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

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week on classic systems (January 8th through 14th)...

 

Arcade:

Time Pilot - 47 min. in 2 sessions

 

Colecovision:

Time Pilot - 11 min.

 

Commodore 16:

Space-Pilot - 11 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Space-Pilot - 104 min. in 3 sessions

Space-Pilot II - 244 min. in 7 sessions

 

MSX:

Time Pilot - 148 min. in 2 sessions

 

This week I played a bunch of different versions and clones of Time Pilot, both official and inofficial. Here's a little rundown on each of them:

The arcade version, of course, is the original one which I got to know in autumn 1983 where I found it put up in a restaurant we visited. It runs pretty smoothly, and it's got a generous collision detection, most of all concerning your shots. It's fairly easy to aim at an enemy and at enemy fire and hit it. If the bullets go into one direction and cross the path of an enemy or a missile, they will hit.

 

I mentioned this because it isn't quite like this on other versions. Most of all, none of the home versions managed to retain the smoothness and speed of the arcade original. All of the versions are somewhat slower and choppy.

 

Space-Pilot on the C-64 is actually a pretty close clone of Time Pilot, but it's already much slower. Hitting enemies works fairly well though, though sometimes you have to hit a missile multiple times in order to hit it.

 

Space-Pilot II, despite its nicer graphics, is worse in this respect. I played this for a pretty long time, and it's much slower than the arcade original, though the enemies and your ship are bigger, and the game throws many enemies at you. You fly very slowly, but in respect to this, you turn a bit faster than on the arcade. Sadly, sometimes you get into situations where you can't avoid enemies or enemy fire because you can't fly away quickly enough and your fire doesn't always hit.

 

Space-Pilot on the C16 has been considerably stripped down. There are no time zones, just wave nubers, and you're shooting at a variety of enemies coming mostly from Space-Pilot II on the C-64. There are still formations, but no clouds, however, and also no parachuters like on Space-Pilot on the C-64. This makes the game somewhat dull.

 

As for the official conversions, Time Pilot on the Colecovision looks fairly well although the clouds and enemies are moving rather choppy, and their movement gets questionable in later levels (especially in the Jet levels, the UFO's don't exist here).

 

Finally, on the MSX, the enemies are still flying around smoothly, but your shots don't fly as smoothly, and enemy fire is generally not much faster than the enemy firing at you, so the fire gets hidden behind the enemy and doesn't get revealed until the enemy gets shot. There also have been some liberties in scoring although the game is by Konami who also made the arcade machine... hitting an enemy gets you 50 instead of 100 points, a parachuter is worth 500 instead of 1000 to 4000 points (and they only rarely show up), the final boss of a stage gets you 1500 instead of 3000 points, but surprisingly hitting enemy fire, which isn't too complicated here, gets you a whooping 500 points! Formations seemingly don't exist here... sometimes 3 enemies at a time appear (they often do this whenever a parachuter appears), but hitting them all doesn't get you any bonus points.

 

I developed some tactics as well... on the arcade, it's good to fly a circle in order to escape some enemies, so you end up being behind them. On the C-64 in Space-Pilot II, it's good to go to the right and spray everything with shots. On the MSX, I normally go up, and when an enemy appears (usually from the top), I fly 90° to the left or right while shooting, so the enemy probably gets hit by my fire.

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 142 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 50 minutes

Burgertime - 65 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 62,921

 

Hunchy 2 : Still on level 14

 

Burgertime : I can't figure out how to play this game well but I still have 7 days to get better.

 

 

[zylon]

Another week of just old stuff, lol

 

5200-

Pole Position- 50min

 

C64-

Pole Position- 15min this one actually resembles more the arcade game than A8/5200, but not as much fun

 

2600-

Pole Position- 10min just couldn't enjoy this one after the others

Bowling- 5min

[Eltigro]

My week was pretty busy... really only played this weekend...

 

SNES

Super Star Wars - 32 min (Was playing with the Game Genie again. Played until the part where I keep getting knocked off of floating rocks or whatever... Man these games are hard.)

 

Sega Saturn (all emulated)

Albert Odyssey - 296 minutes (Started this one up again. I had started playing it last year, but got distracted. Going to try to finish it this year. Not up to the point where I was before yet, but should get there this week. This is a pretty fun little RPG, but doesn't really have much that makes it stand out from others... Mostly 2D, pretty similar to games like Breath of Fire III and the Suikoden games.)

Gunbird - 42 min (I like a good 2d shooter. Gunbird definitely fits the bill, but it is hard... at least to me... there are just so many bullets on the screen. I don't know how many times I was looking right at a bullet and moved my character right into it. Anyway, great graphics and sound... just wish I knew Japanese so I could make sense of the story that they seem so intent on telling me. lol)

 

Game Gear

World Series Baseball '95 - 10 minutes (Just played around with this one a little bit. I won an auction on Goodwill's auction site. I only bid on it because there was a Master System and a Game Gear in it. Anyway, to my surprise, the Game Gear worked (had both sound and picture), had a game in it (this one), and had an AC adapter (a necessity with the Game Gear). Anyway, I was expecting to just get a broken Game Gear. The Master System didn't work... no power... but I'm going to have the 7805 replaced and hopefully it'll fire up.)

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:

Bad Dudes - 94 min.

Godzilla - 299 min.

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II - 337 min.

Robocop 2 - 201 min.

Wizards & Warriors - 96 min.

 

I beat all of the above games this week on real hardware. I'd never played Robocop 2 before (I don't believe), but the others are all games with which I have a long history.

 

One I'd beaten almost three decades ago, but hadn't played since (Wizards & Warriors). Another two, Godzilla and Ironsword, are games that thwarted me as a kid -- until I discovered emulators back in the late '90s/early 2000s and played through them with savestates (take that, hard game!).

 

Finally, Bad Dudes is one I did beat as a kid -- but I'm pretty sure I used a cheat code for extra lives. (I think I might have used the levitation trick in Wizards & Warriors too, back in the day, but I'm not sure.)

 

It's pleasing to beat them legitimately at last.

[agb]

My times for the week are:

 

All Atari 2600

 

Dig Dug 26 mins. High score for week

was about 105,000

 

Dodge ‘em. 47 mins. Couldn’t get near 1080

 

Enduro 37 mins. Only got to 4th day

 

Ms. Pac-Man 41 minutes. High score around 67,000

 

Solar Fox. 162 mins. High score of 5.5 mil

 

Turmoil. 9 mins. High score in mid 60,000s

 

I really enjoyed Enduro this week.

[+wongojack]

Astrocade

Bally Pin 45

Dogpatch 1

Not much gametime for me, but I did tinker a bit with one of my Astrocades and fixed its powerswitch along with one of its controllers.

[Opry99er]

TI-99/4A:

 

Alpiner (30 minutes)

Aperture (40 minutes)

Bigfoot (120 minutes)

Chronicle of Sniffing Zombie (30 minutes)

Legends (70 minutes)

Old Dark Caves (25 minutes)

Parsec (10 minutes)

Star Trek S.O.S. (20 minutes)

Wizards Doom (180 minutes)

Wizards Lair (25 minutes)

Wizards Revenge (60 minutes)

 

 

BBS Door Games:

 

Werewolves and Wanderers (90 minutes)

[Skippy B. Coyote]

There was a bit more diversity around here this week than the last, and I ended up logging a fair amount of classic gaming time in addition to my modern gaming activities.

 

 

Ineligible
Metroid Prime (Nintendo GameCube) - 332 minutes
Pokémon Ultra Sun (Nintendo 3DS) - 833 minutes
Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil (Nintendo Wii) - 115 minutes
Sonic Colors (Nintendo Wii) - 205 minutes

Atari 2600
BurgerTime - 32 minutes

Atari 7800
Astro Blaster (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 18 minutes
Scramble (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 13 minutes
Tower Toppler - 516 minutes


Total Play Time This Week
2,064 minutes (34 hours 24 minutes) [579 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo 3DS - 833 minutes
Atari 7800 - 547 minutes
Nintendo GameCube - 332 minutes
Nintendo Wii - 320 minutes
Atari 2600 - 32 minutes



Like last week, most of my gaming time for the past week was occupied by Pokémon Ultra Sun on the 3DS; though not quite to the extreme that it was last week. I finished up the main game over the weekend and got to see the credits roll, though there's still quite a bit of stuff left to do in the post game so I wouldn't be surprised if I end up putting another 50 hours or more into it over the course of the next few months. It's a really wonderful game with a lot to do even after you finish the story.

I also spent a good amount of time playing Tower Toppler on the Atari 7800, for the Atari 7800 High Score Club. It's a darn difficult and at times really frustrating game but I stuck with it until I did eventually beat the game with a final score of 64,940. Outside of those two games the only other game I played a substantial amount this past week was Metroid Prime on the GameCube, which I started Saturday night since I had been itching to play a first-person shooter and wanted something to tide me over until I could play Doom on the 32X with the 6-button Sega Genesis controller I recently picked up on eBay arrives in the mail. I've beaten Metroid Prime on Normal difficulty half a dozen times before but have never played it on Hard difficulty, so that's what I decided to try this time. It's certainly proving to be a serious challenge, though thankfully a lot less frustrating than Tower Toppler.

For my wife's gaming time this past week she finished Sonic Colors on the Wii, then took a break from gaming for most of the week while trying to decide what to play next. Eventually she settled on playing Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil on the Wii, playing as Jill on Hard difficulty. She had never played it on Hard before and was pretty startled to find about half the ammunition caches you'd normally find in the game to be missing and has probably spent more time running away from monsters than fighting them, but she's been holding her own and doing well in spite of lack of ammunition. It was actually watching her play Resident Evil on Hard that inspired me to try Metroid Prime on Hard.

That's really all the news that's fit to print for this week. Next week I'll be continuing to play through Metroid Prime and definitely giving Doom on the 32X a go once my 6-button Genesis controller arrives in the mail. I've been looking for a mint condition scratch-free official 6-button controller for the Genesis for a good 2 or 3 years now, so I was really excited to finally score one on eBay for a fairly reasonable $29 shipped this past week and I'll definitely be putting it to good use once it arrives. I imagine the misses will continue playing through the Resident Evil remake on the Wii next week, though now that we both have official 6-button Genesis controllers I might have to run out to the local game stores and see if I can find us a copy of Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition or Mortal Kombat to play together. She always kicks my butt at fighting games but it still sounds fun to share some hot 6-button Sega action.

Until next week, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited January 15, 2018 by Jin

[oyamafamily]

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) New scores on 2600 Missile Command, on my 7800 ProSystem

 

2) 7800 Pac-Man Collection video footage: Ms. Pac-Man, Plus OFF, Fast Button, 5 lives, Cherries and One Player - 257310 points

 

3) Burgertime video footage presented for 2600 NEW HSC, inaugural week of Season 7 - 32,850 points

[+thegoldenband]

Here's the summary for Week 2, running from January 8 - 14. We logged 4421 minutes of eligible play, playing 58 games on a total of 20 systems.

Top 10:

1. Tower Toppler (Atari 7800) - 521

2. Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES/Famicom) - 337

3. Godzilla (NES/Famicom) - 299

4. Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean (Sega Saturn) - 296

5. Space Pilot II (C64) - 244

6. Robocop 2 (NES/Famicom) - 201

7. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 180

8. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 170

9. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 162

10. Time Pilot (MSX) - 148

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Tower Toppler (Atari 7800) - 521

2. Space Pilot II (C64) - 244

3. Wizard's Doom (TI-99/4A) - 180

4. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 170

5. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 162

6. Time Pilot (MSX) - 148

7. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 142

8. Burgertime (Atari 2600) - 137

9. Bigfoot (TI-99/4A) - 120

10. Pac-Man Collection (Atari 7800) - 112

Top 10 systems:

1. NES/Famicom (1032)

2. Atari 2600 (849)

3. Atari 7800 (664)

4. TI-99/4A (610)

5. C64 (363)

6. Sega Saturn (338)

7. MSX (148)

8. BBS Door Games (90)

9. Atari 5200 (50)

9. PC (DOS) (50)

In Week 2 it's Tower Toppler that tops the tower on both individual charts, though the 7800 doesn't earn the system crown. That's taken instead by a coalition of games on the NES, with the Atari 2600 a couple of hundred minutes behind at #2.

And the 1000-minute club gains its 316th member in Space Pilot II for C64, with 1094 minutes logged to date.

[digdugnate]

TI-99/4A

 

Bigfoot (60 minutes)

[Opry99er]

Ill be ice fishing this weekend, so my play time basically ends now.

 

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Aperture (100 minutes)

Bigfoot (180 minutes)

Jedi Gauntlet (40 minutes)

Star Trek S.O.S. (45 minutes)

TI Trek (45 minutes)

Tunnels of Doom (210 minutes)

Zero Zap (5 minutes)

 

 

BBS Door Games:

 

Battleship (40 minutes)

Werewolves and Wanderers (100 minutes)

[Opry99er]

I lied.

 

To add:

 

 

 

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Bigfoot (40 additional minutes)

Legends (50 minutes)

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Battlezone - 5 minutes

BurgerTime - 135 minutes

Missile Command - 29 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Astro Blaster - 90 minutes

Pac-Man Collection - 30 minutes

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Burgertime, final video footage for 2600 NEW HSC, inaugural week of Season 7 - Score 63,050 points

 

2) Astro Blaster, video footage for 7800 HSC Season 2017-2018 - Score 32,700 points (Medium, NO guided shots and 5 lives)

[digdugnate]

SNES:

 

Gokujou Parodius (120 minutes)

 

TI 99 4A:

 

Bigfoot (60 minutes)

[carlsson]

Atari 2600:

Bowling - 4 min.

Atari 8-bit:

Bosconian - 41 min.

CBM-II:

Froggie - 2 min.

Reverse - 2 min.

Roadrace - 4 min.

Snakes - 2 min.

Macintosh:

Manhunter - 7 min.

PC DOS:

Arkanoid II - 6 min.

Doom 1 - 6 min.

Prince of Persia - 13 min.

Scorched Earth - 43 min.

Ski or Die - 13 min.

Tetris (Spectrum Holobyte) - 10 min.

This week I loaded a Compaq 486 all-in-one with games for the upcoming expo, plus tested some more on real hardware and of course HSC.

[agb]

Times for the week are:

All Atari 2600

Battle zone 53 minutes

Chopper Commsnd 11 mins

Dodgeem 31 mins

Enduro 91 mins

Solar Fox 224 mins

 

I. couldnt get my Burgertime game working for the HSC. I used an air gun and q-tip with alcohol. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[carlsson]

agb: Is the connector on the cartridge still very dirty? If so, you could try with a pencil eraser which removes more grime than the alcohol on a q-tip does. Of course you could have a broken cartridge as well.

[agb]

Thank you Carllsson. I will try the eraser. Ill let you know if it works.

[digdugnate]

added some more time this week.

 

SNES:

 

Gradius 3 - 60 minutes

 

NES:

 

Super Mario Bros. 3 - 60 minutes

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Burgertime: 10 min

 

PC (DOS)

Silent Hunter: 72 min

[carlsson]

Late addition for me as well:

 

C64:

Motor Mania - 55 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (January 15th through 21st) on classic games:

 

Apple II:

Ms. Pac-Man - 62 min.

 

Arcade:

Ms. Pac-Man - 15 min.

 

Atari 2600:

2048_4vcs - 15 min.

Ms. Pac-Man - 34 min.

 

Atari 800:

Ms. Pac-Man - 22 min.

 

NES:

Dr. Mario - 31 min.

 

TI-99/4A:

Jedi Gauntlet Demo - 23 min.

 

This week I played various versions of Ms. Pac-Man again. My general goal on each of those was to reach 33.333 points which is doable after a bit of practice. The Apple II version shines by its sound relative to the machine's capabilities which does much more than only short blips like you can find them on other Apple II games. Somehow it seems to share much of its codebase with the C-64 version, which might explain some of the properties of the C-64 version, for instance the slowdown when Ms. Pac-Man eats dots. The Atari 800 version, in comparison, reminds me a bit of the MS-DOS version, and it surprised me that the ghosts's eyes are solid instead of cut out. Also there's flicker now and then if too many objects are on one scanline. I also noticed the severe slowdown of Ms. Pac-Man whenever she eats dots which is much less pronounced in the original arcade version, and finally, at the 5th round the game speeds up by a huge degree. I also played the original version for a quick comparison.

 

On the Atari 2600, I also played 2048_4vcs, another version of 2048 for the Atari 2600 with the source code available which I looked through and I must say that I find quite a few places where the code could be optimized to make room for more features, most notably a title music.

 

Then I played Dr. Mario on the NES after trying the Uzebox version which didn't quite work out. On the NES I reached Level 5 or 6, but didn't want to play for more than half an hour.

 

Finally I also tried the demo of Jedi Gauntlet, a BASIC game for the TI-99 by Opry99er, and there I also looked into the source code. I didn't manage to beat the demo since I didn't find a way to solve Level 3 with the amount of force supplied.

[BurritoBeans]

Arcade:

Bubble Bobble - 30 minutes

 

Well, nothing too exciting game-wise but it was fun getting said game to work. Last year (or was it the year before? I honestly don't even remember) I started a project with my father which boils down to building an arcade machine from scratch - it did really well until we had to start getting buttons working right between the two systems he wanted in there, a Pandora's Box 4 (that I got for all of like $15 and had nothing to do with) and a MAME PC. Now reading that you'll probably ask "why the heck would you want the Pandora's Box if you also just have a MAME PC" and that is a really good question as to be honest I can't think of one reason other than that we had the Pandora's Box and we wanted to at least use it in something instead of just having it sit around.

 

So yeah, Bubble Bobble, everyone knows it - it's cool playing it on an arcade setup instead of a janky joystick but honestly past that there's not much to say about it.

 

Next week is looking like I won't play anything as I have some projects in the works - there's some tube-based guitar amps made off of a Fender 5F6A Bassman schematic because I wanted something to use my 4x10" speaker setup with that wasn't a cheap Fender Champ 20 and some nixie clocks because I got in contact with a guy out of Ukraine on my radio and he was trying to sell a good 250 IN14s for dirt cheap prices so I couldn't turn it down. The whole "only use an Apple II" thing is starting to be a real pain as I'm finding myself running out of just about everything when I need it but it has been workable - maybe the next Ultima will be coming up for next week? Who knows...