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

[+wongojack]

A2600

Eggo Mania 17

Encounter at L5 7

Kaboom 69

Music Machine 9

Super Breakout 27

 

FM Towns

Zak McCracken & Alien Mindbenders 85

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 15, running from April 9 - 15. We logged 4490 minutes of eligible play, playing 85 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES/Famicom) - 699

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 322

3. Tunnels of Doom [Quest of the King] (TI-99/4A) - 270

4. Star Wars Arcade (Mac OS Classic) - 170

5. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 156

6. Faxanadu (NES/Famicom) - 140

7. HardBall III (SNES) - 130

8. Wheel of Fortune (C64) - 125

9. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 120

10. King Kong (Atari 2600) - 114

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 322

2. Tunnels of Doom [Quest of the King] (TI-99/4A) - 270

3. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 156

4. Wheel of Fortune (C64) - 125

5. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 120

6. King Kong (Atari 2600) - 114

7. Driller (C64) - 113

8. Robot Wars (TRS-80 Model I/III) - 90

9. Rainbow Walker (Atari 8-bit) - 83

10. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 80

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1133)

2. NES/Famicom (1040)

3. TI-99/4A (585)

4. C64 (363)

5. Mac OS Classic (310)

6. SNES (181)

7. Atari 8-bit (151)

8. TRS-80 Model I/III (135)

9. TG-16/PC Engine (125)

10. Vectrex (120)

One of the most popular video games in history also takes the crown this week, as Super Mario Bros. 3 is #1 by a wide margin. However, it isn't quite enough to keep the NES from getting edged out by the Atari VCS, which tops the system chart.

Meanwhile Kaboom earns the laurels on the pre-NES chart, while another pre-crash game, Mine Storm, becomes the first Vectrex offering to enter the 1000-minute club. That built-in game is assigned spot #325, with 1064 minutes logged to date.

[Opry99er]

cool stuff!! I would have thought Vectrex would have had a bit more play over the years, but then again, it is a hard system to emulate and there really arent that many of them floating around anymore.

[Opry99er]

cool stuff!! I would have thought Vectrex would have had a bit more play over the years, but then again, it is a hard system to emulate and there really arent that many of them floating around anymore.

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Porky's: 5 min

Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back: 7 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 25 min

 

Nothing new under the sun...

[Opry99er]

Ive got to break my submissions up this week. There has been so much Gaming this week in my house (and will be significantly more this weekend) that it will be easier to just do this in two parts.

 

 

Weekday Times:

 

 

NES:

 

Double Dragon (40 minutes)

Double Dribble (30 minutes)

Faxanadu (90 minutes)

Mega Man 2 (30 minutes)

Mickey Mousecapades (20 minutes)

Mike Tysons Punch Out (60 minutes)

Super Mario Bros 2 (40 minutes)

Super Mario Bros 3 (120 minutes)

 

 

SNES:

 

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (150 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Alpiner (30 minutes)

Car Wars (10 minutes)

Crossfire (45 minutes)

Fork (30 minutes)

HeroX (60 minutes)

Tunnels of Doom (200 minutes)

 

 

Vectrex:

 

Minestorm (240 minutes)

[carlsson]

Acorn Electron:

Impossible Mission - 10 min.

Kane - 12 min.

Microball - 14 min.

Overdrive - 7 min.

Q*Bix - 9 min.

Robotron: 2084 - 5 min.

Tennis - 10 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Ardy the Aardvark - 40 min.

Eggard - 15 min.

Oil's Well - 36 min.

C64:

Motor Mania - 79 min.

Spaceman Splorf: Planet of Doom - 39 min.

Creativision:

Chopper Rescue - 6 min.

Crazy Chicky - 4 min.

Sonic Invader - 12 min.

A mixed collection of games this week. Atari 8-bit HSC plus a Facebook oriented C64 HSC make up for the a lot of gameplay, plus that I sunk some minutes into Motor Mania again. I was pleasantly surprised how good picture my Creativision produces through RF on my LCD TV and played a few games for good measure.

Then I realized that the Acorn Electron was one game short to make up for a top 10 list, so I investigated what it takes to load UEF emulator files. The tool I previously had used, FreeUEF produces buggy wave files as confirmed by many other users as well. I found a Python script uef2wave that required me to download a 15+ year old installation of Python in order to get it to run. However the wave files have incorrect header settings so in order to make them load, I had to import them as raw audio into Audacity, specified to be 8-bit signed PCM at 22050 Hz (which they may or may not actually be intended to be), normalize them and save as 16-bit WAV. Due to the Electron has tape remote control, I had to simulate that by pressing the pause button in Winamp so the audio wouldn't keep playing while the computer wasn't loading. This could be solved by "burning" the sound to regular tape of course and play back using a tape recorder which I might eventually do, stashing many games onto a single tape.

At least I got six new games to play, of varying degree of playability. While looking through the games library, it seems they really put out a good number of major titles on this little brother to the Beeb, far more than I had expected. Not quite the library of the Amstrad CPC (to name another home computer few people in the USA pay attention to), but far more than e.g. the Oric-1/Atmos or I would assume the Dragon 32, both released several years earlier so they probably had gone defunct before the Acorn Electron entered the market.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my games for this past week (April 16th through 22th) on classic games...

 

Atari 2600:

Shifty Lifty - 2 min.

 

Intellivision:

Auto Racing - 23 min. in 3 sessions

 

This week I played a bigger assortment of games while waiting for the assets of my deceased mother to be sorted out by the judge.

 

On the Intellivision, I continued to play Auto Racing in order to map it out. I think there are very few distinct metatiles in it, actually, which are overlaid by some additional chunks.

 

Then I tried "Shifty Lifty" on the Atari 2600, a game where you progress through a set of floors while trying to avoid elevators going up and down quickly. I think I've seen that one before on the TI-99 where it was called "Spy's Demise", as it was called on other systems as well.

[agb]

Times for the week are:

 

PlayStation 1. Driver (first one). 33 mins

 

Atari 2600:

King Kong 18 mins

Solar Fox 172 mins

Star Wars ESB 35 mins

Taz 32 mins

 

Most of the Atari games were for the HSC

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Genesis:

Davis Cup Tennis - 26 min.

HardBall '95 - 5 min.

Game Boy:

Soreyuke! Amida-Kun! - 34 min.

PlayStation:

Beyblade - 81 min.

Dreamcast:

Netto de Tennis - 8 min.

Beat the bizarre Beyblade game for PlayStation -- and, since Netto de Tennis was intended for online multiplayer and only offers a single match against the CPU, I guess I beat that one too by winning a match 6-3.

[Opry99er]

The weekend is over... please add these times to my previous post.

 

Weekend play times (in addition to the previous post)

 

NES:

 

Blades of Steel (60 minutes)

Blue Marlin (20 minutes)

Excitebike (20 minutes)

Faxanadu (90 minutes)

Rad Racer (120 minutes)

RC Pro Am (20 minutes)

Tecmo Super Bowl (45 minutes)

 

 

Vectrex:

 

Minestorm (270) minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Tunnels of Doom (45 minutes)

[Opry99er]

As a wrap up, we made a decision to do two things and two things only this weekend: Fish, and play video games. We did an unhealthy amount of both.

 

Needless to say, my hands hurt from the NES controller and from unhooking countless carp and catfish over the past two days. Time for a little break, I think, so Ill go back to work and put my joys aside until next time.

[+wongojack]

Arcade

Pole Position 12

Galaga 4

 

 

FM Towns

Zak McCracken & Alien Mindbenders 58

 

 

Ineligible

I also played Morrowind on XOne for more than 10 hours.

[Iwantgames:)]

TRS 80 Model I/III -

 

Actual Reality - 275min

This is a really fun little space adventure that was just released. It takes a bit to get used to the fast paced real-time combat but overall I really enjoyed it.

 

Submarine Warfare - 120min

Got 3 Campaign missions programmed and 12 random bonus missions you can get in between each campaign mission Still aways to go but its shaping up quite nicely

[Atarian7]

As a wrap up, we made a decision to do two things and two things only this weekend: Fish, and play video games. We did an unhealthy amount of both.

 

Needless to say, my hands hurt from the NES controller and from unhooking countless carp and catfish over the past two days. Time for a little break, I think, so Ill go back to work and put my joys aside until next time.

Only carp and catfish? Too bad they taste like mud. They're fun to catch but I wouldn't eat another one.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 330 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 73 minutes

King Kong - 24 minutes

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - 8 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 65,612

 

 

[Opry99er]

Only carp and catfish? Too bad they taste like mud. They're fun to catch but I wouldn't eat another one.

If prepared properly, catfish are absolutely delicious!!

 

We didnt keep any though. Just had some fun. Also caught a few perch to go along with it.

Edited April 23, 2018 by Opry99er

[zylon]

Only did some chinese knockoff games on my clonetendo. Was my 1st weekend able to really move again after surgery the week before, so I didn't sit home.

 

NES-

 

Robot- 5min

bad clone of a Zenji or Junction type game

 

Panzer Attack- 10min

very basic L-R shooter with only 2 levels

 

Penta Base- 10min

very basic side scrolling shooter, but not very engaging.

 

Strafe- 10min

Commando Raid clone, but for some reason doesn't let you shoot width of screen on up/right diagonals.

Edited April 23, 2018 by zylon

[Skippy B. Coyote]

The Atari 2600 made a bit of a comeback in my household this week thanks to a handful of great games I picked up from a local game store, and we finally finished Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES as well!

 

 

 

Ineligible

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo 3DS) - 388 minutes

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (Nintendo Wii) - 807 minutes

Star Fox Adventures (Nintendo GameCube) - 64 minutes
StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 18 minutes

 

Atari 2600
Breakout - 43 minutes
Commando Raid - 24 minutes
Frogger - 45 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 105 minutes
Pole Position - 81 minutes
Super Breakout - 60 minutes

Game Boy
Kirby's Dream Land - 34 minutes

NES (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)
Super Mario Bros. 3 - 319 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
1,988 minutes (33 hours 8 minutes) [711 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 807 minutes
Nintendo 3DS: 406 minutes
Atari 2600: 358 minutes
NES: 319 minutes
Nintendo GameCube: 64 minutes
Game Boy: 34 minutes

 

 

 

To start off the week the misses and I took another crack at Super Mario Bros. 3 in two player mode and this time, with the knowledge of where to find the magic warp flutes and what levels in the 8th world to save our P-Wings and Lakitu's Clouds for, we finally managed to beat the game. It felt a lot easier and more enjoyable the second time around, and you can read my full thoughts on Super Mario Bros. 3 here in the Games Beaten In 2018 thread for those interested.

 

With Mario out of the way the misses then did a quick play through of Kirby's Dream Land on the Game Boy while I put a little more time into The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. I've been playing that game off and on since January and I know I've still got at least 3 dungeons left to go, but I'm in no rush on it. As long as I finish it by the end of the year I'll be happy, and since it's on the 3DS it's a nice game to play in short bursts here and there when I have a little free time. It didn't take long for me to get distracted from Zelda though, since I picked up a wide assortment of great games from some local game stores this past week.

 

The first of the new pickups that I decided to play through was Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles on the Wii, and oh man was that ever an awesome light gun game. I beat it yesterday and I'm sure I'll be doing a glowing writeup on it for the Games Beaten In 2018 thread in the not too distant future. While I was working on Darkside Chronicles the misses got back to her game of Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube for a bit, but once she started playing our recent Atari 2600 pickups that was it for Star Fox for the remainder of the week. We spent a pretty fair bit of time playing Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Commando Raid together over the weekend; then last night I plunked down with the paddle controllers and set a couple new HighScore.com world record scores in the original Breakout's Game 5 and Super Breakout's Game 5 as well.

 

Looking ahead to next week, I just started in on Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii this afternoon (the light gun shooter that Darkside Chronicles was the sequel too) and the misses has once again voiced her intent to finally finish Star Fox Adventures soon. Whether or not we'll both stick to our respective game plans is yet to be seen though, since I do have a 3DS game and a few new Atari 8-Bit Computer games coming in the mail this week. There may be distractions.

 

Until next time, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

Edited April 23, 2018 by Jin

[Iwantgames:)]

If prepared properly, catfish are absolutely delicious!!

 

We didnt keep any though. Just had some fun. Also caught a few perch to go along with it.

Personally I love Catfish. When I lived in Louisiana there was a awesome place that made a delicious Catfish Poboy.

[carlsson]

NES-

Robot- 5min

Panzer Attack- 10min

Penta Base- 10min

Strafe- 10min

Very interesting knockoff titles. Thegoldenband will have a bit of a challenge to locate the original titles, unless he just records them as stated. It would appear that both Penta Base and Strafe are hacks of another unliced game called Five Days, but based on your descriptions it doesn't seem the Penta Base I found on YouTube equals the Pena Base you played.

[Opry99er]

So Ive not done this before, but I took some time and broke out all the systems I have played and added times up for each system individually. Jin does a good job of this every week.

 

I was actually surprised by the results a bit.

 

 

NES: 805

Vectrex: 510

TI-99/4A: 420

SNES: 150

 

Total: 1885

 

 

I think this is the first week since I started taking part in the tracker a few years ago that the TI wasnt #1. Of course I never tracked it this way before, but Im pretty sure.

 

My Tunnels of Doom sessions can go for hours, so it just always seems like the TI is the most played system every week. This week, it was #3. My Vectrex times are going to spike up even more in the next few weeks, as I found a passable emulator on my iPad, and Im getting an iCade this weekend. Look for insanity in the very near future.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Missile Command - 243 minutes

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - 20 minutes

TAZ - 10 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Desert Falcon - 10 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

More scores and more fun with 2600 Missile Command on ProSystem console - this week I played Games 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 17, all with Difficulty A.

[zylon]

Very interesting knockoff titles. Thegoldenband will have a bit of a challenge to locate the original titles, unless he just records them as stated. It would appear that both Penta Base and Strafe are hacks of another unliced game called Five Days, but based on your descriptions it doesn't seem the Penta Base I found on YouTube equals the Pena Base you played.

 

These little add-on games are what interests me in these clones. Most aren't very good, but there's always a few gems in them. There's no copyright info, just a title screen and press start. Most use same font and basic title screen as well.

I describe them as the 1st game they resemble comes to mind, so they may be hacks of different games.

Edited April 24, 2018 by zylon

[Atarian7]

That's a nice yellow perch in your picture. I haven't had one of those but I have had their cousin: walleye. You can bake walleye plain and they taste like they were seasoned to perfection.