Mitch's Gaming Goals

[marinomitch13]

OK, time's up! Gonna do a quick recap on my year and goals. Below are my original goals and my startend scores:

Game                                            2013 Goal                               Start                              End                           
Track and Field                                       5m+                                   1.1m                              2m
Donkey Kong                                        1.1m+                                  726k                            726k
DK Jr                                                    1.1m+                       ~250k running boards      189K @ 1.1m+ pace
Tron                                                      1m+                                     30k                              90k                     
Dig Dug                                                 1m+                                     50k                             259k                                                                 
Burgertime                                            1m+                                     60k                            2.54m
Galaga                                                   1m+                                  ~450k                         ~450k                                   
Joust                                              1m+/100+waves                         30k                      1.55m/101 waves
Mario Bros.                                             500k+                               ~270k                          ~270k
Centipede                                               500k+                                  75k                              75k
D2K                                                       250k+                                  75k(3+1)                     75k(3+1)
Frogger                                                  100k+                                  11k                               40k
Space Invaders                                       100k+                                  2.5k                              24k (machine overheated, no deaths)
Every race record on Cruis'n USA at my local Arcade...... completed; actually got all but the all-race WRs!
Start playing Asteroids and Defender a bit....... completed. Love 'em both!

Obviously, RQ closing put a HUGE damper on my CAG playing, but school, work, and the DK manual got in the way these past few months too. Some games I basically didn't even touch, so there was no improvement. I hope to get my 60-in-1 machine up and running early this summer, so that way there'll be hope for getting some more games learned this year.

[WCopeland]

What was your PB on Defender by the end of the year?

[marinomitch13]

Lol, only 130k, but I was starting to get the skills down and my average was starting to improve and accelerate higher by the time RQ ended up closing. I was just getting the muscle memory/endurance down and the game was becoming very fun to play on a physical level. RQ's Defender machine was maybe a 9.5 out of 10, so I'm really gonna miss playing on that beautiful machine. I almost coughed up the money to buy it cheap at $750, but I couldn't bite that bullet at the time, financially.

[WCopeland]

I understand... Defender cabinets are not only a bit pricey but can also be very expensive to maintain.  Still... 120k isn't that bad, that means you made it at least to Wave 8, where the difficulty stops increasing.

[Kasht]

Hi Mitch,

I finally got approved here, so I'm going to post the things we discussed that may help you out improve those Arcade times for Cruis'n USA:

1. To access Golden Gate Park, go to US 101 and hold View 1 + View 2.
2. To access Indiana, go to Beverly Hills and hold View 1 + View 3.
3. To access San Francisco, go to Grand Canyon and hold View 2 + View 3.

Things to test from the Nintendo 64 port in the Arcade:

1. ATV is proven to be faster than any other vehicle ONLY when going offroad.  Check if the max speed for the ATV increases while going offroad in the arcade as well.
2. Manual transmission is proven to increase the maximum speed of the vehicles in the N64 version.  Again, something to check and see if it is the same in the arcade.
3. You may want to test out using the Alternate Ferrari (blue/gree).  I haven't seen any videos with it but I know it is faster and has easier handling than the normal red Ferrari.  To get it, highlight the first car at the car selection screen, hold View 1 and rotate the steering wheel fully to the Right, fully to the Left, fully to the Right, fully to the Left, fully to the Right, fully to the Left, then press Accelerate.
4. You may or may not already use it, but double tapping the gas pedal increases the acceleration for a short amount of time.  Mostly useful when doing a full Cruise the USA run! 

Here is the URL for the wiki site tracking the game: http://www.videogamerecords.org/wiki/Cruis'n_USA

I'm looking forward to seeing your times and hopefully some videos of the times soon!

Take care and hope some of the stuff above helps!

-Kasht

[marinomitch13]

Awesome, Kasht!

For anyone on DKF wondering what exactly is going on here, I recently just decided to finally search out more Cruis'n USA players on twitch and ran into Kasht and some other top Cruis'n players on N64.

Kasht, I registered for your wiki, and from now on will take pictures of my best times. As of now, I don't feel comfortable submitting my times to the wiki with no external evidence (even though I know I actually did all these times and I have witnesses for some of them). However, to kinda prove my ability, one time, for Arizona, can still be seen at Rusty Quarter's (the former local arcade in my town) website: http://rqarcade.com/Game_List.html (the time is 1:27.74 and is probably my time I'm most proud of -and it was verified by the Arcade owner).

I'll be sure to check out these suggestions (might have a chance to tomorrow) and report back here. I'm pretty sure, if I recall correctly, that using manual is faster by like 2-3 MPH at top speed, and it is definitely way more efficient to use for just general accelerating. I forced myself to master it early on. I'll explain in more detail some of the tricks I've discovered on arcade for accelerating later (basically just the markers I use for shifting).

I also have messed around with the double tap that revs the engine, but, in watching the speedometer, it didn't seem to be helpful for anything. Maybe I just had bad timing? I know on the later Cruis'n arcade games it would cause you to perform a backflip when going off jumps.

Thanks again for being welcoming!

[Kasht]

Hi Mitch,

I did some additional research on Arcade times and found a FAQ by a guy who goes by Poln.  Here is the link to his FAQ:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/arcade/583721-cruisn-usa/faqs/1229

I created a table with his times and your times.  Note that he only lists some of his times, everything else he listed (times with xx) are only averages that he listed, not necessarily the best times.

Here it is:

Race	Poln	Mitch
Cruise the USA Golden Gate Park San Francisco US 101 Redwood Forest Beverly Hills LA Freeway Death Valley Arizona Grand Canyon Iowa Chicago Indiana Appalachia Washington DC	xx:xx:xx 1:46:94 1:40:xx 1:47:xx 1:45:xx 1:34:99 1:50:xx 1:37:90 1:27:98 1:40:36 1:37:98 1:37:03 1:28:23 1:38:69 1:21:43	22:54:03 1:47:20 1:42:38 1:45:29 1:46:89 1:36:45 1:46:67 1:38:60 1:27:74 1:41:96 1:39:70 1:38:14 1:32:30 1:38:72 1:23:98

Anyways, now that you have the actual arcade cabinet and several things to try you may lower your times.  They seem like legit times, but just in case I emailed him asking for additional information.  We'll see if his email still works...

-Kasht

[marinomitch13]

Dude! Sick! I'm gonna read his FAQ now (just skimmed the start so far). This is a great find! Now I've got some motivation to get back to work on this game!

EDIT: Ok, read the FAQ. If his average times are accurate this is one very good cruis'n player. On most races his average is several seconds faster than mine (this is because on the *average* game I have a crash or two going for near-perfect turns and such), however, on a couple races (LA Freeway, for example) his average time is several seconds slower than -which is interesting, because these are the easier races. His PB times I believe to be 100% possible, since I would admit that my US 101 and Arizona times are by far my best in that I put probably 5-6x more time into those than all the others. Most tracks, if I worked at them like those two tracks, I could take off at least 1-2 seconds. This guy has apparently put that sort of work in on each track, so mad props to him.

Now that I have my own machine, this summer I will make it one of my goals to stream myself beating each and every one of these times.

[Kasht]

I'm glad you were able to look through the FAQ and read everything.  The guy seemed to live in the arcade, he created 18 FAQs, all of which are for arcade games except 4 for Pinball machines and 1 for the original PlayStation.  He probably played a lot and therefore leads me to believe that the times are possible and legit.  I'm glad you think the same too!

As I mentioned earlier, I tried to reach out to him.  He had 6 different emails total (yes I went through all his FAQs, website archives, and internet posts since 1998) and all of them bounced but 2.  Hope one of the 2 emails that haven't bounced actually yields on a hit and get a response from the actual guy.  We'll see.

Anyways, I can assure you that after researching the entire web for other arcade times in Cruis'n USA, you and Poln have the best times.  Looking forward to seeing you stream and break every single time in here!

[marinomitch13]

Just an fyi, you may want to recheck all his times that you listed above (in case you are keeping track of them for your own sake). I saw that his claimed Arizona time was a bit faster (1:27:98) than what you have listed above. I didn't keep tabs on al leo them, so maybe this was the only mistake i caught -or maybe it happened to be the only one- either way, a double-check wouldn't hurt.

Yeah, when I stream this summer (probably starting in about a month, actually) I can get some of you N64 Cruis'n USA peeps in stream for a fun time. Thanks again for finding this guy! Hopefully we can connect with him. If so, point him here as well as to our streams.

[Kasht]

Ok, so I got a response from the guy!  Luckily one of his emails did work.  These are his exact words:

"These are the records that I have observed when someone else is doing it. These are done casually, was held at a free play arcade at the time."

That explains why he was able to create so many FAQs for GameFAQs, as the arcade had all the games in free play.  Unfortunately, he wasn't the one who actually achieved these records, but given that his other FAQs claim to be pretty accurate when it comes to its contents, I would consider the times he listed 100% achievable.  Nevertheless, I will not be listing them in the wiki, but they should serve you as a great guideline for when you break them, I can add your name and WR time to the site. 

[marinomitch13]

Ah, ok. Thanks again for all the info-digging. I'll be sure to get these records broken for you (and with the necessary reliable evidence i.e. twitch stream) in the coming months.  I look forward to pushing this game even more. I know It'll take me a while to get used to playing standing up and I may have to tweak my steering wheel, as it has significantly different "spin-back" (maybe, more appropriately, "re-centering") than the sit-down machine I was used to. Would you prefer me to break all these records on the hardest setting? I think I may just do that, regardless.

[marinomitch13]

Among other games, I just bought Cruis'n USA for N64. So I'll be trying to slowly improve my times on that now.

[marinomitch13]

Below is how my first comment in this thread is as of this post. I'm storing it here, unaltered, for recording's sake as I'll be updating the first post to represent my goals for (generally speaking) 2014.
_______________________________________________________________


I thought I'd start one of these, since I put up a pretty ambitious list of gaming goals for this year at CAGDC.: http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,5305.msg64558.html#msg64558. I'll paste those here as well as try to keep up to date with my pb's/progress. Hopefully this gives me some more accountably and incentive to keep at it. Here were my goals for 2013 (slightly modified, and also with several smaller DK goals added in) along with my current pb's:

Non-DK 2013 GOALS:

(Settings are as my arcade currently has them. As I come to know what they are, I will update them)

Goal                                                                                   Personal Best
11m+ on Dark Tower...............................................................1mish
10m+ on Joust.....................................................................1,556,600 (wave 101)
5m+ on Track and Field (looping)...........................................2,008,300
5m+ on Burgertime (TG settings)..........................................2,540,200
3m+ on Q*bert.....................................................................3,002,875..............................................Completed!
1m+ on Tron (no light cycle lines)............................................90kish
1m+ on Dig Dug (easy settings)..............................................259,390
1m+ on Galaga (rapidfire).......................................................450kish
1m+ on Satan's Hollow (on PS2)..............................................39kish
800k+ on Ms. Pacman (turbo)...................................................450kish
500k+ on Mario Bros (hard settings, 6 lives)............................270kish
500k+ on Centipede................................................................75kish
500k+ on Defender..................................................................130kish
150k+ on Tapper (on PS2)........................................................40,300
100k+ on Frogger....................................................................40kish
100k+ on Space Invaders.........................................................24,510
100k+ on Asteroids...................................................................22,340
100k+ on Mouser.....................................................................71,100k
93k+ on one cycle of T&F.........................................................92.3kish
50k+ on Berenstain Bears:Big Paw's Cave.................................49,xxx

CRUIS'N USA:

2013 goal: Get within 1 second or better of every wr time on Cruis'n USA:

Key:
* means I have reached my goal of being within 1 second of the WR
** means I have better than the WR
# means this race is only available during the 'all-tracks' race, and thus (usually) requires much more effort to play and improve on

Race                          WR time (that is known)                My PB
Appalachia............................1:42.90............................1:38.72**
Arizona.................................1:32.27............................1:27.74**
Beverly Hills..........................1:38.21............................1:36.45**
Chicago................................1:38.41............................1:38.14**
Death Valley.........................1:38.96............................1:38.60**
Golden Gate..........................1:48.74............................1:47.20#**
Grand Canyon.......................1:44.09............................1:41.96**
Indiana.................................1:32.85............................1:32.30#**
Iowa.....................................1:45.29............................1:39.70**
LA Freeway...........................1:49.63............................1:46.67**
Redwood Forest.....................1:48.29............................1:46.89**
San Francisco........................1:47.43............................1:42.38#**
US 101..................................1:45.58............................1:45.29**
Washington D.C.....................1:30.32............................1:23.98#**
All tracks race........................22:48.61..........................22:54.03

DK Goals

Key:
* means I have reached my goal
** means I have the WR

Stage                  WR                               Goal                                   PB
1-1..................13,600..........................14,000..............................13,200
1-2..................25,xxx...........................25,000..............................23,700
2-1..................36,200..........................35,000...............................33,800
2-2..................45,400......................... 43,000..............................40,600
2-3..................57,500..........................53,000..............................50,600
3-1..................68,200..............................?.......................................?
3-2..................78,300..............................?.......................................?
3-3..................85,600..............................?.......................................?
3-4...................98,400.........................92,000..............................89,400
4-1..................111,700............................?.......................................?
4-2..................122,800............................?.......................................?
4-3..................134,800............................?.......................................?
4-4..................142,000............................?.......................................?
4-5 (Start).......150,600........................140,000............................138,300
Level 5+...........69,900.........................66,000..............................64,xxx
NH Start...........93,100..........................90,000..............................(None)
NH highscore.........?..............................600,000............................2xx,xxx
Lowscore KS..........?..............................600,000............................(NONE)
Highscore........1,186,700.....................1,100,000...........................726,xxx

Other DK-Related Goals

                Goal                                                                            PB
1.1m+ on DK Jr (sticky joystick).............................................189,700
250k+ on D2K (6 man)............................................................75kish
150k+ on the wild barrel hack (MAME).....................................92,300
42k+ on DK 4 man challenge....................................................40,800
20k+ on DK BGC 4-man...........................................................17,600
7k+ on DK BGC 1-man survival.................................................4,200


I'll be noting when I up a PB and then editing this first post as I progress. Remember, this is only my 1st year playing these games (with the exception of DK and T&F), so I wanna get caught up with other players as fast as I can.

General Edit: I've decided that this list can be changed to be made harder as I see fit. If I am finding a goal too easy, I will bump it up a bit. Already done this with several games.

« Last Edit: November 24, 2013, 11:17:51 PM by marinomitch13 »

[marinomitch13]

Competed in the CAGDC tourey. Qualified on all the games that were functional. Did a sloppy 1 hr score of 1.4m something on Burgertime. Learned Gorf, Empire Strikes Back, Tetris Plus 2, and Klax. Left a lot of scores out there that I initially just put up to qualify. Wish I had had more time to up my scores (which I could have done significantly) on games like DK3, Tapper, Nibbler, Mario Bros. and Berzerk. Oh well... it was quite fun, overall. Loved getting to play so many games!

Also stopped by Galloping Ghost arcade and took back my Cruis'n USA and Burgertime records. I beat Tim Vermeulen's BT score of like 1.4m and put up 1,666,000 in its place. Hopefully he sees that and it pushes him to get better at the game. Someone had beaten my previous Cruis'n USA time of 1:38.14 on the Chicago track with a time of 1:38.10, so I put up 1:37.60. Hopefully that keeps them busy for a while! Lovit?