48 replies to this topic

[cparsley]

A 3D shoot 'em up. You have to guide a fleet of four merchant space freighters to Earth with vital supplies. Hostile aliens have sighted you and forced you enter a dangerous asteroid belt. And now, you must try to avoid these asteroids, to destroy the Robot mines and alien space ships and also contend with fuel shortages and prevent the deflector shields from over-heating.

Fallout picked the next game, and it's time to get going...

Scores will be accepted until 10:30 am on Sunday February 12th, 2012.

Remaining KO players (BOLD = eliminated) (Remember, non KO players are free to play for HSC points)
(FINAL Results)

• Fallout_002 100,220 ( +10 )
  
• JacobZu7 52,510 ( +8 )
  
• ed1475 34,110 ( +6 )
  
• gezkc 24,840 ( +4 )
  
• INTVGuy97 24,380 ( +2 )
  
• INTVDude 23,660 ( +1 )
  
• RoadRunner 2,770 ( +1 )
  
• cparsley -18,650 ( +1 )
  
• Akito01 0

Non KO Players Ranking for HSC

• thegoldenband 74,650 ( +9 )
  
• jblenkle -22,340 ( +1 )

Updated HSC Leaderboard (thru 4 games) We have a tie

• gezkc - 33
  
• Akito001 - 33
  
• JacobZu7 - 26
  
• cparsley - 25
  
• Fallout_002 - 15
  
• ed1475 - 13
  
• INTVDude - 11
  
• patbb - 5
  
• Roadrunner - 5
  
• INTVGuy97 - 4
  
• HatNJ - 3
  
• crade - 2
  
• RetroGam3 - 2

Edited by cparsley, Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:44 AM.

[JacobZu7zu7]

What the heck am I playing???

Here's A score,

25250 ?

I need to consult the manual...

Attached Thumbnails

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[thegoldenband]

Haha, awesome! I think I'll have to jump on this one. Blockade Runner has always totally kicked my behind, so I'm hoping one of us will be able to make sense of this game and come up with a viable strategy.

BTW JacobZu7zu7, that score is, um...negative 25250. Not an uncommon occurrence in this game.

[JacobZu7zu7]

Never heard of this game...

here's the manual and ROM people,

http://spatula-city....ls/b_runner.txt

Attached Files

•  Blockade Runner (1983) (Interphase).zip   8.56K   30 downloads

[JacobZu7zu7]

thegoldenband, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 12:55 PM, said:

Haha, awesome! I think I'll have to jump on this one. Blockade Runner has always totally kicked my behind, so I'm hoping one of us will be able to make sense of this game and come up with a viable strategy.

BTW JacobZu7zu7, that score is, um...negative 25250. Not an uncommon occurrence in this game.

**pushes head into wall** okay, so far... so bad!


cparsley, are we allowed to use any control setting for B.R.?

Control Option #1 Control Option #2
<- FIRE FIRE -> <- FIRE FIRE ->
<- SLOW FAST -> <- FAST SLOW ->

Control Option #3 Control Option #4
<- FAST FAST -> <- FAST FAST ->
<- SLOW FIRE -> <- FIRE SLOW ->

BLOCKADE RUNNER has programmable controls. At the beginning of the game, you
will see the functions of all your controls. You can decide on the functions
of your four side buttons as follows:

----- Slow ----- ----- Fast -----

This control will slow down your This button will accelerate your ship.
ship. If you hold this button down If your reactor is shut down, the
beyond the minimum throttle point, pressing of this button will
your reactor will shut down. automatically start up the reactor
before the throttle moves.

Edited by JacobZu7zu7, Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:50 PM.

[cparsley]

It will count, as score ahead of someone who doesn't post...

[IntellivisionDude]

Woah never played this before. Better read up.

[thegoldenband]

Ha, I finished the game on my fifth attempt! 74,650 points, and with one ship to spare.

My score can be improved upon, I'm sure, but this is one of the few Intellivision games that can actually be beaten. It's pretty satisfying to finally make sense of this thing, since I've picked it up every so often for the past few years and never been able to really get anywhere with it. The other Interphase game for Intellivision, Sewer Sam, was sort of the same way -- it felt completely messed up and unplayable at first, but once I figured out what the game's logic was, it turned out to be a pretty decent game.

A few hints:

- Read the manual carefully. I'd never realized that you can evade mines by stopping your engines, or that the enemy spaceships will eventually automatically destroy you if you don't take the time to kill them. (You get a much longer grace period than with mines, though.)

- Don't worry too much about the manual's warnings about fuel; avoiding asteroids (by steering in the opposite direction) is the main thing.

- Don't panic if the damage alarm starts going off. Just focus on dodging.

- The ice will often come to you, even if you're stationary. Watch for the first blue pixels to appear, and subtly guide your ship towards it without oversteering.

- Go slow, as in very slow! Maybe when I get better at the game I'll try for a faster run, and I think you can score higher by doing so, but the game is much, much harder at high speed. (The manual makes some noise about an AI system that increases the challenge, but I'm not sure if it's AI or just reaction time.) Having said that, when I got to within 500 distance units, I made a run for it and it paid off.

So glad this game was picked! I know y'all tend to favor the Astrosmashes and Burgertimes, but I have a soft spots for the Blockade Runners and Sewer Sams of this world.

[ed1475]

27,570

[IntellivisionDude]

I guess it's going to take practice. As soon as the enemy ships come in i fall apart.

23,660

[cparsley]

Interesting... bad scores are in yellow, and the better the score, the more green the background goes... There should be no problem with you choosing which of the 4 controller setups you want to use (unless someone, "Goldenband" (looking your way) can tell me otherwise)

[thegoldenband]

cparsley, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 4:51 PM, said:

Interesting... bad scores are in yellow, and the better the score, the more green the background goes...

Hmm? I'm not seeing what you're seeing -- I don't think the Intellivision can do subtle color changes, actually, since it has a hardcoded palette. Negative scores are in red, and positive ones in green. Maybe you're just seeing variation between people's CRTs/displays and cameras?

cparsley, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 4:51 PM, said:

There should be no problem with you choosing which of the 4 controller setups you want to use (unless someone, "Goldenband" (looking your way) can tell me otherwise)

No problem whatsoever. Pretty far ahead of its time -- I don't know of many other console games from the era that allowed you to customize your controller setup.

[IntellivisionDude]

Unless i'm wrong the controller set up is just, where do you want the fire button, slow button and fast button so it's more comfortable for your hand and has nothing to do with gameplay. Correct?

I just use default setting #1. Makes more sense to me. Top 2 buttons for fire and bottom buttons for slow and fast. Most other games have fire buttons on top so it more comfortable for me that way.

[ed1475]

34,110

Getting closer to the finish.

[IntellivisionGuy97]

Blockade Runner? Never played it suprisingly... Better give it a go! I WILL NOT FORGET THIS TIME OR I WILL GO INSANE!!! lol

[jblenkle]

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing on this game, but I wanted to jump into some of these other high score contests for other systems (usually just play ColecoVision).

BLOCKADE RUNNER: -22,340

[gezkc]

JacobZu7zu7, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:10 PM, said:

Never heard of this game...

here's the manual and ROM people,

http://spatula-city....ls/b_runner.txt

JacobZu7zu7, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:10 PM, said:

Never heard of this game...

here's the manual and ROM people,

http://spatula-city....ls/b_runner.txt

This is probably a really stupid question, but how do you get to the rom file? The attachment seems to open an .int file.

[JacobZu7zu7]

gezkc, on Mon Feb 6, 2012 2:51 PM, said:

JacobZu7zu7, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:10 PM, said:

Never heard of this game...

here's the manual and ROM people,

http://spatula-city....ls/b_runner.txt

JacobZu7zu7, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:10 PM, said:

Never heard of this game...

here's the manual and ROM people,

http://spatula-city....ls/b_runner.txt

This is probably a really stupid question, but how do you get to the rom file? The attachment seems to open an .int file.

its a zip file, so u download it... then double click the folder, it opens you'll see the rom,. then drag it out with the mouse.

[gezkc]

JacobZu7zu7, on Mon Feb 6, 2012 4:28 PM, said:

gezkc, on Mon Feb 6, 2012 2:51 PM, said:

JacobZu7zu7, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:10 PM, said:

Never heard of this game...

here's the manual and ROM people,

http://spatula-city....ls/b_runner.txt

This is probably a really stupid question, but how do you get to the rom file? The attachment seems to open an .int file.

its a zip file, so u download it... then double click the folder, it opens you'll see the rom,. then drag it out with the mouse.

Hmm, strange. I'm obviously doing something wrong - when I click on it, it just says it can't find a program associated with the extension.

[thegoldenband]

The .int file is the ROM, which is to say that it's the same as a .bin. I can't speak to other emulators, but jzintv seems to run Blockade Runner fine without needing a .cfg file. If you're not running jzintv then, rather than double-click the file, you should try to open it from inside the emulator, I'd think.

[roadrunner]

- 6,530


plays fine on bliss

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[JacobZu7zu7]

-676

I much prefer the voice games, Solar Sailer and Space Spartians...

This game is interesting, but the aim seems clumsy, or maybe it's just emulation?

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[cparsley]

jblenkle, on Mon Feb 6, 2012 2:12 PM, said:

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing on this game, but I wanted to jump into some of these other high score contests for other systems (usually just play ColecoVision).

BLOCKADE RUNNER: -22,340

joe's blockade runner - 22,340.gif

Nice to have you on my side of the woods jb!

[JacobZu7zu7]

+52,510


1 Mission Complete! Git near the end of mission 2. I just flew top speed most the time.
Only slowing down for a few red ships and one of the ending a**hole ship.

2nd mission starts when hitting ENTER after the score, don't reset if you complete a mission.

Attached Thumbnails

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[JacobZu7zu7]

thegoldenband, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 2:58 PM, said:

Ha, I finished the game on my fifth attempt! 74,650 points, and with one ship to spare.

blockaderunner_thegoldenband_74650.jpg

You finished it?? The game keeps going by hittng ENTER, although your next mission you'd have only 1 ship.