What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2021 (Season 14)

[Nintendo64]

On 3/22/2021 at 10:24 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

They are literally identical to the Genesis/MD versions aside from the addition of kids mode and the sound effects sounding worse on the Saturn. Yes, worse on the Saturn. The way that the music loops on the Saturn is quite poor, as well, as it kind of suddenly fades out and then restarts. The only real advantage is that Thunder Force IV gets to use the Saturn's extra Blast Processing^TM to reduce the slowdown. I suppose that the Saturn is also the only home port of Thunder Force AC, though (the only other releases that I am aware of are emulated, not ported), so if you like Thunder Force IV and AC, Gold Pack 2 is a good thing to buy. They also save your settings and I think maybe your high scores, but other than that, there's no difference at all.

That is funny that the sound effects sound worse for a CD-Rom game compared to its cartridge counterpart, but I always liked the way allot of the Sega Genesis games sound. That is really good to know that there aren't much differences between the series for these two systems because it's allot easier to emulate the Genesis compared to the Saturn. Thank you for that information.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Nintendo64

[carlsson]

Ok, now I've combed through the Arcade list vs the list of Neo Geo class games and found exactly three games previously logged:

 

Neo Bomber Man - 55 min.

Puzzle Bobble - 37 min.

Puzzled - 161 min.

 

Out of these, Puzzle Bobble was previously logged for 200 minutes on the "actual" Neo Geo system, which I suppose means I should merge those entries and introduce the new condition that games running on Neo Geo class hardware are counted as Neo Geo games regardless of the physical form of the machine you played them on.

 

For all other forms of consoles and computers represented in form of coin-op arcades, no change is planned.

[+thegoldenband]

10 hours ago, carlsson said:

In this case, Puzzled for the Neo Geo AES/MVS has not yet been tracked so it would be easy to just move an entry, but I realize things get complicated if there were cabinets that to the common man look like arcade games, contain Neo Geo hardware and that the exact same game may exist in other media formats to be played on a home console. I see what you mean by the Sega comparison, and for that matter we have 8 Vs games (e.g. Balloon Fight, Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros) listed as Arcade while those most certainly consist of Famicom hardware put into a cabinet.

 

Perhaps we'll have to live with that Arcade is an anomaly of a system description, which we already know from the fact that it may contain so many different types of hardware and effectively runs from 1971/72 to 2000 in this tracker, which is why I previously noted the release year for every game. Thegoldenband asked if arcade games should be ordered by date of system hardware instead of release date but that is a bit much splitting hairs for what I have time for.

Yeah, the arcade category was always the big headache -- though more of a potential headache than an actual one, since it never really posed a problem, but just always lurked in the background.

 

I think your approach is perfect: Neo Geo games are tracked as such no matter where they appear, but everything else is just "Arcade", with sorting into pre- and post-crash based on pretty obvious parameters on an ad hoc basis, at the will of the statskeeper.

 

As you note, I tracked Vs. System games as Arcade, as I think did cvga before me. If someone were to play one of those on their NES, it'd become an NES game, I suppose, and I'm fine with that.

 

The only other major case of "console hardware in the arcade" I can think of is the Atomiswave arcade platform, whose entire library has recently been converted to run on the Dreamcast (which is basically what the Atomiswave is: a "deconsolized" Dreamcast). But again, that seems easy enough: play it on the Dreamcast and it's a Dreamcast game; play it in the arcade and it's an Arcade game.

[carlsson]

Yeah. I haven't studied the other various Sega systems, to which extent they resemble Sega consoles but somehow I doubt there was a slew of Genesises (or however you write Genesis in plural) with Jamma adapters for use in arcade cabinets. We have those oddball Amiga 500 based ones that never really reached the market, apparently at least 1 C64 game as a coin-op and supposedly one Space Invaders game that is remarkably alike the VIC-20 except rotated 90 degrees IIRC. (After all, the 6560 video chip supposedly was designed to be sold to arcade game manufacturers but virtually nobody were interested in it which is why Commodore eventually reused it for a home computer).

[Steven Pendleton]

20 hours ago, carlsson said:

In this case, Puzzled for the Neo Geo AES/MVS has not yet been tracked so it would be easy to just move an entry, but I realize things get complicated if there were cabinets that to the common man look like arcade games, contain Neo Geo hardware and that the exact same game may exist in other media formats to be played on a home console. I see what you mean by the Sega comparison, and for that matter we have 8 Vs games (e.g. Balloon Fight, Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros) listed as Arcade while those most certainly consist of Famicom hardware put into a cabinet.

 

Perhaps we'll have to live with that Arcade is an anomaly of a system description, which we already know from the fact that it may contain so many different types of hardware and effectively runs from 1971/72 to 2000 in this tracker, which is why I previously noted the release year for every game. Thegoldenband asked if arcade games should be ordered by date of system hardware instead of release date but that is a bit much splitting hairs for what I have time for.

Yeah, I've actually seen this in person; my local arcade has a few Neo Geos inside Sega Astro City and Blast City cabinets. I think just leaving Neo Geo AES/MVS as its own thing just the way it is would probably be best, especially since the AES exists and stuff.

19 hours ago, Nintendo64 said:

That is funny that the sound effects sound worse for a CD-Rom game compared to its cartridge counterpart, but I always liked the way allot of the Sega Genesis games sound. That is really good to know that there aren't much differences between the series for these two systems because it's allot easier to emulate the Genesis compared to the Saturn. Thank you for that information.

I think the sound effects are actually using the Saturn's sound chip, which would explain why they sound so different.

9 hours ago, carlsson said:

Yeah. I haven't studied the other various Sega systems, to which extent they resemble Sega consoles but somehow I doubt there was a slew of Genesises (or however you write Genesis in plural) with Jamma adapters for use in arcade cabinets. We have those oddball Amiga 500 based ones that never really reached the market, apparently at least 1 C64 game as a coin-op and supposedly one Space Invaders game that is remarkably alike the VIC-20 except rotated 90 degrees IIRC. (After all, the 6560 video chip supposedly was designed to be sold to arcade game manufacturers but virtually nobody were interested in it which is why Commodore eventually reused it for a home computer).

Remember that arcade Sonic 1 that I played a few weeks ago? The one that runs on the Mega Play? The Mega Play is basically 2 Mega Drives glued together + a JAMMA connector. One set of hardware runs the games basically as a normal Mega Genesis Drive would and I guess the extra 68000+Z80 or whatever are there specifically to display the insert coin text and stuff or something like that. The NAOMI, from what I understand, is basically a Dreamcast with more memory, although I have not compared the actual specs. Atomiswave is also extremely similar to the Dreamcast, although from what I understand the Atomiswave is closer to being a Dreamcast than the NAOMI is, but there are NAOMI games on the Dreamcast, like Ikaruga, which is basically arcade perfect.

Edited March 25, 2021 by Steven Pendleton

[Steven Pendleton]

I just remembered that the Neo Geo-ness doesn't end, because the Hyper Neo Geo 64 exists. I actually found one for sale recently, as well, but I have no intention of ever buying one. I think that one is safe to count as "arcade" though, as the system failed so badly that its planned home version (basically like the AES but for the Hyper Neo Geo 64) was cancelled and they only made like 7 games for it or something before giving up and returning to the MVS, which was extremely outdated at that point. I wonder if any of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 games have been tracked... probably not, I'm guessing. I might try emulating the entire Hyper Neo Geo 64 library to see exactly how terrible it was that it failed so miserably.

[carlsson]

I suppose I'd have to visit some more detailed site than Arcade-Museum in that case, since they only list Hyper Neo Geo 64 as a game on its own, not a class of hardware.

[Steven Pendleton]

So basically with the Hyper Neo Geo 64, it's the same idea as the MVS: the arcade operator leaves the hardware and cabinet the way they are and just replaces the game cartridge when they want to change the game. There are 7 games for the Hyper Neo Geo 64, but only 1 of them ever got a home release: Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition for the PS1. There was supposed to be an AES-like equivalent of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 for home users, but it got cancelled.

[carlsson]

Is that type of solution uncommon for coin-ops? My first thought goes to the never released Arcadia Systems which seems to have had a similar approach, though of course an Amiga 500 is nowhere the capacity of a souped up Neo Geo.

[Steven Pendleton]

My knowledge of non-Neo Geo arcade hardware is very lacking, so I can't say if it's uncommon or not, but cartridge-based arcade machines aren't unheard of. Aside from the Neo Geo MVS being the most famous example of it, there are a few others that I can think of: the Mega Play that I mentioned earlier uses what look to basically be Japanese Mega Drive cartridges and apparently Nintendo's PlayChoice-10 uses something that's not quite a cartridge but rather similar to... this is a really bad example, but it works: it looks kind of like installing RAM on a modern PC except they are games instead of RAM sticks.

 

The whole idea of the Neo Geo was to provide arcade operators with a low-cost cabinet that could hold multiple games to save space in the arcade and do all of its own bookkeeping with its built-in bookkeeping software (removed on the AES, of course), so you could say that the Neo Geo's focus was on convenience for the operator. Instead of having a bunch of cabinets with 1 game each, the operator can get a single cabinet that can hold from 1 to 6 Neo Geo games at a time and just change the marquees that came with the individual MVS games when they changed the carts. MVS games really do not take up a lot of space for an arcade game. If you've never seen one, here is my Neo Turf Masters (actually it's Big Tournament Golf, but same thing):

 

 

As you can see with Super Metroid and a standard CD jewel case for scale (Super Metroid will be showing up in the tracker on Monday, by the way~), MVS carts are quite small for an arcade game, so having 6 of those in 1 cabinet takes up a lot less space than having 6 separate cabinets.

[+thegoldenband]

There's a channel on YouTube called Video Game Esoterica with a ton of content related to the Hyper Neo Geo 64, even including coverage of prototype versions of the games (well, one of them, anyway). The system seems to have been a mixed bag, but by no means a complete disaster.

 

The guy behind that channel also covers the 3DO M2 and Bandai Pippin, so he's rather fond of failed platforms.

[wongojack]

3 hours ago, thegoldenband said:

There's a channel on YouTube called Video Game Esoterica with a ton of content related to the Hyper Neo Geo 64, even including coverage of prototype versions of the games (well, one of them, anyway). The system seems to have been a mixed bag, but by no means a complete disaster.

 

The guy behind that channel also covers the 3DO M2 and Bandai Pippin, so he's rather fond of failed platforms.

Is that the channel that had the story about a never before seen prototype found under a tree?

[+thegoldenband]

24 minutes ago, wongojack said:

Is that the channel that had the story about a never before seen prototype found under a tree?

That's the one, and it was a Hyper Neo Geo 64 prototype no less!

[oyamafamily]

ATARI 2600:

Dark Cavern (for HSC) - 10 minutes

Draconian - 4 minutes

Stack Game (for HSC) - 5 minutes

 

ATARI 7800:

Pac-Man Collection - 115 minutes

 

ATARI LYNX:

Viking Child (for HSC) - 11 minutes

 

Stack Game Screenshot:

Edited March 28, 2021 by oyamafamily
Adding a screenshot of 2600 homebrew game

[+jgkspsx]

You’re gonna laugh.

 

Sega CD:

Keio Flying Squadron - 90 minutes

 

Tiger R-Zone:

NiGHTS into Dreams - 25 minutes and I still have no clue what I’m doing. To be fair, I don’t know what I’m doing in the Saturn or Wii versions either.

Daytona USA - 30 minutes

Panzer Dragoon - 10 minutes

Star Wars Jedi Adventure - 45 minutes

 

Tiger/Sega Pocket Arcade:

Eternal Champions - 60 minutes trying to figure out whether it is a decent game or not? It’s... interesting.

 

Tiger game.com:

Duke Nukem 3D - 30 minutes (much better than it has any right to be)

Wheel of Fortune 2 (!!) - 30 minutes (who knew I owned the rarest game for the system? brought it back from the dead and played two games to make sure it really did work)

Lights Out - 10 minutes

Fighters Megamix - 5 minutes

Sonic Jam - 5 very sad minutes with Tails

Jeopardy! - 5 minutes, cart only worked once out of 10 attempts even after cleaning and contact enhancement (and the contacts look perfect - but the board got a bad scrape during manufacturing...)

Resident Evil 2 - 2 minutes

Indy 500 - 10 minutes of spinning

Tiger Casino - 5 minutes

Williams Arcade Classics - 3 minutes of a better version of Joust than the Game Boy Advance got, anyway

Solitaire - 2 minutes

 

Sega SG-1000 (played on a Game Gear with an Everdrive):

Monaco GP would not work on my Game Gear. Booo.

Flipper - 5 minutes

Exerion - 15 minutes (great game!!)

Dragon Wang - 15 minutes

Drol - 5 minutes (this seems like it could be great in a different version)

Bank Panic - 5 minutes of not being able to tell criminals from staff/customers

Chack’n’Pop - 3 minutes of “how does this work???”

C-SO!! - 5 minutes of more confusion

Champion Tennis - 5 minutes of not being able to see the ball at all

Wonder Boy - 15 minutes until I asked myself what I was doing with my life and switched to

 

Sega Game Gear:

Wonder Boy - 10 minutes

Space Harrier - 15 minutes of the poor little thing trying so hard

 

EDIT:

 

Sega Game Gear emulated on the FunKeyS:

Bust-a-Move - 120 minutes

[Eltigro]

Only one game again... and posting early enough to get the time in this time. 

 

PS1

Suikoden - 860 min (Time is somewhat approximate, only because I added a couple hours for some playing that I didn't stream.  If you're familiar with the game, I'm up to the Dragon Knight part... where I'm supposed to go get the ingredients to cure the sleeping poisoning.  I've been spending a lot of time leveling and equipping people who I probably don't really need to level and equip.  I'm also running around checking and rechecking towns to see if there's anyone there to recruit.  I'm not using a guide, but occasionally cheating a bit by looking up recruiting requirements for characters.)

 

Also, while playing, I realized I look like one of the characters...

 

 

[Steven Pendleton]

I don't think I'm going to play anything in the next 8 minutes, so I'll just post now because I can. Cotton's back again in her first game ever and Terry Bogard is back as usual, but for the first time in a while, Sonic isn't! That's okay because Samus is here instead.

 

Arcade
Cotton - 11
Quartet 2 - 6
Space Harrier - 8

 

Genesis/MD
After Burner II - 1

Testing the XE-1AP, which you probably didn't know existed until just now, unless you did. My throttle slider doesn't seem to work properly, unfortunately.
Time Dominator 1st - 16

You've probably never heard of this game. It was released in the US as "Socket" and I'm not sure about PAL territories. The title says Time Dominator 1st, but the katakana on the box only says タイムドミネーター, so I guess you're just supposed to ignore the 1st part and just call it Time Dominator. I don't know.

 

Neo Geo AES/MVS
Garou: Mark of the Wolves - 54

I finally bought a real copy of this game for my AES. I still have never seen a 2D game that has better sprite animations than this game. If you know one that does, tell me, because I want to see it!
The King of Fighters '98 - 7
Metal Slug - 28
Neo Turf Masters - 9
Shock Troopers - 15

 

SFC/SNES
Super Metroid - 119

I used the time from the ending thingy. That's not an exact time measurement because the timer stops during room transitions and when you open the menu and stuff, but it's close enough, I think. I was worried that I wouldn't make it under 2 hours because I got stuck in a room that I'd never found before, but I did! 89% completion and I FINALLY found the last Power Bomb Tank after searching for it for 15 years or so. Turns out it was in that room in Maridia that I just found today and got stuck in for a little while, as I couldn't find the room's exit point in all of the quicksand. I think this is my best run ever, even though I wasn't trying to beat my old record. Now I just need to find 1 more Super Missile, a few Missiles, and the final Reserve Tank. I used to know where all 4 Reserve Tanks are, but I seem to have forgotten where the last one is in the past few years.

 

 

Yes, I use the Neo Geo CD controller on my AES and you should too because it's awesome!

[carlsson]

Atari 8-bit:
Galaxian [1982] - 16 min.

 

Detection limit reached, and all that on a Sunday evening inbetween watching TV. HSC, say no more.

 

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this last week (March 22th through 28th, 2021) on classic systems:

 

Arcade:

Lode Runner - 51 min. in 2 sessions

 

Commodore 64:

Legend of the Amazon Women - 96 minutes in 3 sessions

Lode RUnner - 59 minutes in 4 sessions

 

This week I played some classic games again. On the C-64 I played Legend of the Amazon Women and Lode Runner, of which I also tried the arcade version. I got pretty far in Lode Runner right from the start since I first watched a Youtube video and already could envision how I would play the game although I actually hadn't played it since back in the day. The arcade version is somewhat harder, and they removed some of the more complex screens.

 

In Legend of the Amazon Women I didn't get to the end, but I got pretty far. I saw a video of the Spectrum version which is a bit different in that not many spears are flying around from the start, and the time limit is more relaxed, but there are additional enemies not appearing in the C-64 version.

[oyamafamily]

TO ADD - NES / Famicom - Gun-Nac - 50 minutes

[+thegoldenband]

My times for the week:

 

NES:
Action 52 - 269 min.
Batsu & Terry - 8 min.

 

3DO:
Phoenix 3 - 23 min.

 

Cleared 14 of the minigames in Action 52, including the famous Cheetahmen, which brings me up to 46/52 beaten.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Soldier Blade (PC Engine) 34 mins
Override (PC Engine) 55 mins
Bomberman '93 (PC Engine) 10 mins
Be Ball (PC Engine) 17 mins
Cyber Core (PC Engine) 12 mins (emulated, but I bought a real copy)
Terra Cresta II (PC Engine) 9 mins (emulated, I wish I could afford a real copy)
Gunhed (PC Engine) 22 mins

 

Star Parodia (PC Engine CD) 56 mins (just realized this game is actually called Star Parodia and not Star Parodier)
Gate of Thunder (PC Engine CD) 9 mins
Lords of Thunder (PC Engine CD) 12 mins
Image Fight II (PC Engine CD) 15 mins
Avenger (PC Engine CD) 5 mins
Nexzr (PC Engine CD) 25 mins
Psychic Storm (PC Engine CD) 19 mins
Steam Hearts (PC Engine CD) 7 mins (I thought this game was kind of mediocre)

 

The House of the Dead (Saturn) 14 mins (I got my first light gun for Saturn, and PS1, a Nuby Virtual Gun, so I tested it out with this game)

Edited March 29, 2021 by DragonGrafx-16

[agb]

Atari 2600

 

Dark Cavern for HSC 40

Frogger FB HSC 38

Pepsi Invaders FB HSC 57

Solar Fox 110

Star Wars ESB HSC 68

 

The AA HSC is really tough this year. Finished in 17th place two years ago and I’m struggling to be in top 40 this season. 

 

 

[+jgkspsx]

2 hours ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Be Ball (PC Engine) 17 mins
Cyber Core (PC Engine) 12 mins (emulated, but I bought a real copy)

Two of my favorite underrated/unknown gems. I have the US versions (very questionable retitling of Be Ball and all), but either version will do.

 

What were your favorites among the most illustrious set of shmups you worked on?

[DragonGrafx-16]

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

Two of my favorite underrated/unknown gems. I have the US versions (very questionable retitling of Be Ball and all), but either version will do.

 

What were your favorites among the most illustrious set of shmups you worked on?

Of the CD games Star Parodia is my favorite... Nexzr being a close second.