment, however.

Edited May 30, 2016 by karokoenig

[twoquickcapri]

Sega Saturn:
The Need for Speed - 188 min.

3DO:
The Need For Speed - 100 min.

FM Towns Marty:
Raiden Densetsu - 65 min.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

While my household may not have a whole lot of tracker eligible time to contribute this week, it was still a pretty darn good week for gaming around here with a definite theme to the games that saw the most play.

 

 

 

Ineligible

Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS) - 268 minutes

Call of Duty: Black Ops (Nintendo DS) - 42 minutes

Doom (Game Boy Advance) - 12 minutes

The House of the Dead III (Arcade, played on The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return for Nintendo Wii) - 43 minutes

The House of the Dead: Overkill (Nintendo Wii) - 521 minutes

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo Wii) - 67 minutes

Orcs & Elves (Nintendo DS) - 509 minutes

The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 12 minutes

Red Steel 2 (Nintendo Wii) - 37 minutes

Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil (Nintendo Wii) - 276 minutes

Touch the Dead (Nintendo DS) - 231 minutes

Arcade

Centipede - 6 minutes

Donkey Kong Junior - 7 minutes

The House of the Dead 2 (played on The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return for Nintendo Wii) - 24 minutes

NES

Hogan's Alley - 19 minutes

PC-DOS

Final Doom - 36 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

2,110 minutes (35 hours 10 minutes) [92 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

Nintendo DS: 1,050 minutes

Nintendo Wii: 901 minutes

Arcade: 80 minutes

PC-DOS: 36 minutes

NES: 19 minutes

Android: 12 minutes

Game Boy Advance: 12 minutes

Thinking back about the games played in my household this week, the theme for this week was definitely "Shooting zombies!" For my part in it I played tons of The House of the Dead: Overkill and The House of the Dead III on the Wii, the Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops, a bit of Doom and Final Doom, and spent an hour or so trying my hand at Touch the Dead for the DS on furious difficulty. The misses had no less zombie annihilating fun, spending most of her gaming time this week playing through Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil with Jill on easy mode, logging the vast majority of the time in Touch the Dead with her play through on normal difficulty, and trying out The House of the Dead 2 on the Wii for the first time; which she very much enjoyed.

For me though the real highlight of the week was discovering and playing through what was the absolute best western style RPG that I've ever played on a handheld: Orcs & Elves for the DS! This gem from Id Software is a first person dungeon crawler RPG that is heavy on action and low on the tedium that turns a lot of people (especially me lol) off RPGs. It's got a gloriously retro visual style, using character sprites and textures very reminiscent of Id Software's earlier releases like the original Doom trilogy, Hexen, and Heretic. The game and item mechanics are all thoroughly explained as you go along, the story is great and very humorous at times, and the whole game is just wonderfully crafted to be very approachable and easy to get into for those who may not be too familiar with dungeon crawling RPGs. This game is everything that I wished The Dark Spire was, and it's a real shame that more people don't know about it. I played Orcs & Elves almost non-stop from the moment I started it until I finished it and just couldn't put it down for anything, and now that I've finished the story on normal difficulty I'm really looking forward to going back and playing through it on hard mode!

As far as what next week has in store for my household, right now my wife is playing through Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil again (as Chris instead of Jill and on hard instead of easy difficulty this time) and I know I should really get back to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to finish who knows how many hours are left in the story. Whether or not I will though is yet to be seen, since the draw of Orcs & Elves is pretty strong lol I'd also like to beat Touch the Dead on furious mode and Final Doom's TNT chapter if I can, and maybe spend a bit more time exploring the Sega Master System library so I'll have a more substantial amount of eligible play time to contribute next week.

In any case, I think that about wraps it up for this week! And remember boys and girls, if you're ever attacked by a zombie, always aim for the head!

Edited May 30, 2016 by Jin

[BurritoBeans]

 

...For me though the real highlight of the week was discovering and playing through what was the absolute best western style RPG that I've ever played on a handheld: Orcs & Elves for the DS! This gem from Id Software is a first person dungeon crawler RPG that is heavy on action and low on the tedium that turns a lot of people (especially me lol) off RPGs. It's got a gloriously retro visual style, using character sprites and textures very reminiscent of Id Software's earlier releases like the original Doom trilogy, Hexen, and Heretic. The game and item mechanics are all thoroughly explained as you go along, the story is great and very humorous at times, and the whole game is just wonderfully crafted to be very approachable and easy to get into for those who may not be too familiar with dungeon crawling RPGs. This game is everything that I wished The Dark Spire was, and it's a real shame that more people don't know about it. I played Orcs & Elves almost non-stop from the moment I started it until I finished it and just couldn't put it down for anything, and now that I've finished the story on normal difficulty I'm really looking forward to going back and playing through it on hard mode!...

Dang dude, I forgot how much I used to love this game. It's sat in my DS Lite for years now, probably the one DS game I've played the most, and I still like to pick it up and run it now and then. We got it back in '07 or '08 at EB Games/what is now Gamestop here, and I probably ran through it a good three or four times in the past - I've got a party to go to with nothing to do so I think I'll be giving this game another shot later today. Label on the cart is a bit ruined, but it still plays fine and that's all I care.

 

Also, bit more time, this time with the 600XL and 2600 that I got in this morning

 

2600:

E.T. - 20 minutes

Pitfall! - 21 minutes

Yar's Revenge - 30 minutes

 

Atari 8-bit:

Moon Patrol - 42 minutes

 

So yeah, I plugged the 2600 in and I forgot how sketchy the RF is on that thing. If the cable is in the RCA-Coax adapter the right way and at the right angle it looks nice, but then if you bump it a tiny bit it gets super fuzzy - I think I'll be getting a video mod on my 4-switch sometime here. I ran some 2600 carts for the heck of it, starting off with Pitfall. I kinda suck at pitfall, I'd get maybe one or two treasures before I'd fail, but I still like the game for what it is. Yar's Revenge is fun stuff, I made it 5 or 6 boards in then lost all my lives, so I was pretty glad to be playing that for once in a while. E.T. also got a bit of time, I just played through it twice, once on the 3rd game (No FBI or Scientist) and then once on 1st (FBI and Scientist) which was ok, I always liked the game a good bit, and it's sure a ton better than something like Daikatana was to me. The 600XL got plugged in, and it's a system I need to work on. I only have one piece of software, and that's a Moon Patrol cartridge. I've wanted to 64K mod the thing and get more for it like an SIO2PC or something, but I have yet to work on that. With Moon Patrol, I like the game a good bit, it's simple to pick up and pretty fun to run through. Definitely a game that I love in the arcade, and the A8 port isn't too bad either.

[+thegoldenband]

^Just to be clear, are those Monday times? If so, I'll count 'em with next week.

[BurritoBeans]

^Just to be clear, are those Monday times? If so, I'll count 'em with next week.

 

Yep, just figured I'd mention them before I forget 'em.

[Iwantgames:)]

TI-99/4A -

 

Sabre Wulf - 20min

 

Might be to late, I forgot to post yesterday :/

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 22, running from May 23 - 29. We logged 4253 minutes of eligible play, playing 64 games on a total of 22 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 672

2. Daikatana (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 332

3. Air Cavalry (SNES) - 317

4. Fatal Run (Atari 7800) - 260

5. Adventures of Mighty Max (SNES) - 216

6. Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 203

7. Need for Speed, The (Sega Saturn) - 188

8. Grim Fandango (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 132

9. Elansar (Atari Jaguar) - 118

10. Need For Speed, The (3DO) - 100

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 672

2. Fatal Run (Atari 7800) - 260

3. Breakout (Atari 2600) - 93

4. D2K Arcade (Intellivision) - 75

5. Piggy Bank (Intellivision) - 60

6. Choplifter (Apple II) - 50

7. Jumpman Jr. (ColecoVision) - 47

8. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 40

9. Astrosmash (Intellivision) - 30

10. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 25

10. Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 25

10. Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-man (Intellivision) - 25

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (825)

2. SNES (603)

3. PC (Windows 95/98) (464)

4. Arcade (341)

5. NES/Famicom (264)

6. Atari 7800 (260)

7. PC (DOS) (239)

8. Intellivision (190)

9. Sega Saturn (188)

10. Atari Jaguar (178)

Kaboom achieves 3-way domination again, while the SNES manages a decent challenge to earn the #2 system spot.

But the big news is that Silent Hunter becomes only the 4th game to reach the 10,000 minute club, with 10,037 minutes logged to date. It is and remains the #4 game in the all-time charts, with VCS Galaxian at #3, Christmas Carol at #2, and Kaboom way, way, way out in front at #1.

[karokoenig]

But the big news is that Silent Hunter becomes only the 4th game to reach the 10,000 minute club, with 10,037 minutes logged to date.

 

So THAT's where those 7 days of my life went during the last two years. Add to that countless hours of reading. I have acquired quite a library of historical books by now, some of them hard to come by because they are out of print for decades now. So if anyone needs a recommendation for good books about submarine warfare in the Pacific, Atlantic, the Mediterranean, US, British, Japanese, German, whatever... just ask. Computer games and learning... some people say they don't go well together. Nonsense .

 

As for tracker time, I'm in October '43 with my current playthrough. So more than 1 1/2 years still to go.

Edited May 31, 2016 by karokoenig

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Solar Storm: 14 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 240 min

 

PC (Windows 95)

Grim Fandango: 148 min

 

Finished three war patrols in Silent Hunter and finished one of the greatest Adventure Games ever conceived.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Atari 2600:

Beamrider: 6 Minutes

Atari 7800:

Robotron 2084: 10 Minutes

Asteroids: 8 Minutes

Colecovision:

Donkey Kong: 45 Minutes

Donkey Kong Jr: 20 Minutes

Carnival: 10 Minutes

Smurfs Rescue in Gargamel's Castle: 15 Minutes

Venture: 20 Minutes

Zaxxon: 6 Minutes

SG-1000:

Galaga: 25 Minutes

Hang- On 2: 20 Minutes

Zaxxon: 5 Minutes

NES:

Duck Hunt: 15 Minutes

R.C. Pro-AM: 25 Minutes

Turbo Grafx-16:

Splatterhouse: 15 Minutes

Arcade/Mame:

Mario Bros: 10 Minutes

Star Wars The Arcade Game: 10 Minutes

Pole Position: 5 Minutes

Tempest: 5 Minutes

Tron: 5 Minutes

Lunar Rescue: 2 Minutes

Robotron 2084: 7 Minutes

Zaxxon: 3 Minutes

Asteroids: 7 Minutes

Track and Field: 10 Minutes

Space Invaders: 15 Minutes

[+davidcalgary29]

Lynx:

 

'Loopz', 65 minutes

'Relief Pitcher', 10 minutes (I suck at this game)

 

Jaguar:

 

'Impulse X', 30 minutes

[carlsson]

Interton VC-4000:

Air/Sea Battle (Interton #7) - 7 min.

Car Racers (Interton #1, Grand Prix) - 3 min.

Invaders (Interton #32) - 4 min.

Paddle Games (Interton #3, Olympics) - 10 min.

Tank Battle (Interton #4, Combat) - 5 min.

Since there were several systems in the 1292 AVPS group (Acetronic/Audio Sonic/Fountain/Radofin, Cabel, Interton, Karvan, Rowtron, TRQ, Voltmace etc), I thought it might be worthwhile to point out which # within the Interton series each game represents, as well as using the generic naming used on e.g. this site. While chances are slim that anyone else in the tracker would be playing games from the other 1292 systems, they probably would be grouped together as they have the same hardware, just different cartridge slots.

Anyway, neither of these four new games to my collection were particularly interesting. Actually I spent more time disassembling one of the cartridges, desoldering the ROM, install a socket and try to fit an EPROM than actually playing the games. The experiment didn't work out fully, but at least I didn't damage more than the label of the cartridge, re-inserting the original ROM still made the game working.

[+davidcalgary29]

Jaguar: this, 10 minutes

 

Also: 'Speedster II', one hour. It was the kids...I swear!

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

1) Missile Command - 20 minutes

2) Pac-Man - 45 minutes

 

ATARI 5200:

1) Ms. Pac-Man - 16 minutes

2) Jr. Pac-Man - 20 minutes

 

SEGA MASTER SYSTEM:

1) Ms. Pac-Man - 25 minutes

2) Pac-Mania - 33 minutes

 

SEGA GAME GEAR:

1) Ms. Pac-Man - 15 minutes

2) Pac-Man - 15 minutes

Edited June 5, 2016 by oyamafamily