746 replies to this topic

[thegoldenband]

Time to start a new tracker for a new year! I'm in the process of going through last year's stats, and so I guess I'll temporarily take on the role of statkeeper for this year's tracker.

For those new to the tracker, we basically used the following guidelines in 2010 (originally set out here but later modified):

1. The basic idea is to post what games you played during each week, and for how long. Be sure to list the system, the name of the game, and the length of time you play. If the game has any alternate titles (i.e. Air Sea Battle vs. Target Fun), please list them. If you list multiple games, please group them by system.

2. Each week runs Monday through Sunday (at midnight). The stats are generally compiled up through noon (EST) on Monday to allow for different time zones.

3. Playing on actual game consoles is preferred although emulators are allowed. In some cases (homebrews in development) there is no alternative other than using an emulator.

4. Our cutoff year for consoles has been moved to 2000. This therefore includes Dreamcast and N64, but excludes the most recent systems like PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube, et al. You're welcome to mention gameplay on those systems, but as of now they won't be added to the tracker.

5. Arcade games up to A.D. 2000 are permitted. So are emulated compilations of arcade games for modern systems, as long as they're not rewritten or otherwise massively "updated" versions. If you play 45 minutes of Robotron via Midway Arcade Treasures for the XBox, those 45 minutes are counted towards the arcade game. When you're playing arcade compilations, be sure to list each game separately (don't just put "Midway Arcade Treasures - 45 min.")

6. If you post a big list of games, please consider alphabetizing them first. It actually saves a lot of time for the statkeeper, as I'm now discovering.

7. Comments, stories, gripes, and helpful hints are always encouraged!

I'm also going to plan to regularly post an Excel file so that if I get eaten by bears, or just lose interest in maintaining the tracker, we won't have a repeat of the present situation. Unfortunately we don't have any of cvga's files, so for now the "all-time" records are temporarily on hold. Having said that, I do want to give thanks to cvga for all his work maintaining the tracker until the middle of last year.

Any other thoughts? Does this about cover it?

Edited by thegoldenband, Sat Jan 1, 2011 4:16 PM.

[thegoldenband]

Oh, also, could a mod make this thread a sticky? Thanks.

[sandmountainslim]

I will jump in
The games I have played today


Atari 2600


Cat Trax 25 minutes
Pleaides 15 minutes
Reindeer Rescue 15 minutes
Official Frogger 30 minutes
Adventure 15 minutes
River Raid Returns (Neo) 15 minutes


Arcade
Pac-Man 10 minutes
Donkey Kong 5 minutes

[GKC]

Played so far today:

Knuckles Chaotix 32x: 20 min
Doom 32x: 15 min

I am begining to think that Chaotix is a very very short game. I have completed 4 of the five stages and am on level 5 of the last stage (5 levels per stage). My over all time count for the game only shows an hour and a half. Hopefully after the first five stages are complete there's more stages. Otherwise it's a game that can be completed under 2 hours.......

Edited by GKC, Sat Jan 1, 2011 4:50 PM.

[GKC]

Played so far today:

Zaxxons Motherbase 2000 - 30 min
Doom - 10 min

Both for the 32x

[thegoldenband]

Sega Genesis:
Beggar Prince - 53 min.
World Series Baseball - 47 min.

Nintendo 64:
Gauntlet Legends - 145 min.

Worked a little more on Beggar Prince, and started a new Gauntlet Legends run with my girlfriend, this time on Expert difficulty. So far it doesn't seem much harder -- the game just gives out fewer items, which doesn't really bother us since we usually only use them during boss fights.

We also played a game of World Series Baseball, which I won 21-11 or something like that. It seemed like every third hit in the game was a home run! I'd imagine there must be better baseball games for the Genny, since this one appears mediocre at best.

Edited by thegoldenband, Sun Jan 2, 2011 10:18 PM.

[TheGameCollector]

I have been recording my gameplay videos so I can say exact time. Should I keep editing this one post or reply every time I play something new? I kinda like the idea of keeping a gameplay journal that other people can use for statistics. Sounds fun so count me in.

hours:minutes:seconds

1/2/2011

Nintendo NES
Super Mario Bros. - 59:27
Super Mario Bros. 2 Japanese (The Lost Levels) (repro cartridge) - 53:57
Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) - 1:08:26
Super Mario Bros. 3 - 2:00:57

Edited by TheGameCollector, Mon Jan 3, 2011 1:50 AM.

[pinball22]

Thanks so much for starting this thread/compiling stuff from last year's! What can I do to help re-create the overall stats?

[GKC]

So far today

Sega 32x

After Burner 50 min

Jaguar

Cannon Fodder 20 min

[Reinhardt]

Sonic 3 on the Genesis to test out the audio/video mods i just did. Works great.

Mike Tysons Punch Out on Nes to test some soldering jobs i did in preperation for the overclocking mod.

Pong Sports IV to see if it still works.

[thegoldenband]

@TheGameCollector: Welcome aboard! Different people take different approaches -- for instance, I keep a .txt file log, and usually post my times for the week all at once on Monday morning. Combining times into fewer posts makes it easier for the statkeeper, but OTOH Atariage normally only lets you edit a post for an hour.

BTW I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to round your times to the nearest minute.

@pinball22: You're very welcome! I'd like to recreate the overall stats but it's a very daunting job. Right now I have an Excel spreadsheet with all of 2008, and all of weeks 24-52 of 2010, plus cvga's summaries for the Top 10 of 2009 and the Top 50 of 2010 Q1 (weeks 1-13).

Last time I checked cvga hadn't been on Atariage at all since July 5th and hadn't answered any PMs, so unless he resurfaces I think we'll have to manually re-enter all of the stats. I've already done 2008 which was a short year, and I think I'm willing to redo the first part of 2010, since I was a participant and that helps with morale. But I don't think I have it in me to do 2009. So there are basically three possibilities:

1) We forget about 2009, and just use the year-end stats to incorporate that year's top 10.

2) Someone goes through the 52 weekly summaries that cvga posted, and adds those up. Lower playtime games get left off, but at least we have something from each week's top 10. I might be willing to do this myself.

3) Someone redoes all of 2009 manually. You can save a little time since you don't have to add up the totals for games when cvga has posted totals for those games, so all the VCS Galaxian, VCS Kaboom, etc. can be skipped.

Any thoughts?

Edited by thegoldenband, Mon Jan 3, 2011 12:44 PM.

[pinball22]

thegoldenband, on Mon Jan 3, 2011 12:43 PM, said:

3) Someone redoes all of 2009 manually. You can save a little time since you don't have to add up the totals for games when cvga has posted totals for those games, so all the VCS Galaxian, VCS Kaboom, etc. can be skipped.

I think I'm willing to do this... I'd want to see the spreadsheets you've created so far so that I can make something that will go together with them.

[thegoldenband]

Here's our Top 10 for the abbreviated Week 1:

1. Gauntlet Legends (N64) - 145
2. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES/Famicom) - 121
3. Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) (NES/Famicom) - 68
4. Super Mario Bros. (NES/Famicom) - 59
5. Super Mario Bros. 2 Japanese (The Lost Levels) (NES/Famicom) - 54
6. Beggar Prince (Genesis) - 53
7. World Series Baseball (Genesis) - 47
8. Frogger (Official/Starpath) (Atari 2600) - 30
8. Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 (Sega 32X) - 30
10. Cat Trax (Atari 2600) - 25
10. Doom (Sega 32X) - 25

(No pre-NES top 10 this week since there were fewer than 10 entries.)

Nice to see the 32X in the top 10. I logged some minutes with it early in 2010, but after that it was pretty much unseen for the rest of the year.

[thegoldenband]

pinball22, on Mon Jan 3, 2011 12:54 PM, said:

I think I'm willing to do this... I'd want to see the spreadsheets you've created so far so that I can make something that will go together with them.

That'd be fantastic. I'll start working on the first part of 2010, and once that's done (probably within 48 hours, maybe less) I'll post my Excel spreadsheet (which is actually written in OpenOffice, but same difference).

Frankly the approach I'm using is fairly crude -- just a huge spreadsheet with one column for systems, one for games, and then a column for each group of time entries -- but it seems to work. Since I've put in ~1000 games so far, their info will already be in there, which will save you some time.

Also if someone logs a bunch of new games all at once in the format:

[Game] - [Time] min.

I'm usually able to use my text editor's search-and-replace tools to eliminate the " min." string, and turn the " - " string into a tab character. Then I can just paste it en masse into the spreadsheet.

Edited by thegoldenband, Mon Jan 3, 2011 1:02 PM.

[thegoldenband]

Reinhardt, on Mon Jan 3, 2011 11:36 AM, said:

Sonic 3 on the Genesis to test out the audio/video mods i just did. Works great.

Mike Tysons Punch Out on Nes to test some soldering jobs i did in preperation for the overclocking mod.

Pong Sports IV to see if it still works.

Reinhardt, do you happen to have a minute count on any of these? Otherwise I think the default assumption that cvga was using was 5 minutes per game.

[The_Laird]

In the last few days I have been playing the following:

Sega Megadrive

Wonderboy 3 - 30 Minutes
Dragon's Fury - 20 Minutes
Streets Of Rage 3 - 30 Minutes
Team USA Basketball - 15 Minutes
Bimini Run - 20 Minutes
Jungle Strike - 20 Minutes
Super Hang-On - 15 Minutes
Side Pocket - 30 Minutes
Shinobi 3 - 30 Minutes
Sesible Soccer - 30 Minutes

Atari Jaguar

Missile Command 3D - 30 Minutes
Worms - 1 Hour

Atari Lynx

Ninja Gaiden - 30 Minutes
Duranik Demo Cart - 15 Minutes

Edited by The_Laird, Mon Jan 3, 2011 2:26 PM.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for last week (December 28th through January 2rd). I know this has been a broken week, and I'm also late, but I only played classic games for 5 minutes, and all the other playing time doesn't count...

The classic game (eligible for the Top 10):

Dukes of Hazzard (Colecovision) 5 minutes

The non-classic games (non-eligible for the Top 10):

Cityville (Facebook) 1008 minutes in several sessions
Coffee World (Facebook) 8 minutes
Farmville (Facebook) 26 minutes in 2 sessions
Frontierville (Facebook) 82 minutes in 4 sessions
ORF Ski Challenge '11 (PC) 13 minutes
Treasure Isle (Facebook) 15 minutes
The settlers (Facebook) 227 minutes in several sessions

The only classic game I played was "Dukes of Hazzard". There was a thread about possible future Colecovision homebrew projects, and someone proposed to do TX-1, to which I replied that I would think this would be an interesting project since Pitstop would be the only 3D racing game on the Colecovision. Then someone said there's also Dukes of Hazzard, so I checked that out, but it doesn't look too good, so there still is definitely room for improvement.

As for the other games, most of them were Facebook social games, and I didn't start any new games. I still reached a ridiculously high playing time on Cityville, and the total time for the week was 1384 minutes, that's over 3 hours per day! Actually I think those Facebook games, and Cityville in special, are killing me since they take away much more time from the projects I actually want to do than I like.

I hope I posted this correctly. "Dukes of Hazzard" was played on December 28th, so in the part of the week that's in 2010. Sorry I didn't make it to post earlier, but Cityville took so much time, aside from New Year celebrations and two shows I did on my radio station, that I didn't get to post this until today.

Thegoldenband, I have to thank you for continuing this... up to a few days ago, I thought this would be it, and there wouldn't be such a thread in 2011 anymore. As for the 2010 charts, I'm surprised that the Amiga and the Atari ST weren't listed at all... apparently no-one plays 16-bit computer games around here. I didn't either, although I still have my Amiga 500.

Did I post this correctly? What should be the next reporting period? Does it start on January 3rd or on January 1st? And does it end normally, on January 9th?

[Jibbajaba]

I'm glad to see that the cutoff year for systems was moved. I quit participating in this pretty quickly last year because 16-bit systems were not part of it. I'll try to get back into it this year.

Chris

[Reinhardt]

thegoldenband, on Mon Jan 3, 2011 1:05 PM, said:

Reinhardt, on Mon Jan 3, 2011 11:36 AM, said:

Sonic 3 on the Genesis to test out the audio/video mods i just did. Works great.

Mike Tysons Punch Out on Nes to test some soldering jobs i did in preperation for the overclocking mod.

Pong Sports IV to see if it still works.

Reinhardt, do you happen to have a minute count on any of these? Otherwise I think the default assumption that cvga was using was 5 minutes per game.

On Sonic 3 I played about 45 minutes
Mike Tysons Punch Out for 30 to 40 minutes
Pong Sports IV less than 10 minutes

[sandmountainslim]

Atari 2600

Asteroids Arcade 80 minutes
Official Frogger 30 minutes
Missile Command 10 minutes
Ms. Pac Man 25 minutes
Reindeer Rescue 40 minutes
Toyshop Trouble 30 minutes

Edited by sandmountainslim, Mon Jan 3, 2011 7:10 PM.

[Pong]

SNES:
The Legend of Zelda- A Link to the Past - 40 minutes

NES:
Punch-Out !! - 30 minutes
Milon's Secret Castle - 15 minutes
Castlevania - 10 minutes

PC:
The Neverhood (1994) - 1 hour

That's all retro games I played in 2011, so far, but here's my non-eligible list-

Wii:
Goldeneye 007 - 4 hours
Cave Story - 7 hours

PC:
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword - 6 hours (in a row)
Sid Meier's Civilization V - 15 minutes
Syobon Action 2 - 30 minutes

[PAC MAN FEVER]

atari 7800 donkey kong jr. 1hr
non eligible list
pc star wars lego 1-3 2 hr
pc star wars empire at war 1hr

Edited by PAC MAN FEVER, Tue Jan 4, 2011 10:43 PM.

[GKC]

Today

Genesis:

Sunset Rider - 25 min
Ghouls n Ghosts - 15 min

32x

Zaxxons Motherbase 2000 - 15 min

Jaguar

Power Drive Rally - 15 min

[zylon]

I typically post my times for the week on wednesday night as that's my week's end
A8:
Wizard of Wor- 35min
5200:
Galaxian- 1.25hrs
Super Cobra- 10min
Mario Bros.- 5min
Vanguard- 5min*
Q-bert- 5min*
Jungle Hunt- 10min*
Berzerk- 10 min*
GameGear:
Road Rash- 45min
*= this was my final attempt at trying to find something to like about these. Efforts were not successful so I will never play these again. They have already found good homes.

[thegoldenband]

Times for Monday - Friday of this week:

Sega Master System:
Smurfs - 115 min.

Sega Genesis:
Arrow Flash - 198 min.
Beggar Prince - 190 min.
Castle of Illusion - 41 min.
Toki: Going Ape Spit - 34 min.
Turrican - 21 min.

Nintendo 64:
Gauntlet Legends - 180 min.
Monster Truck Madness 64 - 30 min.

Game Boy Advance:
Super Monkey Ball Jr. - 70 min.

Beat Arrow Flash multiple times this week, starting with Easy/7 Lives and working my way up to Hard/3 Lives. By the time I reached the hardest settings, I knew the game well enough that I almost had a perfect run -- i.e. no ships lost. But I played too passively when I reached the final boss, and ended up blowing through several lives.

Meanwhile, Smurfs is an appealing platformer made up of lots of short levels, a few of which get pretty tricky indeed (especially on Hard mode). In the middle of one of them I turned to my girlfriend and noted, "This is the kind of game that actively tries to kill you. It's kind of refreshing, actually!"

Even so, it wasn't tough to beat it within a couple hours of gameplay. I saw some slowdown, which might be a consequence of playing the game at 60Hz -- I'm guessing it's intended for 50Hz. Still, I admire both Smurfs games for the SMS -- they're the best kind of 8-bit platformers, and have nice tunes as well.

Otherwise, I got a bit farther in Beggar Prince and Gauntlet Legends (on Expert mode), and checked out a few Genesis titles I hadn't yet played much. Oh, and Monster Truck Madness 64 reminded me of why I don't collect for the N64 -- after a half-hour of wildly whipping camera angles, I felt quite ill. For some reason the N64 has that effect on me...