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

[Opry99er]

I am fascinated that Tunnels of Doom is JUST NOW making it to the 1,000 minute club. It would seem that such a foundational game would have had more tracker minutes by now.

 

Interesting...

[Opry99er]

Thus far:

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Aperture (20 minutes)

Barrage (50 minutes)

Henhouse (35 minutes)

Honeycomb Rapture (20 minutes)

Lemonade Stand (40 minutes)

NeverLander (30 minutes)

Snake Plissken (18 minutes)

TI Trek (50 minutes)

Tunnels of Doom-Pennies and Prizes (40 minutes)

Wizard's Doom (285 minutes)

 

 

 

So far, all TI.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Malagai: 7 min

Missile Control: 21 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 10 min

 

Real life wasn't kind to my timetable this week. One very quick attempt to finish a war patrol I began last week, which I had to abandon.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is what I played this past week.

 

Odyssey 2:

 

UFO: 5 Minutes

Blockout/Breakdown: 5 Minutes

 

NES:

 

Castlevania: 25 Minutes

Balloon Fight: 10 Minutes

Super Mario Bros. 45 Minutes

Dr. Mario: 15 Minutes

Mike Tyson's Punchout: 30 Minutes

 

Arcade/Mame:

 

Mario Bros: 40 Minutes

Tempest: 5 Minutes

Pole Position: 5 Minutes

Mr. Do: 10 Minutes

Star Wars: 5 Minutes

Section Z: 15 Minutes

Outrun: 10 Minutes

Frogger: 5 Minutes

Centipede: 5 Minutes

The Simpson's: 30 Minutes

Zombie Raid: 35 Minutes

Stratovox: 10 Minutes

[carlsson]

Amiga AGA/ECS:

Pinball Illusions: Law 'n Justice - 7 min.

Pinball Illusions: BabeWatch - 8 min.

Pinball Illusions: Extreme Sports - 7 min.

Amiga OCS:

Project X - 10 min.

C64:

Decathlon - 32 min. in two sessions

Tandy MC-10:

Flagon Bird - 4 min.

Flipull - 14 min.

Windows 95/98:

Worms 2 - 50 min.

The three pinball courses will likely be grouped together as 22 min, as this is how we usually handle multi-event games. Out of those three, I think I'd enjoy BabeWatch the most, although the previous courses on Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies were more fun than either of the three ones on Illusions, despite the latter has events such as multiball and minigames in the LCD field.

The two sessions of Decathlon were played using the PS2 dance mat, which gives me a bit of long awaited exercise, although only a few muscle groups are used stepping to the left and right. I also set a new personal best on the slow event of Flagon Bird, 46 pts.

[BurritoBeans]

2600:

Dragster - 30 minutes

 

3DO:

Phoenix 3 - 20 minutes

Total Eclipse - 60 minutes

 

Arcade:

Pole Position II - 50 minutes

 

Neo Geo:

Last Blade II - 45 minutes

Metal Slug 2 - 30 minutes

Magician Lord - 15 minutes

 

SNES:

DOOM - 30 minutes

 

Alright, nothing really crazy this week. Most of my game time was put into CS:GO or Elite Dangerous playing with friends, so those took out a big chunk of my time. For 2600, I know that I'm having issues with all the other patches so I'm focusing on Dragster to see if I can get low enough - my lowest time has been 6.17, so I'm getting there.

 

3DO got a bit of time, as I tried it with some different video-out modes for the heck of it... RF is real dark, Composite is fine, and S-Video just looks a little better. So, Phoenix 3 got played, and really I don't know how to get that far in that game, the platforming segments control a bit strange to me and the space combat stuff is kinda fun but I always fail before I get to doing much of it. Total Eclipse also got played, it's a pretty solid shooter but like all space shooters I pretty much suck at it all the time.

 

The Neo Geo stuff got played again, I got Magician Lord because it wasn't bad price-wise and it's a fun game, I think I'll run through it more but it's a bit tough to me. Last Blade II got played, eh, it's a solid fighter and I played it against a friend, yeah I failed at that a good bit like expected. Metal Slug 2 got played also, which I like Metal Slug but I dunno, I'm not that good at it so I never get that far in and just fail after a while.

 

Finally, at work, I got to play a bit of the Pole Position II machine which is always a lot of fun, I like going for high scores and all that, and I played some SNES DOOM because I just needed to test the cart and ended up running through an episode for the heck of it, it's always fun stuff. So yeah, that's the week - nothing crazy, not a ton of time, but still some good stuff.

Edited July 17, 2016 by BurritoBeans

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (July 11th through 17th)...

 

Arcade:

Mario Bros - 33 min. in 2 sessions

 

Atari 7800:

Mario Bros - 33 min.

Jr. Pac-Man - 34 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Gremlins (Atarisoft) - 59 min.

Mario Bros. (Ocean) - 245 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Endless expansion - 167 min. in 2 sessions

 

This week I started off with playing some more Gremlins until I reached a point where the rounds start repeating. Then I took a look at different versions of Mario Bros. specifically the one on the Atari 7800 and Ocean's C-64 version... in addition to the arcade original, for comparison.

 

The 7800 version is a bit jerky. Seems to me like shuffling around the display list takes so much time that they can't keep up the game at 60 FPS... or the graphics chip steals that many cycles from the CPU. The sound is, as was to be awaited, pretty bad, but actually much worse than it had to be... the sound effects are far off from the arcade original. The colors match the arcade, but the enemy graphics are off as well... the turtles seem to go upright (like Bowser in Super Mario Bros.). The playability isn't bad, however, although the physics sometimes seem to be a bit wonky.

 

The Ocean version for the C-64 from 1987 is actually far worse than the leaked Atarisoft version from 1984. While it does have some details which the Atarisoft version doesn't have, like the platforms warping when the player hits them from below and the multi-channel music, the colors are wrong (coins are red and blue instead of red and yellow), the speeds are wrong (most of the enemies seem to move at the same speed, which is much faster than the turtles start out in the original version), the scoring is off (only 200 points for each coin collected during the bonus round), the rounds are off, and, worst of all, it's very hard to steer because you go for half a second, but then you get to run very fast. Add to that some sloppy programming concerning the detection when a character should turn around... they also turn around when colliding with the fireball, but in a somehow random way. All in all, although it lacks some detail, I think Atarisoft did a much better job at porting the game to the C-64 than Ocean, where the programmer just took too many liberties, maybe in thinking "Hey, we have to make it differ from the Atarisoft version". I think the Atarisoft C-64 version is even better than the Atari 7800 version because the sounds and graphics are truer to the arcade and the gameplay is smoother, even though the colors don't match up quite as well.

 

The arcade version is, of course, the original one, and a piece of cake compared to the Ocean C-64 version.

 

While I was at Atari 7800 games, I also played some Jr. Pac-Man. That version is pretty well made... I couldn't find any bigger flaws at least regarding gameplay.

 

Last I tried the game "Endless expansion" which I learned about from a Kongregate newsletter. This is a 2D online strategy game which easily could have done on 8-bit systems like the C-64, MSX, Colecovision, G7400 / Odyssey^3 et al. You place your units which produce wood and stone, from that you build a coal mine, the coal gets converted to steel by yet another unit and so on... you get the idea. The game is still ongoing in the background, I only counted the time I was actually looking at its gaming window.

[oyamafamily]

Due to the absence of Internet (connection dropped) in the last Sunday (July 10th, 2016), here are my gameplay times from the last 2 weeks. Some games were for the Activision Patches Summer Quest Contest 2016, and the last 2600 and 5200 games which I played are for Summer Contests at HighScore.com (Atari Categories). Until now, I am on the 1st place with 20 worldwide trophies taken from other users.

 

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 30 minutes

Beamrider - 25 minutes

Berzerk - 340 minutes

Bumper 'N' Jump - 35 minutes

Bumper Bash - 40 minutes

Chopper Command - 60 minutes

Conquest of Mars - 45 minutes

Earth Dies Screaming, The - 10 minutes

Galaxian Arcade [hack of Galaxian] - 16 minutes

Oink! - 10 minutes

Pengo - 35 minutes

Planet Raid [hack of River Raid] - 10 minutes

Pitfall! - 12 minutes

Robot Tank - 10 minutes

Space Invaders - 112 minutes

 

ATARI 5200:

Atlantis - 15 minutes

Pengo - 60 minutes

River Raid - 15 minutes

[Opry99er]

To add:

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Lemonade Stand (additional 15 minutes)

Wizard's Doom (additional 90 minutes)

Jedi Gauntlet--Demo (50 minutes)

[oyamafamily]

VIDEOS TO CHECK OUT:

 

1) 2600 Berzerk

 

2) 2600 Chopper Command Game 3-BB

 

3) 2600 Galaxian Arcade [hack of Galaxian]

 

4) 2600 Space Invaders

 

5) 2600 Asteroids

 

6) 2600 Bump 'N' Jump

 

7) 2600 Pengo

 

8 ) 2600 Planet Raid [hack of River Raid]

 

9) 5200 Atlantis

 

10) 5200 Pengo

Edited July 17, 2016 by oyamafamily

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 511 minutes

Pitfall II - 20 minutes

Keystone Kapers - 33 minutes

Chopper Command - 4 minutes

Skiing - 26 minutes

Freeway - 8 minutes

Barnstorming - 60 minutes

Pitfall! - 40 minutes

 

 

Kaboom High score of the week: 137, 590

 

[+Ksarul]

For the first time in a while, we actually got a chance to play some on out retro machines. It has been a busy couple of months (and I've spent a lot of my hobby time building hardware for other hobby fans, so there wasn't as much time for gaming fun as I'd like).

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Breakthrough: 3 minutes

Burger Time: 2 minutes

Video Games 1: 5 minutes

Jet Set Willy: 15 minutes

Parsec: 7 minutes

Bouncy: 12 minutes

Robotron 2084: 20 minutes

Centipede: 15 minutes

Pac Man: 25 minutes

Ms Pac Man: 5 minutes

Arcturus: 10 minutes

Flappy Bird: 20 minutes

 

Most of these were times from my 8-year-old son, although his brother contributed to two of the times and Robotron 2084 and Centipede were from me. A nice family group effort for the week!

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Action 52 - 871 min.

PlayStation:

Tennis Arena - 21 min.

V-Tennis - 220 min.

It took a lot of time with Action 52 to beat three games: They Came..., Space Dreams, and The Ooze. Space Dreams was easy and went down in less than 20 minutes, but the other two were among the toughest gaming achievements I've managed in a while, as both have a sixth level that's brutally difficult. (They Came has three more levels after that, but they're not nearly as hard if you know what to do.)

Then I played through the women's version of Tournament mode in V-Tennis, using the character Livitz to win the titular event and then defeat the hidden character Aversa. (I'm still trying to figure out if her name is a very sly joke.) Aversa has the same bullet serve as the hidden men's character Mattox, but unlike him, she sometimes faults and then hits a weaker second serve. She may also have better groundstrokes than Mattox, but it's hard to tell.

I was irritated that the last two matches were five sets, but I guess I can't complain, since the women's tour actually did feature five-set matches in the finals of the year-end championships from 1984 through 1998. In any event I won the match against Aversa 6-2 6-3 7-6(7), and was very glad to finish in straight sets as my focus was starting to waver; all the other, preceding matches were trivially easy.

Somewhere in there I also played an exhibition game in Tennis Arena, losing 7-5. I'm pretty sure it uses the same engine as the mediocre All-Star Tennis '99, which I've played and beaten on N64.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a really odd gaming week for me this week, with long awaited new arrivals and unexpected results. It was so odd in fact that instead of my usual single "games played this week" picture, this week there's three!

 

 

 

 

 

Arcade

Centipede - 4 minutes

Donkey Kong - 7 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 4 minutes

Pac-Man - 6 minutes

Space Invaders - 9 minutes

 

Game Boy

Faceball 2000 - 290 minutes

Mortal Kombat II - 38 minutes

Operation C - 9 minutes

Solar Striker - 21 minutes

Super Battletank - 91 minutes

Super Mario Land - 43 minutes

Super R.C. Pro-Am - 9 minutes

T2: The Arcade Game - 174 minutes

Tetris - 12 minutes

Xenon 2: Megablast - 99 minutes

Game Boy Color

Hexcite: The Shapes of Victory - 186 minutes

Shanghai Pocket - 31 minutes

PlayStation

Dino Crisis - 530 minutes

Total Play Time This Week

1,563 minutes (26 hours 3 minutes) [1,563 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

Game Boy: 786 minutes

PlayStation: 530 minutes

Game Boy Color: 217 minutes

Arcade: 30 minutes

This week saw host to a whole slew of gaming related arrivals in the mail, including a new in box copy of Faceball 2000 for the Game Boy, a new in box Game Genie for the Game Boy, an original Game Boy system with an olive green backlight and bivert chip mod from Game Boy Mods UK (the last one to be made before they went out of business no less), and a few additional games including Hexcite: The Shapes of Victory, Super Battletank, and T2: The Arcade Game. The first order of business for me was to try out Faceball 2000, since I enjoyed it so much via emulation, and I am happy to report that it played even better and smoother on real hardware. Next up was the Game Genie, which much to my surprise fit in the Game Boy Color perfectly with no contact between the bottom of the Game Genie and the top of the system in spite of Wikipedia's claim to the contrary. Back when I was a kid I had a Game Genie for my Game Boy and used to spend hours and hours messing around with codes for the games I had at the time, so along with Faceball 2000 I also ended up using the Game Genie to go back and try out a lot of those codes that I used to use as a kid for games like Operation C, Solar Striker, Super R.C. Pro-Am, and Mortal Kombat II. It was a ton of fun and really brought back some great memories, and I can safely say that to this day using a Game Genie still feels like performing some sort of secret forbidden black magic on your game system; and I mean that in the best kind of way!

Later in the week the aforementioned backlit and biverted original Game Boy from the now defunct Game Boy Mods UK arrived in the mail, and this is where things sadly took a turn for the worse. I ended up quickly encountering an unexpected problem with the system, or more accurately with my living and gaming environment. The problem for me was that where I usually play handheld games, outside on smoke breaks and inside on the couch, are both really bright and well lit environments, and I failed to consider the fact that older backlit LCD screens tend to wash out under bright light. In moderately lit, dim, and dark environments the backlight on this Game Boy is absolutely phenomenal and the pixels all look sharp as tacks thanks to the bivert mod, but outside on a sunny day or indoors directly under a bright light source the screen does wash out pretty badly. I really should have seen it coming, given that most backlit handhelds do this, but it honestly never even crossed my mind when I ordered the system. So, sadly, I'm now hoping to find this Game Boy a new home with someone who can put it to good use in a gaming environment that isn't super brightly lit like everywhere that I tend to play handheld games is. It's currently up for sale in my Marketplace sales thread and if someone here does want to take it off my hands then I plan to use the money from the sale to find myself a pristine condition unmodified original Game Boy system, since I now know that the areas I play in are well enough lit that a backlight won't be necessary.

On a happier note, I'm absolutely loving all the games that arrived in the mail this week! Hexcite is an awesome competitive puzzle game once you use the in-game tutorial to learn the rules, Super Battletank is really technically impressive and loads of fun for anyone who likes Battlezone or Robot Tank on the Atari 2600, and T2: The Arcade Game is hands down my game of the week! It's hard to believe that the infamous LJN could have made a game this good, let alone that a light gun game for the Game Boy could be worth playing, but I've been getting my light gun shooting fix on the go with T2 all week long and have been enjoying it immensely. At this point I've beaten the game 3 times (the first time around getting the bad ending, and the second and third times getting the good ending by destroying all objects in the Cyberdyne labs level) and I'm sure that I'll go back and play through it many more times just because it's so darn fun and can be beaten in 20 minutes or so once you get the hang of it. The only complaint I could really make about T2: The Arcade Game for the Game Boy is that it really needs to be played on a Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, or a GameCube's Game Boy Player. On earlier monochrome hardware like the original Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and Super Game Boy the graphics are just too detailed to be able to clearly make out everything happening on the screen without having the enemies often blend into the background; but when played on a GBC, GBA, or Game Boy Player the enemies and your aiming reticle are all automatically colored a different color than the background so that you can clearly see what is going on and where everything is. It's still a darn tough game even with the visual enhancements of later hardware, but definitely one I'd recommend picking up for any Game Boy fan looking for a fun, unique, and well crafted shooting challenge.

Lastly, to wrap things up for the week, the misses ended up spending the whole week playing through Dino Crisis for the PlayStation two more times to unlock all the extras in the game and is currently about 2/3 of the way through her second play through. I'm darn lucky that I got some new handheld games to play this week, because the TV was all hers all week long! As far as what next week has in store... I'm actually not too sure. After the disappointment of the backlit Game Boy that I had waited so long to get being nearly unplayable in all the locations that I usually play games I'm feeling a little burnt out on original Game Boy games, so I might end up taking some time to play some of my other (and unfortunately tracker ineligible) handhelds instead. I haven't played the Game Boy Advance SP or DS Lite in a while, so maybe I'll give them a go next week. There's one thing I do know for certain though, and that's that my wife will continue to monopolize the retro gaming TV until she has acquired the grenade launcher with infinite ammo in Dino Crisis. That girl really loves her survival horror games!

[carlsson]

Jin: Perhaps it is time for you to get into the closet, so you get a dark room to play backlit games?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Jin: Perhaps it is time for you to get into the closet, so you get a dark room to play backlit games?

 

 

I came out of the closet years ago, and I'm not going back in!

 

In all seriousness though I'm actually pretty copacetic about the backlit Game Boy that I had been wanting for years not really working out in my brightly lit gaming areas. I suppose that just means that I never really needed it to begin with, and I can put the money from reselling it towards other things that I'll be able to enjoy more without having to sit in some dark corner to play them.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Oh no, I managed to forget something again...

 

Could you please add another 73 minutes of Commodore 64 Mario Bros (Ocean) for a total of 318 minutes (in 2 sessions) in the past week (July 11th through 17th)? That's what I played yesterday, but I forgot to add that second session into the count...

[Iwantgames:)]

Ti-99/4a

 

Jedi Gauntlet 30min

 

Just one game this week, other than that I played PS4 and Wonderswan color

[+wongojack]

I actually had no tracked time this week, but I did play quite a few hours of "modern" games:

 

Tron Runner /r - played the trial on Xone (30 mins)

 

Magic the Gathering 2012 on X360 - I hadn't spent a lot of time with this one, but I probably played it more than 6 hours on Saturday. This is a great series

 

Bioshock 2 on X360 - I'd been putting this one off. I mostly liked the original and finally decided it was time for the sequel. I played about 3 hours

 

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West on PS3 - I've had this game on the shelf for years and finally gave it a spin. I was pleased, but not blown away.

 

Beyond: Two Souls on PS3 - I really enjoyed my time with this on Sunday. This is such an improvement to Heavy Rain and was probably the highlight of all the games I played this week

 

Shadow of Mordor GOTY - Basically Arkham City except in Mordor. I'm not sure what I expected here, but they really didn't invest much into telling you about the rather intricate plot that they've created. I get that a lot of gamers want to get into the action, but it sucks to have to read the in game "notes" to even know what the setting for the opening scene is. They also weren't interested in easing you into combat here. My first 2 fights had at least 2 of the bosses and like 4-6 other guys. All of that made for a pretty rough first 2 hours where I found myself not really enjoying the game much. Maybe now that I found the appendicies and figured out how to fight 6 guys at the same time it will be better.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 29, running from July 11 - 17. We logged 6406 minutes of eligible play, playing 107 games on a total of 19 systems.

Top 10:

1. Action 52 (NES/Famicom) - 871

2. Dino Crisis (PlayStation) - 530

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 511

4. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 375

5. Berzerk (Atari 2600) - 340

6. Mario Bros. (Ocean) (C64) - 318

7. Faceball 2000 (Game Boy) - 290

8. V-Tennis (PlayStation) - 220

9. Hexcite: The Shapes of Victory (Game Boy Color) - 186

10. T2: The Arcade Game (Game Boy) - 174

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 511

2. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 375

3. Berzerk (Atari 2600) - 340

4. Mario Bros. (Ocean) (C64) - 318

5. Space Invaders (Atari 2600) - 112

6. Jedi Gauntlet (TI-99/4A) - 80

7. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 73

8. Chopper Command (Atari 2600) - 64

9. Barnstorming (Atari 2600) - 60

9. Pengo (Atari 5200) - 60

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1550)

2. NES/Famicom (996)

3. TI-99/4A (912)

4. Game Boy (786)

5. PlayStation (771)

6. C64 (409)

7. Arcade (288)

8. Game Boy Color (217)

9. Atari 5200 (90)

9. Neo Geo AES/MVS (90)

No, your eyes don't deceive you: that's Action 52 on top. We'd, uh, rather not talk about it.

(But at least Kaboom takes the other two charts. And we had a lot of games this week, too. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.)

[+thegoldenband]

BTW, a few points of confirmation:

 

- I'm assuming Opry99er's "Jedi Gauntlet--Demo" is the same game as Iwantgames's "Jedi Gauntlet". (That may seem obvious, but I want to rule out any weird demo vs. full version issues.)

 

- Kurt_Woloch, you had some playtime of C64 Gremlins back in 2008. Was that the Atarisoft version as well? I assume so, but just want to confirm.

 

- Finally, zylon, if you're reading this, I have 70 min. of playtime of C64 Mario Bros. from you back in 2012. Any guesses as to whether that was the Ocean or Atarisoft version?

[Opry99er]

They are the same, TGB

[Opry99er]

Thanks for the update, TGB. Look for more Intellivision times from the boy and me next week.

[carlsson]

When it comes to the Gremlins on the C64, there was both an arcade game by Atarisoft, and a graphic text adventure by Adventure International. While I haven't tracked neither, back in the days I was mostly aware of the adventure game, but Kurt will have to answer if he played both.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Yes, I think it was the Atarisoft version. Seems like I didn't clarify it back then. This was in the first months of the tracker, and I wasn't doing the commentary I'm doing now. I did play the Gremlins Adventure game back in the day, but not in 2008 as far as I know. Unlike Mario Bros., Atarisoft Gremlins is a totally different game than the adventure version which was made by Adventure International.

 

By the way, be sure to note that I played the Ocean version of Mario Bros. last week because I played the C-64 version by Atarisoft this week (as well as other versions of that game). Times and commentary are forthcoming...

 

BTW, a few points of confirmation:

 

- Kurt_Woloch, you had some playtime of C64 Gremlins back in 2008. Was that the Atarisoft version as well? I assume so, but just want to confirm.

 

 

 

When it comes to the Gremlins on the C64, there was both an arcade game by Atarisoft, and a graphic text adventure by Adventure International. While I haven't tracked neither, back in the days I was mostly aware of the adventure game, but Kurt will have to answer if he played both.