Post Your LeMans High Score!

[+wongojack]

Well, there is no HSC for Commodore 64, so I thought I'd start a high score thread for a game that is a true challenge even for those who have played it for many years.

 

I recently have been on a big LeMans kick and have enjoyed using new paddles from the Atari Flashback. I made it to 617,240 by playing madly over the past few weeks!

 

The procedural differences that seem to effect when the track narrows are difficult to pin down. it seems that the pattern is the same if you power cycle the C64, so by doing that, you at least get the same track each time. I've now played dozens (hundreds?) of rounds and hitting RESTORE to restart sometimes results in the track narrowing much earlier than when cycling the Commie.

 

I'd like to say that I found some trick to exploit to get my score, but I really didn't. Even some things that I think are good ideas fail for me frequently. Probably the toughest parts to avoid a crash are in the divided highway, on the ice, and through the chicane. Occasionally the track is very narrow for the ice (or tunnel) which makes me more nervous, but I seem to do ok on it.

 

The divided hwy gets you with a pattern of cars that forces you to move between a narrow gap from left to right. When I see that pattern, I know I will crash. Interestingly, I find it much easier to squirt through narrow gaps when moving from right to left.

 

On the ice, I find that you actually can change direction fairly quickly if you rapidly turn the paddle back and forth. However, this isn't really useful for more than one quick direction change. I do best on the ice, when I'm able to relax and only change directions once or twice.

 

The chicane is the least predictable. It can seem remarkably easy at times, but then things will set up in such a way that you've really got to just slow down to get through. When I get above about 400k, I find that my instinct is to always slow, but then you do loose valuable seconds.

 

The big trade off comes when you try to decide ahead of time if you want to actively slow down through any of those sections. You can often avoid crashes, but I suspect that sometimes it is better to just crash than to have to persist slowly for more than 10 seconds (on divided hwy for example). On rare occasions, I've slowed down on the ice only to find the pattern of cars completely impassible without being able to accelerate - might as well crash.

 

For my high score, I was going for 500k and blew my previous high away! I simply had some really long runs in there. Hard to say how long exactly as blinking becomes difficult to plan let alone glancing at the score, but I think I managed to accumulate 180k without a crash right in the middle. I had another nice run of at least 80k as I was crossing 400k. I knew I would probably make it when I was just under 380k, and saw my time cycle. I got extended time only a few seconds later, so I knew I was dealing with a refresh point above 55 seconds for my run.