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

[Iwantgames:)]

Not much gaming here but I did play abit

 

Sega CD -

 

SEGA Arcade Classics Collection4in1-115min

Golden Axe - 15min

Columns - 10min

Streets of Rage - 75min

Revenge of Shinobi - 15min

[Eltigro]

Possibly the smallest week yet (besides the weeks when I had no times) for me...

 

Game Boy

Arcade Classics 1 Asteroids/Missile Command - 10 min (Time was split approximately evenly between the two games. Asteroids is definitely harder than the 2600 version, but that could be because of the difficulty seeing anything on the GB screen. I've always sucked at Missile Command. I always think I'm doing good then notice that one missile that I missed...)

The Smurfs - 8 min (Not a bad little game and not the first Smurfs game I've owned. It came with the Game Boy, so that's why I have it... probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise... Control seems good.)

 

I recently got a Game Boy Pocket and these two games came with it. It's been a while since I've played on an actual Game Boy screen (most recent Game Boy game playing has been either in emulation on my laptop or using my GBA.)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It's been one heck of a crazy busy day here so I'm reporting in a little late, though there really isn't a whole lot to report on this week.

 

 

 

Ineligible

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Nintendo DS) - 652 minutes

Touch the Dead (Nintendo DS) - 115 minutes

Arcade

The House of the Dead 2 (Played on The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return for Nintendo Wii) - 50 minutes

Game Boy

Game Boy Camera - 76 minutes

Game Boy Color
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe - 110 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,003 minutes (16 hours 43 minutes) [236 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo DS: 767 minutes
Game Boy Color: 110 minutes

Game Boy: 76 minutes

Arcade: 50 minutes

There were a whole lot of real life obligations going on in my world this past week so I didn't spend nearly as much time as usual playing games. Pretty much the only thing I did play around with, outside of an hour or so trying unsuccessfully to beat The House of the Dead 2 (don'tcha hate it when you make it to the final boss but run out of lives before the end of the fight?), was my newly acquired Game Boy Printer. Along with the Game Boy Printer I picked up some fresh new production rolls of thermal printer paper for it on Amazon, since thermal paper only has a shelf life of around 3 years and the original production stuff from Nintendo has long since expired, and spent a fair bit of time testing out the printer and seeing what I could do with it using the Game Boy Camera and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. I had quite a bit of fun with both and am planning on doing a full writeup with lots of pictures in the Official Game Boy Thread in the very near future.

As far as my wife's gaming time for the last week goes she ended up logging quite a bit more time than I did, though all of it was ineligible for the tracker. She finished up her game of 999 on the DS and finally got the one good ending in the game, which was pretty darn awesome from the parts of it I got to see, then spent a little more time enjoying Touch the Dead. I may have borrowed her DSi XL for a few minutes here and there to play some Touch the Dead as well, since it is a pretty great game for any fan of on-rails zombie shooting. That's about all the gaming news from around here that's fit to print for this week though. Until next time, best wishes and I hope that you guys all have a more relaxing week next week than I had this week!

Edited August 15, 2017 by Jin

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 32, running from August 7 - 13. We logged 5240 minutes of eligible play, playing 66 games on a total of 20 systems.

Top 10:

1. Phantasy Star II (Genesis) - 642

2. Super Tennis (SNES) - 376

3. Alpha Mission II (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 245

4. Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf (Genesis) - 240

5. Banshee (Amiga CD32) - 202

6. DAIVA Story 7 - Light of Kari Yuga (NEC PC-9801) - 200

6. DAIVA Story 3 - Trial of Nirvana (Sharp X1) - 200

8. Alien Breed (Amiga CD32) - 193

9. DAIVA Story 2 - Memory in Durga (Fujitsu FM-77 AV) - 180

10. DAIVA Story 4 - Asura's Bloodfeud (MSX) - 170

Pre-NES top 10:

1. DAIVA Story 3 - Trial of Nirvana (Sharp X1) - 200

2. DAIVA Story 4 - Asura's Bloodfeud (MSX) - 170

3. Planet Patrol (Atari 2600) - 113

4. Break Free (TI-99/4A) - 90

5. Exocet [aka Cruise Missile] (Atari 2600) - 77

6. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 62

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 61

8. Ms. Pac-Man (Speed-Up Version) (Arcade) - 47

9. Wheelie Racer (Epoch Super Cassette Vision) - 45

10. Sorcerer (Atari 2600) - 30

10. Super Cobra (Atari 2600) - 30

10. Tutankham (TI-99/4A) - 30

Top 10 systems:

1. Genesis (1102)

2. Amiga CD32 (830)

3. SNES (520)

4. Neo Geo AES/MVS (517)

5. Atari 2600 (338)

6. NEC PC-9801 (200)

6. Sharp X1 (200)

8. Fujitsu FM-77 AV (180)

9. MSX (170)

10. NES/Famicom (153)

Another week at the top for Phantasy Star II and its host platform, while DAIVA Story 3 grabs the pre-NES brass ring for the Sharp X1. The Amiga CD32 also makes a rare but strong showing at #2.

In other news the 1000-minute club gains its first two Neo Geo games, as Alpha Mission II and Ghost Pilots make it over the threshold and into spots #296 and #297, with 1113 and 1041 minutes logged respectively.

[BurritoBeans]

Famicom

DAIVA Story 6 - Imperial of Nirsartia - 55 minutes

 

FM-77 AV

DAIVA Story 2 - Memory in Durga - 180 minutes

 

Game Gear:

Jurassic Park - 30 minutes

Lemmings - 55 minutes

Mortal Kombat II - 30 minutes

 

MSX

DAIVA Story 4 - Asura's Bloodfeud - 170 minutes

 

MSX2

DAIVA Story 5 - The Cup of Soma - 120 minutes

 

PC-8801

DAIVA Story 1 - Flames of Vlitra - 150 minutes

 

PC-9801

DAIVA Story 7 - Light of Kari Yuga - 200 minutes

 

X1

DAIVA Story 3 - Trial of Nirvana - 200 minutes

 

Alright, so the focus of this week was a run of all seven DAIVA titles in the series. I'm finally able to do this, as the new Famicom means that I have every computer that the series was represented on - T&E Soft did this odd thing where each game was exclusive and took specific advantage of the computer that the game was on. Each of these games is a little action/simulation game set in Space - the PC ones have more of a tactical element in planning ships, while the Famicom one is more of an action focus.

 

For anyone who's never played these games, they revolve around a war set in space with each title having you play as a different side in the war. After a brief introduction and maybe a little story, you get a map of Space - either this is represented by a bunch of dots with lines going between to show routes as it is in most of the PC games, or you pilot a ship which can fly between a bunch of different planets shown on a minimap like the Famicom version. In the PC versions this means a good bit as you have to manage your empire, choose where to deploy people, decide what you want to happen, etc. while on the Famicom version you just go to the planets by flying around as you please. The main goal in all of the titles is to take all of the planets and while you're at it successfully destroy the enemy in little space battles - I never was a big fan of the space battles as you just move ships on a grid and hope for the best, but it's nice that they're optional in most cases. Once you're done maintaining things and get to a hostile planet, you get a long representation of the surface divided into a grid - you deploy on the far left, fight through the enemies, and then finish off with a boss at the far right. There are three general power-ups to help - a shield repair, screen wiping bomb, and missiles that will shoot at enemies - which you can put down at spots in the grid and appear once you hit them, with my strategy being the bomb and missile at the 1/3rd and 2/3rds mark and then the repair right before the boss. After dominating the enemy, based off of factors like how many times you died/how long you took/etc. you get an ending. These games don't take too long - the FC one is the shortest and can be beat in an hour if you're good, but the rest will at least run you a few hours.

 

I'm 99% sure that the Famicom version based off of the removal of the whole strategic element for a focus on action was either just marketed at a younger audience or was a good bit limited - I found myself enjoying Story 6 as I didn't have to manage crap, but I will say they did do a good job on the strategy elements and I wasn't bored by them in the PC versions.

 

These got to be a real fun part of the week for me, as I pretty much got to set up a little history bit about old computers, comparing ones out of the US like my Apple II, IBM XT, Commodore 64/VIC-20, and Atari 600XL to those listed above alongside a few more - the boss likes it when we set up something with a bit of interactivity for those passing through to check out and customers in the store enjoy getting to mess with stuff they've never seen before.

 

Past the computing bits, I got the Game Gear going this week - I bought a nice stack of games anyways but hadn't played them much - so I took three of the games with me in my pocket. Jurassic Park was interesting - I kept dying on the sidescrolling bits with the truck, but found the action stages to be fairly enjoyable as they're neat little sidescrollers. MK II I don't know what to say... it's really choppy, but I mean hey it's Mortal Kombat and plays a bit better than the Game Boy version. The best of the few was Lemmings, as compared to the GB version it has color and looks surprisingly nice - I never got too into Lemmings before, but I had fun with my time playing this.

 

So, next week I'm not sure about gaming - more GG and Famicom probably, maybe I'll find some more of the FM 77 games that don't work on a plain FM-7, and past that I have no clue. School is going to start up in two weeks so my time for gaming is going to really go down - I have a good position at work so I have to go in pretty much every day but two out of the week, there's going to be homework, etc. - but I do plan to work on a little consolization project or two for arcade boards and maybe take the Game Gear and Game Boy around for fun in downtime.

[+thegoldenband]

OK, I've updated the stats to reflect BurritoBeans's post, since we were probably posting at more or less the same time.

[carlsson]

Before Burrito's post, it was a rare week when none of the Top 10 overall games were a pre-NES game.

[carlsson]

Actually I took a second look, and it seems there has never been a week where none of the Top 10 games wasn't a pre-NES game so it was really close. Furthermore, this summer has been the most post-NES intense since the tracker was born, with weeks 28, 30 and 32 being close calls on getting pre-NES systems into the list.

[BurritoBeans]

OK, I've updated the stats to reflect BurritoBeans's post, since we were probably posting at more or less the same time.

Yeah, I posted a matter of minutes after you. Whoops xD

Edited August 15, 2017 by BurritoBeans

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Crossbow - 124 minutes

Missile Command - 45 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Crossbow - 36 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 15 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

Crossbow gameplay footage for 2600 NEW HSC Season 6, Week 30. It's one of 3 final weeks with more and more points to earn.

Edited August 20, 2017 by oyamafamily

[karokoenig]

Commodore 64

Falcon Patrol 2: 2 min

Space Taxi: 2 min

Terra Cresta: 2 min

 

PC (DOS)

Historyline: 175 min

 

I visited my parents this weekend, where my original C64 is set up. I brought a joystick this time, only to find out that I brought a broken one... Shame. I even did have the time to play a little.

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Nu, Pogodi! - 10 min.

Pogo - 11 min.

Pogo Joe - 30 min.

Pogoman - 8 min.

Pogotron - 4 min.

Sport Goofy - 2 min.

Sprong - 2 min.

Atari 8-bit HSC going a bit crazy...

Edited August 20, 2017 by carlsson

[BurritoBeans]

Last week I was a bit late, so this week I'll be a bit early.

 

Atari 5200:

Space Dungeon - 30 minutes

Super Breakout - 30 minutes

 

Dreamcast:

Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 - 445 minutes

 

Game Gear:

G-Loc: Air Battle - 25 minutes

Lemmings - 60 minutes

 

Well, this week wasn't as exciting with systems as last week. The plan was going to be to mess with the FM 77 AV a bit more, but that got blown out of the water as a dude on Discord had brought up the fact that the Dreamcast can go online. I set up one of my Raspberry Pis forever ago with the software and made a line voltage inducer that instead of a 9V battery used a power supply that way I didn't have to swap 9V batteries every week of use, but never got the USB 56K modem to finish off the build. Turns out, just to my luck, a coworker was going to get rid of their really old laptop and they had a USB 56K modem dangled off the side - I gave them $5 as it's a nice Thinkpad 600X with a 500MHz Pentium 3 in it, and it's in a surprisingly good condition. After getting a newer version of DreamPi and finding my 9V PSU, I took the little 56K modem off the side - apparently it was there as the built-in one didn't work well, it's just a Mini PCI modem though so I'll swap it - and put it on my Pi.

 

I have to say, it's a lot of fun getting that little Dreamcast back online after eleven years - Phantasy Star Online was the first MMO I ever played anyways in 2006. I ended up finding a few servers and connecting up, of course there weren't too many people (I don't know how busy these ever really get) and they were all of a way higher level than I was, but it was neat talking to some people and messing around in the game. I ended up getting to join a party of three others, as since I didn't have a player up to the same level as them and didn't want to die in two seconds a few of the people ended up swapping over to a new VMU and hooking in with a new character. We played for a while and then most of the others had to get off, so I just screwed around myself for a while then left.

 

Now, getting the DC online presents me with more stuff to buy - I can play fine with just the controller, but my god is it hard to type to others. Luckily, it seems that DC keyboards aren't too pricey - I'm looking at a couple of eBay auctions anyways. I sort of want to get one of the Japanese ones with the clear case as I can still type roman characters on it, but I'm not too sure as by looking at one compared to the size of a jewel case they look dinky. If all else fails anyways, I'll just get a PS/2 to Dreamcast adapter and maybe plug in one of my own keyboards. I'm also looking at a mouse, luckily for me there's not as many options to choose from there so I'll just grab whatever looks nice.

 

Past that, well I got the 5200 a home to sit - turns out it's just an inch or two smaller lengthwise than the IBM 55SX, aka about the same size as my cassette deck. which the 55SX sits on in my room. Now that I have somewhere good for it to sit, I decided to play around with it - bit of Space Dungeon is always a lot of fun, and Super Breakout was frustrating as my paddle kept wanting to go right but whatever I dealt with it. Game Gear was cool as I got to take it to work and screw around with a handheld - Lemmings is proving to be a lot of fun like usual, and G-Loc was just something odd to try to get a hang of.

 

It's not able to be put into the tracker, but I have to mention this since I thought it was silly. I was ordering a new PC-8801 FE since I saw a really good auction for one in working order alongside a keyboard and some software for ¥1750 and shipping, so I took it... well, I browsed through the video game section on YAJP to see if there was anything else worth adding in - I just buy stuff when I have spare money which I have an interest in, have it sent to my cousins house, and then she mails it to the US for me and I pay her for shipping and a bit for just helping me out - and I found an auction for a completely working Xbox One S in the box in good shape with one of the asia-exclusive games for ¥150. So, for all of about $11.50 on top of the $45 or so that the PC-8801FE is going to cost me, I just got an Xbox One S! We always joke at work that we should get an Xbox One from Japan as we're not sure if they've even broke 100,000 units sold over there, so now I have one - woohoo.

 

So, I figure if I can find even a small yet semi-dedicated community of people who do play some Dreamcast online now and then, I may have to start looking into playing myself. I don't really have many games in my collection but I know that somewhere in the house we have our old DC/accessories/games, so I'm thinking that I'll have to start rummaging through boxes as I'm fairly sure we had a few more online-capable games alongside just some fun ones as long as my memory isn't just blurred. Past that, I have no clue what I'm going to play but I'll figure something out.

[Kurt_Woloch]

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

 

Amiga:

Classic Pucman - 18 min.

 

Atari 7800:

Ms. Pac-Man 320 - 37 min.

 

Colecovision:
Pac-Man (Atarisoft Prototype) - 11 min.

 

Commodore 64:

F1 (SEUCK game) - 21 min.

Munch Man 64 - 19 min.

SEUCK (not sure if eligible) - 39 min.

 

Handheld game:

Ms. Pac-Man (Coleco Tabletop) - 9 min.

 

Lynx:

Ms. Pac-Man - 78 min. in 2 sessions

 

MS-DOS:

Ms. Pac PC (by JROK) - 30 min.

 

NES:

Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) - 6 min.

 

This week I played a bunch of different clones of Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man:

 

First I tried the enhanced Atari 7800 version of Ms. Pac-Man. I think it's called Ms. Pac-Man 320 and shows the game in high resolution and with a vertically scrolling maze. The NES version by Tengen also scrolls the maze, as does Ms. Pac PC by JROK, but the latter one also has a fullscreen mode which shows the whole maze at once, but doesn't show the scoring... at least not for me. Both the NES and Atari 7800 versions have some palette problems rendering some colors different because the systems can't display as many pallettes at once as shown on the arcade original. The PC can, so Ms. Pac PC doesn't show these pallette problems.

 

Ms. Pac-Man 320 is on the harder side and only gives you 3 lives instead of 5 in the original Atari 7800 port. Actually I think it's closer to the NES port than to the original 7800 one though the sounds seem to have been taken from the original 7800 version. Both ports seem to be pretty hard. Ms. Pac PC shows the proper colors, but also scrolls the maze and also includes the "Turbo" variant known from the arcade. It's a bit annoying though beause the keyboard input seems to lag a little so that you don't always move where you intend to.

 

The Lynx version of Ms. Pac-Man seems to be similar to the 7800 one though the objects have been shrinked in size, for instance the ghosts are only 5x7 pixels in one color.

 

The Colecovision version of Pac-Man, in comparison, is rather on the easy side although the horizontal paths are often longer than usual, so you have to take care not to be trapped by ghosts there.

 

On the Amiga, I played Classic Pucman, another Pac-Man clone which is pretty true to the arcade, but shows a shareware limitation from Round 4 on where the screen is only visible for 2 seconds and then becomes invisible for the next 3 (except for the power pills). The sounds on this one seem to have been sampled from the arcade original.

 

Then, Munch Man 64... this doesn't have the original maze, and also the ghosts look notably different and aren't nearly as bright as in the arcade in that they essentially only wander around randomly without chasing the player. And there are LOTS of fruits to be eaten. I'm not even sure if this game ever gets any harder...

 

FInally, the Coleco Ms. Pac-Man tabletop... it's rather far away from the arcade version though the ghosts do chase you here at least somewhat... it was actually a bit too confusing and difficult to play for a long time.

 

Then I had a look at the SEUCK (Shoot-em-up construction kit) on the C-64. First I played the SEUCK game F1 which puts a F1 racing car on the road (think Zippy Race), but it's still rather a shooter than a racing game. Then I played around with SEUCK itself where I'm not sure if this is actually eligible for the Top 10 since it's a game editor rather than an actual game. I tried to put together some background graphics similar to Marble Madness (no, not Pac-Man this time).

Edited August 20, 2017 by Kurt_Woloch

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 394 minutes

 

 

High score of the week: 225,980

 

 

[Iwantgames:)]

Been mostly playing the Remastered Bards Tale on PS4 this week (hard to believe the original versions already 13yrs old O_o)

But I did play one qualifying game.

 

Sega CD -

 

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs Second Cataclysm - 15min

[zylon]

Genesis-

 

Zuma Bubbles- 25min

Mean Bean Machine- 1hr 30min

Phantasy Star II- 8hrs 26min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Youkai Club - 5 min.

Genesis:

Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge - 2 min.

SNES:

David Crane's Amazing Tennis - 204 min.

Last Action Hero - 3 min.

Super Family Tennis - 2 min.

Philips CD-i:

Flashback - 5 min.

Zenith - 14 min.

Beat David Crane's Amazing Tennis for the third time (or fourth, if you count the Genesis version). I still think it's the second-best 16-bit console tennis game released in the US (World Court Tennis on the TG-16 being #1).

[+wongojack]

DOS

Gold Rush 6

Windows 95/98

The X-Files 223

I'm still on my adventure gaming kick. I finished The X-Files. While not a great video game, the X-Files story buried inside was pretty decent. In addition to these two above, I also played some ineligible adventure games. Chapter one of the new King's Quest (2015) was much better than I expected it to be. I'm not sure why I thought this wouldn't be very good, but it exceeded my expectations. Perhaps the game designers refused to fail as desperately as their character "Whisper." "Whisper can do it!"

I also spent quite a long time with Until Dawn for PS4. It definitely fits in the adventure game category if you judge it by its controls and story driven narrative. However, the subject matter is more on the survival horror side.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

For the last two and a half years I've been seriously itching to get my hands on a particular system, and this week I finally got it!

 

 

 

 

Ineligible

Centipede: Infestation (Nintendo Wii) - 82 minutes

Moon Chronicles (Nintendo 3DS) - 397 minutes

Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions (Nintendo 3DS) - 163 minutes

The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 104 minutes

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection (Nintendo Wii) - 138 minutes

Arcade

Ms. Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 7 minutes

Pac-Man (played on Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions for Nintendo 3DS) - 34 minutes

Atari 2600

Ms. Pac-Man - 27 minutes

New Pac-Man (8k Version) - 6 minutes

Game Boy Color
Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 9 minutes

Sega Genesis (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Sonic 3 & Knuckles - 302 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,269 minutes (21 hours 9 minutes) [385 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo 3DS: 560 minutes

Sega Genesis: 302 minutes

Nintendo Wii: 220 minutes

Android: 104 minutes

Arcade: 41 minutes

Atari 2600: 33 minutes

Game Boy Color: 9 minutes

The system in question is of course a New 3DS! I had been waiting for years for the black colored regular sized New 3DS to come out in the United States, but when it did eventually release on our shores it was in the form of a single small production run that was sold for one day and one day only on Black Friday of last year. Unfortunately I was flat broke on Black Friday last year so I missed the black New 3DS during the ever so short period of time that it was available at retail, and now almost a year later I was finally able to shell out the cash (which was just about double the original retail price) for a new in box system from eBay.

Having spent much of a week playing it I have to say that I personally feel that it was worth every penny, and without a doubt my new all time favorite handheld system. It's light weight but sturdily built, comfy to hold with smooth rounded edges all around, and playing video games in stereoscopic 3D still absolutely blows my mind every time. In the past I've owned an original model 3DS and a New 3DS XL, but trying to keep the 3D effect in focus on the original was pretty tricky and the New 3DS XL was just too heavy for the carpal tunnel in my left wrist to tolerate for any length of time. The regular sized New 3DS fixes all my complaints with my previous systems though, with the eye tracking "Super Stable 3D" feature making it so I never have to worry about the 3D effect going out of focus and the light weight of the system making it comfortable on my wrists for hours on end.

So, outside of a few hours of Centipede: Infestation and Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection on the Wii, pretty much everything I played this week was on my recently purchased and rather glorious New 3DS. My wife on the other hand went back to doing some home console gaming after playing little other than her DSi XL for the past month, logging some tracker eligible gaming time for both the Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis. On the 2600 she got in a few Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man fixes, then started in on her personal favorite Sonic the Hedgehog game: Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the Genesis. I remember remarking when she started playing it what an interestingly convoluted setup she had going, playing a Sega Genesis game on the Wii with a PlayStation controller.

She had a great time playing through it though and is probably somewhere in the area of 3/4 of the way done with Sonic 3 & Knuckles at this point. I may have to start playing a Sonic game myself sometime soon, since between watching the Sonic SatAM cartoon with the misses this past week (which is what gave her the idea to start playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles) and seeing the Sonic background on my New 3DS every time I turn it on I have had Sonic on the brain a lot lately. Looking ahead to next week though I think it's a safe bet that my wife will continue her play through of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and I doubt that my current infatuation with the long desired New 3DS will be going away any time soon. But hey, maybe I can download a few older games from the 3DS's Virtual Console to log some tracker eligible time with it. I have been wanting to try Tails Adventure for the Game Gear for a pretty long time now.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what next week brings! Until then, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited August 21, 2017 by Jin

[Eltigro]

This week wasn't much bigger than last week. Just haven't had a lot of playing time lately.

 

GameBoy

Smurfs - 15 min (Got a little farther in the Smurfs game. Some of the enemies are hard to see, but that's the screen's fault... bet it would be fine on a Super GameBoy. Lots of variety in the levels. First one is basic platforming through a forest, then the second stage is floating on a log in a stream, then going across a bridge, then through a swamp...)

 

Genesis

Castlevania: Bloodlines - 18 min (Watched the Castlevania show on Netflix or whatever it is on and it inspired me to play a bit of Castlevania. Bloodlines is one that I've never really spent much time on, so I popped it in. I still can't get past that wizard that fills up the screen with water. That's where I get game overs. Watched a video to see if there was a trick to it, but nope, just keep jumping and hitting it. I just keep missing it and drowning. Just need more practice I guess.)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It occurs to me that I should probably ask "Are 3D remakes of pre-2000 games tracker eligible?" For instance, on the 3DS there are 3D remakes of the arcade version of Xevious and a few of the Sonic the Hedgehog games for the Sega Genesis. They're the exact same as the original versions in every way except that they have the option to be played in 3D. If you turn the 3D feature off then they're just the original games with no changes made to them.

 

Would those 3D remakes be tracker eligible or is the addition of the option to have 3D visuals enough to make them ineligible?

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 33, running from August 14 - 20. We logged 3238 minutes of eligible play, playing 52 games on a total of 21 systems.

Top 10:

1. Phantasy Star II (Genesis) - 506

2. Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 (Dreamcast) - 445

3. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 394

4. Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis) - 302

5. X-Files, The (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 223

6. David Crane's Amazing Tennis (SNES) - 204

7. Historyline 1914-1918 (PC (DOS)) - 175

8. Crossbow (Atari 2600) - 124

9. Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Genesis) - 90

10. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari Lynx) - 78

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 394

2. Crossbow (Atari 2600) - 124

3. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 45

4. SEUCK (C64) - 39

5. Ms. Pac-Man 320 (Atari 7800) - 37

6. Crossbow (Atari 7800) - 36

7. Pac-Man (Arcade) - 34

8. Space Dungeon (Atari 5200) - 30

8. Super Breakout (Atari 5200) - 30

8. Pogo Joe (Atari 8-bit) - 30

Top 10 systems:

1. Genesis (943)

2. Atari 2600 (596)

3. Dreamcast (445)

4. PC (Windows 95/98) (223)

5. PC (DOS) (211)

6. SNES (209)

7. Atari 7800 (88)

8. C64 (85)

9. Game Gear (85)

10. Atari Lynx (78)

A third week of dominance for Phantasy Star II, and its main challenger is...another Phantasy Star game! Meanwhile, Kaboom goes back to doing what Kaboom so often does.

@Jin: That sounds fine! The 3D sounds like it's basically the equivalent of an emulation filter, without changing the underlying game.

[carlsson]

^^ Is the Atari Lynx really pre-NES, given it was released in September 1989?

[+thegoldenband]

^^ Is the Atari Lynx really pre-NES, given it was released in September 1989?

 

Oh, shoot, how'd that sneak in? Fixing presently...fixed!