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

[Iwantgames:)]

This week I managed to complete Atlantis The Last Resort on CDi as well as beat the first boss on The Apprentice other than that I tried out some Hotel Mario which isnt as bad as I thought it would be and I also tried Mega Maze which starts off kinda dull but quickly becomes quite tough and Dimos Quest which seems like itll be decent if I can get use to the floaty feel of the controls.

 

3DO -

D&D Slayer - 15min

 

CDi -

Atlantis - 210min

Dimos Quest - 10min

Hotel Mario - 35min

Mega Maze - 26min

The Apprentice - 255min

[zylon]

C64-

 

Satan's Hollow- 20min

Avenger- 15min

[agb]

Times for the week, All Atari 2600:

 

For the 2018 Activision Patch challenge organized by Toilet Tunes:

 

Beam Rider 47 minutes - No Patch

Chopper Command 13 minutes - Earned patch

Enduro 21 minutes - No Patch

Freeway 20 Minutes - Patch earned

Kaboom 36 Minutes- No Patch

Laser Blast 30 minutes - Earned Patch

Seaquest 11 minutes - Earned Patch

 

For the High Score Club - 2nd round of playoffs:

River Raid 2 - 35 minutes. I lost badly.

 

Solar Fox - 140 minutes

 

Kaboom score 902 .

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

Genesis:

The Killing Game Show - 369 min.

PlayStation:

Davis Cup Complete Tennis - 2 min.

Egypt 1156 B.C.: Tomb Of The Pharaoh - 1 min.

Hyper Final Match Tennis - 3 min.

Missland - 5 min.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a pretty eventful week around here this past week with the acquisition of what should be the last new console additions to our retro gaming center for the foreseeable future, and a few new games to go with them.

 

 

 

Ineligible

StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 9 minutes

 

NES

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse - 525 minutes

Duck Hunt - 36 minutes

Rad Racer - 57 minutes

Super Mario Bros. - 43 minutes

 

Sega Genesis

Ecco the Dolphin - 243 minutes

Mortal Kombat - 65 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

978 minutes (16 hours 18 minutes) [969 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

NES: 661 minutes

Sega Genesis: 308 minutes

Nintendo 3DS: 9 minutes

 

 

 

On Monday last week I went out console shopping with a nice little wad of cash saved up from the sale of our Sega CD and 32X systems, intent on trying to find a really nice condition original toaster model NES and a Model 1 "High Definition Graphics" Sega Genesis with a VA6 board in it, since I had read from several sources that the VA6 High Def Model 1 Genesis had the best quality composite video output of any Sega Genesis system. Those were the last two game consoles I had growing up that were missing from our retro gaming center, and lo and behold I found exactly what I was looking for at a local game store out in the Saint Paul suburbs!

 

The store owner was nice enough to toss in a beautiful condition gray Zapper and a copy of Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt for free with the NES (which they had just installed a brand new 72 pin connector in as well as put all new d-pad and button contacts in the controller for it) and my choice of any $10 or less game with the Genesis. I ended up going with Ecco the Dolphin for the Genesis since I remembered how much the misses liked the Sega CD version, and it ended up being a good pick as she spent much of the week playing and enjoying it. I also picked her up a Retro-Bit Power Stick for the NES, which worked pretty okay out of the box but was just awesome once I upgraded it with a real Sanwa JLF joystick and octagon gate. She put the NES controller to good use playing a few hours of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse over the weekend and liked it a lot, though we do still need upgrade the buttons in her new NES controller to really get the most out of it.

 

For my gaming time this past week I was really focused on playing through and beating Castlevania III, which I lucked out and found locally along with Rad Racer when I was doing my NES shopping, and after a great deal of practice (and no small amount of frustration) I ended up doing just that on Thursday. Once Castlevania III was beaten I spent the rest of the week just bouncing between games here and there. I played some Rad Racer and was surprised to find that I liked it way more than OutRun for the Master System, which I was always under the impression was the superior game, then logged a little time in Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I was really thrilled to find that the Zapper light gun I got with the NES shot pixel perfect accurate on our CRT gaming TV, since finding a properly working Zapper isn't the easiest of tasks these days, but the one that came with the NES works flawlessly and looks just as nice as it functions.

 

I did spend a little time with the new Sega Genesis as well, testing it out with one of my favorite Genesis games: The original Mortal Kombat. I was immediately struck but how incredibly clean the composite video signal looked compared to our old VA3 Model 2 Genesis, it was really a night and day difference. Text that used to be blurry and unreadable now looks super sharp and clean, and the colors of everything are all bright and vivid instead of looking muddy and over saturated like the used to. The sound quality is just fantastic too, and I love the look of the system since the Sega Genesis I had growing up was a High Def Model 1.

 

All in all it was a pretty wonderful week for gaming around here, and I'm beyond thrilled to finally have our retro gaming center set up with every console that's had a special place in my heart over the years. It took me about 4 years but I finally narrowed down my console selection to just the six systems that I had growing up and as a young adult (Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, PlayStation, GameCube w/ Game Boy Player, and Nintendo Wii), and I couldn't be happier about it. Looking ahead to next week I think I'm going to be picking up a few more NES games to play, so expect to see some more NES time from us, and I'm guessing the misses is probably going to get back to Rayman 2 on the PlayStation at some point if she hasn't been completely sidetracked by the allure of the new Genesis and Ecco the Dolphin. She did get a good $230 worth of new PlayStation games for her birthday this past week but all she wanted to play was Ecco the Dolphin, go figure.

 

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

Edited August 6, 2018 by Jin

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 195 minutes

Seawolf - 43 minutes

 

 

 

Kaboom! : 89,966

 

 

[Atarian7]

What happened to this past week's times?

[+thegoldenband]

What happened? 9-hour work days with a 90-minute commute each way, cars that won't pass inspection despite repeated attempts, and a laptop whose keys don't work half the time -- to name a few things that have interfered. But hey, at least they're here now! So:

 

Here's the summary for Week 31, running from July 30 - August 5. We logged 2877 minutes of eligible play, playing 47 games on a total of 11 systems.

Top 10:

1. Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES/Famicom) - 525

2. Killing Game Show, The (JPN) (Genesis) - 369

3. Apprentice, The (Philips CD-i) - 255

4. Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis) - 243

5. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 231

6. Atlantis: The Last Resort (Philips CD-i) - 210

7. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 140

7. Dark Chambers (Atari 8-bit) - 140

9. Mortal Kombat (Genesis) - 65

10. Rad Racer (NES/Famicom) - 57

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Kaboom (Atari 2600) - 231

2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 140

2. Dark Chambers (Atari 8-bit) - 140

4. Beamrider (Atari 2600) - 47

4. King Kong (Atari 2600) - 47

6. Seawolf (Atari 2600) - 43

7. River Raid II (Atari 2600) - 35

8. Laser Blast (Atari 2600) - 30

9. Freeway (Atari 2600) - 24

10. Chambers of Zorp (Atari 8-bit) - 23

Top 10 systems:

1. NES/Famicom (696)

2. Genesis (677)

3. Atari 2600 (671)

4. Philips CD-i (536)

5. Atari 8-bit (163)

6. C64 (35)

7. Sega Master System (31)

8. Commodore PET (22)

9. Epoch Super Cassette Vision (20)

10. 3DO (15)

Kaboom takes the top pre-NES spot, but a tight three-way race between the NES, Genesis, and Atari turns in favor of the NES, led by Castlevania III as our #1 game this week.

Finally, the Genesis port of Mortal Kombat says "Get over here!" to the 1000-minute club and harpoons the 335th spot with 1028 minutes logged to date. Since the last new entry in the 1000-minute club was Mario Kart 64, I guess we've got a pair of MKs sitting next to each other.

[Iwantgames:)]

No times for me this week and most likely none this weekend either. 17hr shifts this week have me wiped out :/

[Atarian7]

Sorry you had so much trouble.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Sorry you've had such a craptacular week goldenband, but thank you for crunching the numbers and getting the stats up anyway even though you've been way overworked and overstressed. You're a champ!

[+thegoldenband]

Thanks, y'all. The work itself was good, just draining, and left me with no free time midweek. I'm the type of person who almost never passes out as soon as he hits the pillow, but I came close the other night. And the car stuff will work itself out; as for the laptop keyboard, well, we'll see...

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Chambers of Zorp - 15 min.
Dark Chambers - 40 min.

VIC-20:
Panic Stations - 8 min.

Yep, that's about it. Some HSC and that I digged up an old VIC-20 game possibly not archived online.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (August 6th through 12th)...

 

sorry, again I didn't play any games this week. Summer's still there, and I've been going swimming with my father nearly every day. The mornings were taken up with organizing the inheritance of my mother's estate, so there was no time left for gaming. In fact I plan to continue this trend over the next weeks. I've been off work for this week and the two before it, but from next week on I've got to work again, and summer's still there, and I still haven't completed the inheritance. Moreover, I actually had other plans for this summer holiday which didn't play out at all due to the extended swimming sessions... I planned to sort my papers and to backup my data, and also to release the next version of my CD+G authoring tool ClearSwipe which is in fact ready for beta testing but still needs an overhaul of the manual before I can send it to beta testers. In fact, these points have already been planned for my Easter holiday, but that has been completely gobbled up by the death of my mother and organizing her funeral and death mass. So I guess I'll have to squeeze these project into normal work weeks now...

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asterix - 80 minutes

Missile Command - 180 minutes

The Activision Decathlon - 17 minutes

 

EVIDENCES OF THE WEEK:

 

1) Discus from Decathlon, video for 2600 NEW HSC Season 7 Silver Medal Finals. My opponent is Scrabbler15, one of the greatest veterans on this HSC.

 

2) New sessions of Missile Command on my console. This week, I played Games 27-BB and 30-BB just to have fun.

[zylon]

C64-

Eagle Empire- 20min

Pole Position II- 5min (plays terrible, about as bad as Namco Museum)

Pole Position- 25min (playable, graphically sloppy, but has more of the arcade elements than A8/5200, such as the puddles, etc.) A8/5200 still much more fun.

 

2600-

Missile Command- 45min

Dark Chambers- 35min (if this had any magic for me before, it's gone now lol )

Pole Position- 20min (this one surprised me in being more fun than even C64, despite limitations)

[agb]

Times for the week are:

For the Activision Patch Quest 2018:

Beamrider 47 minutes score of 29400+

Enduro 11 minutes. Couldnt finish day 3.

Kaboom 13 minutes. Score of 947.

 

Also Atari 2600 Solar Fox 189 minutes.

 

On my new NES Mini Gslaga 25 minutes.

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

Genesis:

The Killing Game Show - 228 min.

3DO:

BattleSport - 164 min.

Beat Easy mode on The Killing Game Show, the Japanese version of the game known as Fatal Rewind in the US. Easy mode is only available in the Japanese game, and offers infinite continues -- which I needed badly to learn the levels.

[+wongojack]

Arcade

Asteroids Deluxe 6

NBA Jam 31

NES

1942 40

Blaster Master 25

Contra 2

Gun Nac 57

High Speed 6

Journey to Silius 8

Ninja Gaiden 4

SMB2 13

Super Pinball 19

[karokoenig]

No classic games for me again this week. Some playtime will come up soon - that is if the hardware I bought off ebay actually works. Got myself a Saba Videoplay (Fairchild Channel F for you folks across the pond) and some games. One cartridge already arrived, and I got to say I love the clunky feel of this beast.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

It was a pretty busy week for gaming around here this past week, with a ton of NES time logged for my part and the misses completing her play through of Ecco the Dolphin on the Genesis.

 

Ineligible
StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 7 minutes

NES
Hogan's Alley - 85 minutes
Operation Wolf - 37 minutes
Rad Racer - 30 minutes
Super Mario Bros. - 27 minutes
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - 907 minutes

Sega Genesis
Ecco the Dolphin - 556 minutes


Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,649 minutes (27 hours 29 minutes) [1,642 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
NES: 1,086 minutes
Sega Genesis: 556 minutes
Nintendo 3DS: 7 minutes

 

The main game I played over the past week was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which I picked up from a local game store on Monday and had done a complete play through and beat the game by Friday. I had never beaten this game before, but as I mentioned in the linked pickup post Zelda II has always been a really special game to me since it was not only the first NES game I ever played as a kid but also the first Zelda game I had ever played. I did end up having to reference a strategy guide for the last two palaces in the game, but it was still a total blast from beginning to end and I'm really looking forward to playing through Zelda II again at some point.

The other gaming highlight of the week for me was setting a new personal best high score in one of my all time favorite light gun games, Game B of Hogan's Alley. That also happened to be a new HighScore.com world record and it felt great to have a new world record high score to submit for the first time in months. I also spent some time playing the trigger finger destroying Operation Wolf and taking turns with the misses playing Rad Racer to test out her new Retro-Bit NES Power Stick that I upgraded with a Sanwa JLF joystick, octagon gate, and Sanwa OBSF 30mm buttons this week (Jeez, it's hyperlink city around here today! )

As far as the spousal unit's gaming time for the past week went, in addition to Rad Racer she played a little Super Mario Bros. with her newly upgraded NES arcade stick then went on to spend the rest of the week focusing exclusively on trying to beat Ecco the Dolphin. She breezed through most of the game, having just played the Sega CD version a few months ago, all the way up until the final level "Welcome to the Machine". Cool name aside, I swear that level has got to be the most brutally punishing and completely unfair level I've ever seen in a video game and I don't think the misses would argue with that. She was stuck on the last level for a good 4 hours until she finally managed to beat it and put the game to rest earlier this evening. She was ecstatic when she finally beat it, but based on the previous 4 hours of constant swearing and cursing at the television I don't think she'll be playing through Ecco the Dolphin again any time soon.

Looking ahead to next week I'm not sure what exactly I'll be playing. I don't have anything new on my "to play" list at the moment nor will I have any spare cash to go buy new games with until one of my items in the AtariAge Marketplace sells, but I have been thinking about doing another play through of Castlevania III on the NES with a different character secondary character than Sypha for the second go around. Now that the wife has finished Ecco the Dolphin she's planning on starting in on some of the PlayStation games she got for her birthday a couple weeks ago, though I wouldn't be surprised if she dabbles around on the NES a bit to spend some time using her new arcade stick.

Well, I think that about covers everything for this week! Until next time, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Jin

[digdugnate]

i've had a rough go of it at the house being laid up, but sneaking in my times at the buzzer. Vice Project: Doom was a lot of fun to play through again!

 

NES:

 

Kirby's Adventure -- 183 minutes

Mega Man 2 -- 147 minutes

Mega Man 3 -- 60 minutes

Mega Man 5 -- 20 minutes

Dr Mario -- 30 minutes

StarTropics -- 30 minutes

Tetris (Nintendo) -- 132 minutes

Super Mario Bros -- 16 minutes

Super Mario Bros 2 -- 27 minutes

Super Mario Bros 3 -- 148 minutes

Balloon Fighter -- 72 minutes

Legend of Zelda -- 219 minutes

Legend of Zelda 2 -- 73 minutes

Vice Project: Doom -- 121 minutes

 

SNES:

 

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest -- 398 minutes

Jaki Crush -- 23 minutes

Puzzle Bobble -- 20 minutes

True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club -- 18 minutes

[Atarian7]

Atari 2600

Kaboom! - 400 minutes

Hunchy 2 - 26 minutes

Pac-man (DINTAR816 8K) - 8 minutes

 

 

Kaboom! : 147,980

Edited August 13, 2018 by Atarian7

[Eltigro]

Popping in this week later than usual...

 

Master System

Enduro Racer - 60 min (Played this one for quite a while. Found some spots where I could pretty much just ride to the finish line. Pretty fun game once you get the hang of it. I almost finished the 10th level... ran out of time in site of the finish line.)

Shinobi - 14 min (This plays so much better with the Genesis pad. My SMS controller isn't responding like it should. I probably would have gotten the other one out of the drawer and used it, but the Genesis one was right there so I figured, why not. Anyway, I've never really played this enough to get good at it. I did get to the third stage, though... which I think is farther than I've gotten before... )

 

Playstation

Castlevania SotN - 321 min (My game time says 6 hours and 21 minutes, but I think I had already put an hour into it before I picked it back up this week. Anyway, when I started, I had just beaten the first boss (Slogra and Gaibon) and now I've got most of the first castle explored. There are still a couple places I haven't been, but I've been having fun. I have taken a little time here and there to grind a level or two when I found some easily defeated and exp rich enemies. I don't have this game memorized and haven't been using a guide, so discovering things by exploring and backtracking once I get a new ability. Playing this on my PSP. It's one of those Playstation for the PSP games or whatever... has all the cutscenes it appears, unlike the XBox 360 version which cut them out for size considerations.)

[Opry99er]

If it's not too late:

 

These are combined times, as I've had dodgy internet and a ton of family in town, so have been unable to post the last few weeks.

 

 

NES:

 

Blades of Steel (30 minutes)

Faxanadu (210 minutes)

SMB (20 minutes)

SMB2 (40 minutes)

 

 

 

N64:

 

Knockout Kings 2000 (180 minutes)

Mario Kart 64 (360 minutes)

Pokémon Snap (40 minutes)

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Alpiner (30 minutes)

MunchMan (20 minutes)

Parsec (20 minutes)