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

[+wongojack]

I don't normally update mid-week, but this week is a strange one with lots of travelling. I may post again, but I wanted to get some times in now

 

NES

Pinball 80

Wario's Woods 119

 

I played both of these in emulation while on planes. I came back to these games after playing them on the Wii U through NES Remix. I'm surprised that I'd never really played NES Pinball before because I like pinball games so much. It is a solid game, but I wish there was a second table layout. As for Wario's Woods, I'm not sure I'd ever actually seen the game before NES Remix, so in that way, the Remix did exactly what it was meant to. It got me interested in an old NES game that I'd never really taken the time to enjoy. I have to say that while the gameplay is reminiscent of Tetris, there are quite a few little quirks that make this unique enough that it easily stands alone in its own way. I am surprised how much I am enjoying it.

[karokoenig]

No classic games playtime this week, but I did do some modern adventure gaming. See the modern tracker for details.

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

Computer War - 63 min.

WarGames - 15 min.

C64:

Double Dragon - 5 min.

Fist II: The Legend Continues - 15 min.

Fist II: Tournament - 5 min.

Shinobi - 10 min.

HSC + testing a few games for a friend looking to sell them. The two Fist II games are different events within the same game, not sure if the times should be combined as we usually do for games with various events of gameplay. And yes, Double Dragon for the C64 is really bad. I had never played it before. The programmers make a note in the manual that they needed to split the sprites so there is a blank stripe across the middle of the characters. Not that it really makes any difference, the game would be bad even without that sprite split.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (July 23th through 29th) on classic games...

 

Atari 2600:

White Water Madness - 5 min.

 

Atari 7800:

Serpentine - 97 min. in 5 sessions

 

I didn't get to play too much this week because we've got a heatwave in Vienna, and I'm going swimming every day with my father now.

 

I played a few more rounds of Serpentine on the Atari 7800... nothing new there.

Then I tried a new game by Atariland2600, White Water Madness. It's nothing fancy actually, think horizontal Monaco GP with only one enemy at a time. But through graphical trickery, the player figure is 3-colors and consists of one player (man), the ball (boat) and a missile (the row).

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Bowling - 2 minutes

Galaxian - 32 minutes

King Kong - 8 minutes

Missile Command - 90 minutes (53 on Stella and 37 on console)

 

King Kong is the game which I played for Round 2 of Silver Medal Tournament on 2600 NEW HSC Season 7 (with my opponent Spriggamortis).

Also, I played Missile on Stella and chose Game 17-BB (Kids variation) just for fun, using the keyboard.

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK:

My lastest scores on Missile Command played on console. In the previous week (July 16 to 22) I played Game 30-BB, and this week I chose Game 24-AA to have more fun.

[zylon]

5200-

Gyruss- 45min

 

A8-

Dark Chambers- 3hrs 35min

 

2600-

Dark Chambers- 40min

 

C64-

Eagle Empire- 20min

Gorf- 15min

 

Arcade-

Gyruss- 20min via xbl

Edited July 30, 2018 by zylon

[Eltigro]

Everything was emulated this week...

 

7800

Donkey Kong - 7 min (I've never been that great at Donkey Kong, but I did okay on this one. Still didn't get anywhere near as far as I'm sure some of you can. Anyway, this version has three screens, which is one more than the version of Donkey Kong I've played the most... the 2600 version.)

 

TurboGrafx-16

Legendary Axe - 28 min (Just played until my first game over. I got to the end boss of level 4... the two Punjabi guys. These guys (not my picture). I was able to kill one of them, but the other one got me. What's frustrating is that there are health pickups right there, but I can't get to them when I need to.)

Terra Cresta II - 5 min (A shooter. I'm bad at them but I like them. An interesting powerup system where it appears that parts are attached to your ship... not sure what was going on, honestly... I didn't last long enough to really figure things out. Oh well...)

 

Genesis

Aero Blasters - 10 min (Inspired by the latest Battle of the Ports again, I downloaded the rom of Aero Blasters for the Genesis. I had played the TurboGrafx version and I didn't see a lot of difference here... besides the loading screen... I mean, it doesn't say that's what it is, but apparently it is. Anyway, a great looking shooter. I'm not too thrilled about how powerups are distributed, but I didn't design it. There seem to be several enemies that either you can't kill and just have to avoid or else I'm just not doing something right... )

Shining in the Darkness - 108 min (I have this cartridge, but it refuses to work, so I downloaded a rom. It's a pretty decent dungeon crawler. Simple so far. I saw something about having other party members but so far it's just me. The dungeon/labyrinth is pretty boring, but then I've mainly just had to grind up some levels so I can get a little farther to grind up some more levels.)

 

Saturn

In the Hunt - 14 min (Sometimes I just don't get computers. When I first downloaded this game, it worked great. Then suddenly, it didn't. Now it does again. I don't know if there were some updates to Launchbox or something that broke and then fixed it or what, but suddenly I can play it again. A great looking game... the pixel art is outstanding. The Metal Slug of its genre. I got a little farther than I have before, but that still used all my continues. I'm not good at this game, but dammit I wish I was.)

[+thegoldenband]

My lone time for the week:

 

NES:

Ikari Warriors - 61 min.

[+wongojack]

More flights for me, so more emulated NES

 

Clu clu Land 34

Ice Climber 29

Pinball 13

Wrecking Crew 72

 

SNES

SMB 2 37 (allstars)

 

 

NES Remix strikes again, convincing me to play old NES games I thought I'd forgotten about. This will probably be the only time Ice Climber gets time logged two weeks so close together.

 

These other games are all solid 80s games that remind you of what Nintendo was like before Super Mario and Zelda. I had fun with these and appreciated little touches like the level select in Wrecking Crew and Ice Climber. These are all very nice games.

[Iwantgames:)]

3DO -

D&D Slayer - 15min

Dr. Hauzer - 15min

Tetsujin Iron Angel of The Apocalypse - 335min

Iron Angel of The Apocalypse The Return - 20min

 

CDi -

The Apprentice - 45min

 

I completed Iron Angel of The Apocalypse and attempted its sequel but in my opinion it sucks so I probably wont spend any more time on it. I made a copy of Dr Hauzer for a buddy so I tested it and then hopped into some Slayer.

 

I love The Apprentice on CDi but man is it hard lol. Most of my time spent on it this week was actually due to testing some SNES2CDi adapters

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 275 minutes

Seawolf - 10 minutes

 

 

 

Kaboom! : 41,994

 

 

[Skippy B. Coyote]

You ever have one of those "I have no idea what I want to play" kind of weeks? That was me this past week, and as such I ended up logging small chunks of time across a variety of systems and games.




Ineligible
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Nintendo 3DS) - 191 minutes
Killer7 (GameCube) - 232 minutes
Pokémon: Ultra Sun (GameCube) - 10 minutes
Trauma Center: New Blood (Nintendo Wii) - 241 minutes

Atari 2600
Battlezone - 25 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 17 minutes

PC-DOS (Emulated on Nintendo Wii)
The Ultimate Doom - 108 minutes

PlayStation
Castlevania: Chronicles - 8 minutes
Rayman 2: The Great Escape - 118 minutes

Sega Genesis
Earthworm Jim 2 (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 29 minutes
Mortal Kombat - 25 minutes
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 17 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,021 minutes (17 hours 1 minute) [347 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Wii: 241 minutes
GameCube: 232 minutes
Nintendo 3DS: 201 minutes
PlayStation: 126 minutes
PC-DOS: 108 minutes
Sega Genesis: 71 minutes
Atari 2600: 42 minutes



I started off the week planning on continuing my play through of Killer7 on the GameCube, but for some reason the game just wasn't holding my interest quite like it did a decade or so ago when I first discovered it. Killer7 is still an amazingly creative and artistic game, but I just wasn't feeling the whole weird and creepy vibe of the game this week so before long I set it down and went looking for something new to play. I've had a copy of Trauma Center: New Blood sitting in my pile of shame (AKA "The games you bought then just put on the shelf to collect dust instead of playing") for the past couple months so I decided to give it a try. It was quite a bit of fun at first and just as enjoyable as the Trauma Center games I loved on the original DS back when that system was current, but the difficulty of this game spiked rapidly and after a couple hours I found myself feeling more frustrated than entertained.

Feeling fed up with the high difficulty level of Trauma Center: New Blood I spent the rest of the week bouncing between games. I played through Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon on the 3DS again to get the second of five possible endings (which was just as fun as the first play through), then played some Sega Genesis games, a little Doom via emulation on the Wii, and finally a couple Atari 2600 games; the latter of which the misses joined me for and we had a little high score competition. I wasn't exactly feeling at the top of my game this week and she thoroughly kicked my butt in both Battlezone and Ms. Pac-Man, but it was still fun getting in some couples' gaming time on the Atari.

As far as her gaming time for the past week went, she started off the week intent on beating Castlevania: Chronicles on Original Mode (having just completed Arranged Mode last week) but soon discovered that the difficulty level of Original Mode is pretty absurd; far harder than even the original Castlevania on the NES. Eight minutes later she had given up and didn't play much else for the week until we had our little Atari high score competition on Friday. After that she did get back to Rayman 2: The Great Escape and had fun playing it for a few hours Sunday night, but that was pretty much it for her this week.

Looking ahead to next week I think we might be getting in some NES and Sega Genesis time, since I'm going out to the local game stores this afternoon shopping for a nice condition toaster model NES and a Sega Genesis Model 1. If I'm successful in my search to for those two systems then I'm sure I'll pick up some games for them as well, so we'll see how it goes. I'm reasonably sure the spousal unit is going to log some more Rayman 2 time next week, but what I end up playing is probably going to depend largely on how my system hunting goes.

That's all for this week, so until next time and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

[carlsson]

You ever have one of those "I have no idea what I want to play" kind of weeks?

I believe that is why High Score Clubs were invented, to guide people into playing specific games.

[agb]

Times for the week are;

Atari 2600 only

River Raid for the 2018 Activision Patch Quest 7 minutes

River Raid II for the 2600 high score club 21 minutes

Solar Fox 95 minutes

[Atarian7]

I forgot:

 

Atari 2600

Hunchy 2 - 17 minutes

 

 

[+thegoldenband]

With apologies for the late post, here's the summary for Week 30, running from July 23 - 29. We logged 2521 minutes of eligible play, playing 50 games on a total of 15 systems.

Top 10:

1. Iron Angel of the Apocalypse (3DO) - 335

2. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 275

3. Dark Chambers (Atari 8-bit) - 215

4. Wario's Woods (NES/Famicom) - 119

5. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (PlayStation) - 118

6. Shining in the Darkness (Genesis) - 108

6. Ultimate Doom, The (PC (DOS)) - 108

8. Serpentine (Atari 7800) - 97

9. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 95

10. Pinball (NES/Famicom) - 93

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 275

2. Dark Chambers (Atari 8-bit) - 215

3. Serpentine (Atari 7800) - 97

4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 95

5. Missile Command (Atari 2600) - 90

6. Computer War (Atari 8-bit) - 63

7. Gyruss (Atari 5200) - 45

8. Dark Chambers (Atari 2600) - 40

9. Galaxian (Atari 2600) - 32

10. Battlezone (Atari 2600) - 25

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (644)

2. NES/Famicom (408)

3. 3DO (385)

4. Atari 8-bit (293)

5. Genesis (189)

6. PlayStation (126)

7. PC (DOS) (108)

8. Atari 7800 (104)

9. C64 (70)

10. Atari 5200 (45)

10. Philips CD-i (45)

After a week's absence Kaboom comes roaring back onto the charts, and leads the charge for the Atari 2600 -- but it's the 3DO that hosts the week's top game, as Iron Angel of the Apocalypse gives the 32-bit console its first win in a while.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

After a week's absence Kaboom comes roaring back onto the charts, and leads the charge for the Atari 2600 -- but it's the 3DO that hosts the week's top game, as Iron Angel of the Apocalypse gives the 32-bit console its first win in a while.

It must have been a while, because I don't think I've ever seen the 3DO at the top of a chart in the 3 years I've been participating in the tracker! Very cool to see something really out of the ordinary this week!

[+thegoldenband]

It must have been a while, because I don't think I've ever seen the 3DO at the top of a chart in the 3 years I've been participating in the tracker! Very cool to see something really out of the ordinary this week!

 

After a quick (i.e. non-rigorous) search, it looks like the 3DO has had the #1 game four times, with four different games -- before this week, that is:

• 2012, Week 50 - Battle Chess (1337 min.)
• 2013, Week 25 - Escape from Monster Manor (1054 min.)
• 2013, Week 38 - The Daedalus Encounter (336 min.)
• 2013, Week 51 - Kingdom: The Far Reaches (422 min.)

The 3DO was the top system in three of those weeks (the ones marked in bold), but not Week 38 of 2013. It was also the top system in Week 8 of 2011 (Immercenary was the #2 game, just behind Kaboom), and Week 11 of 2016 (by a wide margin, despite having no games in the Top 5).

[carlsson]

It also means that the 3DO this week reached #1 with its lowest number of minutes so far, or how to put it. I mean it is easy (or at least popular) to keep track of the largest number of minutes per game and week, but it is just as interesting to see which games have been up there on "slow" weeks, snatching the crown with an amount of gameplay that otherwise barely would have put it on top 10.

 

I went back through the years, and came up with this list of which game became #1 in a week during the season with least amount of minutes.

 

2009: Week 19: Qix (Atari 5200) - 135 *

2010: Week 35: Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 169 *

2011: Week 26: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - 301

2012: Week 14: Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 318

2013: Week 42: Adventures of Mighty Max (Genesis) - 199

2014: Week 7: Road Hunter (TI-99/4A) - 262

2015: Week 7: Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 287

2016: Week 20: Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 243

2017: Week 41, Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 209

2018: Week 1, Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 231 **

*) A little hard to search through the summaries, though I think I've covered all of those seasons.

**) Ongoing season, so the chance is that some game will be #1 with even less play time

As you can see, our #1 game Kaboom! also has the honor to 5 seasons grab this title, and the years it didn't "win", usually it wasn't very many minutes behind.

[+wongojack]

Another rare Friday post from me as I've once again been flying around and playing emulated NES

 

NES

Pinball 32

 

SMS

Sonic Spinball 31

 

 

After scoring a personal best 116,760 on game B of NES Pinball, I went looking for an SMS pinball game. I don't really know the SMS library very well and since there is no game that I could find with "pinball" in the title, I settled for the SMS version of Sonic Spinball. It was ok. I can't tell if the choppy framerates are an emulator problem or if it was that way on the SMS too. I doubt I will be curious enough to actually find out . . .

[karokoenig]

Atari 2600

Berzerk: 3 min

Freeway: 4 min

Oink!: 2 min

Real Sports Soccer: 5 min

Robot Tank: 2 min

Star Wars Empire strikes back: 3 min

Star Wars Return of the Jedi: 1 min

Tomcat: 3 min

 

Testing of an Atari lot I got off eBay. The console (a Jr) works, but I had to reflow a broken solder joint on the RF output. It certainly has suffered some rough treatment, as inside, 4 or 5 plastic pins were broken off. Well, they are tough little fellows :-).

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600 - King Kong - 47 minutes

 

EVIDENCE OF THE WEEK: King Kong gameplay video, presented for 2600 NEW HSC Season 7, Silver Medal Bracket Round 2

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD - Atari 2600 - Star Castle Arcade - 10 minutes

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Chambers of Zorp - 23 min.
Dark Chambers - 140 min.

Famicom:
Pac-Man - 3 min.

PET:
Seige - 12 min.
Ski [Mike Singleton] - 10 min.

Super Cassette Vision:
Doraemon - 7 min.
Lupin III - 13 min.

Edited August 5, 2018 by carlsson

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (July 30th through August 5th)...

 

sorry, I didn't play any games this week. Summer's in full swing, and I'm going swimming with my father nearly every day. Moreover, on Friday I got the note from the court that I'm now eligible to inherit my mother's estate, so there's some more things to do to organize this.