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

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Arcade:

Crypt Killer - 30 minutes

 

Woah! Did you actually stumble on a Crypt Killer machine out in the wild!? The PlayStation port of Crypt Killer was the first home console light gun game that I ever played (starting my lifelong love affair with light gun games) and I've spent decades since then trying to find somewhere that had the original arcade version to play. I've played all the other big name arcade light gun shooters at this point (all 4 House of the Dead games, Time Crisis 1 & 2, Area 51, T2, Operation Wolf, Maximum Force, Silent Scope, Virtua Cop, Point Blank, CarnEvil, Lethal Enforcers, Jurassic Park, etc.) but I've still never managed to track down a Crypt Killer machine. It's kind of become my arcade gaming holy grail to find and play one, but they seem to be rare as all get out.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 33, running from August 8 - 14. We logged 5288 minutes of eligible play, playing 57 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. SimCity 2000 (PC (DOS)) - 680

2. Oregon Trail (PC (DOS)) - 670

3. Dino Crisis 2 (PlayStation) - 646

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 635

5. Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis) - 415

6. Exodus (NES/Famicom) - 251

7. Time Crisis (PlayStation) - 221

8. Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 163

9. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (Game Boy Color) - 145

10. Spider: The Video Game (PlayStation) - 124

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 635

2. Montezuma's Revenge (Atari 2600) - 110

3. Galaxian (Atari 5200) - 78

4. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 55

5. Pressure Cooker (Atari 2600) - 37

6. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 35

7. Seaquest (Atari 2600) - 34

8. Centipede (Arcade) - 30

9. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 25

10. Track & Field (Arcade) - 20

10. RealSports Basketball (Atari 5200) - 20

10. Mega Bug (CoCo 1 & 2) - 20

10. Quest for the Golden Chalice (ColecoVision) - 20

10. Scramble (TI-99/4A) - 20

Top 10 systems:

1. PC (DOS) (1553)

2. PlayStation (991)

3. Atari 2600 (893)

4. NES/Famicom (580)

5. Genesis (530)

6. Arcade (207)

7. Game Boy Color (173)

8. Atari 5200 (98)

9. TI-99/4A (60)

9. WonderSwan (60)

In Week 32 it didn't quite make it, but in Week 33 SimCity 2000 reaches the summit, emerging as #1 from a tight pack of four 600+ minute games.

Meanwhile the 1000-minute club admits four more members, as ticket numbers #227-230 go to SimCity 2000 (1465 min.), Sonic the Hedgehog (1249 min.), Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (1083 min.), and Streets of Rage 2 for Genesis (1021 min.).

[+thegoldenband]

And here's the summary for Week 34, running from August 15 - 21. We logged 3971 minutes of eligible play, playing 60 games on a total of 8 systems.

Top 10:

1. SimCity 2000 (PC (DOS)) - 550

2. Kagero: Deception II (PlayStation) - 465

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 444

4. Boing! (Atari 2600) - 300

5. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES/Famicom) - 230

6. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (Game Boy Color) - 196

7. Centipede (Arcade) - 123

8. Missile Command (Arcade) - 106

9. Time Crisis (PlayStation) - 106

10. Tunnels of Doom [Quest of the King] (TI-99/4A) - 90

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 444

2. Boing! (Atari 2600) - 300

3. Centipede (Arcade) - 123

4. Missile Command (Arcade) - 106

5. Tunnels of Doom [Quest of the King] (TI-99/4A) - 90

6. Bowling (RCA Studio II) - 76

7. Pressure Cooker (Atari 2600) - 61

8. Spider Fighter (Atari 2600) - 52

9. Seaquest (Atari 2600) - 45

10. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 40

10. Venture (Atari 2600) - 40

10. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 40

Top 10 systems:

Not enough entries to make a top 10. (Atari 2600 would be #1, with 1141 minutes.)

Another week at the top for SimCity 2000, while Kaboom is to the pre-NES chart what Annie Wilkes is to Paul Sheldon. (In terms of fandom, not mutilation, that is.)

In other news, Pressure Cooker serves up spot #231 in the 1000-minute club, logging 1018 minutes to date.

[Opry99er]

Sweet!!! Glad youre back up and running, brother!!!

[carlsson]

Great!

 

Too bad we missed out on 10 systems, it probably was the first time this year we didn't get enough diversity. Hopefully I'll add a new one this week or next.

 

Edit: Yes, last time it happened was in 2015. In week 23 (June 1-7) there were 9 systems, in week 24 (June 8-14) there were 6 systems. It means that a 14 month streak was broken.

Edited August 24, 2016 by carlsson

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is my times for the week.

 

NES:

 

Super Mario Bros: 60 Minutes

Super Mario Bros 2: 50 Minutes

Twinbee: 15 Minutes

Track and Field: 20 Minutes

 

Arcade/Mame:

 

Pole Position: 10 Minutes

Turbo: 15 Minutes

[carlsson]

PC DOS:

Stunts / 4D Sports - 8 min.

Yeah, not much to write about. I mostly played to test that the VGA cable and sound cable were OK.

I spent a couple hours trying to get to grips with this EACA Colour Genie EG2000 that I've borrowed. It appears to be a 16K model and boots fine, but neither of the games I've downloaded and converted from CAS to WAV loads properly. To begin with, one needs to use max gain on the output to get the computer to react at all, something I've observed on my COMX-35 as well. Thus loading from a MP3 player with less oomph in the output seems hopeless, a PC sound card is more powerful. Even then, I barely got a few games to load of which two started but neither was possible to get any game play from. Oh well, at least I tried. I might have another go at a later time, or of course settle with emulation but that is kind of like cheating when your aim is to get real hardware running.

[+thegoldenband]

^Could it be a capacitor problem in the audio line? Maybe the machine literally isn't "hearing" the signal correctly because of bad caps or other hardware issues.

[carlsson]

That is quite plausible, just that I haven't disassembed either to have a look.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (August 22nd through 28th)...

 

Arcade:

Missile Command - 42 min. in 2 sessions

Rainbow Islands - 116 min. in 3 sessions

Splatter - 163 min. in 5 sessions

Xybots - 16 min.

 

Facebook (uneligible):

Solitaire Racer - 9 min.

 

Odyssey^2:

Turtles - 48 min. in 2 sessions

 

First I continued to play Missile Command and got through to Round 11, I think. Then I rediscovered Rainbow Islands, where I got to the start of the 3rd island. In between that, I tried "Splatter" which is some kind of racing game with a few twists, and Xybots, which seems to be an early predecessor of FPS games, although you can only turn in 90 degree steps, and the 3D perspective doesn't change smoothly, but rather choppily which is rather annoying when strafing left or right because it always stays centered on one grid tile and then abruptly switches to the next one which makes it hard hitting certain enemies.

 

I also played some more rounds of Solitaire Racer, and finally I replayed the Odyssey version of Turtles which has to be the most faithful arcade port put out by Philips / Magnavox themselves for their systems. While most of their other ports are just "based" on an arcade game, here they tried a real port with mutliple lives, more than 4 digits of scoring et al. Still the mazes on the 5th through 8th floor differ from the arcade version considerably, having dead ends and question marks at the end of spiral-like pathways.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 656 minutes

Spider Fighter - 59 minutes

Plaque Attack - 17 minutes

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 187,790

 

 

[zylon]

5200-

Jungle Hunt- 10min

[BurritoBeans]

Arcade:

Alien vs. Predator - 30 minutes

Beast Busters - 75 minutes

Beast Busters Second Nightmare - 75 minutes

Centipede - 20 minutes

Crypt Killer - 20 minutes

Gorf - 30 minutes

Killer Instinct - 20 minutes

Silent Scope - 30 minutes

Soulcalibur - 10 minutes

Soul Edge - 10 minutes

Space Gun - 20 minutes

Tekken 2 - 10 minutes

Terminator 2 - 30 minutes

 

NES:

Platoon - 20 minutes

 

Alright, so yeah again more arcade stuff with a tiny bit of NES. Starting with the one NES game, I popped in Platoon as I found a box and manual for $4 at a flea market for my copy - yeah I'm still really confused about the game and I couldn't get any far in it. Now onto the big arcade section - A good few of the games I actually got in at arcades, as I played some of the machines in the one at where I work, and then we decided to take a trip into town to check out the one there. I also got the MAME 0.161 ROM set off of archive.org which was 51.2GB, and I'm just missing the 350GB of CHD files - woohoo! So yeah, the first machine I played was Beast Busters - I absolutely love to play this game in three-player, so with two others and a couple coins in for each of us we ended up going through the game and then a bit more. It turns out the place in town had a machine of Second Nightmare, so yeah we got that in too - I've never seen a Hyper Neo Geo 64 game that isn't a five-hour drive away until now, and I have to say I like it a good bit although some of the 3D stuff looks a little silly. Going with more light gun stuff, I got more time in on Crypt Killer - I think it looks a bit funny with the 3D enviroments and 2D sprites, but yeah I still like it and it's also good fun with three players. There's good 'ol Silent Scope, which I love as instead of super fast-paced coin-eater shooter you get to use the big 'ol rifle and it's cool to have the scope be a thing that you actually use. Also, yeah Space Gun... I just love it, I own it myself - everyone else found it to be a bit too challenging but I've got nothing else to say about it. Finally, there's the T2 arcade - I've played a few home ports but never played the arcade until now, I like it a good bit more than that new Terminator Salvation machine (same with the movies, 2 is better than Salvation to me) and it's just fun to play. Onto non-shooting stuff, I got a few fighters in. Soul Edge and Soulcalibur I found cabinets of at the place in town - I love Soulcalibur at home and it's good fun with a nice stick in an arcade setting, and Soul Edge I hadn't played a ton but I think is cool. I played Tekken 2 and I was never a huge Tekken fan, but I do like it because it's fairly simple and easy to pick up and play. Also, I played KI - yeah not much of a comment, I was never a KI fan anyways as I just suck at it. Oh yeah, Centipede got more playtime except this time an actual Centipede machine instead of a multicade with a trackball - I'm kinda happy as I got my score into the 450,000s and on the leaderboard, but I had to put a good few coins into it.

 

So yeah, lots of arcade games and a little teenie tiny bit of NES. Now that I have my mass of game ROMs I'm going to be configuring hyperspin so more arcade stuff is to come, but I think I want to squeeze some plain consoles in too.

[Opry99er]

TI-99/4A:

 

Wizard's Doom (50 minutes)

 

 

 

Mac (Classic OS):

 

Lemmings (660 minutes)

Spectre (60 minutes)

SpinDoctor (30 minutes)

TrainEngineer (840 minutes)

 

 

 

 

 

I spent two days bashing my head against a wall trying to get Sheepshaver to run OS9 on my Win7 machine. Since the moment I got it working, it has been nothing but excellent fun for the boy and me.

 

 

 

We spent several hours on Lemmings, one of the best concepts in the history of games, IMO. My son thinks it is hilarious that none of the Lemmings has a brain, and he has to be the brain for all of them. I remember that sense of power the first time I played the game.

 

 

 

 

 

There is another game we have been playing that I bet 99% of you have never heard of. It is a simple Mac game called "TrainEngineer".

 

 

 

 

It is extremely underrated and surprisingly interactive and fun. You get to design your world, create stations for your train to drop off and pick up goods. You have a schedule (that you create) and a value for each load delivered. It is really something else. My son played this all night last night when he thought I didn't know he was awake, so he created quite an elaborate town map. Excellent fun, and has been going almost non-stop today in the breaks between meals and doing homeschool science work. (We built a baking soda volcano and did the "Citric Acid/Sodium Bicarbonate in water experiment"... that was fun. )

 

 

Anyway, I have to admit that I have had much more fun building my OS9 environment and playing with utilities than playing games... When I boot OS9 now, I have it go fullscreen and take over my Win7 Machine. I didn't think I would enjoy it so much, but I am REALLY having a blast with Sheepshaver.

 

Now I am trying to get Basilisk to run so that I can play the original "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" which cannot run in OS9.

 

Anyway, a few parting screenshots. It has been a blast.

 

 

 

 

[BillyHW]

Arcade

 

Ms. Pac-Man (bootleg, 15 min). Found this bootleg machine at a local truck-stop. It was sped up and the pellets were turned into hearts and the ghost graphics were a bit different. Anyhoo, I don't know why, but for some reason I do much better when the game is sped up. I made it to the third maze on one quarter and that rarely happens on the normal speed game for me. I guess when it's going fast I don't overthink things or try to overdo eating the ghosts on a power pellet.

Edited August 29, 2016 by BillyHW

[+thegoldenband]

Awesome to see Mac OS Classic stuff on here!

 

My times for the week:

 

NES:

AD&D: Hillsfar - 2 min.

Genghis Khan - 2 min.

L'Empereur - 2 min.

Genesis:

Smurfs Travel the World - 127 min.

SNES:

Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge - 9 min.

Outside of testing, my only real gameplay this week was chipping away at Smurfs Travel the World, a PAL-only platformer that's far more of a grind than I'd have expected, thanks to too-long stretches between passwords. (And it's really PAL-only -- get past the region lockout, and it crashes partway through the third level.)

[Iwantgames:)]

Only one qualifying game this week. Stuck at the hospital with the wife and newborn I brought my Wonderswan for some time killing

 

Lode Runner (Wonderswan) - 430min

Finally made it to world 2 lol this is a long game, but excellent.

[Opry99er]

 

To add:

 

 

Mac (OS6.0.4):

 

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (140 minutes)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, where do I start with this one?!? Took quite some work to get Baselisk running my OS7.5 emulation, only to find that 7.5 is way too 'modern' to run Carmen Sandiego. (!!!) I had to find a way to emulate a Mac Plus (!!!!) running OS6.0.4 in order to play it. The game MUST run from a floppy drive (real or emulated), so even though it is small, you cannot run it from the hard drive.

 

Anyway, I flippin loved and lived this game in the late 80s, early 90s.. It will be getting some significant play time over the next few weeks from my son and me.

[karokoenig]

Nor exactly a lot of gameplay. We had such hot weather that I really didn't want to spend much of my scarce free time in front of a screen in a stuffy appartment. At least I got a few games in for the HSC, and test one new cartridge I bought to further expand my Parker Bros collection:

 

Atari 2600:

Atlantis: 10 min

Stampede: 14 min

Super Cobra: 10 min

[Skippy B. Coyote]

A pretty standard week in terms of gaming time for my household this week, but with a much smaller variety of systems played thanks to some new arrivals in the mail and an old favorite rediscovered.




Ineligible
Doom (Game Boy Advance) - 65 minutes
Hardcore Pool (Game Boy Advance, European Import, Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 218 minutes
Killer 3D Pool (Game Boy Advance, Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 17 minutes
Need for Speed Underground 2 (Game Boy Advance) - 375 minutes

Game Boy Color
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX - 142 minutes

PlayStation
Area 51 - 96 minutes
Crash Bandicoot - 315 minutes
Crypt Killer - 90 minutes
Kagero: Deception II - 68 minutes
Time Crisis - 41 minutes
Time Crisis: Project Titan - 110 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,537 minutes (25 hours 37 minutes) [862 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
PlayStation: 720 minutes
Game Boy Advance: 675 minutes
Game Boy Color: 142 minutes



Starting off the week, my first order of business was to finish up The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX for the Game Boy Color. Once my all time favorite handheld game had been completed I got back to working on my play through of Doom for the Game Boy Advance, but before long—while looking for something new to start playing—I stumbled on the copy of my favorite racing game sitting in my Game Boy Advance drawer: Need for Speed Underground 2. Now that my GBA SP has a new battery in it that actually lasts for more than half an hour per charge (it's getting around 10 hours per charge on the new battery now) I've been really itching to play some more Game Boy Advance games, so I fired up Need For Speed Underground 2, made a new save file, then proceeded to spend the bulk of my week playing through every mode in the game whenever I had a moment of free time. I can't even begin to tell you how much I adore this game and how much fun I've had racing and (especially) customizing my cars in it, but I can say that at this point I've completed all of the Drag and Drift races, though I still have about 30% of the Circuit races left and a couple bonus mini games to unlock. There's just so much to do and enjoy in this game that it's a real marvel the developers were able to fit it all onto a single Game Boy Advance cartridge.

Lastly, as far as the Game Boy Advance goes, while testing out the couple billiards games on the system for my upcoming "250+ Game Boy Advance Games Worth Playing" list project to figure out which was the best, I think I found a new favorite time killer in the European exclusive Hardcore Pool. The graphics are lovely, the music and variety thereof is great, and the whole game just has a very quirky feel to it that tells you it was translated into English by a localization team who might not have known the language too well. For instance, when you win a round it says "VICTORY IS YOURS CONGRATULATIONS" but when you lose a round, well... you can see for yourself.

I did get a few things in the mail that drew my attention away from the GBA SP for a bit though! The first of which was the long awaited Konami Hyper Blaster for the original PlayStation that I had ordered from Japan several weeks back. I was so impressed by my experience with the official Namco GunCon that I decided to spring for the official Konami Justifier light gun to play the non-GunCon compatible PlayStation light gun games with, which account for about half the light gun games worth playing on the system. I wasn't too thrilled with the lime green color of the Justifier that we got over here in the US though so I decided to track down the Japanese version of the Justifier (known as the "Hyper Blaster" over on that side of the pond) that came in a cool looking gun metal blue color with red buttons instead. It took a while to arrive in the mail, but once I got my hands on it I've loved it ever since and have had a really hard time putting it down for more than a couple hours at a time. My experience with the Hyper Blaster / Justifier has been exactly the same as with the GunCon. Vastly greater accuracy, more comfortable ergonomics, and much lighter weight than any of the third party PlayStation light guns.

I got in a fair bit of time playing Area 51 and Crypt Killer with the Hyper Blaster, and I also took the time to try out Time Crisis with it by way of the Innovation brand PlayStation Foot Pedal made specifically for the Hyper Blaster / Justifier that allows you to play GunCon games with it. Sadly the gun's accuracy goes downhill pretty sharply when used in conjunction with the Innovation Foot Pedal, but I was still able to beat Time Crisis on Easy with it and really enjoyed having a proper foot pedal to play it with. It's a bummer that the foot pedal doesn't work with the actual GunCon light gun, but it's still a neat Hyper Blaster / Justifier accessory that I'm happy to have in my collection. Speaking of Time Crisis, the PlayStation exclusive sequel Time Crisis: Project Titan arrived in the mail this week as well! I haven't managed to beat it yet, but I can say that it's an absolutely fantastic game and I'm completely amazed by how accurate the GunCon is with it. I honestly didn't think it was possible for any home console light gun using traditional light gun technology (I.E. everything other than the Wii with it's sensor bar setup and the PlayStation Move) to be this accurate but the coders of Time Crisis: Project Titan somehow managed to work some serious wizardry in this game and made it so that the GunCon is accurate down to one pixel every single shot. I was really impressed with how accurate the GunCon with the original Time Crisis, but Project Titan just blows my mind.

As far as the other games that were played in my household this week goes, the misses ended up mostly dividing her gaming time between Kagero: Deception II and Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation. I did warn her about how punishingly difficult the original Crash Bandicoot is before she decided to give it a try, since I've never managed to get more than 1/4 of the way through it with a traditional game pad so I didn't know how much luck she'd have playing it with her arcade stick, but I'll be damned if she didn't make it all the way to the last level earlier this evening! She hasn't beaten the final level yet, but she seems pretty bound and determined to keep practicing it until she gets it so I won't be surprised if she actually beats this classic monster of a platformer next week. She also did surprisingly well in Time Crisis: Project Titan with her arcade stick and managed to beat it on easy mode after a couple tries, which was pretty impressive considering how not even remotely easy the "Easy" mode is.

That about wraps it up for this week! Looking ahead to next week, my longterm forecast predicts scattered light gun showers, bandicoots, and a 80% chance of Game Boy Advance. Catch ya' later dudes and dudettes!

Edited August 29, 2016 by Jin

[+wongojack]

I made it to a nearby movie theatre that has pinball machines and played the new Ghostbusters pinball a lot. I also gave arcade Millipede one play for about 2 minutes and played a terrible game of Dig Dug for another 2 mins. Mostly I was the terrible part in DD, but I didn't really like the flat screen multicade either.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 35, running from August 22 - 28. We logged 4972 minutes of eligible play, playing 55 games on a total of 13 systems.

Top 10:

1. TrainEngineer (Mac OS Classic) - 840

2. Lemmings (Mac OS Classic) - 660

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 656

4. Lode Runner (WonderSwan) - 430

5. Crash Bandicoot (PlayStation) - 315

6. Spatter (Arcade) - 163

7. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (Game Boy Color) - 142

8. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (Mac OS Classic) - 140

9. Smurfs 2 [aka Smurfs Travel the World] (Genesis) - 127

10. Rainbow Islands (Arcade) - 116

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 656

2. Spatter (Arcade) - 163

3. Spider Fighter (Atari 2600) - 59

4. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 50

5. Turtles (Odyssey^2) - 48

6. Missile Command (Arcade) - 42

7. Gorf (Arcade) - 30

8. Centipede (Arcade) - 20

9. Plaque Attack (Atari 2600) - 17

10. Ms. Pac-Man Champion Edition (Arcade) - 15 (I believe this is the bootleg BillyHW played?)

10. Turbo (Arcade) - 15

Top 10 systems:

1. Mac OS Classic (1730)

2. Atari 2600 (766)

3. Arcade (761)

4. PlayStation (720)

5. WonderSwan (430)

6. NES/Famicom (171)

7. Game Boy Color (142)

8. Genesis (127)

9. TI-99/4A (50)

10. Odyssey^2 (48)

Out of nowhere the Mac OS Classic platform completely owns the charts! It had made #2 once before, but otherwise has been a rare guest on our tracker until now.

That leaves the Atari 2600 and a Borgian collective of arcade games battling for 2nd place, with the VCS just taking it thanks to perennial #1 pre-NES game Kaboom.

(BTW I group Mac OS Classic as a post-crash platform, since accounting individually for the small number of games playable on a 1984 Mac would be a headache, and it's a 16-bit platform like the Atari ST and Amiga anyway.)

Finally, the 1000-minute club gains a single patron this week, as Kagero: Deception II for PlayStation parks in spot #232 with 1026 minutes logged to date.

[+wongojack]

Is it Bor guh ee ann or Bor jee an? What say you?

[+thegoldenband]

Ha, I was thinking of the Star Trek: TNG collective, not the nobles of Renaissance Italy. I like the idea of the Borgias represented as a collective of arcade games rife with internal power struggles, though; sounds like one of those titles that the Simpsons would have in the backroom, right next to My Dinner with Andre: The Game.

[carlsson]

A collective of arcade games with internal power struggles, isn't that bordering the overall script of Wreck-It Ralph?

Edited August 31, 2016 by carlsson