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

[Atarian7]

Thanks for looking those numbers up. I guess I thought this week was rather high because the previous week was only 3878.

[carlsson]

After a bit of digging, the top list for 2016 only looks like this:

 

1. 10079 mins (week 6)

2. 6860 mins (week 28)

3. 6686 mins (week 14)

4. 6533 mins (week 11)

5. 6406 mins (week 29)

6. 6224 mins (week 15)

7. 6189 mins (week 46)

 

The average so far is 4673 minutes per week.

 

With the exception of the "double" week 6, thus this year we've been back to more normal counts compared to the previous year. I think there a few posters fewer, which explains the difference.

[Iwantgames:)]

Haven't posted in awhile, not too much gaming time lately but I did manage to get me a Dreamcast and played a couple games so here's my times:

 

Dreamcast -

 

Sonic Robo Blast 2 - 130min

They Hunger - 180min

 

[karokoenig]

Sega Mega Drive

Pier Solar: 75 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 42 min

 

Making a little progress in Pier Solar. Finished the introductory quest and just started a few steps into the "real" story.

 

Grinding on in Silent Hunter.

[carlsson]

Creativision:

Astro Pinball - 14 min.

Police Jump - 7 min.

Sonic Invader - 10 min.

RCA Studio II:

Asteroids - 7 min.

Berzerk - 8 min.

Climber - 8 min.

Concentration Match - 5 min.

Freeway - 19 min.

Gunfighter - 6 min.

Invaders - 3 min.

Kaboom - 3 min.

Outbreak - 7 min.

Pac-man - 7 min.

Pinball - 6 min.

Scramble - 12 min.

TVA2012: Space Rescue - 4 min.

So yes, my RCA Studio II multicart arrived and I finally got to play all available games, including those homebrews from Paul Robson and Lee Romanow that really improve the total library by a lot. The controllers - keypad - obviously still leave a lot to be desired, and the graphics even with colours added as in the later European clones, makes it look primitive compared to the Channel F, not to mention the ultra high definition Atari 2600.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 14th through 20th)...

 

Commodore 64:

Crystals of Zong - 134 min. in 5 sessions

 

This week the only game I played war "Crystals of Zong", a kind of action adventure where you have to exit a system of 9 rooms each containiing a maze similar to Pac-Man, but without the dots. You have to collect the keys which typically unlock the center in another room so you can collect a treasure there. There are 8 rounds in total where each of 4 enemies appears. I got to Round 7, but didn't manage to complete it.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 445 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 93,947

 

 

 

[+Ksarul]

I got to do a little playing this week after a period where all of my hobby time was consumed by hardware construction.

 

TI-99/4A

 

Tutankham: 60 minutes

 

This one is from a dump that recently turned up of the game. Prior to that it was known to exist (one copy) but otherwise lost, as the owner of that one copy had to sign an NDA to get it in the first place. Someone else found a dump from another source and released it into the wild, so I built a cartridge this weekend to play it on real iron. It was a lot of fun.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Kangaroo - 3 minutes

Pac-Man - 60 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Basketbrawl - 4 minutes

Fat Axl - 2 minutes

Mario Bros. - 38 minutes

Ninja Golf - 9 minutes

Robotron: 2084 - 20 minutes

 

GAMEBOY:

Super Mario Land - 1 minute

[zylon]

5200-

 

Millipede- 50min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Atari 2600:

Marauder - 3 min.

NES:

Mega Man 6 - 166 min.

Genesis:

Harry Potter - 16 min.

Miniplanets - 55 min.

Game Boy:

Casper - 28 min.

Chuck Rock - 2 min.

Double Dribble: 5-on-5 - 46 min.

The Fidgetts - 8 min.

Godzilla - 4 min.

Heiankyo Alien - 18 min.

Mickey's Ultimate Challenge - 103 min.

True Lies - 119 min.

Game Boy Color:

Marble Madness - 38 min.

Snoopy Tennis - 26 min.

Beat a bunch of games this week: on the NES, Mega Man 6; for the Genesis, the excellent homebrew Miniplanets and the garbage pirate game Harry Potter; and on the Game Boy, Mickey's Ultimate Challenge, Heiankyo Alien, and True Lies, plus the lower difficulties of Casper and Double Dribble. More thoughts on most of these, plus last week's games, here.

I also played a bit of Game Boy Color, trying out Marble Madness (a truly horrific port that may be impossible to beat!) and Snoopy Tennis (competent, though the license is a weird fit).

[+wongojack]

Lynx

Raiden 25

Scrapyard Dog 8

Shanghai 192

Super Off road 17

 

I guess I wanted to play Mah Jong this week, so Shanghai got some playtime. I probably haven't played a game like it since Win95 was installed on my home PC.

 

I also played and finished Enslaved: Odyssey to the West on PS3, and a ton of Pinball Arcade on Steam.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

My times for this week.

Arcade/Mame:

Mario Bros: 125 Minutes
Robotron 2084: 9 Minutes
Turbo: 12 Minutes

NES:

Super Mario Bros. 2: 70 Minutes

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Another day, another dungeon.

 

 

 

Arcade

Robotron 2084 (played on Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits for Game Boy Advance) - 23 minutes

 

Atari 2600

Berzerk - 13 minutes

Incoming! - 16 minutes

Mario Bros. - 16 minutes

Pete Rose Baseball - 35 minutes

Atari 7800 (emulated on Nintendo Wii)
Frenzy! - 25 minutes

Mario Bros. - 72 minutes

Pete Rose Baseball - 29 minutes

RealSports Baseball - 35 minutes

Robotron 2084 - 337 minutes

ColecoVision (emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Frenzy! - 6 minutes

Game Boy

4-In-1 Fun Pak - 70 minutes

PC-DOS

Wolfenstein 3D (played on Wolfenstein 3D for Game Boy Advance) - 91 minutes

Wolfenstein 3D: The Nocturnal Missions (played on Wolfenstein 3D for Game Boy Advance) - 124 minutes

PlayStation

Tomb Raider II - 507 minutes

Tomb Raider III - 220 minutes

Sega Master System (emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Mortal Kombat - 39 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,733 minutes (28 hours 53 minutes) [1,733 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
PlayStation: 727 minutes

Atari 7800: 498 minutes

PC-DOS: 215 minutes

Atari 2600: 155 minutes

Game Boy: 70 minutes

Sega Master System: 39 minutes

Arcade: 23 minutes

ColecoVision: 6 minutes

A substantial step up in play time from last week, this was really one of those "a little bit of this and a little bit of that" kind of weeks for me. I went into the week intending to spend most of my gaming time finishing the GBA port of Wolfenstein 3D, and while I did finish the original 3 episodes of Wolfenstein 3D I didn't make it very far into the Nocturnal Missions expansion (episodes 4 through 6) before I ended up getting distracted by the games of the week in the Atari 7800 High Score Club. I had a bit of fun with Mario Bros., but when Robotron 2084 came up as the next game to be played that ended up really grabbing my attention and making up the bulk of my gaming time for the week. After more than 5 hours of Robotron 2084, played via emulation on the Wii and using the twin thumb sticks on the Wii Classic Controller to control the game, my top score of the week ended up being a pretty respectable 1,571,625. It wasn't enough to secure me 1st place in the High Score Club, but I do seem to have 2nd place wrapped up rather tidily for the time being.

In addition to Wolfenstein and Robotron, I also spent a bit of time comparing a few versions of Berzerk and Frenzy! for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, and ColecoVision as well as playing a few baseball games on the Atari 2600 and 7800. Of the bunch I think my favorite version of Berzerk is the version that PacManPlus included packed in with his homebrew port of Frenzy! for the Atari 7800 (I love the voice synthesis in that one) but for Frenzy! I do have to go with the ColecoVision version. It plays at a smoother and more even pace than the Atari 7800 version and the colors of everything are quite a bit more accurate to the original arcade version. PacManPlus still did an outstanding job with the port, I just wish he could have found a way to do some little things like make the mirror walls white like they are in the arcade original and ColecoVision port; so I have to give the edge to the ColecoVision for that one.

As far as the baseball games go, I can safely say that while I love Pete Rose Baseball on both the Atari 2600 and 7800, the Atari 7800 version of RealSports Baseball is without a doubt the single worst baseball video game I have ever played. The reason for this is that it has a "sodomize your grandmother while pouring sugar in your gas tank" level of difficulty, to the point that in the two complete games of it that I played I was able to get a runner to first base exactly once in 18 innings. It could still be fun as a two player game with a friend, but playing against the computer is little more than an exercise in pointless frustration.

Lastly, to round off my week, I also played a little Mortal Kombat for the Master System and spent a little over an hour playing a copy of 4-In-1 Fun Pak for the Game Boy that I found in nice minty fresh condition for $3 from a local Half Price Books a couple days ago. Mortal Kombat was just as fun as ever and I actually found myself really enjoying the little classic tabletop game collection for the Game Boy. It has a nice assortment of games, reasonably balanced computer AI difficulty, and was just a lot of fun all around. I did get my butt kicked pretty bad in Othello even on the easiest setting (which is probably just due to the fact that I'm not too great at Othello) but I was definitely able to hold my own against the computer in Checkers and Chess. I haven't tried Backgammon yet, since I don't know how to play that one, but the other three games in the set are quite nicely done so I'd expect Backgammon to be as well.

Wrapping up this week's post, this week the spousal unit only played two games. The first was Tomb Raider II for the PlayStation, which she did finish and beat after no small amount of effort, and the second was it's sequel Tomb Raider III. She loved Tomb Raider II and thought it was a great game, especially appreciating that the designer's gave you the ability to save your game at any time, but Tomb Raider III has been a bit of a mixed bag for her so far. She thinks the game looks beautiful and is enjoying going on more adventures with Lara Croft, but has been more than a little irritated by how dark many of the game's environments are and the shortage of save points. Many a time have I heard her cursing at the TV this week over Tomb Raider III for not providing enough flares to light up dark rooms or for throwing her into some kind of unexpected trap without giving her the chance to save the game first, inevitably killing her character and sending her way back to some previous far off save point.

Right now I don't really know what next week has in store gaming wise. I do plan to continue my play through of chapters 4-6 of Wolfenstein 3D, but with all the frustration the misses has been having with Tomb Raider III I have no idea whether or not she will be continuing to play it over the coming week. I wouldn't be surprised if she sticks with it, but I sure wouldn't blame her if she decided to move onto a different game instead. In any case, as the weather outside gets colder and winter descends I wish you all wonderful week of warm and cozy gaming indoors and a very happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the United States! Best wishes to you and yours.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Jin

[Atarian7]

Happy Thanksgiving to you too and everybody else.

[BurritoBeans]

Power has been flaky (been a blizzard for about four days now and a lot was happening during the week) so I got crap all in for gaming.

 

Atari 2600:

E.T. - 45 minutes

Yar's Revenge - 30 minutes

 

Game Boy:

Super Mario Land - 30 minutes

Pokemon Red - 15 minutes

 

So yeah, not much. I popped the 2600 on because the tragedy that was my main PC having its PSU ripped apart during operation by a mad WoW player, essentially frying the thing. E.T. isn't much special - just kinda fun to pop on now and then - and Yar's Revenge I still suck at but I am doing better, being able to clear more than four boards now before I die. Also, since power has been flaky I've had the Game Boy out. No backlight on the thing so I had to use the old worm light to see the screen, and man I forgot how much of a pain that can be compared to a backlight. Still, it is a fun system and I will admit - I'd like to get more for it, I just never really think of buying Game Boy stuff while I'm out as I don't use it a ton.

 

Happily enough this was a good week for modern game releases at least. Dishonored 2 popped into existence the week before last as of this posting and I finally got it and downloaded it. It kinda really sucks on PC because the stupid game has horrible framerates and glitches everywhere (waiting for a patch if it hasn't come out already) so I'm hoping it'll get fixed up so I can play it, and Pokemon Sun and Moon came out which I played for about an hour and threw back in their cases on my shelf - not a big pokemon fan and I can't get too into them but I figured they'd be good titles to own. So I figure with those two games, possibly picking up Battlefield 1 off of the shelf again, and sifting through the collection to catalog it that I'll be entertained for a while now. That's about it, just a bit of stuff but whatever it was fun.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 47, running from November 14 - 20. We logged 4272 minutes of eligible play, playing 71 games on a total of 18 systems.

Top 10:

1. Tomb Raider II (PlayStation) - 507

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 445

3. Robotron: 2084 (Atari 7800) - 357

4. Tomb Raider III (PlayStation) - 220

5. Shanghai (Atari Lynx) - 217

6. They Hunger (Dreamcast) - 180

7. Mega Man 6 (NES/Famicom) - 166

8. Crystals of Zong (C64) - 134

9. Sonic Robo Blast 2 (Dreamcast) - 130

10. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 125

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 445

2. Robotron: 2084 (Atari 7800) - 357

3. Crystals of Zong (C64) - 134

4. Mario Bros. (Arcade) - 125

5. Mario Bros. (Atari 7800) - 110

6. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 60

6. Tutankham (TI-99/4A) - 60

8. Meteorites (Atari 5200) - 50

9. E.T. (Atari 2600) - 45

10. Pete Rose Baseball (Atari 2600) - 35

10. RealSports Baseball (Atari 7800) - 35

Top 10 systems:

1. PlayStation (727)

2. Atari 2600 (666)

3. Atari 7800 (571)

4. Game Boy (444)

5. Dreamcast (310)

6. Atari Lynx (267)

7. PC (DOS) (257)

8. NES/Famicom (236)

9. Arcade (169)

10. Genesis (146)

Three weeks in a row for Tomb Raider II! And III is still in the mix too. (With both games in the Top 10, it's a pity we don't have the Game Boy title Navy Seals on the charts too, or we'd have...wait for it...Seals and Crofts.)

The margin is small for Lara this week, though, as the Atari 2600 and Kaboom are both close behind at #2 (and #1 on the pre-NES tip), while thanks to Robotron: 2084, the Atari 7800 isn't far off the pace at #3.

Speaking of Robotron, it's now the newest member of the 1000-minute club, grabbing spot #242 with 1230 minutes logged to date.

[Atarian7]

666 for Atari 2600. It's funny: I sometimes get 666 or 777 in my score when playing Kaboom!.

 

I also get full houses with the numbers grouped together.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

666 for Atari 2600. It's funny: I sometimes get 666 or 777 in my score when playing Kaboom!.

 

I also get full houses with the numbers grouped together.

lol I know what you mean! Personally I'm always surprised when my household's gaming times for the week add up to a round number of hours. I think there's been a few weeks this year that we had exactly 20 or 22 hours in time for the week.

 

And oh, it seems the misses has gotten too frustrated with Tomb Raider III and decided to put it back on the shelf and find something else to play; so Kaboom! may very well resume it's place at the top of the charts next week.

[carlsson]

Perhaps if you get a pair of paddles, soon there will be at least two of you chasing that 999,999 score for several hours every week?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Perhaps if you get a pair of paddles, soon there will be at least two of you chasing that 999,999 score for several hours every week?

Nah, I'll leave that achievement to Atarian. My brain starts feeling like it's turning into jelly after just 10 or 15 minutes of Kaboom! so there's no way I could handle the kind of marathon play that he does. I already rolled the score in Centipede for the Game Boy Color this year and that was enough marathon twitch gaming to last me one year. Besides, I'm not sure my brain has fully recovered from that 1,500,000+ game of Robotron 2084 last week. It needs a good long rest after that.

[+Darrin9999]

Odyssey 2 :

1. Happy Bird - 35 min

2. Traffic! - 18 min

 

colecovision:

1. Hang-on - 40 min

2. Jeepers Creepers - 45 min

3. SASA - 20 min

 

Atari Jaguar :

1. Pinball Fantasies - 55 min

2. Flappy McFur - 27 min

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600 - Missile Command - 5 minutes

ATARI 7800 - Robotron 2084 - 30 minutes

[Iwantgames:)]

I got sucked into playing Titanfall 2 and Skyrim on PS4 this week so not much qualifying time.

 

Evil Twin - Dreamcast - 30min

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 7800 - Robotron 2084 - Additional 20 minutes

 

TO JIN - Congratulations on making 7800 Robotron 2084 the newest member of 1000-minute club.

Edited November 27, 2016 by oyamafamily