What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2018 (Season 11)

[Opry99er]

Impressive!!!

[Opry99er]

I have certain games I play regularly... Tunnels of Doom, TI Trek, Aperture, NeverLander...

 

But I cant imagine playing them every day for 10 straight years.

 

Kudos, and mad props.

[carlsson]

Sure you could set off every Sunday for playing 7-10 hours of Tunnels of Doom and then let the game rest for rest the week. You still would need to hold that routine for 10 years, but you would not need to play it every single day.

Edited April 14, 2018 by carlsson

[Opry99er]

Insane.... I dont think there is any game I could play for 7 hours a day once a week for 10 years...

 

Except maybe Morrowind.... on the XBox.

 

But that would not qualify.

[Eltigro]

There are games that I have played a ton of in short bursts... but not solid for 10 years...

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Rainbow Walker - 83 min.

I finished 80% of the game which is much further than I ever had been before the HSC started. Unfortunately that is only the only game I've played in the past week.

[BurritoBeans]

Atari 5200:

Jungle Hunt - 12 minutes

 

Commodore 64:
Driller - 113 minutes

After taking a long break from games to work on building a bunch of stuff I'm back.

 

So I realized I hadn't played the 5200 in a long time so I took the time to play a bit of Jungle Hunt as it's always easy to pick up and I always fail at the bit with the boulders - I don't know why but I just can't ever position myself right on the home versions but I do fine in the arcade, I guess at least I don't have to pay quarters to play the home one.

 

Driller I've had sitting around for a while and I recently got yet another dead Commodore 64 - The lower few banks of RAM were bad so I swapped them and the RF demodulator had so much corrosion that I had to replace a few of the little parts so I could get clean video out of it - so it was a good game to try out once I had the thing up and running again. I think the whole Freescape engine is cool, I enjoyed Castle Master anyways on my Amiga, but man this was grainy and slow - next time I want to play a game I may have to try the ZX Spectrum version because I wonder how that one plays.

 

So until I find another batch of projects to suck up all my time I'll probably be exploring my game libraries a bit deeper - I would like to play something other than random Japanese visual novels and RPGs that I can't fully understand but since I want to play everything I own but haven't put time into at least once or twice that's probably going to be it for a while.

Edited April 15, 2018 by BurritoBeans

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 9th through 15th) on classic games...

 

Intellivision:

Auto Racing - 33 min. in 4 sessions

Hover Force - 10 min. in 2 sessions

 

This week I completed the map of Hover Force on the Intellivision. Actually I'd like to publish it somewhere, but I still have to find a site that would accept Intellivision maps. Same thing for Auto Racing, but there mapping is a bit more tricky because you have to drive everywhere you want to take a shot while in Hover Force, you just fly over everything.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 253 minutes

King Kong - 80 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 53 minutes

Rampage - 40 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 95,916

 

 

[oyamafamily]

Only 1 game played this week - Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 80 minutes

 

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Game Boy:

Soreyuke! Amida-Kun! - 47 min.

SNES:

Brain Lord - 51 min.

HardBall III - 130 min.

Sega Saturn:

Albert Odyssey - 19 min.

Shellshock - 28 min.

 

Beat HardBall III; checked out a couple of Saturn titles; and played a little further into Brain Lord, plus a few levels into a Game Boy puzzler.

[+thegoldenband]

This week I completed the map of Hover Force on the Intellivision. Actually I'd like to publish it somewhere, but I still have to find a site that would accept Intellivision maps. Same thing for Auto Racing, but there mapping is a bit more tricky because you have to drive everywhere you want to take a shot while in Hover Force, you just fly over everything.

 

Strategywiki would be perfect for it -- I've published maps of Tower of Doom there.

[agb]

Times for the week:

 

NES Tetris 26 mins

 

ATari 2600

 

King Kong 28 mins

Porkys. 17 mins

Rampage 4 mins

Solar Fox 156 mins

Star Wars. 32 mins

 

Most of the games were for the high score club and was the first time I played them. Star Wars ESB was the best. Porkys not too good. The other two were fun but not great.

[Opry99er]

Not a bad week this week! A bit more variety:

 

 

 

Atari 2600:

 

Asteroids (60 minutes)

Turmoil (45 minutes)

 

 

Classic Mac OS:

 

Lemmings (30 minutes)

Sim City 2000 (30 minutes)

 

 

NES:

 

Faxanadu (140 minutes)

R.C. Pro Am (15 minutes)

Super Mario Bros (30 minutes)

Super Mario Bros 2 (50 minutes)

Super Mario Bros 3 (40 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Alligator Mix (15 minutes) <- my son

Borzork (30 minutes)

Dragon Mix (20 minutes) <- my son

Fork (20 minutes)

HeroX (20 minutes)

Markus of Marinus (40 minutes)

Story Machine (60 minutes) <- my son

Tunnels of Doom (270 minutes) <- mostly my son

Vortex (45 minutes)

Werewolves & Wanderers (45 minutes)

 

 

 

TRS-80 Model III:

 

Robot Wars (90 minutes)

 

 

 

Vectrex:

 

Minestorm (120 minutes)

 

 

 

 

Total Play Time: 1215 minutes

 

 

We played a bunch at the Midwest Gaming Classic today, but we played a ton this week even without that. Having some NES fun for the first time in a very long time, and I fell back in love with the Vectrex at the Gaming convention. I need a Vectrex at home baaaaaad.... some emulators cut the mustard, there isnt a single Vectrex emulator that makes me feel like Im playing an actual Vectrex.

 

Robot Wars on the TRS-80 is proving to be an excellent Berzerk substitute, but Borzork on the TI is even better... just need some sound and speech.

 

Good week over all.

[Iwantgames:)]

Not too much for me this week

 

Mac Classic II -

 

These probably play on other Mac systems but I played em on the Classic II

 

Amazing - 15min

Oregon Trail - 65min

Star Wars Arcade - 170min

 

Also continued to work on and play test my game for TRS Model III...

 

Submarine Warfare - 45min

 

Really hoping to have a good 3-4 levels playable and balanced before the Florida Retro Computer Club meet on the 28th

[Eltigro]

Got a few new games this week, so I played around with them...

 

2600

Jr. Pac Man - 25 min (Man, every other version of Pac Man is better than the original version of Pac Man on the 2600. I hadn't played this one before and was surprised by the scrolling. Lack of color, though. And did I just eat a tricycle?)

Starmaster - 15 min (I had this one back when I was a kid. It seemed like more of a challenge then, but I was only playing on the Ensign difficulty this time around. Had some trouble with the BW/color switch which is used to change between the map screen and the flight screen. Had to start over a couple of times because it froze/glitched the game. Anyway, was fun to get to play this one again. Edit: Oh... I was also playing with a Genesis control pad instead of the original joystick, so maybe that made it a bit easier, too...)

 

Game Gear

Sonic the Hedgehog - 13 min (I just played until my first game over. Pretty fun game, but seeing some slowdown here and there, which is rough in a Sonic game. Seems to happen most often when those hornet looking enemies are shooting at me. Also noticed a high pitched whine coming from my Game Gear... some interference through the speaker? Was playing with my AC Adapter, so maybe that was it? This one hasn't had any cap replacement, so perhaps that's what's going on. Who knows...)

Edited April 16, 2018 by Eltigro

[+cvga]

I was able to play a few games this week.

 

Atari 2600:

Thunderground - 10 min

Tapeworm - 10 min

Frogger II - 15 min

Cosmic Commuter - 5 min

Bermuda Triangle - 5 min

Deadly Duck - 5 min

Demolition Herby - 5 min

Front Line - 5 min

Quick Step - 5 min

Room of Doom - 10 min

Up N Down - 5 min

Wabbit - 5 min

 

Intellivision:

Stonix - 45 min

Thunder Castle - 15 min

 

Turbo Grafx:

Neutopia - 60 min

Devil's Crush - 65 min

 

NES:

Bubble Bobble - 15 min

[Skippy B. Coyote]

As promised last week, this week's pictures and writeup will cover the past two weeks of gaming around my household. It's been a rough last couple weeks for me with medical crud keeping me feeling pretty lousy most of the time, but having some video games to play always make the hard parts of life feel a little more cheerful.


Last Week

 

Ineligible
Alien: Isolation (Xbox One) - 362 minutes
DOOM (Xbox One) - 614 minutes
Resident Evil: Revelations (Nintendo 3DS) - 226 minutes
StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 19 minutes
Super Lucky's Tale (Xbox One) - 254 minutes

Arcade
Centipede (Played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 for PlayStation) - 6 minutes
Crystal Castles (Played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2 for PlayStation) - 20 minutes
Marble Madness (Played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2 for PlayStation) - 18 minutes
Millipede (Played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2 for PlayStation) - 16 minutes
Super Breakout (Played on Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 for PlayStation) - 14 minutes

Atari 8-Bit Computers
Centipede - 24 minutes
Defender - 4 minutes
Donkey Kong - 43 minutes
Missile Command - 4 minutes
Pac-Man - 13 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,637 minutes (27 hours 17 minutes) [162 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Xbox One: 1,230 minutes
Nintendo 3DS: 245 minutes
Atari 8-Bit Computers: 88 minutes
Arcade: 74 minutes

This Week

 

 

Ineligible

Alien: Isolation (Xbox One) - 1,297 minutes
StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 9 minutes

Atari 8-Bit Computers
Donkey Kong - 7 minutes
Pac-Man - 61 minutes

NES (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)
Super Mario Bros. 3 - 659 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
2,033 minutes (33 hours 53 minutes) [727 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Xbox One: 1,297 minutes
NES: 659 minutes
Atari 8-Bit Computers: 68 minutes
Nintendo 3DS: 9 minutes

 

 

 

The big event around here the past couple weeks was getting a beautiful condition Atari 400 computer in the mail from a fellow AtariAger, and outside of the IBM PC-XT that I grew up with when I was a wee little one this is really my first classic computer. I just adore the retro-futuristic styling of the Atari 400, and to me the visual aesthetics alone more than make up for the slow typing on the membrane keyboard and 16K of RAM. I will be upgrading the RAM to 48K when I can get my hands on a memory upgrade board, but for now there's still plenty of fun that can be had on 16K. Every game the misses and I have played on the computer so far has been wonderfully fun and really visually impressive for the time, head and shoulders above the Atari 2600 versions. The main reason I got the Atari 400 wasn't to play games though, I actually bought it with the intent of learning Atari BASIC. When I was growing up I always kind of in awe of my mom because she knew 6 different programming languages and ever since I was a kid I always wanted to learn some kind of programming language, so I hunted down a good beginner's Atari BASIC programming book to go with the computer when I bought it and fulfill that lifelong dream.

 

The only hitch in my plan is that after a few hours of use the keyboard on the Atari 400 broke down (a key is permanently stuck down and there's no fixing it) but fortunately the seller was gracious enough to refund the entire cost of the computer less shipping when I showed him the issue so I'll be going ahead and ordering a new keyboard for it from Best Electronics later this week. The only reason I haven't purchased a new keyboard already is because I know I'll need some way to save my programs once I start learning Atari BASIC and I'm still flip flopping between purchasing an Atari 1010 Program Recorder along with the keyboard from Best or skipping the Program Recorder and trying to hunt down a working 1050 Disk Drive… decisions decisions. Luckily while I wait and try to make up my mind on the matter we can still play Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, since those games can be started up with just the button on the joystick, and my other half has been doing to a pretty thorough job of kicking my butt in both.

 

Outside of dabbling around with the Atari 400, I passed a lot of time this past week with two games in particular. One was Alien: Isolation on the Xbox One, which you can read my mini-review of here in the Games Beaten in 2018 thread, and the other was Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES which I played 2-player with the misses. Since we don't own an NES at the moment we played through Super Mario Bros. 3 via emulation on the Wii, which ran perfectly though the game itself did end up being a fairly equal mix of fun and frustration. Being used to the platforming controls in Sonic games, both myself and the misses were pretty thrown for a loop by the very different controls in SMB 3. With Sonic it's possible to stop on a dime any time you jump while moving as long as you come straight down on the landing, whereas in Mario games you'll always slide forward from momentum after jumping. It may sound like a minor difference but it made the game really tough for us, and I'm fairly certain that we must have died at least 300 times each over the course of our 11 hour play through; usually from slipping off a ledge or sliding face first into an enemy after a jump.

 

We never did finish Super Mario Bros. 3, we got completely stuck on World 8-2 and eventually gave up, though we did save our game before we quit so we can return to it at some point if we want. For now though I think I'm just going to go back to playing Atari for a while, and maybe see if I can track down a copy of Star Fox 64 3D for the 3DS since I've been wanting to play that game since I got my New 3DS XL for Christmas. The wife keeps talking about going back and finishing Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube after a 2 week hiatus, but who knows how that's going to go. In any case, now that I've finished playing through every game I wanted to play on the Xbox One I did put the system and my games for it up for auction so that should give us a little extra capital to pick up games for other systems with. Since I knew the Xbox One would become little more than a doorstop in 5 years or so when Microsoft drops the servers that keep it running and because there wasn't any viable arcade stick option for the spousal unit to play it with there didn't seem to be much point in holding onto the system now that I've played every game I wanted to play on it, so off it goes to a new home.

 

I think that about covers everything for the past couple weeks around here! Until next, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited April 16, 2018 by Jin

[zylon]

5200-

Robotron 2084- 40min

 

NES clone-

Double Dragon- 10min

Gradius- 5min

Sub Hunter- 10min (bad Silent Service clone)

 

C64-

Gradius- 10min

Operation WOLF- 15min

Burgertime- 35min

Galaxian- 10min

Galaga- 5min

Night Driver- 5min

Wheel of Fortune- 2hrs 5min

Gauntlet- 45min

[zylon]

 

The big event around here the past couple weeks was getting a beautiful condition Atari 400 computer in the mail from a fellow AtariAger, and outside of the IBM PC-XT that I grew up with when I was a wee little one this is really my first classic computer. I just adore the retro-futuristic styling of the Atari 400, and to me the visual aesthetics alone more than make up for the slow typing on the membrane keyboard and 16K of RAM. I will be upgrading the RAM to 48K when I can get my hands on a memory upgrade board, but for now there's still plenty of fun that can be had on 16K. Every game the misses and I have played on the computer so far has been wonderfully fun and really visually impressive for the time, head and shoulders above the Atari 2600 versions. The main reason I got the Atari 400 wasn't to play games though, I actually bought it with the intent of learning Atari BASIC. When I was growing up I always kind of in awe of my mom because she knew 6 different programming languages and ever since I was a kid I always wanted to learn some kind of programming language, so I hunted down a good beginner's Atari BASIC programming book to go with the computer when I bought it and fulfill that lifelong dream.

 

The only hitch in my plan is that after a few hours of use the keyboard on the Atari 400 broke down (a key is permanently stuck down and there's no fixing it) but fortunately the seller was gracious enough to refund the entire cost of the computer less shipping when I showed him the issue so I'll be going ahead and ordering a new keyboard for it from Best Electronics later this week. The only reason I haven't purchased a new keyboard already is because I know I'll need some way to save my programs once I start learning Atari BASIC and I'm still flip flopping between purchasing an Atari 1010 Program Recorder along with the keyboard from Best or skipping the Program Recorder and trying to hunt down a working 1050 Disk Drive… decisions decisions. Luckily while I wait and try to make up my mind on the matter we can still play Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, since those games can be started up with just the button on the joystick, and my other half has been doing to a pretty thorough job of kicking my butt in both.

 

I love the A8 computers and wish I'd had access to them much sooner. While I adore my 64, I find A8 to be a better gaming computer. The MyIDE2 cart is a great item to acquire for it. I use 1050's but you might be better off starting with the tape drive. Most programs you write will be quite short. Disks and cassettes can be found still. I used to use old "cassingles" that I bought 5 for a dollar for that.

I use an XEGS myself now, but 600xl was my first.

Edited April 16, 2018 by zylon

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600:

King Kong: 6 min

Rampage: 25 min

 

Been travelling last week, so very little time. Just got two quick games in for the High Score Club.

[carlsson]

The MyIDE2 cart is a great item to acquire for it. I use 1050's but you might be better off starting with the tape drive.

 

Although I've personally failed to get it to work on my Atari 800, supposedly the SIO2SD should work even with an Atari 400 once it has been upgraded to at least 48K. Possibly there is some more cartridge port mod required too. The SIO2SD may not be as elegant looking as MyIDE-II but less than half the price. It will also allow one to type in BASIC programs and save onto already prepared ATR image files, so no need for physical media unless Jin absoutely doesn't need one. It could be worth looking up.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I love the A8 computers and wish I'd had access to them much sooner. While I adore my 64, I find A8 to be a better gaming computer. The MyIDE2 cart is a great item to acquire for it. I use 1050's but you might be better off starting with the tape drive. Most programs you write will be quite short. Disks and cassettes can be found still. I used to use old "cassingles" that I bought 5 for a dollar for that.

I use an XEGS myself now, but 600xl was my first.

Thanks for the advice! I had looked at the MyIDE2 cart but I get the impression that they require a modern Windows computer to set up and the only modern computers in my household are Macs. I had looked at an SIO2SD, which would be Mac friendly, but every report I've read on people trying to use them with a stock 16K Atari 400 or 800 seems to indicate that they won't work properly unless the computer's memory upgraded to 48K; and even then there are sometimes compatibility issues.

 

So for now I'm just debating between a 1010 program recorder or a 1050 disk drive. The program recorder has the advantage of being very affordable ($40 brand new from Best Electronics) and being able to play audio cassettes, but with a 1050 disk drive I'd have a lot more options for software to run and might even be able to copy disk based game files downloaded on my modern Mac to blank floppy disks to play on the Atari 400 if I can get some kind of Mac compatible SIO2USB solution figured out.

 

I'll ponder it for a couple more days before making up my mind, but I definitely appreciated your input on the subject.

[zylon]

SIO2PC might be an option. It lets me use an old Dell computer as a drive. it also allows me to make disks relatively fast if I want physical media.

I've been thankful for the stuff I've learned and just pay it forward by doing the same.I never even saw an Atari computer until the early 00s. C= was king where I grew up.

 

trbb from A8 HSC would be a great advisor to you on these things. he got me into it via some coop between A8 and 5200 HSC's. I loved 5200 already, so it wasn't a big leap, but I'm awful glad i did.

Edited April 16, 2018 by zylon

[Opry99er]

Late night session last night... Please add:

 

NES:

 

Rad Racer (40 minutes)

 

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Alpiner (20 minutes)