A Frogger player playing Donkey Kong.

[johnbart]

I've re-found my love for classic arcade gaming and decided to catch a big of Kong fever.  I'm stuck with only a laptop and Mame for the next few months so I'm going to see if I can finally get better at this game.  This forum is another reason that I chose to focus on the game.  The rest of the CAG scene has kind of dispersed to the four corners and there are a lot of familiar faces hanging out here.

I've started by setting up a number of saved states for all levels through 6-1 and a special one for the 4th elevator with jumpman already at the top so I can practice going from safe spot to safe spot.  After the first couple of weeks I have a new PB of 194,100 making it to 7-1.  It's far from a good score but it's a start for me.

http://www.myhighscores.net/scores/267

[Scoundrl]

Go Johnny... Go Johnny...

Welcome aboard!

[johnbart]

I've been getting into a practice routine where I spend most of my time looping through boards on level 5 to improve my chances on being able to run those boards cleanly.  While I've been doing that I've noticed something strange happening.

I'm actually enjoying playing Donkey Kong!!

I've played the game on and off for years but I never really had a tonne of fun playing it due to the frustration factors with it.  I have reached a point where I'm starting to understand the levels a bit more and see some of the beauty in the frustration.  I honestly wasn't sure I was going to get to this point.

[VON]

You have to bang through that wall with any game; but once you start making progress, learning new stuff, it's the most fun you'll ever have in CAGing, imo.  Learning the nuances of games new to you, and learning that you like the game in the process, es muy bueno.   

[johnbart]

I've been doing a lot of just practising individual board types and I finally have started to get a bit more comfortable with each and cutting down on the blatantly stupid deaths.  I still have plenty of stupid deaths but they aren't as ugly as they used to be.  The biggest boost was when I started playing around with barrel boards, not for the sake of running them quickly, but to see how I can control barrels better and practice all kinds of different jumps.

The practising is fun to do and it's finally starting to show dividends.  Tonight I bumped up my PB a good chunk in a breakthrough game with 264,300.  Next stop is 300k!

http://www.myhighscores.net/scores/270

[johnbart]

I started reading the Beginner's Manual put together by the guys here and I think it helped me solidify some ideas in my head for the barrel boards.  This led me to a mini-breakthrough game today for a new personal best of 386,100.  Most importantly I didn't have any obviously stupid deaths.  Most of them were just due to my lack of skill and not a complete goober on my part.

Watch out Ken, I'm catching up.

http://www.myhighscores.net/scores/271

[stella_blue]

Most importantly I didn't have any obviously stupid deaths.

I only wish that I could report similar progress.  I honestly cannot recall a single game I've played in the past 2 years with fewer than 2 deaths resulting from "cement head syndrome".  If it's located above my neck and between my shoulders, it must be a cinder block.   

[marinomitch13]

I started reading the Beginner's Manual put together by the guys here and I think it helped me solidify some ideas in my head for the barrel boards.  This led me to a mini-breakthrough game today for a new personal best of 386,100.  Most importantly I didn't have any obviously stupid deaths.  Most of them were just due to my lack of skill and not a complete goober on my part.

Watch out Ken, I'm catching up.

http://www.myhighscores.net/scores/271

Glad the manual is helping you out! Feel free to PM me with any other questions you may have, and I'd be happy to help!

[johnbart]

It's good to have goals even if I never end up getting them all taken care of in a given calendar year

My Classic Arcade Gaming Goals for 2014

• Finish the Battle of the Arcades website in time for the actual event.  I have a good chunk of the site already done and ready to go.  I should have that up for the public in the next couple of weeks so hopefully this is an easy goal.
• Break 500k on Donkey Kong.
• Break 250k on Centipede.  Unfortunately I can only play this on MAME with a mouse.
• Find a way to support/highlight the live gaming events to better the hobby as a whole.  I believe that the social aspects of the hobby are more important than high score lists that can be divisive.  I want to help support them in any positive way that I can.
• Stay away from the drama in the hobby and just have fun playing the games.

[VON]

I HEART JOHNBART

[johnbart]

I've managed to take care of the first of my gaming goals for 2014.  The website for the Battle of the Arcades is now live.  You can find it at this convenient link:

http://www.battleofthearcades.net/

The site has all of the info on the upcoming event along with the past two events including games, settings, scores, players, standings, etc.  It will hopefully also have real-time scoring for the 2014 event when it's live.

Long live live arcade events!

[TheSunshineFund]

Love it.

Thanks John!

[marinomitch13]

Like a boss! Thanks!

[johnbart]

I've been working on the final details for the BotA site to get it ready for the event.  I just pushed out the first cut of the streaming page which allows you to watch a couple of streams at a time while chatting in a global chat room.  A couple things to note:

1. I only have a couple of streams setup as potential channels.  For the event I'll have all of the cameras from the various sites but for now there are just a couple in there for testing.

2. Only online channels will show up on the left side of the screen.  To save the page from being crazy slow to load I currently only check the online status of channels every 5 minutes.  I'll be tweaking as I find out how that works.

3. To view a channel you just grab it from the left hand side and pull it into one of the two available slots.

4. The Twitch.TV chat embeds are messed up.  I couldn't get them to consistently work well and I couldn't find any other site that had them working flawlessly.  Instead I opted for a simple IRC embed that puts anyone watching in an IRC channel called #battleofthearcades..  This means a unified chat room no matter what stream you are watching and you don't need to login with a twitch account.  Just pick a username and you go.

http://www.battleofthearcades.net/Streaming

[syscrusher]

Nice work, JB!