What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2017 (Season 10)

[Eltigro]

Wish I knew how many hours I spent playing Moon Patrol on an Apple ][ during 8th grade.

[+cvga]

Lots of game time this week, which is a rarity for me anymore...

 

Atari 2600:

 

Assembloids - 40 minutes

Panky the Panda - 15 minutes

Anguna - 15 minutes

Scramble - 60 minutes

Super Cobra - 10 minutes

Beamrider - 75 minutes

 

NES:

 

Baseball Stars - 480 minutes

 

Sad news on the Baseball Stars front. If you've read prior posts you might recall that I've built several super teams over the past 30 years. I like to start with a brand new team, put them in the hardest league possible (with the American Dreams and the other teams I've built) and build them to a super power. Well, the Nintendo glitched and caused me to not only lose data for that particular game, or even team, but reset the cart and erased all of my teams. Bummer

[Atarian7]

cvga, that sucks

[+Darrin9999]

NEO GEO AES:

 

1. Alpha Misson II - 263 min

2. Baseball Stars - 298 min

3. Ghost Pilots - 324 min

4. King of the Monster's - 73 min

5. Nam-75 - 163 min

6. Riding Hero - 40 min

7. Sengoku - 33 min

8. Super Sidekicks 2 - 84 min

9. Top Players Golf - 185 min

10. World Hero's 2 - 48 min

 

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Fort Apocalypse - 5 min.

River Rat - 33 min.

River Rescue - 57 min.

However the most amount of time I spent on alpha testing a game that hasn't been released yet, thus I can't include it on the list.

[+thegoldenband]

However the most amount of time I spent on alpha testing a game that hasn't been released yet, thus I can't include it on the list.

 

I have no objections to listing it as long as you were actually playing it (vs. just checking to see whether the collision detection is working, etc.).

 

Of course if the game has to stay a secret, you can always list it under a fake temporary name. I was always surprised that no one batted an eye when I listed a then-secret Intellivision game I played as "Super Pro Curling" a while back.

[+wongojack]

NEO GEO AES:

 

1. Alpha Misson II - 263 min

2. Baseball Stars - 298 min

3. Ghost Pilots - 324 min

4. King of the Monster's - 73 min

5. Nam-75 - 163 min

6. Riding Hero - 40 min

7. Sengoku - 33 min

8. Super Sidekicks 2 - 84 min

9. Top Players Golf - 185 min

10. World Hero's 2 - 48 min

 

 

Excellent times - getting your $$ worth from the AES for sure.

[+Darrin9999]

 

Excellent times - getting your $$ worth from the AES for sure.

Yes, vacation has been good!

[Kurt_Woloch]

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

 

Arcade:

Turtles - 254 min. in 8 sessions

 

Atari XL/XE:

Seafox - 204 min. in 8 sessions

 

Commodore 64:

Seafox - 50 min.

 

VIC-20:

Seafox - 244 min. in 5 sessions

 

After continuing to play the VIC-20 version of Seafox intensively, I finally changed to other versions of the game since I remember having beaten the C-64 version back in the day. I stuck with the Atari 8-bit version which I think is the original one since it seems to be the most colorful and also is much faster than the C-64 version though it clearly shares at least some of its codebase. The game actually takes advantage of the Atari 8-bit's graphics capabilities pretty well with many soft sprites (as usual for Broderbund) and a rich pallette which has been considerably stripped down for the C-64 although I suspect there could have been done more there if they had used the sprites and scrolling capabilities of the C-64 more.

 

Finally I switched to a totally different game, the original arcade version of Turtles, spurred by the mines which follow you in "Seafox" from mission 4 on. I wanted to see if my experiences in Pac-Man variants translate well to Turtles, but it seems they don't translate that well since Turtles is a bit faster and the enemies change their AI over time, following you more aggressively, but you can dumb them down again by laying bombs which is a strategy different from Pac-Man. I didn't manage to reach the roof yet though I got close with only 2 more kidturtles to save.

 

Just for the record, during one of the "Turtles" sessions I listened to BBC Radio One, and the next song starting after I started the gaming session was "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon & Garfunkel, which is remarkable because in 1982 shortly after getting to know the Turtles game, I wrote a song called "Turtle Robinson" basically describing this game out of the main turtle's perspective... the verses are basically ad-libs over the background music of the first round while the chorus has been lifted from "Mrs. Robinson" with some altered lyrics... it goes "Yes, this is Turtle Robinson, who loves you more than unheard"... which in German fits exactly into the number of syllables used in the original English chorus. The song playing after that was Roy Orbinson's first hit "Only the lonely", which is also remarkable because we did Karaoke at home the night before, and my mother was especially fond of my Roy Orbison imitation on "Handle with care" (originally by the Traveling Wilburys).

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 100 minutes

Tanks But No Tanks - 135 minutes

 

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 53,810

 

 

 

[Eltigro]

Only a couple of times to report this week...

 

Saturn

Panzer Dragoon - 73 min (Last time, I think I said that I had beaten this back in the day, but playing through it this time, I don't think I did. I played it for a bit, just normally, but then turned on the Pro Action Replay cheats and played through it with infinite energy/life. I don't remember those later stages, so maybe I didn't beat it back then...)

Panzer Dragoon Saga (emulated) - 615 min (Finished this one this week... well, it was actually only a couple hours ago. Great game. Love the battle system. Could use more variety in creatures and such, but still... is it worth the high price tag? No. Probably not. But still a fun time. I don't know if there are different ending FMVs, but the one I had seemed to hint toward a sequel that of course never materialized. One can only wonder...)

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by Eltigro

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Combat - 30 minutes

Ice Hockey - 5 minutes

Keystone Kapers - 15 minutes

Pac-Man - 75 minutes

RealSports Volleyball - 5 minutes

Robot Tank - 15 minutes

Tanks But No Tanks - 20 minutes

 

ATARI 5200:

H.E.R.O. - 15 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Summer Games - 3 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

My scores noted on Combat (all attempts), played for Bonus Game on 2600 NEW HSC Season 6, Week 27 (TBNT contest)

Edited July 31, 2017 by oyamafamily

[zylon]

5200-

 

Hero- 10min

 

Genesis- (sometimes portable, sometimes 360 compilation)

 

Phantasy Star II- 4hrs 10min (easily the worst of the 4 IMHO, but I'm determined to finally complete it)

Mean bean machine- 3hrs (love this one)

Golden Axe- 40min

Streets of Rage 3- 38min

Junction- 15min

Hyperstone Heist- 50 min

[+wongojack]

Windows 95/98

The Curse of Monkey Island 651

Just one game for me this week. I played Monkey 3 through SCUMM VM. Never played it seriously before this week. It is excellent. Not quite done yet.

[karokoenig]

The Curse of Monkey Island 651

Just one game for me this week. I played Monkey 3 through SCUMM VM. Never played it seriously before this week. It is excellent. Not quite done yet.

 

It is never too late to discover the brilliance of the Monkey Island series. Even MI4 is way better than its reputation. Too many people just didn't like the change to tank controls (so to speak) and the 3D. But when you look past these, there's a lot of fun content and great puzzles.

 

My personal order of favourite MI games:

1. MI2,

2. MI1,

3. MI3,

4. MI4 (still 9 out of 10 points for me)

5. MI5 (just "not bad", definetly not a waste of time to play)

 

I hate the looks of the MI1 remake, however.

[+cvga]

Atari 2600:

 

Beamrider - 35 minutes

Conquest of Mars - 30 minutes

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Wrapping up July with another week of hot weather and handheld hijinks!




Ineligible
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Nintendo DS) - 607 minutes

Game Boy
DragonHeart (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 37 minutes
Ikari no Yousai 2 (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 28 minutes
Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues - 144 minutes
Pop'n TwinBee - 78 minutes

Game Boy Color
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages - 162 minutes
Vigilante 8 (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 23 minutes
Woody Woodpecker Racing - 69 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,148 minutes (19 hours 8 minutes) [541 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo DS: 607 minutes
Game Boy: 287 minutes
Game Boy Color: 254



Though the game selection changed a little, this week played out very similar to last week for my household. Around 20 hours of total gaming time logged between myself and the misses, and all of it spent on portable games. In my case I continued on with the couple excellent Game Boy Color games I have been playing a lot of lately, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Woody Woodpecker Racing, but I also got to try out quite a few games I had never played before either via emulation or by way of acquiring physical copies of them. Starting with the physical games, I had been looking for a nice condition and reasonably priced copy of the European exclusive Game Boy game Pop'n TwinBee for at least 3 or 4 years up until this past week when I finally got my hands on one! $20 shipped from Germany got me a copy of the very last game I had been needing to complete my North American / European vertical scrolling Game Boy / Color shoot 'em up collection, and I have to say it was well worth the wait. Pop'n TwinBee only took me an hour or so to play through and beat but it's definitely one of the finest shooting experiences I've ever had on Nintendo's classic handhelds, and it was joined in my collection my another new game this week as well.

After watching Boyographic's glowing review of Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues for the Game Boy last week I immediately bounced off to eBay and bought a copy for around $10 shipped, and wow was that ever a good decision. It took me a couple hours to play through the game beginning to end and I have to say that the review was spot on. The developers at Ocean did a fantastic job on this game and it plays a lot like a cross between the original Jurassic Park and a Contra game, which is to say that there's a lot of shooting and platforming action intermingled with keycard collecting and boss fights every couple levels. It's got great music, big lavishly detailed sprites, solid control, and was just a real joy to play.

 

My favorite game of all this week though is actually one that I don't yet own a copy of: DragonHeart for the Game Boy! I tried it out via emulation this and, in short, it's pretty much everything I could want out of a Game Boy RPG. I loved the old school first-person perspective, how much dialog and story development there was, how you were given a variety of choices for how to respond to the NPCs you talk to, and how your choice of words would effect how they responded to and interacted with you. That's just something you just don't see too often in Game Boy games. The environments were very well rendered and fun to explore, the puzzles felt natural and intuitive to solve, and the real-time combat system was unique and engaging. Everything about DragonHeart really made me feel like I was playing a classic computer RPG on an old IBM PC-XT or an Apple II with a green and black monochrome display, which is a very good thing in my book. This is one game that I will definitely have to track down a physical copy of ASAP.

 

For my wife's part in things this week it was another one-game-week for her, with 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors on the Nintendo DS making up the entirety of her gaming time for the week. She did actually finish the story in the game once, but after investing a dozen or so hours into game she ending she got was one of severe disappointment. Right in the middle of exploring one of the last segments of the game an unknown character came up behind her, stabbing her in the back and ending the game right then and there with her death. Apparently that is one of half a dozen or so possible endings in the game, and from what the misses was telling me (based on some strategy guides she read after her game was so abruptly ended) all of them but one has your character die some horrible death right before the end. I guess you have to make a very specific series of choices throughout the game to get the one good ending, and that's what she's hard at work on now in her second play through; though there is one more bad ending that she has to get first as a prerequisite to getting the good ending. Ai yi yi! In any case, she does seem to be still having fun with it so I'd imagine she'll be playing 999 well into next week.

 

As far as my plans for next week go I definitely intend to continue playing through The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages on the Game Boy Color, and I've got a couple original Game Boy games lined up that I want to play through for the NintendoAge.com effort to beat as many Game Boy games as possible this year. I think that just about takes care of everything for this week, so until next time and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

Almost forgot to post my times!

Famicom:

Mississippi Satsujin Jiken (Murder on the Mississippi) [English translation patch] - 331 min.

PC Engine:

Atomic Robo-Kid Special - 70 min.

Final Match Tennis - 28 min.

World Court Tennis - 4 min.

SNES:

Mortal Kombat II - 40 min.

Super Family Tennis - 20 min.

Super Final Match Tennis - 10 min.

Sega CD:

Soul Star - 37 min.

Atari Jaguar:

Checkered Flag - 12 min.

Cybermorph - 4 min.

Iron Soldier - 28 min.

Kasumi Ninja - 81 min.

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy - 6 min.

PlayStation:

Rise 2: Resurrection - 5 min.

Shockwave Assault - 8 min.

Some family gaming, plus a run to the final boss of Atomic Robo-kid Special and a lot of headscratching over the mysterious (and sloooow) Murder on the Mississippi.

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 30, running from July 24 - 30. We logged 6814 minutes of eligible play, playing 69 games on a total of 20 systems.

Top 10:

1. Curse of Monkey Island, The (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 651

2. Panzer Dragoon Saga (Sega Saturn) - 615

3. Baseball Stars (NES/Famicom) - 480

4. Mississippi Satsujin Jiken (Murder on the Mississippi) [Eng. trans.] (NES/Famicom) - 331

5. Ghost Pilots (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 324

6. Baseball Stars (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 298

7. Alpha Mission II (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 263

8. Turtles (Arcade) - 254

9. Phantasy Star II (Genesis) - 250

10. Seafox (VIC-20) - 244

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Turtles (Arcade) - 254

2. Seafox (VIC-20) - 244

3. Seafox (Atari 8-bit) - 204

4. Tanks But No Tanks (Atari 2600) - 173

5. Beamrider (Atari 2600) - 110

6. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 100

7. Pac-Man (Atari 2600) - 85

8. Scramble (Atari 2600) - 60

9. River Rescue (Atari 8-bit) - 57

10. Seafox (C64) - 50

Top 10 systems:

1. Neo Geo AES/MVS (1511)

2. NES/Famicom (811)

3. Atari 2600 (731)

4. Sega Saturn (688)

5. PC (Windows 95/98) (651)

6. Genesis (573)

7. Atari 8-bit (299)

8. Game Boy (287)

9. Arcade (254)

10. Game Boy Color (254)

This week mirrors last week in that the Neo Geo dominates, but this time it's Curse of Monkey Island that takes the individual honors, while Turtles gets the pre-NES spot. Still, three platforms top three charts once again, in a robust and system-diverse week.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600

Exocet - 25 minutes

Planet Patrol - 20 minutes

Sorcerer - 30 minutes

Super Cobra - 66 minutes

 

All games played for 2600 NEW HSC Season 6 - Horizontal Shooters Weeks Contest

[+davidcalgary29]

7800 (2600 mode)

 

Hunchy II -27 minutes

 

7800

 

BBCQ - 2 hours

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Defend your Castle: 3 min

Im Reich der Spinne: 5 min

Invasion der Ufos: 3 min

Mission 3,000: 5 min

Moon Patrol: 5 min

See-Monster: 2 min

 

Sega Master System

(Arcade Smash Hits) Breakout: 8 min

(Arcade Smash Hits) Centipede: 4 min

(Arcade Smash Hits) Missile Command: 10 min

Chuck Rock: 3 min

 

Sega Mega Drive

Battle Frenzy: 8 min

Jurassic Park Rampage Edition: 5 min

Shinobi III: 10 min

The Incredible Hulk: 2 min

 

Some variety, and a little more playtime this week for me. It was basically all testing work on a nice flea market haul I made last weekend. Among it was a complete Atari Vader set (with a few common games), which is in really nice shape, albeit a little dirty. But that can be fixed, and I'm happy about it. You don't see Atari consoles all that often in these regions anymore, and if you do, people usually try to get ridiculous amounts of money for them. This particular one was from a collector who was there to sell off some of the stuff he didn't need anymore. Good thing about collectors: they usually do know what their stuff is worth and don't ask stupid money. From that guy, I also grabbed Shinobi III, Battle Frenzy and Hulk, as well as Chuck Rock and Arcade Smash Hits for the SMS. I loce to find these compilation carts with arcade games. Turns out that out of the three on this one, only Missile Command is really worth playing, but I'll take that for a few bucks.

[BurritoBeans]

Atari 2600:

Demon Attack - 55 minutes

 

Atari 5200:

Galaxian - 30 minutes

Jungle Hunt - 215 minutes

Pac-Man - 60 minutes

Qix - 45 minutes

Super Breakout - 30 minutes

Space Dungeon - 300 minutes

Star Raiders - 20 minutes

 

Famicom:

Barcode World - 5 minutes

Hydlide 3: The Space Memories - 150 minutes

Hydlide Special - 200 minutes

Hyper Olympic - 30 minutes

Lode Runner - 30 minutes

Ninja JaJaMaru-kun - 45 minutes

Tetris (BPS) - 30 minutes

 

So, I don't exactly remember everything I played this week and I'm skipping last weeks times as due to the massive amount of stuff at ReplayFX I don't think I'll ever get it all covered. Past that, well this week was a lot of fun because this is my first week with two new systems in the house - an Atari 5200, and a Famicom.

 

The 5200 was from ReplayFX - it was at a decent price anyways, and then another vendor had a stack of games (The system only came with Pac-Man) for a couple dollars each and a controller so I set myself up with a tiny collection. I know they're all the commons, but just about every one of the games is enjoyable apart from the fact that in Galaxian the ship moves to the right unless I pull the stick a bit to the left. Out of the lot, my two favorites are Space Dungeon and Jungle Hunt - Space Dungeon I even know about until recently but I've been loving it as it's simple and still a ton of fun, and then Jungle Hunt I just always enjoyed so it's always nice having a new version of it. While the games have all been enjoyable, the controllers have been giving me a little bit of trouble as within two weeks of owning the things I've had to clean them inside and out, fix the plastic joystick that kept slipping off the metal rod bit on one of them, and put a jumper onto one of the circuts due to a destroyed trace from someone who had previously opened the thing and been way too rough. I think my goal for the system is going to end up getting a good digital controller and adapter for the thing that I can use on the games which can use it, put a 4-port BIOS in for Pitfall, and buy some more games.

 

The Famicom arrived which was cool. The first thing I did is clean the crap out of the system - while it did work fine, there was a good bit of dirt just about everywhere and I figured I should get rid of it. After that, I got it plugged in and tried playing it... it didn't do crap. Well, I forgot since all my other JP consoles are A/V that I had to go to Channel 95, so after doing that I got it playing fine. I left one game out - Daiva - as I'll be doing a full-series runthrough either next week, the week after, or split between the two. I enjoyed almost all of my cartridges - I realized that Barcode World requires that stupid Barcode Battler handheld and I'd rather not have to buy a gimmicky handheld, sets of cards, and an interface just to play a Famicom game - if it comes up for cheap, maybe I'll get it, but if not then I won't. I will say, it's enjoyable how tiny everything is compared to the NES cartridge-wise, and I think it was a good purchase.

 

So again, I'm probably leaving out a good bit but I honestly don't remember most of it - next week will probably be Daiva and Game Gear.

[carlsson]

ZX Spectrum:

The Anchovy Coast - 60 min. (estimated number)

This week I haven't had motivation to play very much. In the beginning of the week I finshed my latest entry to the CSSCGC, and actually played a few full rounds just to enjoy my own game, beyond bug testing. Though it hasn't been reviewed yet, I'll attach it for anyone who is interested to try it out. By the way, this is not the same game as I casually mentioned last week without going into detail.

amalfi.zip

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my gaming times for this week (July 31st through August 6th)...

 

Arcade:

Turtles - 112 min. in 3 sessions

 

Commodore 64:

Seafox - 68 min.

 

Online (non-eligible):

Color Lines - 4 min.

Crazy Fast Fourniture - 5 min.

Javascript Pac-Man 3D - 33 min.

Javascript Pac-Man 2.6 - 19 min.

Pac Man (Javascript) - 19 min.

Robo Racer - 5 min.

Space Buggy - 2 min.

 

VIC-20:

Seafox - 41 min. in 2 sessions

 

This week I started off with playing some more Turtles, where I finally managed to reach the roof.

 

Then I replayed the C-64 version of Seafox and managed to beat it after some trying.

 

Then I played a whole bunch of online Javascript games I searched for since Flash seems to come out of fasion. There were some 3D racing games (Robo Racer and Space Buggy) and some (more) variants of Pac-Man, most notable Pac Man (Javascript) where the author tried to match the arcade behavior as closely as possible, but the game lacks any sound. Space Buggy is a simple racer where you only can lean forward and back, not steer left or right. Crazy Fast Fourniture is a kind of time management game where you have to put together pieces of furniture, but I couldn't find out how to properly give them to the customers who ordered them.

 

Finally I returned to the VIC-20 version of Seafox, but I didn't find it any easier after having beaten the C-64 version. A flaw with the VIC-20 version is that they usually used the whole picture rectangle of each object as collision box so that you often die without actually having visibly collided with anything. Also the rounds seem to go on for much longer than on the C-64 version, mostly because the boats on the top row which are your primary target only come out one by one, so it takes much longer to hit all of them.

 

After having played all this, on Thursday I stopped gaming entirely because it's been the last week of my three-week leave, and I realized I didn't get nearly as much done in my projects as I had hoped for and planned. Well, at least I got to do more in the last days.

 

One note to last week's stats: I was surprised that I single-handedly won the pre-NES charts with the "Turtles" game. I guess there aren't many other players (at the moment) who put that much time into a single pre-NES game during a week.

 

On another note, I've started to translate the short descriptions for the first 20 TI-99 programs I wrote in XBasic and saved on tape back in 1983 in order to figure out which ones of those I should release... but I'm also still unclear on how I should release them. Any tips?