5200 HSC Season 12 Round 15 - Buck Rogers

[+Cafeman]

179,913. 

[eegt97]

289406

 

[Cobra Kai]

Okay we got a shoot out now.

[eegt97]

So on my run I timed out on Level 2.... twice.  Then finished Level 2 and 3 before losing out on 4.  There is a strategy there where you if you have enough lives you can gain extra points for timeouts

 

Pretty sure you could just continuously timeout on Level 0 and get 20k on each run to make up for the lost life.  Obviously not in the spirit of the HSC but I thought I would mention that, seems like a flaw in the game.  Not sure if we need some bounds for that (or just not allow runs with timeouts to count?) or if it is just don't exploit it on purpose.

 

[Cobra Kai]

266,610

 

[Cobra Kai]

1 minute ago, eegt97 said:

So on my run I timed out on Level 2.... twice.  Then finished Level 2 and 3 before losing out on 4.  There is a strategy there where you if you have enough lives you can gain extra points for timeouts

 

Pretty sure you could just continuously timeout on Level 0 and get 20k on each run to make up for the lost life.  Obviously not in the spirit of the HSC but I thought I would mention that, seems like a flaw in the game.  Not sure if we need some bounds for that (or just not allow runs with timeouts to count?) or if it is just don't exploit it on purpose.

Yeah I thought of that too. It seems like you could cruise through the stages and just make sure you don't kill the boss and start over. But, you score tons of points on level 5 (4.0+). I can beat your score on a straight playthrough if I can beat 4.3, but I keep getting smashed right there. 4.3 is really hard.

1 minute ago, eegt97 said:

 

 

[eegt97]

 

54 minutes ago, Nuclear Pacman said:

Yeah I thought of that too. It seems like you could cruise through the stages and just make sure you don't kill the boss and start over. But, you score tons of points on level 5 (4.0+). I can beat your score on a straight playthrough if I can beat 4.3, but I keep getting smashed right there. 4.3 is really hard.

 

Gotcha, I'm getting to 4.1 in terms of gameplay, so I will try and catch up and with straight playthrough hopefully.  Not sure why I run out on 2.3 sometimes, the others I don't have have an issue with.

[+DamonicFury]

3 hours ago, eegt97 said:

So on my run I timed out on Level 2.... twice.  Then finished Level 2 and 3 before losing out on 4.  There is a strategy there where you if you have enough lives you can gain extra points for timeouts

 

Pretty sure you could just continuously timeout on Level 0 and get 20k on each run to make up for the lost life.  Obviously not in the spirit of the HSC but I thought I would mention that, seems like a flaw in the game.  Not sure if we need some bounds for that (or just not allow runs with timeouts to count?) or if it is just don't exploit it on purpose.

 

You are absolutely correct about this being a flaw in this particular game. I reported this finding to zylon five years ago and she made a ruling on this we’ll use again here:

 

 

“ATTN: No score pumping by purposely missing the mothership. This enables a player to reach high scores without advancing far into the difficulty levels. The occasional miss will happen, but don't overdo it guys.”

[Cobra Kai]

8 hours ago, eegt97 said:

 

Gotcha, I'm getting to 4.1 in terms of gameplay, so I will try and catch up and with straight playthrough hopefully.  Not sure why I run out on 2.3 sometimes, the others I don't have have an issue with.

I found that on the early levels, 0.1 through 2.3, you need to throttle up somewhat to be able to have enough fuel to finish. This is because the flying saucers aren't as numerous, and the pylons aren't as frequent either. So, it takes a bit more time to reach quotas. 3.0+ has enough enemies and pylons that usually you have enough fuel without speeding up too much.

 

Once again, while a fun game, this has some really bad design flaws, probably due to inexperienced game design. For instance, the throttle up/down. You actually score  fewer points when you speed up! How screwed up is that? Also, how hard would it have been to give you bonus points  for your remaining fuel after defeating the mother ship? Lots of Activision games gave fuel/time bonuses.

[jblenkle]

Excuse me for asking here, but as I was playing Buck Rogers on Altirra, I thought I'd give it a shot.

 

I just had to do a total re-install of Windows XP on my computer and when I installed Altirra back on and tried to play Buck Rogers I found I am not getting any sound output.

 

As I am basically starting from scratch, does Altirra require anything else to be installed that might be causing the no sound issue?

[Cobra Kai]

312,265

Well, this was a straight playthrough, never ran out of fuel. 4.3 was really tough, but I beat it with tons of guys left. The game just repeats world 4.0+ from there. I tried to pause the game and hit RESET instead, so I had plenty of score left in the tank. I think I have this one licked.

[eegt97]

Great score!  I'm still in the game, have been to 4.3 now with a best straight play (no misses) of 271322.  Though if I do make it past, I'm sure I won't have "tons of guys left".  That is for sure

 

 

[eegt97]

334268.   Straight up, no misses, made it to 4.2 on the second go around before biting the dust.  Probably about as good as it gets for me, just glad I made it through all 5 levels without a fuel timeout.

 

 

[Cobra Kai]

Great score there. I think what kills me the most are the cheap hits from that bouncing robot. Sometimes it will fire right as you start a fresh life, and you don't have any opportunity to avoid the shot. That has happened to me so many times!

[eegt97]

Yep, that's exactly the thing I hate the most, when they get a 2 for 1 on you.  Sometimes even a 3 for 1. 

 

I really have to be disciplined on the first three levels, minimize losses on the forth, and have a bunch saved up for the fifth level.  Because I go through them pretty quickly on the last one, its crazy tough for me.

[Cobra Kai]

Good game. I tried but couldn't reproduce a high score run like I had before. I realized that there's quite a bit of luck in this game. Sometimes you can get fortunate where the pylons are on the opposite side of where the bouncy robots are spawning and avoid all his shots. That's pretty much what kills me the most, are his hard to avoid shots.

 

There are random elements to the gameplay as well, making it hard to duplicate scoring runs. The pylons are randomly placed. Also, on boss levels, you can get a run of unlucky flying saucer spawns where they go off the screen and you can't even shoot them, draining your fuel down without making any progress. Ah well, I have a new respect for this game after this round. I find it actually quite fun, where I never played on the 5200 really, other than to check if the cartridge worked when I bought it.

[eegt97]

Yeah, I thought for sure you were going to beat that score.  I tried a few more rounds, but never made it past 4.3 again.  It really is a fun game, it's too bad about the scoring system.  I went and read the manual, it was funny to read where one of the hints was to finish faster for more points.  

[jblenkle]

Buck Rogers - 251,745

[+DamonicFury]

13 minutes ago, jblenkle said:

Buck Rogers - 251,745

Very sorry, but that came in a bit late. (Wouldn’t have changed the standings though.)

[+DamonicFury]

Congratulations to eegt97 for smashing the most saucers and mangling the most Mother Ships!  

 

Keystone Kapers coming up next. 

 

Final standings:

eegt97 - 334,268 - RECORD BREAKER +11 +1 = +12

Nuclear Pacman - 312,265 - RECORD BREAKER +10 +1 = +11

jblenkle - 225,755 +9

Cafeman - 179,913 +8

AverageSoftware - 115,385 +7

roadrunner - 73,685 +6

Mangia-Boy - 35,368 +5

[jblenkle]

3 hours ago, DamonicFury said:

Very sorry, but that came in a bit late. (Wouldn’t have changed the standings though.)

No problem...I knew the deadline was today, but wasn't paying attention to the time.