What have you ACTUALLY played tracker - Modern Edition (2021)

[Agamon]

PC

DEATHLOOP (467 min)

Hero Realms (198 min)

Fire Pro Wrestling World (185 min)

Magic the Gathering Arena (723 min)

 

OQ

Beat Saber (277 min)

 

Same list of games from last week, but the game time is higher. Was too tired to game much during the week, but a long weekend helped out. Finished up DL yesterday. Odd ending, looks like Arkane might be planning a sequel. Played Fire Pro online with my brother. He usually owns me on games where timing is important, but he was pretty frustrated to not be able to win a single match all evening. MtG seems to be eating up more and more minutes every week. I didn't think I'd still be playing, but I'm enjoying trying out different decks.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Jeez, my gaming time is really down this summer/fall compared to previous years! I'd usually be logging 20 or 30 hours a week of gaming this time of year, but this year I've been so preoccupied with playing Nerf and modding Nerf blasters, tarantula keeping, and socializing with friends that it feels like I've hardly had time for gaming at all. 

 

I did manage to log a bit of classic Doom time on the Switch again this week, but I'm definitely looking forward to life slowing down when the cold weather sets in so I can have a little more time for gaming. The Atari 2600 HSC starting up again in November is something I'm really looking forward to as well, though I gotta figure out the best way to play Atari 2600 games on a modern HDTV since my trusty old CRT will be finding a new home soon to make room for shelving to house tarantula enclosures. Any suggestions?

 

For now though, here's my gaming time log for the week:

 

 

Nintendo Switch
Doom [Classic]: No End in Sight - 265 minutes
 

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by Skippy B. Coyote

[Steven Pendleton]

5 hours ago, Cafeman said:

Oops, its not called JP evo! I just bought Jurassic World Evolution about a month or two back. I have no idea why I didn't earlier because I find it a lot of fun, and I'm usually not into park or city builder games. I got 5 stars on all the islands up to Isla Sorna, then went back and revisited some islands to complete some missions. I think it is Tacano where I've been at for the past week. I have a large paddock way off to the one side with a herd of Torosauruses, 3 raptors which don't bother these large Triceratops-like herbivores, and I keep adding big carnivores and watching the battles. Well, the Toros have killed one of every big carnivore! TRex, Allosaurus, Spinosaurus, and others. I was surprised.  I threw the Indominus Rex in there, it started to kill everything, but again to my surprise, my T Rex killed it. Yeah!   The JP music and the commentary from Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm really hit the JP feels right, and I had fun overcoming the various logistics problems. 

It's a pretty decent game. I put about 188 hours into it according to Steam. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I enjoyed the first playthrough a lot more than my 5 subsequent playthroughs. Or maybe it was 6. I kind of forgot. Anyway, I did a new playthrough every time there was an expansion. I will of course be playing the sequel when it releases in about a month.

[+Cafeman]

I need to see if my PS4 tracks hours played, I'm sure it's over 50 hours for me by now.  The first day I got it, I played 16 hours that Saturday! I never play games that long typically! Since I got it so late, I believe any patches and some DLC was already in there for me. I know the package came with  Return to JP DLC,  I will be starting that next. 

 

The sequel looks very different, being based in North America. I'll also be getting that but not immediately. 

[carlsson]

Week 40

 

Top games

 

1. Suikoden V (PS2) - 1140 min.
2. MLB The Show 21 (Xbox Series X) - 888 min. (#3)
3. Littlewood (Switch) - 840 min. (#1)
4. Magic the Gathering Arena (PC) - 723 min. (#6)
5. Zen Match (iOS) - 636 min.
6. Diablo 2: Resurrected (Xbox Series X) - 600 min. (#2)
7. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - 540 min.
8. Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection (iOS) - 497 min. (#8)
9. Metroid Dread (Switch) - 480 min.
9. Space Invaders Invincible Collection (Switch) - 480 min. (#9)
9. Tetris Effect: Connected (Switch) - 480 min.

 

Top systems

 

1. Switch - 3385 min. (#2)
2. PC - 1573 min. (#3)
3. Xbox Series X - 1488 min. (#1)
4. iOS - 1149 min. (#5)
5. PS2 - 1140 min.
6. Xbox 360 - 499 min. (#10)
7. Xbox One - 404 min. (#4)
8. PS4 - 300 min. (#6)
9. Oculus Quest - 277 min. (#7)
10. Browser based - 149 min. (#9)
 

Total 10399 minutes and 27 different games on 11 different systems, with 10 participants.

 

Neither of the top three games from last week can match Suikoden V (2006). Systems wise though, the Switch dominates with 8 different games.

 

In the all-time stats, #2 Animal Crossing: New Horizons breaks the 40K barrier with 40,073 minutes. Beat Saber is still #3 though MLB The Show 21 is only 763 minutes behind.

[TheGameCollector]

I missed the week again. For my final week of playing this game for a while, I have

 

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (2001) for PC - 612 minutes

 

I finished off the expansion pack exclusive 5th chapter and defeated Baal as the Barbarian on normal mode.

 

Now I'm trying to get my new gaming PC situation figured out before I play any more PC rpgs.

 

I got one that had a corrupted hard drive that ended up corrupting the bios due to powering on and off too much after constant BSOD during setup so I have to send it back. I ordered a different one. 

 

RetroArch is also finally much easier to install than it used to be and I like how it saves controller configurations for any controller you plug into it. I tried it on my older laptop that I used to play the Diablo games to test it out. I'm going to like using my Neo Geo AES joystick with a usb adapter for a lot of older games, especially arcade ports, but being able to switch it out with any other controller if I feel like it.

[carlsson]

Ok, I'll include that for next week, just like I added some late/early additions by Mik's Arcade over at the other thread.

[Eltigro]

Just one for me... Week of 10/10 to 10/16

 

PS2

Suikoden 5 - 328 min (Made progress, and some NPCs showed up for some characters that I thought I was too late to recruit.  So I'm now on route to the full 108 roster!)

[Steven Pendleton]

Yay, a new release of Gleylancer is here!

 

Switch
Gleylancer - 32 (estimate)

So it's Gleylancer and it's emulated, so normally I'd put it in the Mega Genesis Drive section in the other tracker, but there is a brand-new game mode here that completely changes how the game is played, so I think it's worth counting it here instead. If you want to try this game legally but don't want to pay $400+ for it, get this new release since it's like $6 or something on every system that it got released on.
Metroid Dread - 600 (estimate)

Played it twice, ending timers add up to 8 hours, 10 minutes, and 17 seconds, but I died a lot on my 0% playthrough and tested a bunch of stuff without saving, so let's just say 10 hours and call it good.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (October 11th through 17th) on modern systems:

 

Browser-based:

Taonga the Island Farm - 270 minutes in 14 sessions

 

I continued to play Taonga the Island Farm. The sessions grew longer because a new building required an ingredient I have to get from another island, so I visited all the islands which I still had a quest open for, meaning that I got some additional energy just for visiting the respective island. But it seems like by this morning I've seen them all. For the moment, I have bought all the buildings I can afford, so I have to complete some other jobs to gain funds to buy more buildings. But I haven't completed all I've bought so far yet anyway.

[+jgkspsx]

The whole of my modern gaming this week would have been

 

iOS:

 

Konami Pixel Puzzle Challenge - 580 minutes. Beat my first three bosses, including this one:

 

 

I am now 77.2% done with it and hitting diminishing returns. Most of the puzzles left are sports or high school simulators, and those ain’t my bag, man. On top of that, some puzzles are getting HIGHLY technical. My average clear time is still five minutes or so but on this puzzle (which doesn’t look like much) I spent 25 minutes alone:

 

 

I am probably going to slow it down, and I am only going to keep going while there are games I care about left.

 

Like I said, that would have been it but today I fired up the Wii and played:

 

Gamecube:

 

Super Monkey Ball - 25 minutes. Beat beginner mode again since this is a new memory card. Those credits are sadistic.

 

[digdugnate]

Nintendo Switch:
Animal Crossing: New Horizons -- 420 minutes
Axiom Verge -- 180 minutes
Littlewood -- 960 minutes
Space Invaders Invincible Collection -- 120 minutes
 

Nothing major to note here, kinda just more of the same stuff. 

I started my island over in ACNH in prep for the new stuff coming soon.    I also spent some time in Axiom Verge which I really enjoyed.

 

XBox Series X:
Back 4 Blood -- 360 minutes
Borderlands 3 -- 120 minutes
Diablo 2: Resurrected -- 960 minutes
Minecraft Dungeons -- 360 minutes

 

Some old favorites on the XBox, with the addition of Back 4 Blood.  I was also working on the Halloween stuff for Minecraft Dungeons.

 

What I've played of B4B is pretty enjoyable, but it's hamstrung somewhat by the Solo Campaign stuff being bugged (characters not unlocking, achievements not firing, etc).  I don't mind playing MP but I can't do so all the time- it'd be nice to have the Solo stuff fixed.

[StormSurge]

Xbox Series X
MLB The Show 21: 843 minutes

 

Xbox One

PUBG: 297 minutes

 

iOS

Pop! Blitz: 24 minutes

Zen Match: 632 minutes

[Agamon]

PC

Hero Realms (96 min)

HUMANKIND (872 min)

Magic the Gathering Arena (519 min)

 

OQ

Beat Saber (364 min)

 

Took just 13 hours to play a complete game of Humankind. It arbitrarily ends at 300 turns, which, in real world tech level, is the mid renaissance; I had just been able to set up my first off-starting-continent colony, and had just researched tech for musketmen. So it really feels like it ended way too early. I went with pretty much default settings, so perhaps there's a way to change that.

 

The way cultures work in the game, you start with a bronze age culture, then as you move to new ages, you pick a new appropriate-age culture (or get a point bonus and keep your old culture). Picking when to change ages is interesting, you can change when you get 7 milestones, but there are 21 potential milestones to reach and get extra fame for each one (which is game score). Changing culture earlier lets you pick from more possibilities and lets you move up into the age-appropriate tech, while sticking to the old one even after getting your 7th milestone lets you get more points.

 

So, it being my first game, I came in 3rd out of 5. I went Zhou (Ancient), Zhou (Classical), Ghanaian (Medieval), and ended with Spanish (Early Modern). Interesting take on a 4x game, I'll be coming back to it soon, but onto finally getting to Disco Elysium next.

[+wongojack]

PC

Pinball FX2 32

 

XOne

Super Time Force 35

 

Lowest time total for me in some time.  Lot's of work plus lots of fun distractions.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Finally back to more normal gaming time around here this week! After many months of sitting idle I dusted off the Atari 2600 and played a few games of Super Breakout, then the misses joined me for a couple rounds of Berzerk. On my first try at Berzerk I ended up topping my all time Game 3 high score of 9,730 with a whopping new personal best high score of 25,240!

 

After that I put a little time into the Doom add-on No End in Sight on the Switch, played a bit of Pac-Man Plus and Samurai Showdown II on the MVSX machine, then picked up the brand new Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch!

 

I spent all weekend playing Metroid Dread and I've been enjoying it a lot, though the game definitely has it's faults. The size of the game world is easily more than double that of Super Metroid so it's quite easy to get lost and not be sure where to go next sometimes, and the game is just absolutely loaded with tons of rather generic boss fights that are fairly unmemorable aside from their intensely frustrating difficulty.

 

That's not to say the boss fights are unfair, because in spite of the high difficulty level all of the bosses have attack patterns that can be memorized and once you do memorize them it's definitely possible to beat every boss without taking damage, but it often took me a dozen or more tries to get the boss patterns down. It wouldn't have been an annoyance we're there only a handful of bosses like in previous Metroid games, but there are dozens of them in Dread and only a few really stood out as cool and fun to fight; the rest just kinda felt like generic filler.

 

So, while I wouldn't say Metroid Dread is a bad game, it's certainly not the masterpiece that Super Metroid or the original Metroid Prime was. If I had to make a list of my personal favorite Metroid list I think Metroid Dread would occupy the #5 spot:

 

1. Metroid Prime (GameCube)

2. Super Metroid (Super Nintendo)

3. Metroid Prime 2 (GameCube)

4. Metroid II: Return of Samus (Game Boy)

5. Metroid Dread (Nintendo Switch)

 

All in all Metroid Dread a fun and quite lengthy game that should bring a lot of enjoyment to long time Metroid fans and new players alike, and the Alien: Isolationesque hide and seek sequences with the E.M.M.I. robots do add some new excitement to the tried and true Metroid formula, but the game world may be a bit too big for it's own good and the frequent tedious fights against lackluster bosses can cause a lot of frustration. I'd give it a solid 8/10 rating

 

 

 

Ineligible

Berzerk (Atari 2600) - 41 minutes
Pac-Man Plus (Arcade) - 10 minutes

Samurai Showdown II (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 39 minutes

Super Breakout (Atari 2600) - 31 minutes

 

Nintendo Switch
Doom (Classic): No End in Sight - 25 minutes
Metroid Dread - 870 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,016 minutes (16 hours 56 minutes) 
[895 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Nintendo Switch: 895 minutes
Atari 2600: 72 minutes
Neo Geo AES/MVS: 39 minutes
Arcade: 10 minutes

[carlsson]

Week 41

 

Top games

 

1. Metroid Dread (Switch) - 1470 min. (#9)
2. Diablo 2: Resurrected (Xbox Series X) - 960 min. (#6)
2. Littlewood (Switch) - 960 min. (#3)
4. HUMANKIND (PC) - 872 MIN.
5. MLB The Show 21 (Xbox Series X) - 843 min. (#2)
6. Zen Match (iOS) - 632 min. (#5)
7. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (2001) (PC) - 612 min.
8. Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection (iOS) - 580 min. (#8)
9. Magic the Gathering Arena (PC) - 519 min. (#4)
10. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - 420 min. (#7)
10. Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PS5) - 420 min.

 

Top systems

 

1. Switch - 3207 min. (#1)
2. Xbox Series X - 2643 min. (#3)
3. PC - 2131 min. (#2)
4. iOS - 1236 min. (#4)
5. PS5 - 420 min.
6. Oculus Quest - 364 min. (#9)
7. Xbox One - 332 min. (#7)
8. PS2 - 328 min. (#5)
9. Browser based - 270 min. (#10)
10. PS4 - 240 min. (#8)

 

Total 11196 minutes and 28 different games on 11 different systems, with 11 participants.

 

Last week, Metroid Dread and Space Invaders Invincible Collection shared #9 place. This week, the Metroid game moves straight into #1 by a margin of 8.5 hours over the next game, while Space Invaders is down to #20 outside the top list. The list also include some times posted in the other tracker, carefully balancing PS4 and PS5 games.

 

Systems wise, the Switch with 7 entries becomes the most played ahead of Xbox Series X and PC, both with 5 entries each.

[Steven Pendleton]

PS2
Sakura Taisen ~Atsuki Chishio ni~ - 687

Not Sakura Taisen's debut as a third-party game, as there are those 2 Game Boy games, but the first of several mediocre titles to be released after the death of the Dreamcast. This is a remake of the original Sakura Taisen. As a game it's fine, but as a remake of the legendary Sega classic... yeah, it kind of sucks. Unfortunately, half of the cutscenes are recycled from the Saturn, but half are completely new, leading to massive inconsistencies in the art style that just looks horrible. One or the other, Sega. There's also a new scenario here for Kohran, who doesn't have a chapter in the original version of the game for whatever reason, but the writing in her new scenario is so incredibly bad that I can't describe how terrible it is. This new scenario also tries to connect the game to Sakura Taisen 2 in a manner that is so poorly done that it actively creates massive consistency problems with Sakura Taisen 2. It has the ARMS battle system from Sakura Taisen 3, which is one of the few areas that is actually an improvement over the original version of the game. Overall I think this remake isn't bad, but it might be better to pretend that it doesn't exist and play the Dreamcast version instead.

 

Switch
Metroid Dread - 591

2.3 playthroughs complete, as I took an existing save file and used it to get 100%, and then did an additional 2 playthoughs, one of which was a hard mode 0% playthrough without the Space Jump. Final boss with no Energy Tanks on hard difficulty kills you instantly with anything, so not having the Space Jump is generally a bad idea, but it's still possible to beat the game. Still... get the Space Jump.

 

PS4
Blue Reflection TIE - 2 (estimate)

Yep, two minutes of the sequel to the 3rd most boring game I have ever played (CrazyBus and Desert Bus are 1st and 2nd, respectively). Turned it on to see if it will let me skip past the prologue, which was the demo, but nope. Turned it off. Still need to finish its prequel eventually.
Love Live! School Idol Festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai-Wai!Home Meeting!! - 200 (estimate)

[carlsson]

Android Phone:

Ingo Rondellen - 0 minutes.

 

I had 20 unused game attempts that I planned to spend, despite strong rumours that the high score list is completely rigged so nobody gets a chance to win any fuel. However when I started the game, all I got was a solid red screen and the background music. I tried to restart the app and wasted 3 attempts without getting further. I've been in touch with customer service, though I doubt they'll be able to help me.

 

Sure I've played various solitaire games etc too but as usual I don't keep track of minutes when I play those so I never count it towards the tracker.

[Kurt_Woloch]

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

 

Browser based:

Taonga: The island farm - 223 min. in 14 sessions

 

PC (Windows):

Kung Fu Bruce - 251 min. in 6 sessions

 

This week I continued to play the browser game Taonga: The island farm. By now I've completed most buildings that only need resources available on the home island, and for the next building I'd need 90000 coins which I haven't quite collected yet, so I'm fulfilling some orders again as well.

 

As a new game, I tried Kung Fu Bruce, which is somewhat of a sequel to the classic game Bruce Lee, and it says it'd mimick ZX Spectrum graphics and sound, though what it actually displays goes way beyond that. The background is tile based, and the game basically uses the Spectrum's pallette, but each tile can have more than 2 colors, and there are sprites having a different palette without any color clash. And there are some tiles which have especially rich graphics, for instance the knifes use a total of 7 or 8 colors out of the 16 allowed, but maybe 8 will do. Sprites also often have 4 forecround colors plus black and transparent. So I tried to find out what kind of system you'd really need to run this game:

The system probably would have the following features:

- ZX Spectrum color pallette (8 primary colors + their darker equivalents)

- Tile based background consisting of 40 x 25 or 40 x 24 tiles with 8x8 pixels each, each tile can have 8 different colors (it probably makes sense to define 10-20 8-color pallettes out of the 16 available colors).

- Sprites with a width of 16 pixels and a height of 24 pixels, at least 4 of them should be visible in any position, or, alternatively, 1 16x24 sprite + 8 8x8 sprites.

The same thing, of course, could also be achieved by having a 16-color bitmap in the ZX spectrum palette with software sprites and tiles drawn on it.

Anyway, this would be far more powerful than the Spectrum was. The memory requirements for this would probably be at least:

- Tile definitions: 24 bytes x 256 characters = 6K

- Tile palette definitions (tied to tiles): 256 / 2 = 128 bytes

- Screen memory: 40 x 25 = 1000 bytes

- Sprites graphics definition: 6 x 24 = 144 bytes x 4 = 576 bytes (could, however, also be part of the tile set)

- Sprite attribute blocks: 9 x 6 = 54 bytes (attributes are: vertical position (2 bytes), horizontal position, palette, size, pattern

- Pallette definitions: 8 colors per pallette out of 16 = 4 bytes per pallette x 16 pallettes = 64 bytes

In total this would be 7966 bytes, so 8 K of graphics RAM should roughly be enough, which is still a bit more than the 6.75 K the Spectrum uses. And a graphics system with 8 colors per tile and 8-color sprites in 320 pixel vertical resolution was pretty much unheard of back in the day, this would rather correspond to an Atari ST.

 

Anyway, I managed to get to Level 4 out of 5 but Level 4 seems to have some unreachable lanterns which you can't collect... or at least I haven't figured out how to collect them.

[+jgkspsx]

For me it was just:

 

iOS:

 

Konami PixelPuzzle Challenge - 371 minutes.

 

 

So mysterious.

 

 

So far the single longest puzzle, though I was falling asleep for part of this one… I have nothing against Tokimeki but I am not playing this game because of it.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Back to a more normal week for me gaming wise this week! I finished off Metroid Dread on the Switch and then decided to give Super Metroid for the SNES a playthrough, even though I had already beat it once this year. Metroid Dread was a lotta fun, but it just wasn't anywhere near the masterpiece that Super Metroid or the original Metroid Prime are so after finishing Dread I really had the itch to revisit the best that the Metroid franchise has to offer

 

 

Ineligible
Super Metroid (Super Nintendo) - 970 minutes

 

Nintendo Switch
Metroid Dread - 625 minutes

 

 

Total Video Game Play Time This Week
1,595 minutes (26 hours 35 minutes) [625 minutes eligible]

Individual System Play Times This Week
Super Nintendo: 970 minutes
Nintendo Switch: 625 minutes

[digdugnate]

Switch:
Animal Crossing: New Horizons -- 420 minutes
Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade -- 240 minutes
Darius Cozmic Collection Console -- 240 minutes
Littlewood -- 420 minutes
Sonic Mania -- 360 minutes

Space Invaders Invincible Collection -- 120 minutes
Tetris Effect -- 600 minutes

 

XBox Series X:
Back 4 Blood -- 120 minutes

 

Really not too much to mention specifically- I was all over the place with my game time.  I picked up Sonic Mania on sale and am having fun with that so far- it's nice to play a 'new' 2D Sonic game.

[StormSurge]

Xbox Series X
MLB The Show 21: 557 minutes

 

Xbox One

Call of the Sea: 44 minutes

PUBG: 398 minutes

 

iOS

Pop! Blitz: 111 minutes

Zen Match: 300 minutes

 

Had to do a bit of travelling this week, so less console time & a bit more activity on the phone.

[Agamon]

PC

Disco Elysium (302 min)

Magic the Gathering Arena (596 min)

 

OQ

Beat Saber (351 min)

 

Definitely down on game time this week. Didn't start Disco Elysium until the weekend. Different RPG, for sure, very puzzle-y, lots and lots of dialogue, no real fighting to speak of. Pretty dour atmosphere; the protagonist is an alcoholic that literally can't remember anything at the beginning of the game after a binge (you can actually ask some union workers, "What's a strike?" lol). A lot of inner dialogue and your ugly necktie screams insanely at you. Neat.

 

Man, I'm falling down the MtG hole...YT channels, podcats, blogs...send help. Played regularly back in the 90's when it was shiny new. Shame I got rid of my cards, I could have bought a house with them today...

Edited October 25, 2021 by Agamon