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

[+wongojack]

 

Baby Pac-Man [homebrew] (Atari 7800) - 131

 

 

Does this have the pinball sections added yet?

 

Are the cool kids still using MESS for the 7800? I haven't played around with MESS in forever, but I may have to for this game.

[Iwantgames:)]

Apparently it was its fourth appearance, and the first time someone else than Kurt played its games. The previous occasions were in November 2008 (46 mins), April 2012 (88 mins) and September 2016 (90 mins). It also means that Iwantgames in one week played almost as much as the previous total on nearly 10 years.

Nice and Ive played even more this week already

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

River Raid: 25 min

 

A quick early entry in this week's High Score Club. Leaving for a vacation early tomorrow...

[Kurt_Woloch]

Nice and Ive played even more this week already

Well, I surely can remember playing its games before since I tried to play every version of Turtles in existence (other than the Casio PV-1000 version which I couldn't quite get a hold of)... I can remember that the VG-5000 version is pretty frustrating because unlike the arcade original and the Odyssey version, it has some open spaces and dead ends (OK, the Odyssey version does have those as well), and the enemies can turn on a dime if they feel like it, so they are pretty dangerous even though your turtle is much faster than them.

 

Now it makes me wonder if there's ever been homebrew games for the VG-5000... the fact that it's been a computer with tape storage would favor it, and I think it had a Z-80 as the CPU, but was there ever a Z-80 assembler for it, or would you have to cross-assemble? I already wrapped my head around the datasheet of its video chip which seems to be an improved version of the Teletext chip used in the G7400 / Odyssey^3 (but without the low-res sprites overlaying there by the Odyssey^2 chip!), and I think that the VG-5000's full potential was never reached.

 

Oh, wait... there's Tetris in the list of games played which does seem to be a homebrew from 2013. It definitely wasn't in the original list of released games.

[Iwantgames:)]

Well, I surely can remember playing its games before since I tried to play every version of Turtles in existence (other than the Casio PV-1000 version which I couldn't quite get a hold of)... I can remember that the VG-5000 version is pretty frustrating because unlike the arcade original and the Odyssey version, it has some open spaces and dead ends (OK, the Odyssey version does have those as well), and the enemies can turn on a dime if they feel like it, so they are pretty dangerous even though your turtle is much faster than them.

 

Now it makes me wonder if there's ever been homebrew games for the VG-5000... the fact that it's been a computer with tape storage would favor it, and I think it had a Z-80 as the CPU, but was there ever a Z-80 assembler for it, or would you have to cross-assemble? I already wrapped my head around the datasheet of its video chip which seems to be an improved version of the Teletext chip used in the G7400 / Odyssey^3 (but without the low-res sprites overlaying there by the Odyssey^2 chip!), and I think that the VG-5000's full potential was never reached.

 

Oh, wait... there's Tetris in the list of games played which does seem to be a homebrew from 2013. It definitely wasn't in the original list of released games.

Yea I have a rom pack which has a few games in it that Im sure must be homebrews but I havent copied them all to tape to try out yet

[Opry99er]

Been a busy week so far for my kids and me. Mostly my kids.

 

***Monday - Friday times:***

 

 

NES:

 

*Duck Hunt (60 minutes)

R.B.I. Baseball (30 minutes)

*Super Mario Bros. (90 minutes)

*Super Mario Bros. 2 (20 minutes)

*Super Mario Bros. 3 (180 minutes)

 

 

N64:

 

*1080 (45 minutes)

Cruisin' USA (45 minutes)

Knockout Kings 2000 (120 minutes)

Star Wars (Shadows of the Empire)--(30 minutes)

 

 

VCS:

 

Fantastic Voyage (10 minutes)

*Mario Bros. (10 minutes)

Super Breakout (20 minutes)

 

 

My kids are homeschooled. It is tough for them to make friends, mostly because they don't go to regular school with the other kids and that's where many bonds are formed. My son has done T-ball and Boy Scouts, but lasting friendships haven't happened. Over the past week, he has made two really solid friendships with neighborhood kids via a Summer School program he is in (electives mostly, gardening, cooking, etc)

 

These two kids have been at our house every day this past week playing and having fun with my kids. I opened my game room up to them and they were amazed and delighted to play all these old school games. All the times above with an asterisk are just my son's play times with his friends. I didn't contribute to those in any way.

[BurritoBeans]

Atari 2600:

Demons to Diamonds - 20 minutes

 

Cromemco Dazzler:

Chase! - 30 minutes

Gotcha - 30 minutes

Life - 10 minutes

 

Game Gear

Ninja Gaiden - 37 minutes

 

So this week was a first for me as I finally got to mess with one of the old 70s-style homebrew computers that I've always heard of but never used, anything S-100 based. Turns out one of my uncles up in Rochester NY who I rarely ever see has his own S-100 setup running of an 8088 card is managing his HAM Radio setup and some other stuff, so after a wedding they had up there I went by to see the thing. The star of the whole system (for this thread at least) was the one set of cards, a Cromemco "TV Dazzler" board, which I guess was one of if not the first bitmapped graphics card for computers. All the games are what you'd expect - Chase was a maze chase game with two players, Gotcha is like the Atari arcade counterpart, and Life is the standard Conway's Game of Life - but all running on a massive set of boards with wires running everywhere. I have a soft spot for the 70s homebrew computers, I mean heck I built my own Cosmac ELF and a few others, so this was definitely cool to me. I wasn't sure if the games should go under "S-100" or Dazzler so I put them on Dazzler as you need those cards to run the titles, if it needs to be changed by all means go ahead as I'm not sure if this stuff has shown up before on the tracker.

 

The 2600 comes out for the first time in a while as I found a copy of Demons to Diamonds for all of $0.50 at a store while I was out looking for records. It's not exactly the most exciting game but hey, for the price and being that the labels were still on it I can't really complain all that much as it's something more to play with.

 

Finally I played a bit of Game Gear as I found a copy of Ninja Gaiden for a few dollars. I always knew there was the NES version and that the Master System had a version, I guess it makes sense that the GG had a version if the SMS did but I was a little bit surprised at first when I saw it. Like expected it was really basic and I beat it in less than an hour but hey, it wasn't bad so I can't complain.

 

So yeah, crap now I'm back to looking at old homebrew computers but I also want to go with the CMVS idea - I could do both but I really don't think that breaking into my money I saved so I can get stuff ReplayFX is a good decision, probably going to stick with the CMVS as it's cheaper and easier if stuff goes wrong but hey either could be done. Past me wishing I could do more, well SGDQ 2018 started a few hours ago as-of the time of this post and I really like speedruns so I'll probably just be watching games for next week, not playing them, but at least that can also be entertaining. If anything this will get me wanting to play more games for speedruns and TASing but once I saw how much time my friend and I put into Lawnmower Man I almost wonder what I was thinking at that point in my life.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this week (June 18th through 24th) on classic systems:

 

Atari 2600:

Midnight magic - 5 min.

 

Hmmm... seems like I didn't play anything else than "Midnight Magic" on the Atari 2600, which is a pinball game that came out late in the system's life. There's still a discussion going on about the development of "Baby Pac-Man" on the Atari 7800. Right now the pinball part is in the works, and while I'm not the programmer, I made some quite extensive contributions to the thread explaining my ideas how to program things, such as dividing the pinball playfield in several areas having only 1 to 2 collision checks each. You can read all of my postings from this week if you start here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278165-baby-pac-man/page-15

 

To that end, I played a bit of "Midnight magic" to see how an already existing 8-bit pinball game works.

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Metagalactic Llamas - 43 min.
Minotaur 16K - 18 min.
Pad [NRV] - 152 min.

C64:
Emlyn Hughes International Soccer - 7 min.
Microprose Soccer 2010 - 52 min.

Another round of Atari 8-bit HSC plus that I played a few of the highest rated C64 soccer games - Microprose Soccer which I've loved since decades ago and Emlyn Hughes which I've never really played before. I found the latter to be rather complex, but not so much fun on first attempt.

[digdugnate]

short-n-sweet this week. i picked up a couple games on the cheap from someone on FB and finally got around to cleaning their boards and firing them up.

 

Atari 2600

 

Q*Bert - 30 minutes

Galaxian - 30 minutes

 

i wanted to play more but a cluster migraine cut it short tonight

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600

Bowling - 6 minutes

Centipede - 36 minutes

Pac-Man - 26 minutes

River Raid - 35 minutes

 

Season 7 of the new 2600 HSC is finishing with the "Beat the Leaders" wave in progress (River Raid for the first part)

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD - Super Cobra Arcade (Atari 2600) - 20 minutes

[Iwantgames:)]

VG 5000 -

 

L’ Abeille - 5min

Machaon - 206min

Star Roc - 10min

 

I tested L’Abeille (a game where you play a bee collecting pollen) and found it to be quite boring, perhaps it gets better? Dunno

 

Then I tried Star Roc (a shoot em up side scroller with flying mouth enemies lol) this one seems decent but I die quick.

 

Most of my time was spent on the Boulderdash like game, Machaon. So far I can make it to level H I’m guessing it goes to Z but really dunno lol fun game tho

[zylon]

5200-

Pole Position- 55min

 

C64-

Wheel Of Fortune- 38min

 

Genesis- Wheel Of Fortune- 1hr 20min

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Master System:

Toto World 3 - 112 min.

 

Genesis:

Championship Pro-Am - 13 min.

Ms. Pac-Man - 31 min.

P.T.O. - 13 min.

Beat Toto World 3, a funky little Korean platformer with nice graphics and glitchy music.

I also cleared Ms. Pac-Man on default difficulty (Normal) with the Pac-Booster on.

[Opry99er]

Weekend times (Saturday and Sunday)

 

 

 

NES:

 

R.B.I. Baseball (30 minutes)

Rad Racer (30 minutes)

Super Mario Bros 3 (45 minutes)

Top Gun (25 minutes)

 

 

N64:

 

All Star Baseball '99 (60 minutes)

Cruisin USA (20 minutes)

Knockout Kings 2000 (120 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Popeye (45 minutes)

St. Nick (30 minutes)

Star Trek SOS (20 minutes)

 

 

VCS:

 

Mario Bros (20 minutes)

Video Pinball (10 minutes)

 

 

 

Got ASB99 in the mail today.... it's about to get real....

[Eltigro]

I've been really bad at actually timing anything lately, so times are approximate...

 

Sega Genesis

TMNT Hyperstone Heist (emulated via PSP) - 60 min (Never played this before. Really enjoyed it. Used to play the arcade every once in a while way back when arcades featured more than just ticket redemption games and upscaled iOS games. This had a very similar feel. Preferred Leo to the other turtles. Usually Donatello is my go to in the arcade, but didn't seem to play as well as Leo did here.)

Truxton - 15 min (One day I'll "git gud" at this game... but I'll have to play it longer than 15 min at a time I guess. It came up on a video on youtube and I thought, I should get that out and play for a bit. I have it on my PSP, but it's easier to play it on a bigger screen.)

 

TurboGrafx-16

Legendary Axe II (emulated via PSP) - 10 min (Man, this one was glitching out bad. It was playable, but only barely. I may try to find another rom and see if that was the problem. I never was that fond of this one anyway. Always thought the first one was much better all around. If they had made the sequel an actual Legendary Axe game instead of whatever this one is, I'd like it much more.)

Neutopia II (emulated via PSP) - 30 min (One day I'll get this for real... and the first one too... I got the first one on my Wii via the Virtual Console, but never got the second one. Wish I had. Don't think you can anymore, can you? Anyway, for some reason, this plays at about 75% speed or something on this emulator. It's good for boss fights, but man it gets tiresome traveling in the over world. May be able to adjust a speed in the emulator somewhere, but I haven't dug that deep into it yet.)

Edited June 25, 2018 by Eltigro

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 175 minutes

Shark Attack - 5 minutes

Raft Rider - 201 minutes

Pele's Soccer - 12 minutes

Lost Luggage - 19 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 21 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 82, ???

 

 

 

[+wongojack]

I played a lot of retro inspired games this week on modern platforms, but I have no eligible time. Some of the ineligible games that I played were

 

X360

Hydro Thunder

Outrun Online Arcade

 

Steam

Little Racers Street

 

AND - I finally got a Wii U. I got it off of someone on OfferUp for only $120. It came in its box with Super Mario 3d World and NintendoLand installed, plus some aftermarket WiiMotes and 3 loose games that I immediately traded to a local gamestore. I spent a fair amount of time playing SM 3d World, NintendoLand, and Yoshi's Wooly World. I also played a demo of Wii Sports Online or whatever it is called. I mostly wanted it as an upgraded Wii, and (after this initial burst) I plan to slowly collect games for it as well as look for hidden Wii gems for years to come. I already loaded up my wishlist with lesser known Wii games. If you have any recommendations regarding Wii hidden gems, please let me know. I doubt there really are any Wii U hidden gems, but feel free to share those too.

[carlsson]

Some of the ineligible games that I played were

 

You may post those times here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/273762-what-have-you-actually-played-tracker-modern-edition-2018/page-9

 

Even if you have no exact minutes to post, I'll count at least a minute or two.

[+wongojack]

 

You may post those times here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/273762-what-have-you-actually-played-tracker-modern-edition-2018/page-9

 

Even if you have no exact minutes to post, I'll count at least a minute or two.

 

Yeah, I know, but I prefer to only track the "retro" time. Maybe I need a better/easier tracking system, but I usually just make notes on my phone and I don't really want to be bothered to do that for EVERY game I play. For the retro stuff, it feels more like an experiment anyway (sometimes) so the tracking seems like less of a bother and makes sense.

 

I can't believe we've never had a discussion about how everyone tracks their time. What are your methods and tips you've learned over the years we've been doing this? Do you prefer ultimate accuracy or approximate times? Do you keep a log or just go by memory?

[Eltigro]

Well, ideally, when I'm actually timing stuff... I actually set the stop watch on my phone. Then when I stop playing, I write it down in a spiral I keep by my chair. Unless it's an RPG that records the played time on the save file, then I just use that. Here lately, though, I've been lazy and just guessing. lol

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Not of a ton of games played in my household this week, but a good bit of time logged in each.




Ineligible
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Nintendo Wii) - 241 minutes

Game Boy
Alien 3 - 297 minutes
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 148 minutes

Game Boy Color
Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers - 211 minutes

PlayStation
Parasite Eve - 522 minutes
Punky Skunk - 257 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,676 minutes (27 hours 56 minutes) [1,435 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
PlayStation: 779 minutes
Game Boy: 445 minutes
Nintendo Wii: 241 minutes
Game Boy Color: 211 minutes



For me the week started off by finishing my all time favorite Zelda game, Link's Awakening on the Game Boy, then playing through and—for the first time in my entire life—beating my #1 childhood favorite Game Boy game: Alien 3. I had an absolute blast exploring the hallowed halls of Fiorina 161 and discovering all the little hidden secrets and solving the puzzles I could never figure out as a kid, and once the task was done I wrote a nice little review of Alien 3 that you can find here in the Games Beaten in 2018 thread. Between Link's Awakening and Alien 3 I also did a full play through of Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers for the Game Boy Color, which I also wrote a little review of for the aforementioned thread. In short, it was the best Scooby-Doo game I've ever played and I'd definitely recommend it to any fan of the cartoon.

After finishing up the classic Game Boy / Color titles I decided to dive into a Wii game that's been sitting on my shelf for a few months now, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I'm on chapter 11 of 12 in the game right now so I'm almost done with it, but I'll save my thoughts about the game until next week once I've beaten it and have had some time to reflect on the experience. At the moment my feelings on it are rather mixed, but we'll see how it plays out.

Moving on to the misses' gaming for the past week, she had some pretty mixed experiences too. She played through Parasite Eve and had a great time with it up until the final boss, at which point she discovered that with her character's current experience level, health restoring supplies, and weapons there was literally no way to beat the final boss. No matter what you do the boss will do more damage to the player than she had health restoring supplies to recover from and her character's level was too low to do any substantial damage to the boss, and to top it all off the game makes you save right before the boss fight so there was no way for her to go back and level up her character more to try again. After a few dozen failed attempts on the boss she accepted that it was just impossible to beat then gave up and started a new game, with the intention of playing through the whole thing again and going in to the boss fight better prepared the second time around.

She spent a few hours on her second Parasite Eve attempt but soon got distracted from it when a copy of Punky Skunk she scored on eBay arrived the mail. Putting aside Parasite Eve, she spent the rest of the week doing a full play through of Punky Sunk and had a ton of fun with it. 2D platformers were pretty scarce during the 32/64-bit era and this rare little gem turned out to be a fantastic one. The characters and backgrounds all looked great, the level design was creative and interesting, and she thought the difficulty curve was just right. The only complaint she had about the game is that the noise Punky makes whenever he jumps was a little grating at first, but she did get used to it and ultimately thought that the game as a whole was great.


Looking ahead to next week, I've got a few Game Boy Color games coming in the mail from Wongojack and I'm sure I'll be playing through two of them in particular as soon as they arrive. Until then I'm just going to work on finishing up Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The misses does plan to resume her second attempt on Parasite Eve, but she did score copies of both Rayman and Rayman 2 for the PlayStation on eBay last night so I imagine that once they arrive she might set Parasite Eve aside again for some more platforming action.

I think that covers all the gaming around here for now, so until next time, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Jin

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I can't believe we've never had a discussion about how everyone tracks their time. What are your methods and tips you've learned over the years we've been doing this? Do you prefer ultimate accuracy or approximate times? Do you keep a log or just go by memory?

I have a laptop computer that's always sitting on an end table near the gaming center, and I always leave a text document open on it to jot down the start time whenever I or the misses play a game. Then once we're done playing we log the time we stopped playing and calculate the total minutes played for that session. When I'm out and about and playing portable games on the bus I always bring a little Android tablet along with for the same purpose.

 

The only exception is when I'm playing Wii or 3DS/DS games, because those systems have built in daily play time trackers; so at the end of the week I just go into the tracking application on the system and total up the times for the week to add to my text document on the laptop.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Jin

[agb]

Times for the week. All Atari 2600

River Raid for HSC 72 mins

Shark Attack for HSC 15 mins

Solar Fox 93 mins