What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2019 (Season 12)

[carlsson]

Wasn't that a movie with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, the Easter Arcade?

 

 

 

In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,

You'll be the grandest player at the Easter arcade.

I'll be all in clover and when they look you over,

I'll be the proudest fellow at the Easter arcade.

Edited April 22, 2019 by carlsson

[+wongojack]

 

In the tracker, we have a single entry for "Star Wars: The Arcade Game" which I'm not sure if it refers to Star Wars (1983) or Star Wars Arcade (1993). Wongojack played "Star Wars" several times in the past few years, some others also tracked times for the same game. It could be worthwhile to determine which of the two it was.

 

Also Gauntlet Dark Legacy is listed as from year 2000. The guidelines say we include arcade games up to year 2000, while home video games are cut-off before year 2000. I think it makes sense to apply the rule in the same way and thus I'd carry over this game as an arcade game in the modern tracker.

 

IMO when people say Star Wars Arcade, they are referring to the 1983 game. You'd have to call out specifically that you were playing a later version of the game for it to be counted separately. For my part, I have never played that Sega game from 1993. Although, I would now very much like to.

 

Also, I knew about the rule of not counting arcade machines from 2000 forward, I simply forgot to check regarding Gauntlet DL. Thanks for being so diligent on these Carlsson.

[Eltigro]

Looks like some others made it to an actual arcade this week!

 

 

Yep, put some pics up in the Arcade and Pinball area... It was a pretty nice place. Got there early and pretty much had the place to myself.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Somehow I genuinely managed to forget that it was Monday today.

 

 

Ineligible

You vs. Wild (Netflix Interactive) - 16 minutes

 

Atari 2600

Gangster Alley - 61 minutes

 

Game Boy

Qix - 19 minutes

Solar Striker - 38 minutes

Tetris - 10 minutes

 

Game Boy Color

Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 7 minutes

 

PlayStation

Doom - 76 minutes

 

Sega Genesis

Castlevania: Bloodlines - 90 minutes

NBA Jam: Tournament Edition - 15 minutes

Mortal Kombat II - 75 minutes

Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi - 121 minutes

Tanglewood - 361 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week

889 minutes (14 hours 49 minutes) [873 minutes eligible]

 

Individual System Play Times This Week

Sega Genesis: 662 minutes

PlayStation: 76 minutes

Game Boy: 67 minutes

Atari 2600: 61 minutes

Netflix Interactive: 16 minutes

Game Boy Color: 7 minutes

[carlsson]

Here's the summary for Week 16, running from April 15 - 21. We logged 4596 minutes of eligible play, playing 100 games on a total of 16 systems.

Top 10:

1. Tanglewood (Genesis) - 361 min.
2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 247 min.
3. PGA Tour Golf (Mac OS Classic) - 240 min.
4. Blasto (TI-99/4A) - 212 min.
5. Age of Empires 2 (Mac OS Classic) - 210 min.
6. Splash [1992] (Arcade) - 208 min.
7. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 175 min.
8. Eggomania (Atari 2600) - 173 min.
9. Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (Arcade) - 157 min.
10. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 155 min.

Pre-NES top 10:

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 247 min.
2. Blasto (TI-99/4A) - 212 min.
3. Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 175 min.
4. Eggomania (Atari 2600) - 173 min.
5. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 155 min.
6. Spectar (Arcade) - 118 min.
7. Pole Position (Atari 5200) - 100 min.
8. Beamrider (Atari 2600) - 95 min.
9. Tales of the Arabian Nights (C64) - 89 min.
10. Arabian (Arcade) - 79 min.

Top 10 systems:

1. Atari 2600 (1072)
2. Arcade (995)
3. Genesis (727)
4. Mac OS Classic (570)
5. TI-99/4A (242)
6. TG-16/PC Engine (225)
7. NES/Famicom (174)
8. C64 (120)
9. Atari 5200 (100)
10. TG-CD/PC Engine CD (95)

As already noted, it was a strong arcade gaming week with both original and emulation over the range of at least 20 years worth of arcade games. However the 2600 just barely beats it as the most played system of the week, in particular thanks to a few strong games like Solar Fox, Asteroids, Eggomania, Beamrider and of course Kaboom! which three people played this past week.

 

The main list is topped by Tanglewood, a homebrew Genesis game released in August 2018 and by now has reached a total of 1215 minutes of playing which renders it member #369 on the 1000 Minute Club.

 

But wait! There's more! Yes, Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition (Game Boy Color) reaches 1004 minutes and becomes our #370 on the same club.

 

But wait! There's more! Yes, Solar Fox (Atari 2600) just crawled past The Lawnmower Man (SNES) by a margin of 8 minutes (14738 vs 14730) and now is our second most played game ever. I suppose that is fitting that the top two games are for the Atari 2600 since that is kind of the mother console for the entire forum.

[Agamon]

Burgertime! That was another one I played at the arcade. Only about 5 min though. I could've sworn I used the pepper! Stupid egg.

 

Hit box in that game is a bit larger than I'm used to, for sure. Trying to time it to hit as many enemies as possible usually ends up with me dying because they got too close...

[+wongojack]

Solar Fox 247 mins. High score of 5,607,110.

 

 

 

 

 

But wait! There's more! Yes, Solar Fox (Atari 2600) just crawled past The Lawnmower Man (SNES) by a margin of 8 minutes (14738 vs 14730) and now is our second most played game ever. I suppose that is fitting that the top two games are for the Atari 2600 since that is kind of the mother console for the entire forum.

 

 

agb, did we ever get your story (not that you need one) regarding Solar Fox? Is it your favorite game from childhood? Are you going for a specific score value?

[agb]

 

 

 

 

agb, did we ever get your story (not that you need one) regarding Solar Fox? Is it your favorite game from childhood? Are you going for a specific score value?

I started playing Solar Fox back in 1984 at the age of 23. My sister gave it to me when she was changing apartments. I found it interesting enough and challenging enough to play it a lot. I played the game 3-4 times a week because it relaxed me a lot but was still challenging. I stopped playing atari from 1994-2001 and started again. For a few years I mostly only played this game. Since I started playing again, I play solar fox 4-5 times a week just to relax. The reason I stop at 5.5-5.6 million point is because when you complete rack 256 it goes to rack 0 which is a really neat looking rack. You cannot advance when you go to rack 0. Game ends. Sometimes when I want a higher score, at rack 255 I will skip a rac and it will go to rack 1 but your points remain. When I do that, then I will go up to 7-8 million. I can play indefinitely but I will get bored at 8 mil. I would not say this is my favorite game but it helps me to relax and that is why I play it a lot. My favorites are probably Breakout and Super Breakout.

[carlsson]

Year by year breakdown of logged times on Solar Fox:

 

2008: 115 min

2009: 190 min

2010: 0 min

2011: 3 min

2012: 0 min

2013: 138 min

2014: 15 min

2015: 7 min

2016: 0 min

2017: 2865 min

2018: 8504 min

2019: 2901 min (so far)

 

I also traversed through all seasons back to the beginning to see how many contributed:

 

agb 14212 (96.4%)

karokoenig 126

tremoloman2006 120

Mirage 60

oyamafamily 54

midnight magicman 40

Skylark68 25

Ripdubski 15

sandmountainslim 15

VectorGamer 15

littleman jack 15

cvga 10

shadow460 10

Agamon 8

thegoldenband 3

unknown/error 10

Since some of those times were estimates, I suppose an error margin of 0.07% is fine.

[Opry99er]

Won't be getting any gaming time in tomorrow most likely.

 

 

TI-99/4A:

 

Blackjack and Poker (30 minutes)

Blasto (30 minutes)

Riding for the Brand (45 minutes)

The Search for Bigfoot (30 minutes)

Wizard's Doom (20 minutes)

Yahtzee (40 minutes)

 

 

Classic Macintosh:

 

Age of Empires II (90 minutes)

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (120 minutes)

Oregon Trail (35 minutes)

 

 

Atari 2600:

 

E.T. (20 minutes)

Enduro (15 minutes)

Outlaw (20 minutes)

[+cvga]

First time in over a month that I've been able to play anything (not on my phone)

 

Atari 7800:

 

Rikki & Vikki - 25 minutes (what a great game!)

 

 

TI-99/4A

 

TI Invaders - 10 minutes

Munch Man - 5 minutes

Dragon's Lair - 30 minutes (wow!)

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:

International Karate [2014 Enhanced Edition] - 146 min.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Sorry, I didn't play any modern games this week.

[carlsson]

Sorry, I didn't play any modern games this week.

You mixed up the two threads, but I'll include your post here:

 

Here are my times for this past week (April 22st through 28th, 2019)...

 

Atari 2600:

Fix-it Felix Sr - 4 min.

Heartbreak - 13 min.

Sheep it up - 4 min. in 2 sessions

 

Atari 7800:

T:me Blasto - 39 min.

 

Commodore 64:

Crossfire (Sierra) - 15 min. in 2 sessions

Super Mario Bros - 5 min.

 

This week I tried the new C-64 version of Super Mario Bros. which is already a bit hard to find because Nintendo went after the main sites distiruting it (why did I expect this to happen?), and then while I was at it, I also played some Crossfire (by Sierra, there's another Crossfire by a different company with completely different game mechanics), and after that I retried the Atari 7800 game T:me Blasto which Crossfire is based on because I picked up a new strategy for both games which consists of mainly staying still and only waiting for enemies getting into your lane, anticipating their entry and shooting them before they are able to shoot you. This worked better than my previous more aggressive strategy and lead to me finally making the 4th level of Blasto in order to reach the 2nd challenging stage which has got the enemies running in a different, more complex pattern than in the first challenging stage.

 

Othere than that, I tried 3 Atari 2600 homebrews I hadn't tried before. Fix-it Felix Sr. seems to be a decent conversion although I don't remember the oroginal gameplay too well anymore. In "Heartbreak" you have a heart in the center which constantly changes color and tries to hit the blocks surrounding it with a ball going into a ranbom direction, by rotating the blocks so that the ball is able to hit the coprrect ones. Then there's sheep it up where you try to throw up sheep from platform to platform by throwing your sheep at the right moment in order to catch the next platform.

 

Ah yes, someone tried to tell something pretty confusing about something, but I can't remember what it was.. maybe it was only a dream though.

On the Atari 7800, would that be T:me Salvo or is T:me Blasto a sequel? I didn't find any info online.

[+thegoldenband]

No gameplay for me this week, alas!

[digdugnate]

hardly any Classic time this week.

 

TI 99-4/A:

 

Blasto -- 30 minutes

Caveman -- 30 minutes

[Eltigro]

Only a few games for me this week...

 

TurboGrafx-16

Blazing Lazers - 63 min (I've beaten this before, but it was by cheating. This time, no cheating, and no continues. I couldn't believe what a great run I had. Anyway, was down to 3 ships left on the last boss and no powerups... I was sure those last three ships were going to go fast because the previous three or four had gone fast. But then the boss died. Got the bonus points for killing the boss and 50 lives for some reason and credits rolled. Looked on the How Long to Beat website to see what it said. Fastest was 55 minutes... Okay... some people beat the bosses faster... makes sense. But longest was like three and a half hours. WHAT WERE THEY DOING? lol)

Bonk's Revenge - 47 min (I've beaten Bonk's Adventure several times before, but not this one. I don't know if it's actually harder or if I'm just less familiar with it. Played until I got a game over, which was on the third level boss.)

R-Type - 150 min (Playing a lot of this lately. Got a lot better at the third level and got past it several times this week. I actually got to the boss of level 4 once, too. First time ever for that. I think playing this so much is what helped me on my Blazing Lazers run, actually. Dunno. Anyway, will probably play more this next week, we'll see.)

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Asteroids - 110 minutes

Boxing (for HSC) - 30 minutes

I played Boxing for 2600 NEW HSC Season 8 - Round 2 of Silver Medal Tournament (Boxing is NOT one of my favorite games). My best score is KO-88 (88 points scored by the computer), but it is not enough to beat my opponent Novastar (KO-78). I conceded the victory officially to Novastar and I will compete therefore on the Losers Paper Medal Tournament.

 

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection - 65 minutes (just for fun)

[zylon]

5200-

 

Pole Position- 40min

[agb]

Times for the week are

All Atari 2600:

Asteroids 54 mins. Level 3AA. HS of 127,820

Barnstorming 16 mins.

Beamrider 16 mins.

Eggomania 105 mins. HS of 62,474

Kaboom 12 mins. My all time high score of 5,344.

Solar Fox. 167 mins. Scored over 3 mil once.

 

Enjoyed the Asteroids for the first time in a while. My first game ever back in early 80s.

[karokoenig]

Seems to become a slow week on the tracker, and I am no exception. No gameplay logged this week for me. I was crazy busy in real life.

 

In the coming week, there will be times logged for me. Either from the Bronze Medal tournament or from the Losers' round :-).

[DragonGrafx-16]

Titan (PC-Engine/TG-16) 5 mins - Interesting game would be better if it did not have the 4 second music loop through the entire game...
Star Parodier (PC-Engine CD/TG CD) 38 mins
Ai Chou Aniki (PC-Engine CD/TG CD) 10 mins - This is the strangest shmup I have ever played... wait make that weirdest game I've ever played. No wonder this one never left Japan lol
Summer Carnival '92 - Azladick (PC-Engine CD/TG CD) 20 mins - I really liked this game minus the fact that it's only really a time attack mode... was there ever a full game or at least one that used the same engine?
Overrride (PC-Engine/TG-16) 45 mins
Super Star Soldier (PC-Engine/TG-16) 65 mins (trying to get past Stage 2 which is a pain in the ass because you NEED your powerups from stage one. Might as well restart the game if you die)
Bomberman '93 (PC-Engine/TG-16) 52 mins Apparently Pac-Man is in this game as an enemey (along with some ghosts) and of course you blow him up. lol
V-V (Grind Stormer played with the V-V option) (Genesis) 25 mins I seem to prefer V-V over Grind Stormer.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Titan (PC-Engine/TG-16) 5 mins - Interesting game would be better if it did not have the 4 second music loop through the entire game...

Star Parodier (PC-Engine CD/TG CD) 38 mins

Ai Chou Aniki (PC-Engine CD/TG CD) 10 mins - This is the strangest shmup I have ever played... wait make that weirdest game I've ever played. No wonder this one never left Japan lol

Summer Carnival '92 - Azladick (PC-Engine CD/TG CD) 20 mins - I really liked this game minus the fact that it's only really a time attack mode... was there ever a full game or at least one that used the same engine?

Overrride (PC-Engine/TG-16) 45 mins

Super Star Soldier (PC-Engine/TG-16) 65 mins (trying to get past Stage 2 which is a pain in the ass because you NEED your powerups from stage one. Might as well restart the game if you die)

Bomberman '93 (PC-Engine/TG-16) 52 mins Apparently Pac-Man is in this game as an enemey (along with some ghosts) and of course you blow him up. lol

V-V (Grind Stormer played with the V-V option) (Genesis) 25 mins I seem to prefer V-V over Grind Stormer.

Override not Overrride... I really feel that us freeloaders should at least get 2 hours to edit a post lol...

[+wongojack]

Odyssey 2 / Videopac

Flashpoint 9

Freedom Fighters 43 (personal best 155)

JG Munchkin (Timelord hack) 66

KC's Krazy Chase 26

KC Pacman (Munchkin hack) 10

KC Pacvid (Munchkin hack) 23

Killer Bees 29

Midspace (wip) 4

Mr Roboto 14

Pinball 2

Pong 15

Route 66 40

Sid the Spellbinder 4

Smithereens 3

Stone Sling 6

Turtles 81 (personal best 8740)

UFO 57 (personal best 108)

 

It was all Magnavox gaming for me in the classic tracker this week. Some of these games I'd never played before, so it is easy to get a personal bast - LOL.

 

The O2 is pretty amazing in some ways. For instance, I don't know if there is a more fun game that fits into 2k than UFO. It is so simple and so good at the same time, and there are so many experiences like that on the console. I also think that it is pretty amazing that they stumbled their way into having a de-facto mascot in KC Munchkin. If Magnavox had kept making games maybe they would have had a jump on the whole console mascot thing.

[Agamon]

SNES

 

Aerobiz Supersonic (257min)

 

This is one of the few classic Koei games I haven't tried (this one, or the original Aerobiz), so thought I'd give it a try. Pretty interesting airline business sim.