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

[carlsson]

Channel F:

Tetris - 69 min.

Video Whizball - 25 min.

After a couple of rounds of Tetris, of which I prematurely ended one due to I got bored, I set a new personal best 2923 pts. On Video Whizball, I mainly played game variation 64, meaning up to four blocks at the same time with increasing value up to 9 before they disappear. It results in rather short matches, but also very sudden changes who wins.

[karokoenig]

This week: nothing. No time at all.

[Kurt_Woloch]

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.

Thank you for that tip! I just found it, it's here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/254218-what-ever-happened-towith/page-2

 

Anyway... here are my times for this past week (November 21st through 27th)...

 

Arcade:

Mario Bros. - 16 min.

Space Invaders Part II - 21 min.

Space Attack - 1 min.

Space Invaders Deluxe - 9 min.

Space Invaders Part Four - 4 min.

Space Invaders Multigame - 21 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Crystals of Zong - 299 min. in 16 sessions

 

TI-99:

Tutankham - 26 min.

 

Apart from a quick replay of Mario Bros. (the 16 min. were actually a single game), I tried various variants of Space Invaders. The Space Invaders Multigame actually contains multiple games, but I can't remember their names and respective minutes. It's one ROM though... I did it all in search of the variant I know from back in the day. I think it was called Deluxe Space Invaders, but that is the name of another variant. The variant I remember was in color, kept score at 10 times the vailue of original Space Invaders and had a bonus round at the end of each wave where as far as I remember several saucers flew through at once. I still have the audio of that version recorded on a tape from back then, where you can clearly hear the bonus round. I don't know if that was an actual release, actually, or if somebody hacked another variant. I think the shapes of the Invaders were also altered. Maybe it was in fact a ROM hack put into a Space Invaders Deluxe cabinet so that I thought that would be the name of the game.

 

The main game, however, was Crystals of Zong on the Commodore 64. Apart from playing it for nearly 5 hours, I began to disassemble it, but I don't know if I'll complete that. I'm actually interested in writing a bot that plays it automatically, but this would probably take several hours, and I don't know if WinVICE actually accepts its input via Windows messages (I know that MAME doesn't, at least not for the joystick inputs).

 

As a quick update, I now tried the non-released version of Tutankham on the TI-99 as well. It's very well playable (more so than the Intellivision and the Atari 2600 versions in my opinion), only the sound is a bit weird and over-the-top, as usual for Parker Bros. It's pretty easy... I managed to complete the first four rounds of it which I never managed to do on the Intellivision and arcade versions.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Kurt_Woloch

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 289 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 60,806

 

I had a lot of trouble focusing this week. Sometimes I tried too hard and other times not hard enough. I just couldn't find that zone of balance.

 

 

 

 

[zylon]

Sega Saturn-

 

Guardian Heroes- 35min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Castlevania III - 16 min.

Ninja Kun: Ashura no Shou - 22 min.

Famicom Disk System:

Konamic Tennis - 2 min.

Genesis:

Nobunaga's Ambition - 864 min.

Game Boy:

Battleship - 111 min.

A little Castlevania, a little Battleship (48 levels?!), but otherwise it was tons of Koei. I ended up beating the 17-fief scenario on difficulty levels #1 and #3 out of five, using the title character.

[adamchevy]

Xbox 360, Kingdoms of Amalur 700 minutes

[+wongojack]

Atari 2600

Beat em and Eat em 11

Commando 1

Dark Chambers 15

Espial 15

Kaboom 46

Music Machine 72

Pac Man 6

Super Breakout 41

Ultra SCSIde 7

Video Olympics 47

 

Arcade

Battlezone 2

Dragon's Lair 11

Red Baron 8

Spy Hunter 120 --New Personal Best 32,375

 

TG16

Ninja Spirit 8

 

Intellivision

Burgertime 4

 

Apple II

Gauntlet 1

 

Gameboy

Revenge of the Gator 20

 

Vectrex

Armor Attack 18

Bedlam 10

Cosmic Chasm 28

Fortress of Narzod 20

Hyperchase 51

Mine Storm II 6

Patriots 8

Pole Position 10

Protector 30

Scramble 17

Spike 17

Spike Hoppin 5

Spike's Water Baloons 3

Spinball 48

Star Castle 29

Star Trek 20

Star Trek II (Bug Fixed Hack of Orig) 23

Tour de France 4

Vectris 3

YASI 10

 

A big week for me as I took advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US to play some games. Things really got going on Friday when my wife and I visited the National VG museum just north of Dallas. The highlight was my wife noticing a Music Machine box and announcing "I'll play that if you get it." I had to explain that I'll never "get it" unless we win the lottery. Thing is, we both listened to the Music Machine album growing up and actually have a connection to it. Come to find out that the game is actually a pretty good Kaboom clone that adds some nice gameplay variety. I played it several times on my harmony cart this weekend.

 

The museum has a Spy Hunter machine which I played a little, but it inspired me to play it in MAME. I fiddled with the controls and played for quite a while at home despite not having an analog wheel.

 

A few weeks ago, I ordered a bunch of reproduction Vectrex overlays, and I finally had time to try them out. Hyperchase is the kind of twitchy race game I like (see my Lemans times), but it might be too hard to get into further. It sure looks good with the right overlay though.

[+Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is what I did last week.

 

Arcade/Mame

 

Phozon: 10 Minutes

Satans of Saturn: 15 Minutes

Space Firebird: 15 Minutes

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I'm laying back in bed doped up on Benadryl after having an allergic reaction to something this morning (I've yet to figure out exactly what) and posting from my mobile, so there won't be any picture or long post about the games played in my household today. But I thought I'd still try to get the times for the week posted anyway:

 

Atari 2600

----------------

Adventure - 62 minutes

Adventure Plus - 100 minutes

Berzerk - 24 minutes

Berzerk: Voice Enhanced - 8 minutes

Carrot Kingdom Demo - 6 minutes

D.K. VCS - 12 minutes

Frogger - 11 minutes

Millipede - 13 minutes

Millipede TB - 25 minutes

New Pac-Man (8k Version) - 13 minutes

Pac-Man Arcade - 12 minutes

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns - 20 minutes

Scramble - 65 minutes

Space Rocks - 28 minutes

Venture - 27 minutes

 

Atari 7800

----------------

Dig Dug - 6 minutes

Food Fight - 5 minutes

Hat Trick - 5 minutes

Winter Games - 12 minutes

 

Game Boy

----------------

All-Star Baseball 99 - 480 minutes

Boggle Plus - 10 minutes

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents: Major League Baseball - 111 minutes

Mortal Kombat II - 8 minutes

 

Game Boy Color

--------------------------

Monopoly - 178 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 10 minutes

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe - 12 minutes

 

PlayStation

------------------

Tomb Raider III - 38 minutes

 

Sega Genesis

----------------------

Zoop - 28 minutes

 

 

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This week

--------------------------------------------------------------

1,329 minutes (22 hours 9 minutes) [1,329 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

----------------------------------------------------------------

Game Boy: 609 minutes

Atari 2600: 426 minutes

Game Boy Color: 200 minutes

PlayStation: 38 minutes

Atari 7800: 28 minutes

Sega Genesis: 28 minutes

[BurritoBeans]

Arcade:

Ghosts 'n Goblins - 30 minutes

Ghouls 'n Ghosts - 45 minutes

Splatterhouse - 30 minutes

 

NES:

Ninja Gaiden II - 30 minutes

 

All the arcade stuff I got in on Monday - we threw the Supergun in for the heck of trying it so I played a bit of Splatterhouse, and it was nice playing on a screen bigger than the little VGA monitor I was using for the thing. Ghouls 'n Ghosts/Ghosts 'n Goblins I ran through the Pandora's Box, they're always fun enough anyways. My brother took a try at them and it was funny seeing him not be able to pass the 2nd level, but eh they were pretty impossible to me for about a month so I understand why. NES got a bit of playtime with Ninja Gaiden 2 as a friend popped over for a bit and wanted to mess with the NES - we ended up handing off the controller after every life and it was kind-of fun to play.

 

I did get a bit more playtime in with games but it was all on Elite: Dangerous as a few friends ended up buying it on Steam so I helped them get started and ended up doing some stuff with them. I'm thinking maybe after Christmas I'll get back to the collection organization thing - I'll buy a few more titles by then if it's like every other year. Deer season started so all my spare time is going to be sitting in the cold trying to get some deer with my dad and an uncle so I won't have much time to play games unless I carry a handheld on me or something. So yeah that's it, and maybe I'll get some in but I may skip a few weeks here.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 48, running from November 21 - 27. We logged 4454 minutes of eligible play, playing 99 games on a total of 21 systems.

Top 10:

1. Nobunaga's Ambition (Genesis) - 864

2. All-Star Baseball '99 (Game Boy) - 480

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 335

4. Crystals of Zong (C64) - 299

5. Monopoly (Game Boy Color) - 178

6. Spy Hunter (Arcade) - 120

7. Battleship (Game Boy) - 111

7. Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball (Game Boy) - 111

9. Adventure Plus (Atari 2600) - 100

10. Music Machine, The (Atari 2600) - 72

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 335

2. Crystals of Zong (C64) - 299

3. Spy Hunter (Arcade) - 120

4. Adventure Plus (Atari 2600) - 100

5. Music Machine, The (Atari 2600) - 72

6. Tetris (Fairchild Channel F) - 69

7. Scramble (Atari 2600) - 65

8. Adventure (Atari 2600) - 62

9. Hyperchase (Vectrex) - 51

10. Robotron: 2084 (Atari 7800) - 50

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (981)

2. Genesis (892)

3. Game Boy (740)

4. Vectrex (360)

5. Arcade (358)

6. C64 (299)

7. Game Boy Color (200)

8. ColecoVision (105)

9. Fairchild Channel F (94)

10. Atari Jaguar (82)

As Sylvester the Cat might say, "Oda shame of it all." But it's hardly a shame that the Genesis port of Nobunaga's Ambition fulfilled its name to take #1 on the main charts this week, though the Atari clings onto the top of the other two.

No new entries into the 1000-minute club this week, but the Game Boy Color port of Monopoly cracks the 5000-minute club -- only the 12th game to pass that threshold.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Gorf: 5 min

Smurf: 5 min

 

Atari 7800

Asteroids: 5 min

Centipede: 3 min

Galaga: 8 min

Pole Position II: 10 min

 

No time for any involved gaming like sub simulations or rpg's, but at least I found a little time to test a new toy that arrived in the mail today: An Atari 7800. I have been bidding on ebay patiently for quite a few months until I got one for a decent price.

 

The console does have some issues. Both control pads that came with it aren't perfect. One pad has a broken "1" button, the other won't steer down. Ah well, those pads are overrated anyway, and I have a whole drawer full of other controllers. The picture quality isn't great either. I heard that the 7800 tends to show horizontal stripes, and mine is no exception, it seems. However, I didn' open it yet to give it a thorough cleaning. We'l see how it turns out.

 

Another annoying thing I noticed: The Atari 2600 is much better when it comes to playing NTSC games. The 7800 carts I have are all NTSC (from a lot I acquired some time ago), and they show a big bar of flashing garbled noise on the bottom of the screen. No such problem with the 2600.

 

The games are fun, though! I can definetly see why many people are very fond of this console.

[carlsson]

VIC-20:

Fourth Encounter - 10 min.

Metagalactic Llamas - 14 min.

Miner 2049er - 15 min.

+ that I finally acquired a working combination of Family BASIC keyboard + cartridge, so eventually I'll play with that, at least type in some of the demonstration games.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week:

 

Arcade:

Funky Fish - 18 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Crystals of Zong - 79 min. in 2 sessions

 

Emerson Arcadia:

Funky Fish - 157 min. in 5 sessions

Turpin (Turtles) - 2 min.

 

I played a bit more Crystals of Zong until I reached the last round (Level which repeats indefinitely and is very hard.

Then I replayed Funky Fish on the Emerson Arcadia and the arcade original for a comparison. I also tried the Arcadia version of Turtles (Turpin), but lost interest quickly.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600

Missile Command - 40 minutes

Pac-Man - 10 minutes

Stay Frosty 2: Stay Frostier - 275 minutes in 3 sessions

 

ATARI 7800

Scramble - 70 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 353 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 77,574

[zylon]

5200-

 

Wizard Of Wor- 35min

Missile Command- 20min

 

3D0-

 

Wolfenstein 3D- 10min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Wit's - 22 min.

Genesis:

Lyle in Cube Sector - 5 min.

Nobunaga's Ambition - 206 min.

Game Boy:

Bionic Battler - 41 min.

Panel no Ninja Kesamaru - 7 min.

Square Deal: The Game of Two Dimensional Poker - 8 min.

Top Rank Tennis - 98 min.

Beat Bionic Battler, a silly excuse for a game with remarkably little to offer, on all difficulties. It'd be a moderately fun BASIC type-in game, but as a Game Boy retail title? Forget it.

I also made fruitless attempts at Level 5 difficulty in Nobunaga's Ambition. I'm not sure if I have it in me to take it on, as it's just too unfair (by design), and I haven't found any reliable exploits to counter that. The slow and steady tactics that work in ROTK, where each turn is just one month long, don't pay off in a faster-moving game where one turn = one season. One more save slot would make a world of difference, but two slots isn't quite enough.

Otherwise I played the only Game Boy tennis game I haven't beaten, and a translated Famicom game that's basically the light cycle stage in TRON over and over again.

[+Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Here is what I played.

 

Arcade/Mame:

 

Lunar Rescue: 10 Minutes

Pleiades: 15 Minutes

Stratovox: 10 Minutes

Vs. Excitebike: 15 Minutes

Vs. Hogan's Alley: 5 Minutes

Vs. Super Mario Bros: 20 Minutes

[+wongojack]

Arcade
Robotron 31
Satan's Hollow 29
Spy Hunter 358 --New Best 74,755

2600
Adventure 3
Asteroids 70
Astroblast 9
Beamrider 8
Chopper Command 15
Dig Dug Arcade 6
Frostbite 4
HERO 34
Megamania 10
Miss It 37
Pac Man 4k 2
Pitfall 13
River Raid 10
Saboteur 17
Seaquest 6
Shield Shifter 10
Space Invaders 3
Spider Fighter 20
Spiderman 39
Spy Hunter 2
Strip Off 7
Tempest 2

 

Another big week for me as I continued a small obsession with Spy Hunter. I spent a fair amount of time playing it on the Midway Arcade Legends collection for PS2, but most of my time spent with that game was on my MAME cabinet. I managed to learn a quick route to get to the boats, and if you can get there with oil slick then you can rack up the points. I want to break 100k, but I'm not sure if I'll get there. I may be done with it for a while. Overall, I'd say that the Midway Arcade Legends version is very nice, but it was a bit harder than the MAME version I was playing. That meant that I was able to switch back to MAME and get a little farther. It was sort of like practicing with weights on and then getting a boost when the weights came off.

 

Almost all of my 2600 time was on the new Flashback Portable. It is a nice little device that is very affordable. Sadly, the one I have produces a lot of errant moves as about 1 out of 6 presses UP results in a diagonal or straight LEFT press. Maybe I'll open it up and see what is going on. Asteroids doesn't really require you to press UP that often, so I had fun playing game #12. It is still a fun little machine that unlike other Flashbacks comes with an SD Cart slot.

[Atarian7]

How do you like Spider Fighter? I suggested it for next season's high score club.

[+wongojack]

I think on the default difficulty setting on Spider Fighter is actually quite easy. I would definitely recommend choosing the hardest difficulty configuration. I haven't read the manual in a while, but I know there is one. Otherwise it is a great game. Very fast and a pure shooter. I'd recommend a genesis (or other) arcade stick. Your thumb will be sore if using a CX40.

[Atarian7]

I think on the default difficulty setting on Spider Fighter is actually quite easy. I would definitely recommend choosing the hardest difficulty configuration. I haven't read the manual in a while, but I know there is one. Otherwise it is a great game. Very fast and a pure shooter. I'd recommend a genesis (or other) arcade stick. Your thumb will be sore if using a CX40.

On the default setting you can only shoot straight up. If you switch it to A then you can also shoot diagonally. I forgot if anything else changes.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Since I wasn't feeling too well and didn't end up taking a picture of the games played in my household last week, this week I decided to do a double picture. One for last week and one for this week.

 

Last Week

 

 

This Week

 

 

And now for this week's play times:

 

 

Atari 2600

Brik - 76 minutes

Carrot Kingdom Demo - 3 minutes

D.K. VCS - 43 minutes

New Pac-Man (8k Version) - 16 minutes

Sentinel - 24 minutes

Space Invaders Arcade - 11 minutes

Space Rocks - 15 minutes

Super Breakout - 15 minutes

Atari 7800 (emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Basketbrawl - 26 minutes

Donkey Kong - 7 minutes

Donkey Kong Junior - 12 minutes

Frenzy! - 37 minutes

Mean 18 Ultimate Golf - 6 minutes

One-On-One Basketball - 10 minutes

Pac-Man Collection - 10 minutes

Scramble - 187 minutes

Game Boy Color

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe - 25 minutes

PlayStation

Deathtrap Dungeon - 42 minutes

Tomb Raider III - 240 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
805 minutes (13 hours 25 minutes) [805 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Atari 7800: 295 minutes

PlayStation: 282 minutes

Atari 2600: 203 minutes

Game Boy Color: 25 minutes

It was a pretty small week for gaming around here, largely due to my continuing dental problems causing me no end of trouble while I wait for my oral surgery appointment on January 10th. When I wasn't being driven nuts by tooth pain, medication side effects, or medication allergies though I did manage to get in a bit of time on the Atari 2600 and do some Atari 7800 emulation on the Wii. On the 2600 front I decided I wanted to try and beat the homebrew game Brik, but after over an hour and probably more than 100 levels I eventually came to the conclusion that it must have a randomized level generator past a certain point and no true ending; so I called it quits at a score of 42,460.

After that I also played a bit of Super Breakout and played a game of Sentinel to test out the Atari Light Gun that Best Electronics sent me to replace one I had previously ordered from them that arrived broken. The replacement light gun does technically work, but it shoots about 1/2" to 1" to the right and looks like it was assembled by trained monkeys. Sadly Best Electronics refused to accept their terrible workmanship and as a defect and won't let me return it unless I pay them $26.25 for shipping and restocking fees, so it looks like I'm done doing business with that company and will have to look elsewhere for a properly working and decently constructed light gun for the Atari 2600 / 7800. I did try to file a claim about it with my credit card company but unfortunately I couldn't dispute the transaction with Best Electronics since it was more than 30 days old. Ah well, I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

I did end up having a lot of fun playing Atari 7800 emulated on the Wii this week though! This week the Atari 7800 High Score Club was playing Scramble, which is just a wonderfully well made homebrew title and was a ton of fun to play. I was really trying my best to top 90,000 on the Normal difficulty setting to get me in contention for 1st place, but ultimately the best I could pull off was 87,330 which I believe puts me in 3rd place at this point. I still had a great time playing though, and I had an equal amount of fun with Basketbrawl, Donkey Kong Junior, and a few other emulated 7800 games.

As far as my wife's gaming time this week goes, she actually ended up playing a fair bit more than me this time around. She started off the week with a variety of Atari 2600 games, since she wasn't sure if there was any longer story focused game that she really wanted to play right now, so she just played some really amazing homebrew renditions of some of her favorite arcade favorites on the 2600 for a while. D.K. VCS, New Pac-Man 8k, Space Rocks, and Space Invaders Arcade kept her entertained for a good while until she decided to get back to her usual favorite system the PlayStation. After getting frustrated and fed up with Tomb Raider III last week she decided to change things up and try Deathtrap Dungeon, but that didn't last too long. It didn't take more than 2 levels of Deathtrap Dungeon before she declared the controls "horrendously awful" and decided she'd be better off trying her luck with Tomb Raider III again. So, back to Tomb Raider III she went and it wasn't long before she got past the part she was stuck on last week. She's been really enjoying the game again since then, so I wouldn't be surprised if she sticks with it and sees the game through to the end over the coming few weeks.

I'm not really too sure what the next week has in store for me gaming wise, since my teeth and the various medications for them to get me through until my oral surgery early next year are still giving me trouble, but I'll do my best to keep my spirits up and get in a few games here and there when I can. Until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Jin