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

[Opry99er]

Some sweet variety!!!

[Opry99er]

I put together a spreadsheet of all my family's Classic game play time in 2018 (all of which has been tracked in this thread) and it is remarkable how much time we spend playing games!!! Looks like the last few weeks have seen a fairly drastic uptick as well.

 

It's interesting when you have it in a spreadsheet, the patterns you see forming... if you replace all numbers with colors corresponding to values by minutes played and leave blank spots blank, it creates a really neat mosaic. Some games are colored all the way across the screen since they get played almost every week. Other areas are large voids surrounded by color.

 

Pretty cool.

[Opry99er]

M-F results:

 

Atari 2600:

 

Battlezone (30 minutes)

Enduro (180 minutes)

Freeway (15 minutes)

Laser Blast (90 minutes)

Target Fun (30 minutes)

Turmoil (70 minutes)

 

 

Vectrex:

 

Mine Storm (120 minutes)

Spike (40 minutes)

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Angriff der Luftflotten (aka M.A.D.): 4 min

California Games: 5 min

Decathlon: 3 min

Invasion aus der Galaxis (aka Laser Base): 6 min

Raumbasen-Attacke (aka Base Attack) 7 min

Sky Jinks: 2 min

 

PC (DOS)

Historyline: 125 min

Silent Hunter: 37 min

 

Three 2600 games for the High Score Club, three new members of my illustrious "Quelle" games collection tested, and some strategy/tactics on the PC.

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Enduro - 14 minutes

Frostbite - 26 minutes

Missile Command - 207 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Desert Falcon - 140 minutes

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Desert Falcon Standard, final video presented for 7800 HSC Season 2017-2018, Round 17

 

2) My Missile Command scores on my ProSystem VCS console. I played Games 18-BB, 18-AA, 33-BB, 33-AA and 32-BB this week; to do this, I used 2 controllers which I have - Sega Master System and Edladdin Super 78.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (April 30th through May 6th) on classic games...

 

Arcade:

Daytona USA 2 - 2 min.

Galaga - 15 min.

Pac & Pal - 6 min.

Scud Racer - 2 min.

 

Channel F:

Alien Invasion - 22 min. in 2 sessions

 

Handheld:

Ms. Pac-Man (Coleco) - 8 min.

 

Intellivision:

Auto Racing - 39 min. in 4 sessions

 

MSX:

Bomberman - 27 min.

GP World - 6 min.

Pac-Man - 3 min.

 

Sharp X68000:

Kikori No Yosaku - 43 min.

 

This week I played quite an assortment of games. I've been to multiple arcades as well, playing both classic and modern games. I consider Daytona USA 2 and Scud Racer classic games because they were released before the year 2000. Actually, I was in search for an arcade cabinet that moves the player, and finally I found one in the game Gaelco Championship Tuning Race, although only one of the two cabinets there actually moved. I suspect there were other arcade machines there which originally moved, but the moving mechanism was broken.

 

Also I played The world's biggest Pac-Man, which is a new machine with a giant screen composed of 288x224 individual LED's and over a meter high. Pac-Man stays somewhat true to the original, but has been somewhat updated (more about that in the Modern Gaming tracker). The cabinet also includes Galaga which hasn't been updated that much, but I didn't try that one. I then played the original Galaga in order to see how good I would have been at it, and didn't fare as well as in Pac-Man, but still after a few attempts I managed to get into the 3rd attack wave (through the first challenging stage). I also briefly replayed Pac & Pal.

 

On the Channel F, after attempting to write something like Pole Position which suffers from a low framerate, I played Alien Invasion, which is a pretty fluid and playable version of Space Invaders. They managed to let it run at a pretty constant frame rate, partially by not updating all of the score at once, but only one digit per frame.

 

I also played the handheld version of Ms. Pac-Man by Coleco, but the emulation in MESS doesn't quite work since Ms. Pac-Man once somehow got into a part of the maze which should be inaccessible, and in another game, she disappeared completely. I also briefly played the Pac-Man version on the MSX system after playing GP World on it (trying to recreate Fuji Speedway on its editor) and a session of Bomberman, which started out on the MSX and other 8-bit computers back in 1983.

 

Also, I played Kikori No Yosaku on the Sharp X68000, which is a port of the signature game of the Epoch Cassette Vision which is still unemulated because it has the CPU, display processor and memory on each cartridge, presumably in a single chip, similar to the Coleco Telstar. Therefore I think there was one pinball game which appeared on both systems using the same chip.

 

Finally, I've completed the map of the actual tracks of Auto Racing on the Intellivision, but I'm still working on the off-track areas.

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

AtariBlast! - 33 min.

Blaster - 19 min.

Metagalactic Llamas - 33 min.

Mostly HSC content and all of it played at the beginning of the week, before I got busy with other stuff for the weekend. The two HSC games Blaster (prototype game from Williams which seems fairly complete but never released because they wanted an arcade game prior to a home version) and AtariBlast! (recent homebrew that requires an 8 megabit cartridge or a 1 MB RAM expansion) are both great in their respective ways and well worth trying even if only through emulation. On Metagalactic Llamas, a homebrew from 10 years ago, I set a new PB of 112654 pts which is less than 6000 pts away from my PB on the original VIC-20 version which goes to show the ported version works just as well on the Atari.

[zylon]

not much gaming done. spent 13 straight days at work moving the entire factory.

 

5200-

Robotron 2084- 20min

The Dreadnaught factor- 35min

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD - Atari 7800 - Failsafe - 80 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Genesis:

HardBall '95 - 165 min.

Paperboy - 53 min.

Shaq-Fu - 201 min.

Game Boy:

Soreyuke! Amida-Kun! - 76 min.

PlayStation:

Army Men 3D - 173 min.

Beat HardBall '95, and also beat Army Men 3D on Easy difficulty. As for the other three games, they supplied me with a healthy (?) dose of frustration.

[+wongojack]

FM Towns

Zak McCracken & Alien Mindbenders 291

 

 

Kept going with Zak. I read "The National Inquisitor" that comes with the game, and I'm having fun with some of the puzzles. The UHS file for this game isn't that great, so I went looking for the original Hint Book, which has hints and maps, but it also has a narrative of the game which feels only slightly better than using a walkthrough.

[Iwantgames:)]

CoCo 3 -

 

Gate Crasher - 15min

Popstar Pilot - 20min

 

 

C64 -

 

Frogger - 45min

Rocket Ranger - 25min

Sky Shark - 15min

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a nice week for gaming around here this past week. Lots of variety and a good mix of classic and modern titles!




Ineligible
Heavy Fire: The Chosen Few (Nintendo 3DS) - 66 minutes
Metroid Prime Trilogy (Nintendo Wii) - 241 minutes
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Nintendo Wii) - 175 minutes
Star Fox 64 3D (Nintendo 3DS) - 187 minutes
Star Fox Adventures (Nintendo GameCube) - 259 minutes
StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 11 minutes

Atari 2600
Pole Position - 9 minutes

Atari 8-Bit Computers
Defender - 177 minutes
Donkey Kong - 39 minutes
Pac-Man - 24 minutes
Pole Position - 104 minutes

Total Play Time This Week
1,292 minutes (21 hours 32 minutes) [353 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 416 minutes
Atari 8-Bit Computers: 344 minutes
Nintendo 3DS: 264 minutes
Nintendo GameCube: 259 minutes
Atari 2600: 9 minutes



For me this past week was largely about finishing up a few games that I started during the previous couple weeks, namely Star Fox 64 on the 3DS and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii. Both were quite enjoyable, particularly Star Fox 64 3D which I actually wrote a second review of for the Games Beaten in 2018 thread; since my opinion of the game changed rather drastically when I went back and played it a few more times. I've yet to write a review of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, but I'm sure I'll get to that at some point over the coming week.

Once I had finished up those two games I started in on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes on the Metroid Prime Trilogy collection for the Wii. Normally in a collection like this I'd start with the first game in the series, but I had already played through the original Metroid Prime on the GameCube last year so starting with the second game sounded like the most fun. I think the last time I played through Metroid Prime 2 was probably 7 or 8 years ago on the GameCube and I remember liking it quite a bit, and my feelings on the more recent Wii port are mostly unchanged. It's been a very enjoyable and well made game thus far, though strangely I'm not sure whether I actually like the change from the original GameCube controls to the Wii remote controls.

Normally I always prefer using the Wii remote and nunchuck over any other control option for aiming in first-person shooters, since the Wii remote really feels like it was made for this sort of thing and provides pixel perfect aiming, and while it does do just that in Metroid Prime Trilogy I still have a lot of nostalgia for the classic GameCube control scheme and think I might prefer it for non-aiming reasons. Turning was a bit faster with the GameCube's analog stick than dragging the Wii remote's cursor to the side of the screen, and switching between visors and weapons was substantially faster and more intuitive when using the GameCube's D-Pad and C-Stick than the Wii's control scheme of pointing to what you want to select with the Wii remote while holding down the + or - buttons. Maybe I'll get used to it after a while, but for now I am finding myself wishing there was a GameCube controller option in Metroid Prime Trilogy.

As far as the misses' gaming time for the past week goes, she divided it pretty evenly between making more forward progress in one of my all time favorite games—Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube—and doing some classic gaming on the Atari 400 computer. She's still having fun playing through Star Fox Adventures but discovered a new gaming love in Defender on the Atari 400, logging nearly 3 hours in Defender and setting some pretty ridiculous high scores in it. She started on easy difficulty but quickly graduated to normal and hard, ultimately setting high scores of 959,825 on normal difficulty and 385,275 on hard. I played a bit of Defender with her too, but she really took me to school in it every time. We also played some Pole Position, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong together this week and I seem to recall that she got the highest score in all of them. The only exception was Pole Position's Malibu Grand Prix, which I ended up just barely winning with a high score of 58,250 to her 56,250. She still beat me by no small margin in the Namco Speedway and Atari Grand Prix races though.

Well, I think that about covers everything for this week! Next week I imagine I'll probably play a good bit more Metroid Prime 2 via the Metroid Prime Trilogy, and get in some more Atari 400 gaming time too. I'm guessing the spousal unit will most likely finish up Star Fox Adventures next week, but what she's going to play after that is up to speculation. She did recently get copies of Syphon Filter 2 for the PlayStation and Klonoa for the Wii though, so one of those two seems pretty likely. Also likely is her continuing to kick my butt in the aforementioned Atari 400 games.

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

Edited May 7, 2018 by Jin

[agb]

Atari 2600:

 

Breakout 15 minutes

Solar Fox 115 minutes

 

Not much variety.

[Opry99er]

Weekend Minutes (Sat-Sun)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Donkey Kong (15 minutes)

PAC Man (10 minutes)

TI Invaders (20)

 

 

VCS:

 

Donkey Kong (30 minutes)

Enduro (45 minutes)

Laser Blast (25 minutes)

Pac Man (15 minutes)

Space Invaders (20 minutes)

Spider Man (20 minutes)

Survival Run (90 minutes)

 

 

Vectrex:

 

Mine Storm (45 minutes)

Spike (30 minutes)

 

 

 

 

 

Did some system comparison with my son this weekend... DK, Pac Man, and Space Invaders, cross platform. The TI-99/4A won the day on all 3, but I was up in the air on Invaders because TI Invaders is so different.... functionally they are extremely similar, so we considered it a fair comparison.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 260 minutes

Sky Jinks - 40 minutes

California Games - 5 minutes

Quick Step - 3 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 5 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 81,859

 

 

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 18, running from April 30 - May 6. We logged 3794 minutes of eligible play, playing 65 games on a total of 19 systems.

Top 10:

1. Zak McCracken & the Alien Mindbenders (FM Towns) - 291

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 260

3. Enduro (Atari 2600) - 249

4. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 207

5. Shaq-Fu (Genesis) - 201

6. Defender (Atari 8-bit) - 177

7. Army Men 3D (PlayStation) - 173

8. HardBall '95 (Genesis) - 165

8. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 165

10. Desert Falcon (Atari 7800) - 140

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 260

2. Enduro (Atari 2600) - 249

3. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 207

4. Defender (Atari 8-bit) - 177

5. Mine Storm (Vectrex) - 165

6. Desert Falcon (Atari 7800) - 140

7. Laser Blast (Atari 2600) - 115

7. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 115

9. Pole Position (Atari 8-bit) - 104

10. Survival Run (Atari 2600) - 90

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1396)

2. Atari 8-bit (429)

3. Genesis (419)

4. FM Towns (291)

5. Vectrex (235)

6. Atari 7800 (220)

7. PlayStation (173)

8. PC (DOS) (162)

9. C64 (85)

10. Game Boy (76)

Aliens, man. Aliens.

[carlsson]

I recently begun to help out with modern games tracker. If we would combine the two trackers, I noted that this week 3 of the top 10 games would still be pre-crash games which is rather cool in a world where otherwise modern gaming seems to dominate the landscape. Also the Atari 2600 would be the second most played system after Xbox One. This week actually both the Atari 8-bit and Genesis would edge out the Wii and first Xbox.

[Opry99er]

Cool. 3 Atari systems in the top 10, the top 3 games are all VCS games and there are 3 post-crash systems in the top 10.

 

Threeeeeeeeeeee.....

[Opry99er]

I'm curious about something:

 

If we play 2600 games on a 7800, does it count as 2600 play time or 7800 play time?

 

I know how the rules work for emulation, but this isn't emulation.

[Opry99er]

Interesting... I took some data points from my gameplay spreadsheet and made a few line graphs. The TI-99/4A and the over-all minutes chart could almost be laid over top of one another. The massive increase in VCS play and even some Nintendo play over the past few weeks didn't do much to alter the graph which confused me for a moment.

 

Then I realized that the increase in minutes for those systems corresponded with a proportional decrease in my TI-99/4A play time.

 

Having this data is neat because it can be viewed in many different ways and gives an interesting perspective on the free time. I can see where my busy work weeks were by dips in the line, or see increases when a high score competition was going on. When I got my CRT a few weeks ago, my NES and VCS times went through the roof.

 

Just neat to me.

[+thegoldenband]

I'm curious about something:

 

If we play 2600 games on a 7800, does it count as 2600 play time or 7800 play time?

 

I know how the rules work for emulation, but this isn't emulation.

 

That counts towards the Atari 2600 for sure, since the 7800 is operating in 2600 mode. Same goes for SMS games played on the Genesis or Game Gear, monochrome Game Boy games played on a Game Boy Color or Advance, and regular MSX games played on a MSX2.

[carlsson]

.. or Amiga OCS games played on an Amiga 1200, C64 games played on a C128 ... well, you get the idea.

 

It makes me wonder about the recent TRS-80 activity. Previously we kept TRS-80 Model 1 and TRS-80 Model III separate, but in the past few months those seem to have been grouped. I suppose they're more or less the same system, perhaps increased amount of RAM but otherwise no more significant differences so perhaps at the end of the year the two formats have been merged?

[+thegoldenband]

^Well, here's a list of the TRS-80 games played so far on the tracker:

 

Actual Reality

Alien Defense

Defense Command

Frogger

Missile Command

Quest for the Key of Night Shade

Robot Attack

Robot Wars

Scarf Man

Sea Dragon

Submarine Warfare

Zaxxon

 

Do any of those require the Model III (other than Quest, which I played and I believe is Model I compatible)?

 

I'd be happy to differentiate the two, though I definitely am not interested in researching each game myself, for reasons I hope are both understandable and obvious. But if posters are scrupulous about specifying the games that require Model III hardware (and IIRC a few games do?), I agree that it's the right thing to separate them.

 

Also some Model I games have to be patched to work on a Model III, again IIRC -- I think that's a frequent issue, whereas I'm not sure what hardware features are exclusive to the III, though obviously the faster CPU makes a difference in gameplay speed at least...

[Opry99er]

I think generally Model III is accepted as a backwards compatible Model I machine with a larger RAM base.

 

In terms of numbers, the majority of Model III games are written in a compatible TRS BASIC and therefore are mostly compatible between machines.

 

IMO, there isn't really a distinguishable enough difference between the two to warrant specification in the context of the tracker