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

[+wongojack]

 

Niiiice! Very atmospheric game. Some puzzles, however, are a little bit on the cryptic side, at least for me. I had to rely on a walkthrough now and then to finish that game.

You pretty much got it right. The game suffers from every problem PnC games had and yet benefits from some of the highest production values of any game ever in the genre.

 

These days, I prefer to use the Universal Hint System for these types of games. It does a great job of pointing you in the right direction without spoiling the solutions. The UHS website even has a nice mobile version.

[BurritoBeans]

Apple II:

Akalabeth: World of Doom - 120 minutes

Ultima I: First Age of Darkness - 200 minutes

 

Lisa:

Through the Looking Glass - 75 minutes

 

Macintosh:

Beyond Dark Castle - 100 minutes

Dark Castle - 60 minutes

Uninvited - 45 minutes

 

Pippin:

Super Marathon - 230 minutes

 

So yeah, Apple Week for me... well this is a first I guess.

 

The staple of the week for me is Super Marathon, the Pippin version of Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal packaged into one nice box. The version I usually play with, the @World copy, is fairly sought-after between all twelve Pippin collectors that ever existed for reasons I don't know... all I know is I have two and that's good I guess. I do enjoy Marathon a good bit - not too long ago I broke out the trilogy on Mac - so this was cool. Super Marathon is a neat port - compared to the classic Macs you have a higher framerate but a lower resolution, mind you the gameplay is still pretty smooth. I don't really have too much to say about these - they're just fun little story-driven FPS games... if you have Pippin and don't have Super Marathon it's an amazing game to go for, if you do then good for you.

 

Next up time-wise is the Apple II - I'm doing yet another Ultima series runthrough just for fun, so I knocked out my first two - Akalabeth and Ultima I - this week. After finding my backup disks (I don't use the originals usually because Akalabeth is stupid expensive) I popped these in and went through, grinding a bit and then finishing the game up. I have to say, the best part of these is always the graphics - even compared to some later Apple II games that I have, the whole first-person dungeon crawling comes through as a good bit better looking... it's really impressive for stuff made in Applesoft BASIC, anyways. While Akalabeth is good fun, Ultima I is always a bit of a relief to play after a while of Akalabeth because it improves on just about everything that Akalabeth did, and it even has little sprites instead of crosses and lines alongside the ability to save! In the grand scheme of Apple II RPGs, this excites me a good bit running these again - I'm thinking, based on a conversation with someone, of also adding in Wizardry (I have I-VII and the Gaiden games...) after these and maybe using those to close out 2017.

 

After that, the Mac comes in... well it's been a while since I did much gaming on the Mac, I only use it a couple of times a year anyways. The big game is my favorite MacVenture - Uninvited. It's not too hard once you know how to get through it and the horror themes are very cheesy at best, but hey it's good fun. The biggest issue I have with this is that I grew up on the NES version... I'm used to color and funky music, not black/white (mind you higher resolution) and really screechy effects. After running that I brought out Dark Castle and the sequel, Beyond Dark Castle... well I'm fairly sure most people know how mediocre Dark Castle can be on all of the other systems, and I went in with this expectation - I was actually surprised to find a smooth and playable arcade-y game on the Mac of all places. As with Uninvited I'm used to a lower resolution but color - in this case I highly prefer the Mac version as I can actually make out and do things whereas the console versions were just a dark mess. Beyond Dark Castle was cool, improving on the original in just about every way, so I had a good bit of fun with it... I think I'll be revisiting these not too long from now.

 

Finally, the Apple Lisa pops up. My Lisa, well... it's a mess, really. I got a Lisa and Lisa 2/10 for $350 a while back in a lot with their keyboards and mice - really cool deal, issue is the tubes and analog boards were absolutely screwed in both. It's been an adventure fixing the thing, so finally just last weekend I got the Lisa 2/10 up and running at its home (a radio/other old tech museum in WV that I lend some old computers like my AIM 65, Apple II, PET 2001, etc. to) as I sourced a new tube to fit inside the case - I didn't have much to run with, just an OS floppy and a copy of Through the Looking Glass, so I messed with just that - boot the OS, write it to the hard drive which surprisingly works still (I want to find a modern CF/SD solution as I'm not sure how well the hard drive was treated and with how flaky they can be nowadays) and played for a while... it's a fun game, but nothing to write home about - you pretty much play as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, trying to capture chess pieces who are trying to catch you. In the end I'm really happy I got another Lisa running - the plain Lisa still needs work but I'm not going to where it is for another month so it will be a while.

 

So yeah, that's the week. Sorry for the dual-post last week, I think that's the first time I can remember having that happen... probably just a 'net issue like usual on other forums. I'm thinking next week will be more Ultima with a bit of something random on the side but who knows what'll happen with knowing how good I am at doing what I say.

Edited November 21, 2017 by BurritoBeans

[+Darrin9999]

Neo Geo MVS :

 

1. Bang Bead - 77 min

2. Metal Slug 3 - 135 min

3. Metal Slug 5 - 98 min

4. Prehistoric Isle 2 - 110 min

5. SNK VS. Capcom - 15 min

6. Spinmaster - 30 min

7. Top Hunter - 40 min

8. Viewpoint - 25 min

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 46, running from November 13 - 19. We logged 3579 minutes of eligible play, playing 37 games on a total of 17 systems.

Top 10:

1. Dig, The (PC (DOS)) - 443

2. Super Final Match Tennis (JPN) (SNES) - 384

3. Super Marathon (Apple Pippin) - 230

4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 219

5. Ultima I: First Age of Darkness (Apple II) - 200

6. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 198

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 150

8. Sonic Megamix (Sega CD) - 146

9. Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 135

10. Virtua Fighter (Sega 32X) - 128

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 219

2. Ultima I: First Age of Darkness (Apple II) - 200

3. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 198

4. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 150

5. Akalabeth: World of Doom (Apple II) - 120

6. Through the Looking Glass (Apple Lisa) - 75

7. Dig Dug (Atari 7800) - 54

8. Beef Drop (Atari 7800) - 29

9. Space Invaders (Atari 2600) - 28

9. Mario Bros. (Atari 7800) - 28

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (662)

2. Neo Geo AES/MVS (530)

3. PC (DOS) (443)

4. SNES (384)

5. Apple II (320)

6. Apple Pippin (230)

7. Mac OS Classic (205)

8. Arcade (153)

9. Sega CD (146)

10. Sega 32X (128)

Baby, can you dig your game? It's a righteous game.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Space Invaders - 114 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Dig Dug - 12 minutes

Jr. Pac-Man - 15 minutes

Mario Bros. - 24 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK: my scores on 2600 Space Invaders, obtained on 7800 ProSystem Console just to have more fun!

Edited November 25, 2017 by oyamafamily

[oyamafamily]

Mario Bros. and DIg Dug are the current games for the 7800 High Score Club Season 2017-2018.

Edited November 25, 2017 by oyamafamily

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

River Raid: 7 min

Sky Alien: 4 min

Title Match Wrestling: 3 min

Vanguard: 25 min

 

NES

Ghosts ‘n Goblins: 5 min

Gradius: 5 min

 

Sega Mega Drive

Red Zone: 10 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 50 min

 

Some new stuff tested, and some gameplay for the current team tournament and another war patrol beneath the waves. The NES playtime was actually on an NES Mini, which was installed as one of the interactive elements in the current "Japan" exhibition in the Uebersee-Museum Bremen, Germany. A great museum, a great Japan exhibition, and I'm certainly not going to complain that I even got to play some NES :-).

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Bowling - 40 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Bewitch Castle, The - 6 min.

Beyond Castle Wolfenstein - 2 min.

Castle Attack - 4 min.

Castle Keeper - 15 min.

Castle Mania - 5 min.

Castle Martian (Martian Castle) - 3 min.

Castle Wolfenstein - 9 min.

Castles of Confusion - 7 min.

Crystal Castles XE - 10 min.

Crystal Crisis - 13 min.

Crystal Raider - 6 min.

Dr Tom's Castle - 6 min.

Fairy Castle - 12 min.

King of the Castle - 5 min.

Star Crystals - 8 min.

Tarkus and the Crystal of Fear - 5 min.

So yes, the current round of the Atari 8-bit HSC is Crystal Castles XE, with possible bonus points for playing other games with the words "crystal" or "castle". I decided to start out lightly and play through as many as I could find, then perhaps put more effort in the main game later on.

[BurritoBeans]

Apple II:

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress - 300 minutes

 

DOS:

Paratrooper - 20 minutes

 

PC98:

Sengoku Turb - 150 minutes

 

So yeah, this week wasn't too exciting for gaming but whatever. The big title is Ultima as I'm going on with my runs - Ultima II, while a ton of fun, was never my favorite by any means - it's pretty much just the first game but expanded a ton with a bunch of optional places. I will say that the time period thing is fun, as it's the second game put out by On-Line Systems in 1982 in which you run through time - there's the adventure game Time Zone, which is an absolutely massive six-disk long adventure with a million dead ends that cost $99 when it was new, requires a whole notebook worth of paper for maps, and in the end was just a little "meh" compared to the rest of the Hi-Res lineup. Still, I did have fun playing with the game and I'm definitely looking forward to playing Ultima III.

 

The next game is Sengoku Turb... you may know a game of the same name on the Dreamcast but have never heard of the PC98 version - the DC one I just bought a copy of last week so it will take a while to get here but I plan to do a full run once I get it. Pretty much, in this ARPG you play in a world of big-headed cats who have a war against sheep... you're this dude Norin who has to help save the cats from being wiped out - it's definitely an odd one. Gameplay was alright with one major flaw, half of the game is in the fashion of Zelda where you just move around to get to places with a top-down view, and then the other half covers battles which are fought in a strategy-type game where you and up to 37 cats fight. This is fun until you realize that the controls just kinda suck - it's like if you only had mouse movement in Wolfenstein 3D if you know how that is where you're constantly picking the mouse up so you can roll yourself ten feet more forward - sure it "works" but it's by no means good. In the end, I mean it was enjoyable even if it did have a few flaws - I think when the DC one comes (hopefully before christmas?) I'll have to give it a full run.

 

Finally, well I got a bit of Paratrooper in. Do you know the Apple II game, Sabotage? If so, you know Paratrooper - you play as a turret and have to shoot down planes and paratroopers who are trying to destroy you, they come in waves and you go until so many are there and blow you up. It's good arcade-y fun, and it's just enjoyable to play now and then.

 

So yeah, that was the week. I'm not sure how much gaming I'll be getting in for next week between deer season opening up, work, school coming back, and the fact that I have about 40 records being shipped to my house that are supposed to arrive sometime next week - if anything I'd like to cover Ultima III, but I'll see if I get to it as it all depends on what else I do.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 20th through 26th)...

 

Android phone (non-eligible):

Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 118 min. in 13 sessions

 

Online (non-eligible):

20 Euros - 40 min. in 2 sessions

Papa's Pancakeria - 104 min. in 3 sessions

Spar XMas-Rallye - 6 min.

Stockstream - 98 min. in 6 sessions

 

This week I didn't play any classic games that would be eligible for the tracker, but I played some online games and one Android one...

 

first I continued to play Papa's Pancakeria which I started last week. Sadly it sometimes hangs up on placing the bananas (you have a banana on the pointer, but can't place it).

Then I replayed "20 Euros", but I don't quite know what to do to succeed on it.

I considerably cut down the time on Stockstream this week, thanks to Thanksgiving where the stock exchange was closed.

Then I briefly played Spar XMas-Rally, a minigame where you basically play Santa flying on his sled (you are actually stationary with the background scrolling by) and drop presents (different products available at Spar, probably by manufacturers who sponsored this game) at the right moment so that they fall into a chimney... which is quite easy if you remember a point in the non-moving part of the background which a chimney has to pass in order to throw another present. There is a 2 minute timer running out, but you get 10 extra seconds each for hitting 3 chimneys consecutively and for correctly answering trivia questions about the products you throw.

 

Finally, and most importantly, I installed my first gaming app on my Android phone, Crazy Taxi: City Rush. To win the game, you have to upgrade your taxi to the max (probably) in several areas where each upgrade gets progressively more expensive. I've come to a point where you need 3-4 runs for each upgrade, and after 4 runs your fuel is depleted and you have to wait approximately an hour until you can do 4 more runs (hence the many short sessions of 9-16 minutes each). I haven't managed to finish the first area (Downtown) yet.

[zylon]

Sega Genesis-

 

Shining Force- 12hrs 48min

- played via 360 collection, also checking for differences.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 81 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 269 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 49,657

 

Hunchy 2 : I made it to level 12. It isn't too hard but I made some stupid mistakes. Hope to at least get to 13 this next week.

 

...and.. I finally got a pattern on level 7. It varies a little each time depending on my timing.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Atarian7

[agb]

Times for the week are:

PlayStation 1 Tetris Plus 45 minutes.

 

Atari 2600 games are;

Ms. Pac-Man 37 minutes. High score of 65,940.

Dig Dug- 81 minutes. High score of 224,980.

Solar Fox 183 minutes. High score over 5.3 mil.

[+cvga]

Got in a little gaming this week...

 

Mattel Aquarius:

Tron Deadly Discs - 5 minutes

Utopia - 20 minutes

Astrosmash - 15 minutes

Nightstalker - 15 minutes

[+wongojack]

I have time to report 2 weeks in a row - whoopie

 

DOS

The Dig 410

Genesis

Championship Pro AM 4

Super Monaco GP 3

Windows 95/98

The Longest Journey 189

I was playing the dig for the first time, and I didn't really have trouble with the turtle or the light prism puzzles at all (common stumpers), but I did struggle at several points. Playing more recent PnC games and going back to these old ones highlights 2 areas were we've seen improvement. First, in most modern PnC games, once an item is no longer useful, it gets removed from your inventory. Second, the newer games tend to only let you explore the areas you need to for the very next puzzle. These two "improvements" (if you'll allow me to call them that) really make gameplay less frustrating. The Dig does not benefit from either of these - lol.

In my playthrough of The Dig, I had several situations where I could swear that I tried something earlier only to find out I hadn't. I played for hours before looking at UHS and understanding that

I had to get the power on to open the doors - only to discover that I'd never pushed the robot activation button with the power crystal in its place. I could've sworn that I tried that, but alas I had not. I also had never completely walked over to the water area where the turtle puzzle was located. I dunno how, but I had to just get a very slight hint that I could explore in that direction. I was playing the game on a portable with a rather small screen, so it was hard to see that the tips of the blue crystals were changing as I slid the blue rods up and down. I also had not tried to use the scepters on the planetarium ceiling (despite thinking I had),

so that cost me lots of time going everywhere and trying everything. After the planetarium, I got a string of hints because I was frustrated from wasting time. However, once I got

down to the crypt

, I played the rest of the game hint free.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Microvision:

Block Buster - 2 min.

NES:

Crossfire - 2 min.

Tetris - 34 min.

Zhen Jia Hou Wang (Genuine Monkey) - 11 min.

Sega Master System:

Ghost House - 2 min.

SNES:

Adventures of Mighty Max - 2 min.

Dungeon Master - 15 min.

The Itchy & Scratchy Game - 95 min.

The Lost Vikings - 15 min.

Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday - 148 min.

RPM Racing - 70 min.

Beat Porky Pig on Hard, and Itchy & Scratchy (which I've beaten before) on Normal. I also got the Kremlin to take off in Tetris in Game A.

[Iwantgames:)]

Got a bunch of newer titles for Black Friday so no classic gameplay from me this week, hopefully get some in next week

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a nicely balanced week around here this week, with a relatively equal amount of time devoted to classic tracker eligible games and more modern ineligible ones.

 

 

 

Ineligible
Kirby's Epic Yarn (Nintendo Wii) - 455 minutes
Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Nintendo Wii) - 371 minutes

Atari 7800
Mario Bros. (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 35 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 234 minutes

PC-DOS (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)
Final Doom - 311 minutes

Sega 32X
Doom - 173 minutes
Virtua Fighter - 61 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,640 minutes (27 hours 20 minutes) [814 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 826 minutes
PC-DOS: 311 minutes
Atari 7800: 269 minutes
Sega 32X: 234 minutes

 

 

 

For my gaming time this week I divided it between continuing my leisurely jaunt through Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii, the brutally challenging Final Doom for PC-DOS, and a few Atari 7800 classics; with a bit of Virtua Fighter on the 32X thrown in for good measure. Kirby's Epic Yarn continues to be a joy to play and at this point I've completed the game's story mode, gold medaled every level, collected every treasure, and the only thing left to do to achieve 100% completion in the game is to finish playing through all the mini-games that can be played with Kirby's neighbors in his apartment building. I'm not in any rush on it though, since I am still immensely enjoying this ever-so relaxing game, and I'll be happy to just pick it up for a few minutes here and there when I want to mellow out.

 

In the less relaxing game department, holy hell is Final Doom ever tough! I could always beat the original Doom and Doom II on Ultra Violence difficulty with no problem at all, but Final Doom is definitely causing me some consternation. There's 64 levels in the game too (compared to the 30'ish in the former two games) and I'm only on level 14 at the moment, and it's certainly giving me a real challenge. With that many levels left to go it's pretty questionable as to whether or not I'll finish this one by the end of the year.

 

The only other game I spent a lot of time on this past week was Ms. Pac-Man on the Atari 7800. I've always loved Ms. Pac-Man on every system I've ever played it on, but the Atari 7800 port has been kinda driving me nuts for the last year or so because I could never make it to the 4th maze in this version. So this week I decided that I was just going to practice, practice, and practice some more every single day until I made it to the 4th maze. I had seen my wife do it twice before so I knew it was possible but never could make it there myself, always running out of lives on the second random fruit stage right before the 4th maze. With a personal goal in mind and a friendly marital rivalry to spur me on I kept at it all week, until Saturday afternoon when I finally did it! Making it to the 4th maze after a year of trying was immensely satisfying, and I was also pretty chuffed about narrowly topping the misses' previous household high score record of 92,200.

 

Speaking of the spousal unit, this week she spent the vast majority of the week playing through the male character's story in Muramasa on the Wii; though she did take breaks every now and then to play some Ms. Pac-Man with me and offer her strategic expertise. I was pretty sure she was going to finish Muramasa this week, until I ended up distracting her with an early Christmas present that is. I knew that she had been wanting an official 6 button Genesis arcade stick for several years and this week I finally found a brand new in box one for her and snapped it up as soon as I saw it. She was thrilled to get it and immediately put it to good use doing a full play through of Doom on the 32X (on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty) to get a feel for it, after she had me open it up and lubricate the joystick with Shin-Etsu grease that is. Once she had spent a couple hours of putting the new controller through it's paces she was really pleased with it and said the joystick on the 6 button arcade stick was a lot smoother and more precise than the 3 button one, though the buttons were a little snappier and easier to press on the 3 button version.

 

All in all it was a pretty fun and exciting week for gaming around here, and I have a feeling that next week is going to be just as much fun. With a few Wii games to finish up and plenty of classic games to enjoy, as well as a new controller for the spousal unit to play them with, next week looks to have plenty of fun and relaxation in store. Until then, happy gaming and best wishes to you and yours!

Edited November 27, 2017 by Jin

[+Darrin9999]

Odyssey 2 :

 

1. Clay Pigeon - 20 min

2. Pick axe Pete - 192 min

 

Neo Geo MVS :

 

1. Metal Slug 3 - 75 min

2. Metal Slug 5 - 32 min

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 47, running from November 20 - 26. We logged 4554 minutes of eligible play, playing 66 games on a total of 17 systems.

Top 10:

1. Shining Force (Genesis) - 768

2. Dig, The (PC (DOS)) - 410

3. Final Doom (PC (DOS)) - 311

4. Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II) - 300

5. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 269

6. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 234

7. Pick Axe Pete (Odyssey^2) - 192

8. Longest Journey, The (PC (Windows 95/98)) - 189

9. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 183

10. Doom (Sega 32X) - 173

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II) - 300

2. Hunchy II (Atari 2600) - 269

3. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 7800) - 234

4. Pick Axe Pete (Odyssey^2) - 192

5. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 183

6. Space Invaders (Atari 2600) - 114

7. Dig Dug (Atari 2600) - 81

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 81

9. Mario Bros. (Atari 7800) - 59

10. Bowling (Atari 2600) - 40

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (844)

2. PC (DOS) (791)

3. Genesis (785)

4. SNES (345)

5. Atari 7800 (320)

6. Apple II (300)

7. Sega 32X (234)

8. Odyssey^2 (212)

9. PC (Windows 95/98) (189)

10. NEC PC-9801 (150)

Surprisingly, Shining Force has never appeared on the tracker before, but this week it arrives in a big way, taking the #1 spot with a bullet.

However the Genesis only makes #3 on the system charts, where the Atari 2600 holds sway -- though it's Ultima II on the Apple II that, in turn, claims the brass ring on the pre-NES charts. So, three charts, three systems: which, for some reason, makes me think of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Finally Dig Dug on the Atari VCS and Ghosts 'n Goblins on the NES take spots #309 and #310 in the 1000-minute club, with 1069 min. logged to date by the former game and exactly 1000 on the nose by the latter.

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Bowling - 62 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Crystal Castles XE - 17 min.

More bedtime bowling (hmm... that sounds dirty) and a bit of HSC where I swapped my Starplex for a Tac-2 in order to more naturally play diagonals.

New personal best on Bowling on game 1, easy difficulty (in case that switch makes any difference) is 245 pts:

[BurritoBeans]

Apple II:

Ultima III: Exodus - 345 minutes

 

Woohoo, one game!

 

So yeah, my one game this week is what I wanted to get done, Ultima III. I don't know if this is my favorite Ultima, it may be, but if not then it has to be up there - I've got this game on so many different systems (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, C64, DOS, Mac, MSX2 cartridges, MSX2 disks, NES/Famicom, PC-88, PC-98, Sharp X1...) and it is one case where I don't feel like an idiot for having a million variants. Compared to Akalabeth/I/II, III brings a lot more to the table - four-player parties with eleven classes, the food system, stuff like bribing/stealing/fighting people, dungeons that aren't just wireframe, and more. Pretty much I just ran the game real quick, then went back to mess around doing things like "killing" Lord British and fighting everyone and everything possible. I always have a ton of fun on this game and I'm glad that I didn't end up really messing with anything else game-wise to take the focus off of it.

 

Past that, well I had a bunch of random work to do with school/work... one fun thing coming out of that is that I'm getting yet another IBM from my Physics teacher, he's got a spare in his room that he doesn't want anymore but doesn't want to destroy for the electronics class so I'm going to take it and its tube monitor to my house - that should be cool. Also with getting new stuff, I got a nice pile of ~750 78RPM Records/Edison Diamond Disc/Cylinders from some guy who was selling the whole collection for $50 in the newspaper just to get rid of it - this is probably going to ruin half of my time to play games as they're not exactly the cleanest so between washing and digitizing this is going to take me a while. I'm going to try to squeeze in some handhelds, but if anything else I'll at least get to work and maybe beat Ultima IV.

[karokoenig]

NES

The Guardian Legend: 27 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 75 min

 

One war patrol in Silent Hunter and a little go on my newest flea market find: The Guardian Legend. I knew beforehand that this game is a genre mix, and I'm glad I did know. Otherwise, I would have probably given up at the first vertical shooter sequence and dismissed it as a very mediocre and fairly frustrating game.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 27th through December 3rd)...

 

Android phone (non-eligible):

Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 190 min. in 16 sessions

 

Online (non-eligible):

20 Euros - 28 min.

Aground - 163 min. in 2 sessions

Papa's Pancakeria - 22 min.

Stockstream - 144 min. in 8 sessions

 

I didn't play any classic games this week (as last week), but I did play some new games. I continued to play Crazy Taxi: City Rush where I completed Downtown and moved on to the Beach. I also played another session of Papa's Pancakeria and continued to play Stockstream, although I actually didn't do too much in this game, mostly only chatted with other players. I also had another go on "20 Euros" a variant of 2048 where I made it more than halfway through the game, but didn't manage to complete it.

 

A new game I found in the Kongregate newsletter is Aground, a 2D game where you get stranded on a lonely island and have to find your way out. You meet other people who give you quests, and on completing those quests various facilities get built which enable you to do more, such as crafting additional materials and things. The final goal is to craft a dock and then a boat on which you can leave the island. On the way, you deal with wood, Iron Ore which gets converted to Iron bars and then to steel bars, you slay wild pigs or domesticate them to regular pigs later in the game, you eat various things, and you dig for coal, iron ore and gold, where coal and wood get used as food for your facilities. In the final phase of the game there are market stands where you can buy and sell everything and you have various helpers which fill your storage facility with things so you don't need to fetch much more from underground anymore.

 

In this game, the end comes a bit surprising because there are many more things you can craft or reach which aren't of any actual use for the quests or can also be done without without too much trouble. For instance, at the right of the play area, there's a mountain covered in snow. You could theoretically dig your way through to up there, but you don't have to do it to win the game. Also in the cutscenes there's mention of more islands existing, but in reality the game ends on leaving the one you're on.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Kurt_Woloch

[oyamafamily]

ONLY ATARI 2600

Bowling - 15 minutes

Space Invaders - 30 minutes

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Video of me playing 2600 Space Invaders on my ProSystem Console (game 1 with double shots)!

Recorded with my smartphone just to try (the scores DOESN'T matter)!

 

2) My scores on 2600 Bowling, also played on my ProSystem Console