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

[zylon]

Finally I discovered a new game, T.N.K III which is a predecessor to Ikari Warriors made in 1985. In it you control a tank and try to get through the enemy lines and various scrolling scenery.

 

Wow. I haven't heard of that one in ages. It was also available on floppy disk for the C64. I used to have a copy.

[+wongojack]

 

 

I was in the HSC mindset when I read this one and thought, "Man, game 12 must be tough if he only got a score of 25!" Then the rest of my brain kicked in... lol

Ha! Yeah, I like game 12. It is sorta my go-to variation, but the shields make it so you don't really ever have to move. I may try one of the other variations. Which one are they playing in the HSC?

[Eltigro]

Ha! Yeah, I like game 12. It is sorta my go-to variation, but the shields make it so you don't really ever have to move. I may try one of the other variations. Which one are they playing in the HSC?

 

Game 4, difficulty switches on A

[oyamafamily]

ONLY ATARI 2600

Asteroids - 52 minutes

Defender - 105 minutes

Galaxian - 85 minutes

Yars' Revenge - 80 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK

Defender on my ProSystem VCS Console - 1,000,000+ points (Game 1 B/B, played with my Edladdin Super 78 joystick and Polyvox cartridge)

[+cvga]

Not sure if I'll have any time to play today so...

 

NES

Baseball Stars - 69 minutes (only 3 games to go to finish another season!)

 

Commodore 64

Jumpman - 30 minutes

[+cvga]

ONLY ATARI 2600

Asteroids - 52 minutes

Defender - 105 minutes

Galaxian - 85 minutes

Yars' Revenge - 80 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK

Defender on my ProSystem VCS Console - 1,000,000+ points (Game 1 B/B, played with my Edladdin Super 78 joystick and Polyvox cartridge)

 

That's awesome. I love that you wrote down your score every 10 waves. Also, your handwriting is fantastic!

[carlsson]

This has been a crazy week where I've barely had time to read email, much less answer incoming mail. My spare time for eligible gaming has been as close to zero as one can get.

Instead I spent the entire Saturday on the yearly board game day, in which we first had a short test play of Small World and then moved onto a five player game of Advanced Civilization. The opponents were far less war hungry than last year (note: AdvCiv is not a war game) which also paid off with a rather good score of 3067 points and second place. Play time was roughly estimated after adjusting for a food break.

Ineligible:

Advanced Civilization (board game) - 510 min.

[karokoenig]

NES

Duck Tales: 10 min

 

Just testing some equipment. No time for anything else...

[Kurt_Woloch]

I've also had relatively little gaming time this week since I tried to catch up with other things... and I've run out of good games to play for now:

 

Arcade:

Hyper Pacman - 20 min.

Manhattan (DECO Cassette System) - 24 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Tank - 36 min. in 2 sessions

Toy Bizarre - 20 min.

 

I tried the C-64 version of Tank (same game as T.N.K: III which I played last week in the arcade version), and it's a bit strange in that the soldiers shooting at you diagonally follow you to the step most of the time, but you can't hit them because your tank can't move or shoot diagonally. There is also an over-lengthy Game Over sequence you can't interrupt.

 

Then I replayed Manhattan on the DECO Cassette system, not a particularly great game, but I remember it from 1980 or 1981 when it was put up in our local arcade.

 

A new game I discovered is Hyper Paman, a more modern take on Pac Man with different maze layouts and lots of extras. Never saw that one in our arcades, but maybe that's because by 1995 I wasn't going there that often anymore because my interest in video games had been replaced by Karaoke shows which I visited every week.

 

Lastly, I replayed Toy Bizarre on the Commodore 64. The 20 minutes were one single game, but I still didn't get as far as I hoped I would.

[Eltigro]

Was able to play more than I thought I would be able to this week. And with my work schedule this coming week, should be able to put up some more good numbers. =)

 

2600

Asteroids - 53 minutes (Playing game 4, difficulty A for the 2600 HSC. Had about 4 games in the 20,000s and thought that was going to be my limit, but then had one outlier at 42,560)

Berzerk - 24 minutes (Picked this up at a flea market yesterday, works perfect, played for quite a while before I realized that the difficulty switch was still on A for Asteroids HSC... lol)

 

TurboGrafx-16 (some TG or PCE CD games, too)

Bonk 3 (emulated) - 61 minutes (this game just confuses me... I have no idea where I'm supposed to be going in a level, but I somehow end up at the goal...)

Gradius II (emulated) - 25 minutes (took a while before I figured out to use a different core in Retroarch so I could use turbo fire )

Ordyne (emulated) - 9 minutes (I remember renting this one bitd, one of the few that I played two player simultaneous with my Turbotap. My brother in law didn't like the cutesy look of it, though.)

Super Raiden (emulated) - 42 minutes (just about every emulated version of Raiden seems easier than my actual Hucard...)

 

Playstation

Final Fantasy VII (emulated) - 641 minutes (See below.)

Project Raiden (emulated) - 14 minutes (Split up in 11 minutes on Raiden and 3 on Raiden II, both on this same game. Again, Raiden seemed easier than my HuCard.)

 

Got to the end of disc 1 on Final Fantasy VII ... If you know what happens at the end of disc 1, then you know what the sad face is for.

 

However, the changing of discs went perfect and I'm continuing on into disc 2! I've just gotten the Highwind and am just tooling around in it for a bit... taking some time to level some characters and materia. Want to get some of them to split so I'll have more of them to use... specifically the ALL, ADDED EFFECT, and ELEMENTAL materia.

 

 

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 217 minutes

Asteroids - 67 minutes

Galaxian - 106 minutes

Gyruss - 165 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! High score of the week: 96,389

[+LS650]

Just spent about 40 minutes playing 'Bound High!' for the Virtual Boy.

 

With a pair of red-blue anaglyph glasses, this is quite a fun game with a really nice 3D effect.

[zylon]

5200-

Kaboom!- 3hrs 48min

[twoquickcapri]

Nintendo 64:

Cruis'n USA - 256 min.

 

Finally got back around to leveling up each car. Now everything fully unlocked and ready to go.

[BurritoBeans]

Missed last weeks posting by an hour, bleh

 

Sega Saturn

SimCity 2000 - 1200 minutes

 

Sharp X1

Romancia - 300 minutes

Super Mario Bros. Special - 100 minutes

The Tower of Druaga - 200 minutes

 

Super Nintendo

Lawnmower Man - 600 minutes

 

Eh, not a ton compared to the usual but it was all I wanted to do.

 

Pulled the Saturn up for SimCity 2000 as it's one of the two US titles I own and I like SC2K. Apart from the stupid long loading times, I do have to say that the Saturn version is pretty awesome - not much different from the PC version anyways. The big gripe right now is that I have no cart for my Saturn, so I can only hold like one save which really sucks - sometime here I'll buy an Action Replay cart. Pretty much I just started a city, took it really far, and then blew it up - not much to say other than that it's a fun game and I think it was worth the $10.

 

Lawnmower Man was more of the same... The run is getting shorter and shorter. We haven't found anything new to the run yet which is sad as I'd think with the amount of glitchieness there's got to be something I can abuse in it, but without going in and looking at it like a TAS I doubt I'd be able to find any more elements I can abuse. Just like Simcity, there's really not much I can say here as I've said everything there is so far.

 

Finally the X1 shows up for me which is something a bit different but hey, I like the X1. Super Mario Bros Special was first for me... it's alright but nothing great. Pretty much, the colors are a bit screwed up due to the PC-8800s/X1 color palette (The 88 can only do like eight colors but Special only runs with four), all the levels are different, the difficulty was raised, and the screen scrolls when you hit the edge instead of a constant scroll. It's a fun game, but it's tough and looks a bit rough. Tower Of Druaga was next, which is an arcade port. Imagine Pacman but with RPG elements and combat... it's strange. You have to go through 60 floors with a sword and shield, defeating monsters and finding a key in the maze to get to the next floor. The game gets tough, but hey I enjoy it. Finally, Romancia was up. Romancia is a sidescroller which is kinda fun and really sucks the rest of the time. Pretty much based off the bos statement of "Very cute, 100% difficulty" you can get what it's like. First off, controls just suck. The game world is super small with just a town, a giant maze, and another town which is fairly boring. The game is on a timer (30 minutes), there's no save system, if you talk to a king more than like two times the timer is cut in half, and it's really freaking difficult. It's a neat little RPG that's way too hard, so play the Famicom one with the "fixed" elements yet still frustrating if you want to play it as it's the best out of them all.

 

So yeah nothing crazy this week but I liked it. I've got Orchestra practice from 6:30 to 10PM every night as we're doing a musical performance of Into The Woods which is going to be interesting, so I'm taking a 98Note and some random games with me on the hard drive to mess with which should be fun.

Edited March 6, 2017 by BurritoBeans

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES/Famicom:

Moai-Kun - 52 min.

Q Boy - 4 min.

Quest of Ki - 2 min.

Transformers: Mystery of Convoy - 15 min.

Got about halfway through Moai-Kun, a single-screen puzzle platformer I beat with savestates some years back, and am now beating "legit" -- though frankly the savestates didn't make much difference in a game like this, especially since it has passwords.

[+wongojack]

Missed last weeks posting by an hour, bleh

 

 

 

Did you add your time from the last week into these totals? Maybe you should. I think some others have had to add time from previous weeks in the past; myself included.

 

 

Here are my times for the week.

 

Arcade

Burgertime 6

Dragons Lair 2

Galaga 2

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker 8

Mr. Do 15

Punch Out 2

Skull and Crossbones 2

Star Wars 13

StratoVox (Speak and Rescue) 4

Sunset Riders 8

 

Astrovision (Astrocade)

Gunfight 6

 

Atari 2600

Asteroids 109 (38,670 new game 4 best)

 

Jaguar

Tempest 2k 10

 

Vectrex

Vectrexians 2

 

Windows 95/98

Baldur's Gate 115

 

 

I went back to the National Video Game museum again this week. I think I've now finally taken all the family members that will ever have an interest in going to that thing - lol. Some of the arcade times are my family's time.

 

I keep seeing new stuff there. For instance, this was the first time that I've ever played a Jaguar, and I was able to give Tempest 2000 a few plays. I'd also never heard of the arcade game Stratovox before. They had a machine up and working which was kinda cool. It was interesting to see in it the inspiration for another game I've played in the tracker - Spider Fighter. I also tried Stratovox in MAME (after I discovered it was called Speak and Rescue), but the voices weren't really working in emulation for me.

 

Even though I didn't contribute in the HSC, I switched my time spent with Asteroids to game 4. I wonder how many people have played Asteroids without ever trying any of the game variations? There's really a lot of depth to discover within those variations.

 

I'm slowing down with Baldur's Gate. I'm finally in the game's namesake city and, for whatever reason, exploring it feels more like a chore than some other parts of the game.

 

I finally got my hands on a working Astrovision/Astrocade. Well, it is mostly working. It has a nice picture, but it cut out on me after about 90 total minutes of playtime, and I need to try and clean out the controllers, but all of that seems like par for the course for the this temperamental console. The good news is that it came right back on.

[Eltigro]

I loved the NVGM. I could have stayed there all day, but the gf and kids were getting bored with it. I tried to go solo later, but they were closed that day. For me it was the first time playing some of the Atari 8 bit computers and the first time I've been in an actual arcade environment in a long time. Did you look under the mattress in the bedroom? lol Love that place.

 

Asteroids on game 1 has very little challenge. I think I could play it indefinitely and I'm sure I'm not alone on that. I imagine most people, if they didn't try the different variations, would bore of it pretty quickly.

[+davidcalgary29]

7800:

 

30 minutes of Roof Pooper, until I ran out of gas.

Water Ski: 3 minutes, but it felt like a week.

 

Dreamcast:

 

Samba de Amigo party on Saturday! 2 hours.

Shenmue 60 minutes

Soul Calibur 60 minutes

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Making up for last week's absence of my usual picture and gaming story for the week, this week I've got two pictures and a short synopsis of my household's gaming activities over the past two weeks. The listed times are just for this week though, since I did at least manage to get the time logs posted last week.

 

 

Last Week

 

 

 

This Week

 

 

 

Arcade

Centipede (played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 for PlayStation) - 22 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum Vol. 3 for PlayStation) - 34 minutes

Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum Vol. 1 for PlayStation) - 95 minutes

Atari 2600

Asteroids - 137 minutes

D.K. VCS - 38 minutes

Galaxian - 37 minutes

Gyruss - 42 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 60 minutes

Super Breakout - 27 minutes

Atari 7800 (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Asteroids - 16 minutes

Centipede - 33 minutes

Donkey Kong - 25 minutes

Donkey Kong Junior - 26 minutes

Motor Psycho - 29 minutes

Ms. Pac-Man - 8 minutes

Pac-Man Collection - 153 minutes

Xevious - 33 minutes

Game Boy Color

Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 11 minutes

NES (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

Rad Racer - 7 minutes

PlayStation

Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown - 44 minutes

Quake II - 457 minutes

Sega Genesis (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

OutRun - 8 minutes

Sega Master System (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)

OutRun - 11 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,353 minutes (22 hours 33 minutes) [1,353 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week

PlayStation: 501 minutes

Atari 2600: 341 minutes

Atari 7800: 323 minutes

Arcade: 151 minutes

Game Boy Color: 11 minutes

Sega Master System: 11 minutes

Sega Genesis: 8 minutes

NES: 7 minutes

For me last week was largely spent finishing up Metroid Prime on the GameCube and practicing Asteroids, Gyruss, and Galaxian for the Atari 2600 High Score Club. I did spend a little time fiddling around with the GameCube's Game Boy Player to see how some Classic NES Series games for the Game Boy Advance (Xevious and Castlevania) played on the GameCube, and the results were quite good, but most of my week in gaming was consumed by Metroid Prime and the Atari with the occasional game of Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man on the Game Boy interspersed here and there. The only other game of note for me last week was Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure for the Sega Genesis, which I remembered really liking as a kid so I decided to revisit it via emulation on the Wii. It was just as much fun (and actually a little less frustrating) as I remembered it being, and though I didn't manage to beat the game it was still fun to play. I think I'll have to pick up a copy of it for the Atari Jaguar when one of those systems eventually finds it's way into my gaming center in the not too distant future.

 

This week was an "all Atari" week for me aside from a brief venture into emulated racing games last night and a few games of the arcade and Game Boy Color versions of Ms. Pac-Man. I spent the vast majority of the week just practicing Asteroids, Gyruss, and Galaxian for the Atari 2600 High Score Club and I'm pleased to say that my efforts paid off and I think I placed pretty well in the rankings this week. I also spent a lot of time playing emulated Atari 7800 games, since the misses decided that she might have been a bit hasty insisting that I resell our Atari 7800 and the games for it earlier this year; and we will most likely be getting another Atari 7800 next week to replace the one that was sold. So I played quite a few Atari 7800 games via emulation to build up excitement for the return of the 7800 to the gaming center, and I had a really great time with all of them.

 

As far as my wife's gaming time for the last two weeks goes, last week she finished off Diablo and—wanting to play a first-person shooter of some kind—decided to give Quake II for the PlayStation a try. She began playing it on Normal difficulty but ended up quitting and restarting on Easy halfway through the game, since it got a lot tougher than she was anticipating. After playing through and beating Quake II on Easy last week she decided to give Normal difficulty a go this week, and was able to beat it this time around now that she knew what to expect from playing through the game on Easy. I do recall the final boss taking her a good 2 hours or so of practice to beat on Normal, whereas she breezed right through it on Easy, but with a bit of practice she was able to beat him and finish the game.

 

After Quake II was done she was still itching for more sci-fi first-person shooting so I recommended Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown to her (which is essentially just a port of Duke Nukem 3D for PC-DOS with a new episode added in at the end) and she's been having some fun with it and enjoying the humorous and slightly crass dialogue, though she did comment that the controls are a little twitchy. Other than Quake II and Duke Nukem the only other games the misses played over the last two weeks were the arcade version of Pac-Man on the PlayStation some of her homebrew favorites on the Atari 2600 to break up the first-person shooter action, including D.K. VCS, Space Rocks, and New Pac-Man 8K. She did try out the High Score Club games for the past two weeks as well, though she wasn't too interested in competing in the HSC so her play times for those were pretty brief.

 

 

Looking ahead to next week there's 3 new games for the next round of the Atari 2600 High Score Club that I'll be playing, but other than that I'm not sure there's much that's certain in terms of my household's gaming activities. The misses may or may not stick with Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown on the PlayStation and I have been wanting to play a longer and more story focused game since I finished Metroid Prime, but I haven't decided exactly what game to play yet. What I do know though is that we will be getting our Edladdin Super Twin 78 controller back in the mail from it's temporary owner this week, and I'm sure that is going to make competing in the HSC a heck of a lot more fun!

Edited March 6, 2017 by Jin

[Eltigro]

"pretty well"

 

Top five in all three. So modest. lol

[Skippy B. Coyote]

"pretty well"

Top five in all three. So modest. lol

I guess a just expect a lot from myself when I'm playing a video game competitively, maybe too much. At this point I hold the HighScore.com world records in 19 different games and I always go into every game with the goal of becoming #1, and anything less than that is just "pretty well". I try not to be too hard on myself when I don't win though, because I know there are only certain types of games that I'm really good at (vertical scrolling spaceship shooters mainly) so honestly any time I can make the Top 10 in the Atari 2600 HSC I'm happy. There is some really tough competition here on AtariAge and if there's one thing I've learned it's that no matter how good you might be at a game there is always someone out there who is better. And that's okay, because it wouldn't be any fun to compete if there was no challenge and you were always the best.

[carlsson]

Jin, let us know when you start selling your own barbeque sauce!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Jin, let us know when you start selling your own barbeque sauce!

Barbeque sauce? I think you lost me on that one.

[karokoenig]

I'm slowing down with Baldur's Gate. I'm finally in the game's namesake city and, for whatever reason, exploring it feels more like a chore than some other parts of the game.

 

That city is pretty overwhelming with its size and myriads of sidequests. When I played it back in the days, I felt that too. It helped me to make a good old-fashioned list on paper with all quests instead of relying on the in-game questbook. Then focus on one quest at a time and finish it without looking left or right.