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

[+thegoldenband]

Atari Jaguar:

1. Kobayashi Maru - 45 min

2. Checkered Flag - 33 min

3. World Tour Racing - 55 min

 

Vectrex:

1. Big Blue - 25 min

2. Warrior - 15 min

 

so far will add more

 

Hi, Darrin9999! Are those times from today or last week?

[+Darrin9999]

 

Hi, Darrin9999! Are those times from today or last week?

Today

[+Darrin9999]

Atari 7800:

1. Ms. Pac-man - 35 min

2. Moon Cresta - 35 min

3. Meteor Shower - 27 min

 

Atari Jaguar :

1. Kobayashi Maru - 125 min

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 43, running from October 17 - 23. We logged 3731 minutes of eligible play, playing 61 games on a total of 13 systems.

Top 10:

1. Historyline 1914-1918 (PC (DOS)) - 755

2. Ninja Golf (Atari 7800) - 388

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 366

4. Resident Evil: Survivor (PlayStation) - 318

5. Pokémon Crystal (Game Boy Color) - 257

6. Rampage: World Tour (Arcade) - 225

7. Crossed Swords (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 125

8. Mega Man (NES/Famicom) - 88

9. Silent Hunter (PC (DOS)) - 82

10. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 80

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Ninja Golf (Atari 7800) - 388

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 366

3. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 80

4. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 57

5. Up 'N Down (Atari 5200) - 45

6. H.E.R.O. (Atari 2600) - 40

7. Asteroids (Arcade) - 34

8. Asteroids (Atari 7800) - 29

9. Centipede (Arcade) - 27

9. Robotron: 2084 (Atari 7800) - 27

Top 10 systems:

1. PC (DOS) (837)

2. Atari 2600 (637)

3. Arcade (500)

4. Atari 7800 (475)

5. PlayStation (318)

6. NES/Famicom (264)

7. Game Boy Color (257)

8. Neo Geo AES/MVS (125)

9. SNES (88)

10. Atari Lynx (82)

In Week 43 our all-time #7 game, Historyline 1914-1918, leads itself and the DOS platform to the #1 spot, while Ninja Golf just pips Kaboom for the pre-NES title.

Meanwhile, we don't have any new milestones per se this week, but in auditing my files I noticed that I somehow missed that Dino Crisis for PlayStation passed the 1000-minute mark in Week 29, with 1399 minutes logged (it now has 1764).

It would have been game #221, bringing the total membership of the 1000-minute club to 240 members: a crowded elite!

[adamchevy]

Vectrex:

 

Minestorm 90 minutes

 

Once I get a VecMulti I can play other games. Although, I have been really enjoying getting further in Minestorm. Personal best so far is Mine level 5 with a score of 49,216. I think it's the best asteroids clone ever made.

[karokoenig]

PC (DOS)

Historyline 1914-18: 380 min

 

Two more maps. One. Only one to go.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Pac-Man - 75 minutes

New high score on Game 6, Difficulty BB (obtained with my 7800 console and SMS controller) - 50,000 points

 

ATARI 7800:

1) Ninja Golf - 77 minutes

Highest score: 179,330 points on normal difficulty, new attempt for the NEW 7800 HSC Season 1, Round 2 - I beat this game by completing 9 holes.

 

2) Midnight Mutants - 66 minutes

I played this game for Halloween celebration. It was more irresistible.

[carlsson]

Arcade:

Defender - 1 min.

Pac-Man (Japanese ROM) - 3 min.

Robotron 2084 - 3 min.

Atari 2600:

Human Cannonball - 3 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Pac-Man - 12 min.

Zorro - 5 min.

Not as much gaming as intended, as most of time on the Saturday event was spend behind our vendor table. Also the two Defender cabinets were partly malfunctioning since last year. The yearly Pac-Man championship was just as much a failure for me as it always is, despite I had "practised" on the Atari 8-bit version right before moving onto the arcade game, this year the Japanese version with much shorter periods of ghost hunting.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (October 24th through 30th)...

 

PC (non-eligible):

 

Space Birdz - 156 min. in 7 sessions

 

Sorry, no classic games this week. I continued to play Space Birdz. I made it to the end of the demo rounds, after which the game displays a message about the forthcoming full version (which, sadly, never was released) and then the rounds start again with faster enemies. I still have the goal of beating 20,000 points, which is the high score when the game starts. So far I didn't even reach 10,000.

 

In other news, yesterday I wrote my first working PC program in Assembler (up until then, I only looked at the compiler output of programs I've written in other languages such as VB5, C and FreeBasic).

Edited October 30, 2016 by Kurt_Woloch

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 399 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 189,823

 

 

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is what I played.

 

Arcade/Mame:

 

Turbo: 8 Minutes

Vs. Castlevania: 30 Minutes

Tempest: 5 Minutes

Galaxian: 12 Minutes

Hard Drivin': 35 Minutes

 

NES:

 

Wild Gunman: 45 Minutes

[BurritoBeans]

Do you ever play so many games that you need a spreadsheet? Because this is the second time for me. Sorry for the long post/making people scroll.

(also sorry the systems aren't in alphabetical order thegoldenband, but I made the games in alphabetical order at least...)

 

System then Title then Playtime (min)

 

PC-98 2-Shot Diaries 10

PC-98 Ace of Spades 10

PC-98 Akemi 10

PC-98 Alone in the Dark 35

PC-98 Alone in the Dark 2 35

PC-98 Amy’s Fantasies 10

PC-98 Angel Hearts 10

PC-98 Another Genesis 10

PC-98 Asuka 10

PC-98 Asuka 2 10

PC-98 Asuka 3 10

PC-98 Asuka X 10

PC-98 Beast 3 10

PC-98 Bind 10

PC-98 Brocken 10

PC-98 Camel-Zoo 10

PC-98 Castles 10

PC-98 CG Gallery 1 10

PC-98 Corpse Party 85

PC-98 CRW 10

PC-98 CRW 2 10

PC-98 Dead of the Brain 50

PC-98 Deja Vu – A Nightmare Comes True 20

PC-98 Desire 10

PC-98 Disaster 10

PC-98 Dracula Hakushaku 20

PC-98 Dragon Egg 10

PC-98 Dragon Knight 10

PC-98 Dragon Knight 2 10

PC-98 Dragon Knight 3 10

PC-98 Dragon Knight 4 10

PC-98 Dragon Province 10

PC-98 Dungeon Master 10

PC-98 Dynamo 10

PC-98 Earth Girl Defence Force 10

PC-98 Elle 10

PC-98 Etsuraku no Gakuen 10

PC-98 EVE Burst Error 20

PC-98 Farland Story 10

PC-98 Farland Story 2 10

PC-98 Farland Story 3 10

PC-98 Farland Story 4 10

PC-98 Farland Story 5 10

PC-98 Farland Story 6 10

PC-98 Farland Story 7 10

PC-98 Foxy 10

PC-98 Foxy 2 10

PC-98 Galaga 30

PC-98 Garudius ‘95 30

PC-98 High School War 10

PC-98 In The Dungeon 10

PC-98 Incredible Machine 20

PC-98 Kuru 10

PC-98 Love Letters 10

PC-98 Lucy Shot 10

PC-98 Mai 10

PC-98 Meimi 10

PC-98 Meimi 2 MIKI 10

PC-98 Mobile Suit Gundam: The Return of Zion 20

PC-98 Net Guardian 10

PC-98 Night Slave 50

PC-98 Panic Bomber 20

PC-98 Popful Mail 20

PC-98 Ray Gun 10

PC-98 Schoolground Sketches 10

PC-98 Shangrlia 10

PC-98 Shangrlia 2 10

PC-98 SimFarm 10

PC-98 Star Striker 10

PC-98 Thexder 10

PC-98 Weapons Free 10

PC-98 Xenon 100

PC-98 Xevious 20

PC-98 XIX 10

PC-98 YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world 140

TOTAL MINUTES FOR PC-98: 1295

 

Apple II Akalabeth 40

Apple II Ali Baba and the Forty Theives 40

Apple II Beyond Castle Wolfenstein 20

Apple II Castle Wolfenstein 20

Apple II Choplifter 20

Apple II Commando 20

Apple II Crossfire 10

Apple II Dam Busters 10

Apple II Dig Dug 10

Apple II Dino Eggs 10

Apple II Elite 60

Apple II Frogger 10

Apple II H.E.R.O. 10

Apple II Maniac Mansion 10

Apple II Moon Patrol 30

Apple II Pitfall II: The Lost Adventures 20

Apple II Prince of Persia 40

Apple II Robotron 2084 10

Apple II Softporn Adventure 10

Apple II Taxman 10

Apple II The Oregon Trail 10

Apple II Time Zone 10

Apple II Ultima 20

Apple II Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress 20

Apple II Ultima III: Exodus 20

Apple II Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar 20

Apple II Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny 20

Apple II Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds 20

Apple II Wizardry III: Legend of Llylgamyn 20

Apple II Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna 20

Apple II Wizardry V: Heart of the Malestrom 20

Apple II Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord 20

Apple II Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz 20

Apple II Zork III: The Dungeon Master 20

Apple II Zork: The Great Underground Empire 20

TOTAL MINUTES FOR APPLE II: 690

 

Intellivision Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain 10

Intellivision Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin 10

Intellivision Astrosmash 10 Intellivision Night Stalker 30

TOTAL MINUTES FOR INTELLIVISION: 60

 

Arcade Pengo 20

Arcade Qix 20

Arcade Tempest 20

TOTAL MINUTES FOR ARCADE 60

 

 

Alright, so this week starts the process of "me saying I'll sort my collection so it's nice and neat and organized but fail miserably after a week and give up and be lazy like usual" for me, and three days in I'm already regretting trying again. Out of pure stupidity I started off and said I'd sort my messiest collections - the classic computers - and picked the Apple II and PC-98xx lineup of computers which respectively have the most software out of my American and Japanese computer collections. My definition of "Catalog" has been "Put the program in, get the name, play it for 10-15 minutes, write it down in an Excel chart with the Name/Genre/Medium it's on, and put it with the similar-genre games in a nice cool dry area" which gets me frustrated but whatever. So, yeah enough me ranting about being lazy, here's some things that I've been thinking:

• When it comes to Apple II, holy crap do I have more educational software than I ever thought I did. Why I'm amazed I don't know as I got it from my uncle who was an 8th grade history teacher and used the Apple IIs in class to help teach, but I am amazed at it anyways.
• Sitting down with the Apple II after so long is really a nice thing. I've been off and on with my collecting and I keep going for the odd systems that nobody really cares about.
• Holy crap do I suck at drawing maps for RPGs and text adventures, and I love my automap too much.
• In the grand scheme of old computers, apart from the game library and slight hardware modifications the PC98 isn't really all that much different from the usual IBM, and I didn't realize that until I got back into playing with it
• If you can look past the eroge factor, there are some seriously solid games on the PC98 that I kinda threw to the side because "eh just another porn title" and I didn't actually get past the cutscenes.
• There's some seriously good FM Synthesized music out there and I've been ignoring it for a while because with computers I either praised the Sharp X68000 and it's sweet sweet MIDI card (still love that thing) or had a good MIDI-out whatever in the IBMs.
• Quick-time decisions make me mad and cause me to screw up a lot. Screw you Dead of the Brain, I refuse to get killed more.

Standout titles:

• PC98 - YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. Alright so my first impression was "another eroge" but once you get into it, it's actually pretty neat - the FM-synth music is done by Ryu Umemo/Ryu Takami/Kazuhiro Kanae so the sound department is golden (ended up ripping the soundtrack off the disc to listen to), the game as a pretty cool universe that it takes place in, and it has this auto-mapping system, ADMS, which isn't expected for an RPG of that time and you can see all the branching points in the storyline. I think there's a Saturn and Windows release both which have all the explicit stuff cut out and english patches do exist, and I actually enjoyed playing this a good bit.
• PC98 - Night Slave. Again, started with "another eroge" as an impression but in the end, it's a fairly solid sidescrolling mech shooter. My only real gripe is that the bosses sometime feel like that one Terminator game where they take a million shots to go down, and without a lifebar it gets hard to tell if you're even winning against them in some bits.
• PC98 - Dead of the Brain. I've talked about this one before, but just as a recap - it's a VN involving a fairly silly plot with revival serum and a graveyard, kinda like Return of the Living Dead if you've ever seen that movie being that it had the gas which brought back the dead and there was a graveyard. I do get mad at the quick-time actions as it's a dang VN, there's reading to be done and I need to think of ways to take care of the zombies and other monsters attacking, but overall I like the thing in general.
• Apple II - Ali Baba and the Forty Theives. Alright so when I heard the name I thought of Rhymin' & Stealin' by the Beastie Boys on Liscensed to Ill because they repeat it a few times in the lyrics, but playing it it's a solid RPG. You navigate Arabia while being attacked by these 40 theives, and while the rooms and all that confused me at first once I got the hang of it I really started to enjoy it. The plot is simple - rescue the daughter - but the gameplay was awesome.
• Intellivision - Both AD&D games. Not doing seperate things for these, but I'm a D&D nut - I collect any books and modules I can get my hands on, have too many sets of dice, and we play every Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Sunday for an hour at least. So of course I played these - they're pretty sweet for 2nd gen stuff, and I have to say I like the arrow ricochet mechanics and all that in Cloudy Mountain. If I ever buy an Intellivision, I want both of these alongside Night Stalker to start off my collection.

Also, if you saw the tiny Intellivision section in there, I threw BlissX v10 on my softmodded Xbox and tried out a few games - I still do want to get an Intellivision someday so I can own games I like (Night Stalker, the AD&D games, etc.) and I thought it was alright on the xbox apart from the fact that mapping controls is seriously confusing to me with that. All arcade playtimes were on the multicade, which holy crap I love that thing.

Expect more lists like this from me for a while (or as long as I can stick with this stupid organization decision) because this is what I'll be doing in free time for a while, then I have to sort, then I have to clean, then I have to take images, and then I'll be done for maybe a year as long as I don't quit in the middle of this.

Edited October 31, 2016 by BurritoBeans

[+thegoldenband]

(also sorry the systems aren't in alphabetical order thegoldenband, but I made the games in alphabetical order at least...)

 

No worries, I do mine in chronological order! Posting the systems in alphabetical order is always helpful, but as long as the games themselves are in alphabetical order, that's the big thing that makes a difference.

 

And speaking of which, my times for the week:

 

NES:

Godzilla 2 - 1 min.

Krion Conquest - 13 min.

Mega Man IV - 3 min.

Game Boy:

Amazing Spider-Man 2 - 2 min.

Fist of the North Star - 20 min.

Hatris - 14 min.

In Your Face - 18 min.

Itchy & Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness - 51 min.

Jordan vs. Bird: One On One - 33 min.

Metal Masters - 9 min.

Rolan's Curse - 11 min.

Super Scrabble - 61 min.

Dreamcast:

Advanced Daisenryaku 2001 - 6 min.

Bangai-O - 5 min.

Frame Gride - 25 min.

Beat In Your Face, a spectacularly lame basketball cart for the Game Boy, and "re-beat" Fist of the North Star and Hatris. I also beat the one-on-one part of Jordan vs. Bird on the highest difficulty (though I haven't cleared the slam dunk or 3-point contests yet), and bested the CPU in Super Scrabble on the lowest difficulty.

Advanced Daisenryaku 2001 and (to a lesser extent) Godzilla 2 are games I'd like to play and think I could enjoy, but I get so easily put off by any kind of learning curve in war games -- I feel caught on a knife edge between wasted time and trivial exploits. Maybe I should put some real time into a game like Military Madness or Master of Monsters first.

[+wongojack]

Lynx

Gates of Zendicon 33

Stun Runner 5

 

 

Not much. I have a new Lynx multi cart, so I'm going through that library. I also played the indie game You Must Build A Boat a lot this weekend.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Thanks to the magic of arcade game compilations and emulation, a whole lot of games were played using a very small assortment of hardware around here this week.

 

 

 

Ineligible

Doom (Game Boy Advance) - 50 minutes

Arcade
Asteroids (played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 for PlayStation & Atari Anniversary Advance for Game Boy Advance) - 32 minutes
Centipede (played on Atari Anniversary Advance for Game Boy Advance) - 13 minutes

Defender (played on Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits for Game Boy Advance) - 7 minutes

Joust (played on Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits for Game Boy Advance) - 4 minutes

Missile Command (played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 for PlayStation) - 8 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 6 minutes

Robotron 2084 (played on Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits for Game Boy Advance) - 51 minutes

Sinistar (played on Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits for Game Boy Advance) - 3 minutes
Tempest (played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 for PlayStation & Atari Anniversary Advance for Game Boy Advance) - 29 minutes

Atari 7800 (all emulated on Nintendo Wii)
Astro Blaster - 17 minutes

Astro Fighter - 26 minutes

Commando - 28 minutes

Donkey Kong - 8 minutes

Donkey Kong Junior - 14 minutes

Double Dragon - 3 minutes

FailSafe - 46 minutes

Ikari Warriors - 6 minutes

Klax (Prototype) - 7 minutes

Meteor Shower - 15 minutes

Midnight Mutants - 80 minutes

Moon Cresta - 9 minutes

Ninja Golf - 90 minutes

Rip-Off - 12 minutes

Robotron 2084 - 30 minutes

Scrapyard Dog - 53 minutes

Xevious - 37 minutes

 

Atari Lynx (all emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Ms. Pac-Man - 6 minutes

Robotron 2084 - 49 minutes

 

NES

Donkey Kong (emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 9 minutes

Xevious (played on Classic NES Series: Xevious for Game Boy Advance) - 7 minutes

PlayStation
Alien Trilogy - 367 minutes

 

Sega Genesis

Raiden Trad - 61 minutes

Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits - 6 minutes

 

Super Nintendo

Raiden Trad - 7 minutes

Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits - 14 minutes

 

 

Total Play Time This Week
1,210 minutes (20 hours 10 minutes) [1,160 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Atari 7800: 481 minutes

PlayStation: 367 minutes

Arcade: 153 minutes

Sega Genesis: 67 minutes

Atari Lynx: 55 minutes

Game Boy Advance: 50 minutes

Super Nintendo: 21 minutes

NES: 16 minutes

 

 

 

With the coaxial port on the household retro gaming TV still out of commission there wasn't much opportunity to play Atari on original hardware this week, but both the misses and I still found plenty of games to enjoy via arcade game compilations and emulation on the Wii. I spent a good bit of time playing just about every version of Robotron 2084 that I could get my hands on, which included the arcade original on the Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits compilation for the GBA, slightly scaled down ports on the SNES and Sega Genesis William's Greatest Arcade Hits compilations, and the Lynx and Atari 7800 versions. After playing them all through various means my favorite of the bunch is definitely the Atari 7800 version, for it's big clearly defined sprites and slightly more relaxed pacing, but I also enjoyed the GBA port of the arcade original quite a bit too. As far as controlling the game without dual joysticks goes I think the GBA port offered the best and most effective control scheme, though the SNES version's use of the 4 face buttons was quite nice too.

 

Other than the Robotron binge I also tried out a wide variety of Atari 7800 games that I had never played before, including a whole slew of homebrew arcade ports and some pretty unique original production titles like Midnight Mutants, Scrapyard Dog, and the very cool Commando. Using emulation I tried a couple different versions of Raiden for the Genesis and SNES as well, with auto-fire shut off to prep me for what to expect when playing the Atari Jaguar version that I'm hoping to pick up when I get a Jag next year. Playing Raiden without auto-fire turned out to be a bit more grueling of an experience than I was expecting, and after 45 minutes or so I ended up calling it quits when the muscles in my right hand started aching something fierce. I'm still excited by the prospect of eventually getting the Atari Jaguar version, since it looks like a fantastic port of the arcade original, but I'll definitely have to look into seeing if I can find some type of auto-fire adapter for the Jaguar controller to make it a comfortable experience playing Raiden on the Jag.

 

Lastly for me, this week I finally finished the play through of Doom for the GBA that I had been working on for much of the year. Interestingly enough it's apparently almost identical to the Atari Jaguar version of Doom aside from the addition of music from the original PC-DOS game, but I'm still listing it under the "Ineligible" category since there was a change made between the Jaguar and GBA versions of Doom. After all these years and the nearly a dozen different versions of Doom that I've played I think the GBA port is still my favorite when it comes to playing Doom on a console. Id Software and Activision really did some amazing work bringing this classic first-person shooter to a 32-bit handheld, and it's one game that I never seem to tire of going back to revisit.

 

As far as my wife's gaming time this week goes, she spent most of it wrapping up the play through of Alien Trilogy that she had been doing off and on over the last few months. In spite of a bit of frustration in a couple levels on the third and final chapter of the game she still had a great time with it, and once that was done she popped in the Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 disc a few times to relax with some Asteroids and Tempest. That was pretty much it for her this week, though I imagine next week will have a bit more to offer since we're finally going to be replacing our retro gaming CRT TV with the broken coaxial port tomorrow! After searching for a good long time every day on Craigslist I finally found my personal holy grail of retro gaming TVs, a Sony KV20-FS120 WEGA Trinitron in excellent condition, and will be picking it up from the seller tomorrow afternoon. I know there are bigger and slightly better WEGA models that have honeycomb filters and such, but this is pretty much the best consumer grade 20" CRT TV that will fit in our entertainment center so I'm absolutely thrilled to have finally found one. I know the misses is pretty excited about the prospect of being able to play Atari again (and on such a nice TV no less) as well, so tomorrow should be a pretty great day for gaming around here.

 

Until then, Happy Halloween to all you fine gaming folks! Have fun, stay safe, and try not to eat too much chocolate tonight. I never do seem to be able to follow my own advice when it comes to that last one.

Edited October 31, 2016 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 44, running from October 24 - 30. We logged 5206 minutes of eligible play, playing 185 games on a total of 18 systems.

Top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 399

2. Historyline 1914-1918 (PC (DOS)) - 380

3. Alien Trilogy (PlayStation) - 367

4. Kobayashi Maru (Atari Jaguar) - 170

5. Ninja Golf (Atari 7800) - 167

6. Midnight Mutants (Atari 7800) - 146

7. YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world (NEC PC-9801) - 140

8. Xenon (NEC PC-9801) - 100

9. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 90

10. Corpse Party (NEC PC-9801) - 85

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 399

2. Ninja Golf (Atari 7800) - 167

3. Midnight Mutants (Atari 7800) - 146

4. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 90

5. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 75

6. Elite (Apple II) - 60

7. Robotron: 2084 (Arcade) - 54

8. Tempest (Arcade) - 54

9. Scrapyard Dog (Atari 7800) - 53

10. Failsafe (Atari 7800) - 46

Top 10 systems:

1. NEC PC-9801 (1295)

2. Atari 7800 (721)

3. Apple II (690)

4. Atari 2600 (474)

5. PC (DOS) (380)

6. PlayStation (367)

7. Arcade (310)

8. Game Boy (219)

9. Atari Jaguar (203)

10. Vectrex (130)

185 games, wow! I believe this is the second-largest number of games we've ever had in a single week, surpassed only by Week 42 of last year (with 213 games).

Since the PC-9801 accounts for nearly half of those, it's no surprise that it takes the laurels as this week's #1 system. However Kaboom gets the other two top spots, edging out Historyline -- which is now our #6 all-time game, BTW -- on the main Top 10.

Meanwhile we get a strong showing from the Atari 7800 and Apple II, popping up at #2 and #3 respectively.

[+Darrin9999]

Vectrex:

1. Mine Storm - 65 min

2. Clean Sweep - 75 min

3. N.E.L.S. - 52 min

4. Hyper Chase - 80 min

5. Star Castle - 25 min

6. Berzerk - 35 min

[+Darrin9999]

Colecovision:

 

1. Galaxian - 20 min

2. Meteoric Shower - 24 min

3. Threshold - 30 min

 

 

Odyssey 2:

1. Wildlife! - 15 min

2. Popeye - 36 min

[karokoenig]

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 144 min

 

December 1944 now. As I may have mentioned earlier, I tend to name my skippers after Metal musicians. This particular playthrough - in honour of the late Mr. Lemmy Kilmister - is slowly but surely coming to a close.

[carlsson]

PET:

Car Race II - 25 min.

MSX:

Boogie Woogi Jungle - 16 min.

El Príncipe y el Dragón - 4 min.

Kick It! - 5 min.

Sorcery - 6 min.

Yie Ar Kung-Fu - 2 min.

Yie Ar Kung-Fu II - 2 min.

Super Cassette Vision:

Super Baseball - 11 min.

Super Soccer - 23 min.

A few more SCV additions - I'm now up to 15 games including the untracked Milky Princess - followed by some Friday evening "petting" and then I plugged in a tape recorder to play through my cassette games for the MSX. Unfortunately the Mappy tape seems to have gone bad and snapped, so that one is only for looking at. I also picked up Yie Ar Kung-Fu 1 so I got to function test it and compare to the sequel I've got since before. The first YAKF on the MSX is nothing like e.g. the C64 version and actually quite unplayable IMHO, the sequel is a bit better. I rounded off with some Boogie Woogi Jungle and afterwards watched a YouTube video to get hints how to solve some levels.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (Red October 31st through November Rain 6th)...

 

Online (non-eligible):

Dead End St. - 37 min.

Crazy Karts - 46 min.

 

PC Windows (non-eligible):

Space Birdz - 67 min. in 3 sessions

 

I tried an online game called Dead End St., but I didn't complete it. In it, you have to shoot and kill ever growing hoards of Zombies coming at you and your car. Another online game, Crazy Karts, is a racing game similar to Super Mario Kart with some crazy extras like a rocket launcher.

 

Finally, I managed to beat the pre-set high score of 20,000 points in Space Birdz, which concludes playing it for now.

 

I also tried to analyze the arcade game TX-1 which has a slightly broken way of drawing the road. My approach was somehow extracting the track data and trying to render it properly. I'm satisfied with the result, though it's not releaseable.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 261 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 56,718

 

 

[BurritoBeans]

System: then Title: then Playtime (Minutes):

PC-98 Armist 10
PC-98 Blood Seed 10
PC-98 Case of Dungeons 10
PC-98 Christine 55
PC-98 Delicious Lunchpack 10
PC-98 Demon City 10
PC-98 Filsnown 10
PC-98 Girl 10
PC-98 Gram Cats 10
PC-98 Harlem Blade 10
PC-98 Hermes War 10
PC-98 Pentium 10
PC-98 Pentium 2 10
PC-98 Ray Gun 10
PC-98 Smell of Blood 10
PC-98 Viper 6 10
TOTAL TIME: 205

PC-88 Bomb Jack 10
PC-88 Thexder 10
TOTAL TIME: 20

PC-6001 Hydlide 20
PC-6001 Mappy 20
PC-6001 Suido 20
TOTAL TIME: 60

Apple II Bubble Bobble 45
Apple II California Games 10
Apple II Colossal Cave Adventure 20
Apple II Dangerous Dave 5
Apple II Impossible Mission 45
Apple II Karateka 45
Apple II King’s Quest 20
Apple II Lode Runner 10
Apple II Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum 10
Apple II Moon Patrol 10
Apple II Pitfall 10
Apple II Tetris 10
Apple II The Bard’s Tale 10
Apple II Wasteland 10
Apple II Zaxxon 10
TOTAL TIME: 270

NES After Burner 10
NES Arkanoid 10
NES Contra 30
NES Jackal 30
NES Rush‘n Attack 30
NES Super Mario Bros. 10
NES Super Mario Bros. 2 10
NES Super Mario Bros. 3 50
NES The Legend of Zelda 10
NES Thunder & Lightning 10
NES Ultima – Quest of the Avatar 10
NES Ultima: Exodus 10
TOTAL TIME: 220

Game Boy Pokemon Blue 20
Game Boy Pokemon Red 20
Game Boy Super Mario Land 20
Game Boy Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins 20
TOTAL TIME: 80

PC (DOS) DOOM 75
PC (DOS) Spear of Destiny 50
PC (DOS) Wolfenstein 3D 50

TOTAL TIME: 175

PC (Windows) Battlezone 30
PC (Windows) Battlezone II 30
PC (Windows) Simcity 3000 120
TOTAL TIME: 180

 

Well first off, I tried putting the spreadsheet into a text document then importing it - not as good but whatever I'm not taking all the time to change it. So, onto stuff.

 

To start off the text, since I've been playing so much of the NEC PC-98, I dragged out the PC-88 and PC-6001. The PC-88 I never much found a use for and considered selling multiple times - it kinda just does business and that's it. Same case for the PC-6001, but the PC-6001 with the tape drive, floppy drive, cartridge sidecar and touchpad isn't as big as the PC88s box with a full-size QWERTY keyboard attached so I don't mind it as much. Why is this significant? Well it's not, I just felt like it'd be fun to play them, and yeah they have worse graphics and all that but whatever they're cool anyways - I think the PC-6001 even had a US run under another name, so I thought it was neat. The games are a bit more limited, graphical capabilities are thrown out the window, but they're cool in my book even if they all share a port of Hydlide running at an increasingly worse standard.

 

So, I ditched the "cataloging by system" idea - I mean I'm still doing it, but I'm not going one or two systems at a time, instead I'm going all-out "Play whatever and put it in the right place" for my methods, as I seriously am tired of visual novels/eroges on the PC98 after a week and a half, so I pretty much quit those. Instead, I brought out more standard stuff - the NES collection got a bit of love from me, the Pentium rigs got used for a bit of DOS and Windows-based gaming, and I took some time to play the Apple II again with the Laser 128 and the cool Thomson monitor that's Amber instead of the standard Monitor /// on the II+ as the Laser 128 has 128KB of RAM, while the Apple II has "64KB" even though by "64" it means "62 and a dead 2K IC on the language card" right now.

 

So, for the points 'n stuff:

• Cassettes feel slower and slower the more I use them - the load times are getting to kill me, I swear I finished Led Zeppelin 3 by the time the PC-6001 games loaded but that may have just been me falling asleep in my chair
• Playing too much too fast makes my head seriously hurt, and I think I may slow it down or give 20+ minutes to each game (probably a horrible decision on the 2nd one but whatever I don't care)
• I never liked the NES Advantage controller so much - the stick just kinda works, while my D-Pads are a mess most of the time

 

And for games that were strange/cool/whatever:

• PC98 - Christine - Yeah talk about a "what the fu......." game. I sat there and played so much of it to figure out what the hell was happening, and the plot went something along the line of "A sorceress came out of the blue, turned some girls boyfriend into stone, and now you have to save him" with a bunch of torture and sex and shit - If someone ever asks me "what's the strangest game you've played?" I think this may be a new answer as I honestly have no idea what to say that isn't confusion.
• PC6001 - Hydlide - I've played Hydlide on a million systems, and while they're all similar this one was different in the fact that it's running on the lowest specs I've seen so far - a Z80 clone at 4MHz and 16K of RAM. Usually Hydlide isn't a game I care for, but I thought this was pretty sweet.
• Apple II - Wasteland - I've mentioned this one before, and I'll mention it again. Wasteland is just a fun little RPG to pick up and play, and I enjoy it a good bit. Not much in the way of post-apocalyptic games that I cared for before Fallout 3 and all that stuff, so this is always fun
• Windows - Battlezone I and II - It uses the same name as the old arcade, but it's a FPS/RTS combo. Build stuff, get in space tanks which are pretty slick, and just have fun - I like it a lot.

So yeah that's all. Not a massive chunk of the list is PC98 which is exciting to me as I was thinking it would be if I stuck to finishing off that system so that's cool - variety is always nice to have. I figure I'll try and finish off Apple II or run through NES as it's only 60ish titles, and that'll be good for next week.

 

 

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

This was a quiet week for me. Worked too much and didn't have much time for any gaming. Only did some Breakout as I bought a couple pairs of paddles that needed to be cleaned out and test played them with the mentioned game. Next time I'll make sure to alphabetize the games chronilogically by console and game.

 

Atari 2600:

 

Breakout: 15 Minutes

[zylon]

5200-

 

K-Razy Shootout- 25min