Donkey Kong Forum
Other Classic Arcade Games => Classic Arcade Game Discussion => Topic started by: datagod on February 13, 2014, 11:43:45 am
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Who will be attending the Battle of the Arcades?
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In. Team RK all day.
www.battleofthearcades.net (http://www.battleofthearcades.net)
~Steve W
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I will be there in spirit cheering on the West coast and hoping the scoring calculations on the web site work in real time without crashing :)
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Team House here.
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Team RK. 8)
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RK hype <YSG>
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I think I'm the only one here representing the midwest contingent.
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I'll be there if nothing more to support my teammates. :D Go team RK....
Kreygasm
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I think I'm the only one here representing the midwest contingent.
I'm pretty sure the west coast team is happy about you being in the midwest this year.
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Team Manhole! 8)
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Team Manhole! 8)
YER
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This thread would have been so much better with moderated posting (MP).
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Wish I could make it down there. I'm actually going to be visiting the Chicago area the weekend prior, but my work rotation has me on for the BOTA weekend.
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Had a blast, thanks to everyone for all their efforts in putting it together. I think there were 2 people, Jeff and Robbie who flew out for their respective teams so big props to them too for traveling such a long distance. It's always a lot of fun to get together with all my homies and use Allen catch phrases all weekend. Shit game. <Allen>
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Great gaming competition!!!
Mike Kasper and Matt Hall make it hard to compete against.
I'm standing right there watching, and I still can't tell you how they do it.
Big ups to Ken for all of the work he put into it, for the West Coast team.
Sam McNear's wife kept feeding us all weekend.
Hector made it up from southern Cali.
Jeff Harrist from Alaska.
John McAlister and Chris Mansfield drove in from Seattle.
Well rounded West Coast team. Thanks to everyone.
Bill C
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incoming wall of text!
First of all I want to say thanks as always to Ken House for hosting the PNW location again, not only the weekend of the tournament but all the practice sessions over the last couple months, we all needed to put in the time to make sure our crown was successfully defended again. I love the camraderie, with everyone cheering and congratulating each other when we get new scores. It's always a really fun weekend even if some of us have... uh, certain rage issues at times.
I was very happy finishing 2nd in the overall ranking, when this gamelist was announced I thought I would end up around 5th again like last year. Seeing that I finished just 4 points behind Mike Kasper made me wish I had put in just a liiiiiiittle more practice on some games, but he definitely earned it since he puts in more practice for this tournament than me. This is also the first time I've finished ahead of Steve Wagner <YSG>
Shoutouts to the Galloping Ghost team for a very strong showing in their first year! There were some really good scores that came out of them, admittedly I wasn't too familiar with most of the players other than like... Ben Falls, but there is obviously some real talent there. Hope they participate again next year.
Now for some thoughts/my experiences on the games themselves...
Donkey Kong 3 - A game I've never really played much, but after a little practice I found I could definitely play for an hour on... on Easy difficulty, lol. The Medium difficulty used for the tournament gets really ridiculous on the later levels because DK keeps scurrying down the poles very quickly. Later on it felt like doing the third level of each loop without a super spray was impossible because I just can't move him up there fast enough. I had a good start and lost maybe 4 or 5 lives on one level, it was crazy. Still, 729k was good enough for 3rd place.
Elevator Action - geezus christ Steve Wagner! Seeing a 135k score before we'd even started playing on the west coast is soul-crushing! I had a couple bad games the first day but managed to end up with 115,500, which eclipsed the 112k I got last year, so I'm satisfied.
Frenzy - I like this game a lot. When it was decided that extra lives would be at every 15k, I knew it would make things harder because otherwise a lot of players would do an hour on it. In one of our practice sessions I got 81k and joked "What if I can do an hour on this at the tournament?". Day 1 came, I barely got 70k and Sam McNear topped me by a few hundred, and before the end of the day Tim Vermeulen from Galloping Ghost broke 110k. That gave me extra motivation to try again on day 2, even though it wouldn't change my overall point ranking much I really wanted to do this (plus I was relatively satisfied with a lot of the scores I got on day 1 anyway). I had a few bad starts, then finally got a game where I stopped choking and managed to stay consistent enough to play for a full hour. I actually had two extra lives in reserve at the 59-minute mark, and I noticed that I had just reached the board which has the computer in the center of the screen that when shot makes all the robots commit suicide. I ended up sacrificing two lives here after making the robots suicide since I figured it was the fastest way to get some points, and then finished the board up on my last life right as the hour limit was reached. So otherwise, I still could have kept playing for a while unless I made some stupid mistakes very quickly. Definitely the score I was happiest with.
Gravitar - Gravitar has some neat concepts, but I just can not get used to the control scheme. Never been a fan of games that use buttons to rotate AND thrust, especially since the rotation feels so slow. I ended up barely breaking 100k which was a personal best at least.
Mappy - NO, FUCK THIS.
Millipede - I always have way more fun playing Millipede than I do playing Centipede, just because there's a bigger variety of stuff going on. In 2013 I got 140k on it, but in practice sessions this year I had managed to get a 175k and a 174k (one of those games having a 128k first life followed by a spectacular meltdown). For a while I could not get a good game started until I managed to do 187k, another personal best I was happy about.
Pole Position - Got 64,910 in 2012, this year I got 65,100 (exactly 1 second faster, minus the phantom 10 points). Alright.
Q*Bert - my worst performance by far. This game just doesn't click with me, I was astounded by the number of people that could play this for an hour (or close to it). I could have been 1st in the overall rankings if I didn't suck at this. Oh well!
Rally-X - This game is ridiculous on Medium difficulty. I got a 58k on my first official attempt of the tournament, then didn't play it again until day 2 where I finally managed to reach the blue stages and ended up with 73k. Never want to play it again.
Robotron 2084 - The 875k I'd gotten back in 2012 was my personal best and I knew it was going to be hard to top. My goal was to get at least 700k but the Robotron Gods had not been smiling on me. I'd had ~645k after day 1 which did put me in 1st, but I wasn't satisfied. Luckily persistence paid off on day 2 and I eventually ended up with 818,100. Again, probably not the most productive use of my time when I could have been improving my ranking on other games, but it was another pride thing.
Super Pac-Man - Not really a fan of Pac games in general, and didn't really know much in the ways of patterns. Ended up with 161,300 which was better than I did in any practice sessions, but I do kind of wish I'd made more of an effort to figure out what to do on the higher stages.
Zaxxon - Ugggh, those space stages! I felt like I was making progress on this one but I feel so helpless once ships start randomly divebombing you, and ships coming out with no warning at varying height intervals... enraging. For a while I felt like I was making progress but I just couldn't figure out the space scenes. Oh well, 179k was still a good placement.
This is long enough so let me wrap this up with my two demands for next year's event -
1. No Mappy. Never again.
2. Pleeeeease don't schedule this the same weekend as Daylight Savings Time AGAIN! It is a killer for us west coast folk! (or maybe we need the handicap, ehehe)
Matt Hall
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This is also the first time I've finished ahead of Steve Wagner <YSG>
First of many I'm sure. GG's sir.
~Steve
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Yes was great time to be had. The Pole Position scores from the KenCade were just phenomenal and a big reason you guys won. I had a real shot at a HUGE game but got screwed on the last lap (I'm guessing maybe 67k at least). It was a fun weekend and was amazing to watch people play. Don and Steve putting up these monster scores and even watching the crazy Mappy scores (Don and his 580k? and Josh with 350k while I'm struggling trying to get 100k). Practice is the key I think and next year I will be putting in a lot more! That 560k Q-Bert hour score was bonkers and playing Frenzy for an hour just wow....
Great job everyone and just wait till next year! :D Kreygasm
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The Pole Position scores from the KenCade were just phenomenal and a big reason you guys won.
If this is true then I feel a little better about my decidedly average to below-average overall performance, because I blew away my personal best on Pole Position on TG settings at this event. Previous PB was at BOTA1 with 57,600. This year I got 62,300 and then 63,300 on Friday night while practicing, matched it on Saturday with 63,300, and then got 64,310 in the last hour of the event on Sunday.
I had played fewer than five games of Gravitar in my life before this event and had never played Frenzy before. I'm pretty happy I finally eeked out an extra man on Frenzy on these settings and finished with 16,922. I hadn't played Zaxxon since the mid-'80s and even then played maybe a half dozen credits of it. I mostly played Zaxxon on my Commodore 64, which had better hit detection and less clunky ship control, from what I remember.
I like Mappy a lot but just don't know what I'm doing on it, even after getting several helpful tips from Ken. The key seems to be grouping and leading the cats around the board and knowing when it's safe to cross a platform but I just couldn't figure that out in the short time I had. You know you're doing something wrong when you reach round 10 and your score is still less than 60k!
I'm a better 5-man Millipede player than 108,733 but just couldn't put it together all weekend. Same with my 5-man Robotron 394,350 -- was hoping to match my PB of 451k from BOTA1 but it didn't happen despite many attempts.
After becoming a truck driver last year right after BOTA2 I have much less free time than I used to and am mostly away from home during the week and much of Saturday. I got almost no practice time this year except for the two times I made it over to Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma during my 10-hour resets when I didn't have enough time to go home. (Dorky's is about 12 miles from my terminal while my house is 30 miles away, and I need to get as much sleep as possible on those 10-hour resets too.) For practice at Dorky's I played maybe two games of Q*bert and a bunch of Pole Position since I like that game so much. Most of the rest of the games I either didn't have access to at all or with proper controls (Frenzy, Gravitar, Zaxxon, Rally-X) or I have at home but never had the time or energy to play when I was actually at home (Robotron, Millipede, Super Pac-Man, Mappy, DK3, and Elevator Action but my EA board set has been down for months) and I needed to spend time with my wife anyway.
Many thanks again to Ken for hosting our team for the event and for practice sessions, and thanks to all of the organizers for all the work involved. We get to have a blast every year because these people spend so much time figuring out a game list that can be duplicated at multiple sites, acquiring and fixing those games, and building nice streaming setups. It's a lot of work, time, energy, and money for no financial gain.
John McAllister and Chris Mansfield drove in from Seattle.
Don't forget Perry Rodgers, who always shows up semi-unexpectedly on Saturday afternoon. :)
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Also a HUGE shout out to john Bart for the awesome job on the site. Worked flawlessly all weekend love it mate!
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Also a HUGE shout out to john Bart for the awesome job on the site. Worked flawlessly all weekend love it mate!
+1. Score entry was fast and easy. The only problem I saw, and it was only a potential problem, is that it was a little too easy to accidentally enter scores under someone else's name. I'd suggest that after clicking the "Update" button the user is asked for confirmation, like "Update score(s) for <player>?" with yes/no buttons before the score update actually goes through. With the database not quite being real-time you have to make double sure that your name is selected and that the database pulled your existing scores and is displaying them before you try to update anything. We had a case where Perry thought someone else had entered scores under his name since none of the scores listed were his, even though his name was being displayed. He just had to select his name from the drop down again to get his scores to populate. Maybe the database was busy at the instant he first selected his name? *shrug* As long as players are keeping track of their own scores somehow (piece of paper, etc. I used my smart phone) they can re-enter them should something like that happen, but an extra click to confirm player identity might be a good idea.
Forgot to mention... with regards to KenCade's Pole Position scores being a big reason why we won, in a contest as close as this one was it is possible for the results of a single game to sway the outcome. By Saturday evening Ken was seriously worried that Mappy was gonna cost us the win. I wasn't convinced at first, but at the time the overall standings looked so close that I can see why Ken was concerned. For Mappy we had two or three scores in the top ten, one or two in the middle of the pack, and seven or eight in the bottom ten. Ken threatened to shut off all the games and mandate a quick Mappy class but that never happened. Thankfully a few of us pushed into the mid-range on the Mappy standings and it ended up being a non-factor, I think because several of us also improved our scores on many of the other games throughout the day on Sunday. Personally, I got my best Mappy score fairly early on Saturday and was never able to top it, but on Sunday I was able to pass six people from the other teams on Rally-X, four on Donkey Kong 3, thirteen(!) on Frenzy, three on Q*bert, six on Zaxxon, and five on Elevator Action. So I more than made up for my low Mappy score by adding lots of team points on six other games.
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I'm really happy that the site worked well for data entry and scoring. I originally started the site with the plans of it just being a single page for viewing multiple streams. It exploded into a full on project when I got a hold of all the data from the previous events and started having fun with it.
I'm open to any suggestions to the site for next year. The data entry page didn't get a lot of love since it is only used during the even but I can definitely add a confirmation dialog to make things more clear.
The basic data entry should have been real time. You should have been able to see the scores you entered on the game page updated instantly. The only part that wasn't real-time was the calculation of the team scoring. I had that running every 10 minutes because it's surprisingly computationally expensive. The site is running on the same tiny VM running myhighscores.net so I wasn't sure how it would hold up. I can definitely shrink that interval for next year.
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As the only one here that represented our team, I think I can safely speak for us all when I say we had an amazing time! Thanks to Doc and his crew for an outstanding job with everything! I'm really proud of all of our team members for putting in the effort to learn these games. Thanks to all the organizers, JB for the awesome website, and the players. And congrats to Mike Kasper and the rest of the Manhole crew for another victory.
My thoughts on the games...
Donkey Kong 3 - I started my game with about 55 minutes left on Saturday thinking I would definitely have to play another game on Sunday, but I wanted to have a score turned in for every game by the end of the night. It was a really crappy game too, but I just played it out to get into 2nd. Luckily, that was good enough.
Elevator Action - I still don't really care for this game. It could be one of those games that I just need to keep playing and get better at before I start to enjoy it. I'm pretty sure there was an 8-way joystick on the machine, so that kinda messed me up too. Congrats on that 135K, Steve!
Frenzy - Never played it before this event, but I'm a fan of Berzerk so I had fun playing it. A little more practice would've gone a long way, but I wasn't too disappointed with my score.
Gravitar - This has been in my top 5 arcade games since I learned it for the <Pigger> tourney last year. I will continue to play this.
Mappy - Never played this one before either because it seems so painful to learn, but I enjoyed it. Now that I understand the game much better, I may revisit it. I do think it's a well-designed game, except that I hate the music.
Millipede - Although I haven't played this very much, another one of my all-time faves. I couldn't really practice it, but I figured I'd get at least 150K.
Pole Position - 99% of my play time on this was during a BotA, so I knew this was gonna hurt me. I started getting the hang of it near the end, but couldn't pull off a good run. I had a great time playing it though.
Q*bert - Messed up a couple of boards pretty badly which cost me. I should've sac'ed some guys.
Rally-X - Yeah.
Robotron 2084 - Amazing game...need to play a lot more. I was happy with 350K+. Matt Hall crushed it.
Super Pac-Man - I probably put more time into this than the other games. Running patterns is a little boring, but I learned some grouping techniques and that made it more enjoyable. One of the better Pac games.
Zaxxon - I struggled with this game at first, but then everything just started to click. I think I could push my score up a lot, but it's definitely low on the priority list. Don pwned us.
Looking forward to next year!
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Mappy - I hate the music.
Whtda <Allen>
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I may as well do a game rundown as well...since I tend to find them an interesting read. <Walter>
Donkey Kong 3 - I played the hell out of this prior to the event on the hardest settings possible in MAME to prep. RK had this on medium for awhile at the arcade some years back in the pre-George Riley days when me and a few others were thinking about trying for the TG record. According to Aurcade my previous best was 1.15m on these settings so I figured I'd make sure I was able to go the hour this time. It was the first game I played on Saturday to try and get it out of the way. A few folks on the team wanted to see the gameplay as well so I tried to do a tutorial at times while playing (George did this with his 1 hr Q*Bert as well). It worked out where I got in a groove and was able to keep the one death per loop goal alive for a lot of the game. Thankfully I only had to play this once and I don't really want to ever really play it again unless I have to.
Elevator Action - The 2nd game I played on Saturday right after DK3 since it was next to it, ironically they were my only #1 finishes for the tourney. I don't recall it actually giving me many screwing opportunities except at the end of the game, though I did have a few crossfire Matrix-type moments. I got to the bottom of building 8 I think and died 2x there, the re-spawn they give you at the bottom where you get placed in the middle is pretty much suicide at this level. This is the 2nd best score I've ever gotten. Had I completed that building I would have beaten the old TG record again and needed to get about halfway down the next building or so to beat my current best but it was not to be.
Frenzy - I never really played this before the event that much and my MAME rom basically stopped working. I practiced it a little bit but never really got into it that much. I'm not a fan of having to pay attention to all the details other than just walls and robot fire like Berzerk. I think it was fun on these settings though much more than it would have been on extra every 3k. I was uber impressed with the 100k scores, seems like this game can screw you a lot.
Gravitar - I tried but I just can't get into this that much, there should also probably be a rule in place about leeching the map screen I think but I digress...it does look really pretty on a real cabinet though, I must admit. I don't know how Ben, Sam, John, etc crush this game so much.
Mappy - I hadn't played this since last BOTA but once I played a few games I started to get back into it. I dig it a little bit, especially when it gets fast later on. I was able to loop the boards this go around and probably could have pushed to 200k maybe or a little more but looking at the scoring it didn't make much sense to spend time on it.
Millipede - Our PCB was pretty fucked. It showed double arrow fire but only one arrow counted and that would change while you played so you had a lot of deaths from not knowing which bullet was connecting. It was also resetting but then I fixed that on Sunday. I'll blame the PCB for my lower score than last year <Billy> Great game though.
Pole Position - This is a great tourney game, always close scoring obviously. I can usually bang out 65k games fairly regularly but I was hoping to maybe eclipse my personal best of 65,750 this time but once I got a decent score on it I didn't want to tie it up when other people were unable to practice it at home and needed the runs on it. Best driving game easily.
Rally-X - We played on a multicade which we set to medium. On Saturday I couldn't break 50k but maybe 2 or 3 times and I knew I had gotten 90k before on medium and regularly to the blue boards at least. I was befuddled. Then I took a look closer at the first red board, it had 7 cars (I think) at the bottom and 3 starting from the top (it also said "Challenging Stage" in proper English. I thought that was odd, so I had Dan fire it up in MAME on medium and sure enough, first red board had only 1 car starting from the top. We were playing on harder settings the entire day on Saturday. Once we switched to MAME/medium, our team got a few 70k's. LOL. Totally juiced roms in that Multicade. <Tim>
Robotron 2084 - I was able to beat my personal best by about 30k this year which I was pleased with (448k). This is another awesome tourney game, probably Williams 2nd best game ever after Mystic Marathon. Kappa
Super Pac-Man - Other than a starting pattern to grab the keys, I spent little time on this because I'm not much of a Pac guy and I was too lazy to work on any real patterns. I figured about average on it would do and that's about what I did I think. Sam helped a bit though trying to show us how to play like he's done on the other Pac games in the past. <pacman>
Zaxxon - This was probably my favorite new game. It reminds me of Scramble where the city in Scramble is the only tough part and space in Zaxxon is the only tough part. I started to get better by watching Don play and I'd like to maybe try to break 1m at some point but that seems like a pretty unreachable goal right now until I can be much more consistent in space.
Q*bert - Easily my 1 hour personal best, I was really happy with this score and I was able to cruise through a lot of boards early in the event chain on the repeating boards. Most times I never got to the freeze ball event which is miles better than I was doing leading up to the event in my 1 hour practice runs.
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The basic data entry should have been real time. You should have been able to see the scores you entered on the game page updated instantly.
That did happen. What I meant was that sometimes you'd select a new player name from the drop-down and the list of game scores would not populate with that player's already-submitted scores; the previous player's scores would remain. I saw this happen more than once. If you hit the drop-down and selected the player again, then it would populate. I don't think it happened a lot because I never heard anyone else mention it, but I did see this happen a few times.
If it matters we were using Chrome on Windows on both laptops (one for data entry and the other for monitoring the standings on each game and the team scores).
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Ok I'll check that out. I really didn't give the page a bunch of testing so it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't handle lags in polling data very well.
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Millipede - Our PCB was pretty fucked. It showed double arrow fire but only one arrow counted and that would change while you played so you had a lot of deaths from not knowing which bullet was connecting. It was also resetting but then I fixed that on Sunday. I'll blame the PCB for my lower score than last year.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the PCB. This sounds like a game logic problem that is symptomatic of low power on the +5V rail. Put a multimeter on it. I bet it reads low, like 4.8V or so. If so, adjust to 5.05V and test it. If no change, dial it up to 5.1V and try again. Repeat to a max of 5.2V. If the problem goes away at a voltage higher than 5.05V then clean the contacts and re-seat the edge connector, then dial it back to 5.05V and re-test. If you can't get it running correctly at 5-5.05V you may need to rebuild the edge connector to get strong contact again. Leaving it running at the higher voltage (5.1V or higher) will cause it to run hot and will burn up the edge connector and board contacts before long.
Anyway, start by verifying good power and solid connections. And test the boardset in another known good Millipede cab if that is possible.
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Millipede - Our PCB was pretty fucked. It showed double arrow fire but only one arrow counted and that would change while you played so you had a lot of deaths from not knowing which bullet was connecting. It was also resetting but then I fixed that on Sunday. I'll blame the PCB for my lower score than last year.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the PCB. This sounds like a game logic problem that is symptomatic of low power on the +5V rail. Put a multimeter on it. I bet it reads low, like 4.8V or so. If so, adjust to 5.05V and test it. If no change, dial it up to 5.1V and try again. Repeat to a max of 5.2V. If the problem goes away at a voltage higher than 5.05V then clean the contacts and re-seat the edge connector, then dial it back to 5.05V and re-test. If you can't get it running correctly at 5-5.05V you may need to rebuild the edge connector to get strong contact again. Leaving it running at the higher voltage (5.1V or higher) will cause it to run hot and will burn up the edge connector and board contacts before long.
Anyway, start by verifying good power and solid connections. And test the boardset in another known good Millipede cab if that is possible.
Thanks Chris. It ain't my game, it's Richie's so I'm not sure if he measured the power or not. I'm pretty sure it was underwater during a flood though so who knows. I cleaned the contacts and reset the edge connectors to stop it from resetting at least during the tourney on Sunday. Richie might not know it was having issues at this point. I could only take a little bit of time to try and do any quick fixes as people needed to play it.
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Well shoot I'll go ahead and join in. :D
Donkey Kong 3 - I was doing the opposite and practicing on "medium" in MAME which apparently is not Medium on the arcade. I should have practiced this game more. My 252k game on this I lost 4 guys in a ROW on the "gray" board. So frustrating as I felt I was in a "groove". I feel I am real close to at least marathoning for 1 million on this title if I could stop the explosions around board 16 or 19. I should have practiced on the hardest setting as well.
Elevator Action - Played a few games of this that were uneventful. Finally got past 60k and then my phone rang. I was a fool an attempted to answer it while going up and down in an elevator and got shot in the foot :) - Fairly happy but feel I could have done 70-80k if I played again and pressed a little more for points.
Frenzy - I NEVER played this (or Berzerk) and while my 13k score was ok I really felt like I should have tried for a 20-25k score. Tough game but on my 13k I died basically back to back due to bad room setups. Really frustrating if that happens. NOT MY FAULT :D
Gravitar - I finally started getting the hang of the gravity its really just about how to shoot the turrents for me now. I should be able to go a lot deeper in this game if I practice and watch a little more. I was able to get past the 2nd reactor screen as well! Yeah leeching the map is odd but it gives you so few points its really not worth it and you will never get the WR doing that. Would take like 120 hours :D - Really great scores on this title from a lot of people. Way higher then I expected.
Mappy - I played a few practice games and was a little disappointed with this score. I really wanted 100k at least and had gotten it several times in practice. Its a different title and I find myself getting impatient which results in stupid deaths. The big red cat killed my last guy on the 89k game. Grrrrr. Watching Don and Josh just cruise with the scores was pretty impressive.
Millipede - Our PCB was pretty fubar. I had a PB on this tho so feel pretty good about it. I had a 68k game with 2 guys left when the game reset on me otherwise who knows what that score would have been. This is a title I wanted 100k on but did way better than BOTA2 so booya..
Pole Position - Had one run that was dang near perfect (for me) and it reset on me on the final lap (Kind of like Millipede was doing. If you hit the steering wheel to hard it just hard reset). Not sure what that score could have been im guessing 66k plus maybe? I played several more attempts and always seemed to choke on the last lap :) - KenCade really tore this title up and is one of the reasons they won the overall. Fun game and think I like it more than PPII. If we do PP2 again it needs to be this same track going forward :)
Rally-X - Ill just put what Steve said since its pretty much exactly the same for me. "We played on a multicade which we set to medium. On Saturday I couldn't break 50k but maybe 2 or 3 times and I knew I had gotten 90k before on medium and regularly to the blue boards at least. I was befuddled. Then I took a look closer at the first red board, it had 7 cars (I think) at the bottom and 3 starting from the top (it also said "Challenging Stage" in proper English. I thought that was odd, so I had Dan fire it up in MAME on medium and sure enough, first red board had only 1 car starting from the top. We were playing on harder settings the entire day on Saturday. Once we switched to MAME/medium, our team got a few 70k's. LOL. Totally juiced roms in that Multicade. <Tim>
Robotron 2084 - I was able to beat my personal best on 5 man. Im stuck in the lvl 10ish zone for now. Only reason I got 175k is I had a smorgasbord of humans I was able to gather on Lvl 5. Kreygasm - I think that 175k is almost my Marathon PB as well. This is a cool tourny game on the 5 man settings. That 800k is just nuts :D Kappa
Super Pac-Man - I'm not much of a Pac guy either and Sam was able to do well on this title again. I could have probably gotten 200k if I tried again and got a little lucky but the joystick was acting up for me on the dedicated Super-Pac and would go right sometimes when I wanted to go down so after trying a few times I just moved on.
Zaxxon - This game sucks :) - I got a new PB on this as well (wooooo 60k) but its the 3D that messes with me. Everyone says its the spaceships that kill them but for me its the damn walls. I crashed into the walls or the missiles shot me all my deaths this game. Its just skewed funny to me and I have to focus so hard on my shadow that I lose track of my altitude and objects above. If I really tried I could probably get something going but naww I doubt it :D
Q*bert - Woo hoo 100K baby - New PB. I should have tried more but with the 1 hour players its hard to get time in. I just couldn't practice this on MAME at all. The diagonals sucked. Amazing to see the huge variety in 1 hour scores. Don and his 560k was just insane.
Overall 100k was a goal score for all the titles except PP. I fell just a little short on Mappy, Gravitar and Millipede but overall was very happy with the event. I was fairly consistent and ended up 3rd on the team (just counting our scores) and 4th on the team overall counting everyone which was a HUGE surprise for me. Even managed 14th overall so I am pretty stoked!! I'm just the slow and steady type it seems Kappa
Was very cool to watch people put up major scores and participate with everyone. Already looking forward to next year!!
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DK3 Unique game in that there are two ways to clear the screen, but later in the game only 1 way and that is to clear all the enemies. The score Wag put up was and is very impressive. 2 Years ago I could do that scoring pace on easy and I thought Med would only be a little harder, hmmm oooops that show's it's not the case in my score :(
303k
EA Owned this game in the early 90's. Used to play with friends and get to around 80-90k not sure what the settings were. I do like the game although it is a little slow. I just couldn't get into it again this year just like last year, but I did increase my score to around 52k. Wag again wooof
Frenzy Played this game to 100k at home at 3k bonus and just barely made it to 100k. Thought that I had enough play to let my mind figure out how to play. Didn't go so well as I couldn't even get an extra man.
I'd like to play this game more as it's a fun and challenging game.
Gravitar Played this a bunch when I was a kid, could get to the last invisible reg gravity and then would die. Figured that took about an hour to do so I didn't even practice. Took around 40 minutes to reach that solar system of planets but I couldn't remember the levels anymore so just gave up and said that's enough to be
in top 5.
Crappy Yeah I didn't, don't, won't, will, ever want to play this game again. It's not a bad game, it's just a game
I don't enjoy what so ever.
Millipede I wan't to be more like Don, relax, smile, have some fun playing Millipede. But I still tense up, stop breathing, sweat and cramp trying to stay in control. Much better game than Centipede and I'd like it to be in
more tourney's or events.
PP I blame my vision or lack of when I wear glasses. Not being able to see upcoming cars or take your eyes
off the road to see other stuff makes this game much harder. Just couldn't get a good game and gave up and
just went for a finish with no crash. I like PP2 better though
Rally X No I didn't play this game over and over again, it was playing me. Finished the 1st challenge stage with no men lost and 30-40k in score at least 20-30 times. But I just couldn't make it to the next one. This game on these settings was just too hard for me. Those that did make it ":#@%#$
Robo I can't beat that clown BBH. He just laughs at me when I play Robo. I'm thinking that he is going to steal my patterns so I don't play as well :) Not playing this game on a regular basis sure shows off the rust that will gather if you don't play. Still the best game out there for a tourney or event. Quick and fun, scores are all over the map. You can have some of your best games and it makes your day.
Super Pac Mazes are not fun, I get lost easy, and I'm scared of ghost.
Zaxxon 3d screw that we have 4d and 5d nowadays. I've never liked this game.
Q-Bert Never have learned how to play this game, was amazed that I could do an hour, well 4 minutes short of the hour. Watching the pros like George though gave me enough info to know how to do some stuff to keep me going.
Had a good time. Sam's wife brought teriyaky chicken over for dinner and for lunch on Sunday she brought spaghetti and meatballs for lunch, yuummmmy thank you Sam's wife. BC's wife made my favorite brownies, no special ingredients people. Ken did a great job of hosting and all games were wiped down and cleaned, he did forget to take out the (Mappy) trash though. Hector and his wife flew in from LA to be on our team and we all had a good time. Some Alaskan fellow flew in and caused some fun too. That Kasper guy learns his games very well, and then goes on and shows his skills, nice job being number 1 again.
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I'll throw in my two cents.
I felt that this year's competition was a lot more competitive than last year. I underestimated the Midwest team. I guess it was because I did not know anyone on that team aside from Ben, so I assumed that collectively they were not going to be as tough as the Kencade. Of course our team had some great competitors, so I assumed it would be a close race between us and the Kencade.
Now on to the games:
Q*bert - I had practiced one hour runs for quite some time, so I was happy with my score, (518,000+, it was the first game I played and did not need to play it again) though I wanted to shoot for a 525,000+ point game. It didn't matter, because fellow team members Don and Steve finished ahead of me. Going for a higher score would not have helped the team's rankings.
Millipede - I did a personal 5-man high of 180,000+ points. What surprised me was that for most of the game, the graphics had that double vision effect, but it did not hinder my performance. I might be in the minority, but I enjoy Millipede much more than Centipede. I would like Millipede to be a fixture in the Battle of the Arcades.
Mappy - I actually struggled throughout the first day, maxing out at 254,000. I put a lot of pressure on myself to achieve a personal high in this game. I expected only Don and Ken to put up much higher scores than me. On the second day, I noticed Mike Kasper had passed me in the standings with a 293,000+ point game, so it motivated me to try again and I wound up with a personal best of over 355,000 points. As with every big game, I had some insane near death moments, only to lose my last life on a simple bump into a cat. I was shooting for a score between 350,000 to 400,000, so I was very pleased. I give serious props to Don. I saw him do a 660,000+ point run on Friday night and he made it look so easy.
Elevator Action - I've taken a liking to this game and I scored a personal high of 72,700. I hope this game remains a fixture in future events.
Robotron 2084 - For the second year in a row, there was a game that I expected to do very poorly in, but ended up with a decent score. Robotron was that game. I did a personal best of over 202,000 points, which is shocking, because I could never score that many points even with extra lives at every 25,000. It took me dozens of tries to get that score, so for someone who is god awful at this game, I'm happy.
Pole Position - Driving games are not my thing. I think it has to do with the fact that I'm 36 and have never gotten my driver's license, so I am somewhat inexperienced in driving. I blame living almost my entire life in the Big Apple on that. I did 47K on it, which was a lot better than last year.
Rally-X - This game suplexed me, put me in the camel clutch, broke my back, fucked my ass, and made me humble. On Friday night, I scored 80,000, so I thought that I was going to kick ass during the competition. Wrong!!!!!! I suspect that the game was set on easy on Friday and switched to normal afterwards. I ended up scoring over 56,000 points, which I did during the final hours of the contest, which helped boost my ranking in the game 8 spots. The Galloping Ghost did a great job in this game and Dan, from our team rocked with a 76,000+ point game.
Super Pac-Man - I remember before the competition there was confusion as to what romset was supposed to be used on MAME for practice. I remember a lot of you guys were disappointed to find out that you were using the wrong romset, which has a great impact on scores. I thought that the scores weren't going to be that high, but I was wrong. Many of you guys kicked ass. I had a solid 152,000+ points. Don, Robbie, and Sam kicked serious ass in this game.
Frenzy - I had very little experience in this game prior to the competition. I've taken a liking to this game. I was practicing Berzerk at Barcade before the event, but after playing Frenzy, the two games have a very different feel. I scored just under 14,000 points.
Zaxxon - This was one of the games that I knew I was going to be lousy at and I was right. I could never get accustomed to the controls.
Gravitar - See comments for Zaxxon
Donkey Kong 3 - I suck at this game and I hope I never have to play it again.
Of course I have to thank Mr. Richie Knucklez for setting everything up. He puts in countless hours bringing in the machines and setting them up for the event. I thank everyone on the team for their enthusiasm and effort. We will take the crown next year. So Kencade, WHATCHA GONNA DO, WHEN TEAM KNUCKLEZ RUNS WILD ON YOU!!!!?????
I look forward to the 2015 event. I would like to make two early suggestions: Ladybug and Swimmer.
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I look forward to the 2015 event. I would like to make two early suggestions: Ladybug and Swimmer.
Swimmer not likely, as it's pretty hard to come by. Ladybug is on the 60-in-1 so that is much more do-able.
We should probably start a BOTA4 wish list thread.
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I'd like to thank Ken for opening up his home to allow us to do this contest and Sam's wife for bringing the food. I'd also like to thank everyone on the PNW team for allowing me to be part of the team. It was an honor to be in a contest with so many great players.
I went into this contest with three goals. Have fun, don't finish last and help the team win. At the end of Saturday, I was doing good on only the first of those goals. I sucked bad and was worried my suckness was gonna cost Kencade a chance to win. I went into Sunday with some personal goals and did much better accomplishing goal number two. I'm not sure about goal number three but at the least, I didn't cause the team to lose. Most importantly, everyone on the team is super cool and I had a great time.
As for the games, when Ken told me the 12 games we would be playing, I knew it was going to be a struggle because I'm not good on any of those games and some of them I had never even played before (Frenzy, Mappy, Super Pac) or never played on an actual cabinet (Millipede, Elevator Action, Rally X). And a couple I just don't care for (Zaxxon, Q*Bert).
Before this contest, I didn't really care for Gravitar either but after watching others play this game and seeing how it's supposed to be played, I like it a lot better now. I'd like to put some more time into this game.
Robotron is a game that I never played much before but what an awesome game. I plan to continue playing this game with the hopes that maybe someday I'll be good enough to get a million but it's also an ass kicker so it's going to take some major effort. Too bad getting good at a game isn't as easy as watching someone else's play like some others think <Pigger>, cause I just watched some of the best players in the world kick this games ass.
I remember playing DK3 as a kid and thinking it was ok. I practiced this game a fair amount and enjoyed it but probably not enough to go out of my way to play this game again.
Pole Position is an awesome game that I played plenty as a kid. I'm disappointed I didn't get complete run in but once I scored the 50k, it made more sense for me to try and improve some of my other scores. I feel like I've got some unfinished business with this game and my local arcade (The Coin Jam in Salem) has one of these so I'll continue to play.
Thanks again for letting me play and a huge congrats to Mike Kasper for being the number one individual player and congrats to us for winning the team battle.
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Ok my turn. LOL
First of all BIG props to KEN HOUSE and richie knuckles and doc. and everyone else involved with this great tournament!
and thank you to jean mcnear for bringing over the best teriyaki chicken i have ever had. and a dam good spaghetti and meatballs also .
I was very worried this yr. when i first heard the game list i thought i had no chance to repeat as individual winner again. 3 games i had never played in my life. 2 games very very very little. and 2 games i just was not good at . even with 2 weeks to go i was sure i would finish 4 or 5th. but pep talk from ken. and a couple of AHA moments. on a couple of games during the last week before the event pushed me over top !
so now onto the games .
RALLY X . i actually like this game. it was just the settings were a joke. and not cause it was so hard. but because. it was hard and became a crap shoot. you had to just play over and over until you got good variations of flags and got the special flag right away on a couple of boards and a big sac of. during practice i had a game of 86 K. on these settings. during the tourney 72 K and died in the exact same spot. so a diff of 14 K. THATS HUGE for a short game . i would have spent more time and tried for 1st but mccalister was on this game all weekend LOL
millipede. i barely practiced. cause i knew i had reached a threshold i wasnt going to pass. and i thought 150K would still be good for top 5. got 158. which was 6th. so my estimate was pretty close.
elevator action. i knew going into this one. i would be second or 3rd. no way was wagner losing on HIS game for a second yr in a row. 135K wow. great job wags. i really wanted to put up 100k +. but when i saw that 95 would be 3rd i didnt bother playing anymore . matt put up a very very good 115 k too.
robotron. I used to think i was the effing man on this game. obviously i can marathon it ( and roll my lives LOL :'( ) but 5 man. im no match for KEN <MATT AND JOHN. im pretty damn good maybe 5th best in the world and these guys make me look like a chump. i barely practiced . cause i pretty much knew i was/am as good as im gonna get. my goal was 4th. i got 3rd only cause ken only played like 5 times. matt hall put up another 800k like last yr. WOW.
POLE POSITION. never played it much as a kid. didnt really like it. i was into other driving games like TURBO> ( would love to see this in the BOTA) . had never even finished the race before. and until 2 weeks before the contest still hadnt. and i practiced a lot in those next two weeks and couldnt get anybetter. and was just going to settle with a 60k score and call it good. but then i watched matt hall and had an AHA moment. and on sat upped my PB 3 times. finally settling with 63750. which i thought would be 6th 0r 7th. but in the last 4 hrs. like 5 guys went around me WOW.
super pacman. i actually thought i was going to win this game. until with 1 week to go found out i was practicing on the wrong setting. DOH> IDIOT!!! scrambled to get good enough in a week to do 200k. and thought that would still be top 5. ended up with 202. and got 6th so agin my estimate was close. WOW this game gets so effing hard after level 24. anyone who can even make it 3or 4 levels after that. WOW. you rock .
MAPPY. i had originally wanted to unviel my masterpiece on this game for the bota. but the pattern practice is just going to slow. i fig its going to at the rate im learning. take 3-4 mths. of solid 3 hrs every day. to finish what im doing. and didnt have time for the bota. i fig i could easily do 300k. and that would be 3-5. got 298 and finished 4th. again another good estimate.good thing i finished this high or i think ken would have punched me LOL ( btw a mappy WR will be happening in the next yr ).
donkey kong 3. i actually practiced this one more than any other game . mostly cause of marinomitch on the forum saying this is the easiest of the 3 kongs to get a million. WTF i think he is high. cause. i practiced a ton and my best game was 440. and only got over 400 2 other times. i fig 350375 would be right around tenth and thats what i shot for. got 388., and got 7th. i really didnt think i would finish that high on this one. more proof that marino mitch is drinking the bong water HEHE.
gravitar. i hated this game as a kid. played it like maybe 5-8 times. never played it at kens until practice for the BOTA> this is now one of my all time favs. with 1 week to go my best was 98 k. and i just kept at it. practiced this one second most of any game. and managed to get good enough for a 200k. this was a shock. i really thought i would finish low on this one. and finished 3rd. this is the one that made the difference i believe in winning.
frenzy. still cant believe matt hall did an hr at 15k a man . what a beast. my goal was 40 k. thought that would be top 5 got 39 k and finished 5th. again another good estimate. i very much enjoyed this game. i like it better than berzerk. probably in the minority on that one.
Qbert. man i dreaded this one going in . when i heardit was in the bota i thought this game would be the death of me . like it was for matt hall . sorry matt. but all it took was watching a video on youtube. and it was like OHHHH DUH> thats easy. if not for a kasper meltdown. i had 7 guys at 320 and ended at 350 LMAO . i would have played for the hr. but stll would have been 70k behind donald . what a 1 hr pace. wow.
lastly . zaxxon. this game pisses me off like no other. i feel like i have it mastered but yet dont at the same time. GRRRR.. i was hoping to have the game of my life and beat donald. but only played it twice. 2nd was good enough for me. the 2nd time was only cause mcnear beat my first score of 440. and i was like no cant have none of that LOL. sorry sam.
So who is going to step up next yr and stop my 3peat ? 8)
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donkey kong 3. i actually practiced this one more than any other game . mostly cause of marinomitch on the forum saying this is the easiest of the 3 kongs to get a million. WTF i think he is high. cause. i practiced a ton and my best game was 440. and only got over 400 2 other times. i fig 350375 would be right around tenth and thats what i shot for. got 388., and got 7th. i really didnt think i would finish that high on this one. more proof that marino mitch is drinking the bong water HEHE.
Mike, DK3 is gonna be one of those games that is over quick if it gets under your skin and causes you to rage (like I've seen you do on other games, so I'm just saying ;) ). I've only played the game a few times and I can tell that if I take my time and chill out and don't try to play beyond my ability and skill set my scores are way better -even moreso than when I apply this rule to other games. Just play patiently and all those saved lives will add up super quick, baby! Ben Falls is super good at this sort of mentality, so watch some of his gameplay. Patience actually goes a long way to coming up with/developing/noticing sound and consistent patterns.
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Just play patiently and all those saved lives will add up super quick, baby! Ben Falls is super good at this sort of mentality, so watch some of his gameplay. Patience actually goes a long way to coming up with/developing/noticing sound and consistent patterns.
I'm convinced this is why Ben beat me to a million on Mario Bros. when we were (unofficially) racing on that about a year ago and we were neck and neck for quite a while. I'm just too damned impatient and play very aggressively. Doesn't work for big scores in Mario Bros. and it won't work in DK3 either for most people. I'll get back to playing MB one of these days. I'm going to have to make time for it somewhere.