200 hours for Carnival and Moon Patrol. My 200th thread!

[homerwannabee]

I was actually thinking about going in an entirely different direction with my 200th thread, but then while planning that I realized that my goals for these two games coincidentally were 200 hours.  So why not make an on going blog about trying to get really high scores for these two games?

First with Carnival:  The record on this game has a lot of respect.  My goal is to see if this record deserves all the hype that it gets.  If after 200 hours I get a higher score on MAME, than this record doesn't deserve the respect it gets.  If after 200 hours I am nowhere near this score, than yeah, it deserves all the respect in the world.

Second with Galaga:  After I got the record on DK3 I wanted to prove myself on a major established game.  I did that with Donkey Kong Junior.  Having said that DKJr isn't a shooter game.  After all these years I really haven't gotten a great score on ANY shooter Arcade/MAME game besides DK3.  Oh to be sure.  I have good scores on Zaxxon, Moon Patrol, and Galaga, but none of them are great scores, or even close to great.  Galaga is basically the Donkey Kong of shooter games.  I believe the Galaxian record is harder, but over the years Galaga has had the most competition.  Yeah, you could argue Robotron2084 has more competition, but it's not really the classical shooter game like Galaga.  Neither is Zaxxon, or Moon Patrol for that matter.

So my goals.  Obviously to put in 200 hours time for both games.  200 for Carnival, and 200 for Galaga.  Except for the Donkey Kong series games I have never put in that type of time in a game.  Even for Arm Wrestling I didn't put in that type of time.   

I will be playing this at Retro Uprising initially.  Every time I get a new high score the next day I will post about it in this blog.  At first I'll be making posts every day, but that'll soon change as I hit plateau's.  So both of these games are the classical shooter games.  One isn't really played by many people but has a legendary record that I'll plan to find out if it's truly legendary, and the other is/was highly competitive, and I plan on putting a respectable score on this title.

Ultimate goals: 100k for Carnival,  Killscreen Galaga on difficulty A.

[Barra]

It took you 200 threads but you got there in the end. Finally something worth reading 

Wish you the best of luck, sir. Will keep a keen eye on your progress

[krehztim]

I noticed you were playing Carnival this morning.  I was trying to start my journey with Congo Bongo (horrid game).  I can't wait to watch the dozens of replays.  Thanks.

In all seriousness, remember there have been issues over the past year with high-input games being saved to the servers.  My 90-minute Crazy Kong was fine, but several people have lost hour-long games that had more inputs.  Kong has just recently moved to new servers, and I haven't heard of any issues so far.  Just wanted you to be aware.

Good luck! 
Tim

[homerwannabee]

I noticed you were playing Carnival this morning.  I was trying to start my journey with Congo Bongo (horrid game).  I can't wait to watch the dozens of replays.  Thanks.

In all seriousness, remember there have been issues over the past year with high-input games being saved to the servers.  My 90-minute Crazy Kong was fine, but several people have lost hour-long games that had more inputs.  Kong has just recently moved to new servers, and I haven't heard of any issues so far.  Just wanted you to be aware.

Good luck! 
Tim

Good to know.   For some reason I think it's the .ip address or maybe even the computer.  I use to have that issue a few years ago, but since then I have had no problems.  I mean my seven hour Donkey Kong 3 score went through just fine.

[QAOP Spaceman]

Good luck George.

I am personally waiting for thread #201

[johnmcallister]

Need a weekly log with some stats and progression of your scores.  This should be interesting as Carnival will take some serious time and effort to figure out how to get past stage 5 and above.  Would love to hear about the things you discover along the way.   Happy gaming.

[homerwannabee]

OK, I'm basically going to update this every time I get a new high on one of these games the next day.  So at first it'll be daily, but it'll eventually become weekly.

Progression of high scores for Carnival
3680
6830
15,520
16,360
18,370
21,480
23,770

Time spent 2hrs 31 minutes in total

Galaga high score
283,510

Time spent on Galaga 44 minutes total

The highest I got was level 4 for Carnival.  Haven't yet started save stating yet.  I like to get a feel for the game before I do that.  Things I learned.
1)Gotta get the flags before I can clear a level.  2) Getting the bonus is a waste.  It give less than 500 points.  Gotta focus on more important things.  3)In order to get the bonus on the top left hand of the screen, all you have to do is shoot at it, and hit it.

As far as Galaga, well 283k isn't even close to my all time highest.  I got this on my first game, and my next two game sucked.

[homerwannabee]

I'm already getting to level 5 on Carnival.  I am noticing a lot of this game has to do with luck.  Sometimes you get a boatload of extra bullets, and sometimes it's almost nothing.  Also sometimes you get a lot of ducks, and sometimes it's nothing.  It's a very luck based game, but of course, if you are good at the game, you can probably still overcome crummy luck in the beginning stages.

My new Carnival high scores.
27,710
31,710

Time spent yesterday on Carnival 2 hours and 21 minutes; Time spent in total 4 hours and 52 minutes

No new Galaga high score although I'm getting better at the bonus stages got the first three bonus stages as perfect one time, and one time got four out the first five bonus stages as perfect.  I'm just screwing up the higher levels.  A couple of times I got to board 20 without dying, and then had some epic melt downs.  seven months ago I was much better.  Eventually I'm certain I'll get back to that level.   Just need more time.

Time spent yesterday on Galaga 1 hour and 33 minutes; Time spent in total 2 hours and 17 minutes

[homerwannabee]

OK, had a moment of insight with Carnival.  It's not only about being accurate, but it's about how quick you do it.  The ducks keep increasing as the round goes on.  So if you shoot everything quickly there will not be as many ducks to shoot.  See for every extra duck you see you have to use an extra bullet, and you only have so many bullets.  For once I feel like I did well in both games.  Had three games of at least 350,000 in Galaga. 

Carnival
New high scores
32,110
32,400
35,310

Time spent yesterday   2hrs 21 minutes.   Time spent total 7hrs 13 minutes
Galaga
New high score
478,000

Time spent yesterday  2hrs and one minute

[homerwannabee]

I had decent improvement on Carnival.  Not necessarily by score, but I did a couple of things I couldn't do previously.  Before yesterday my record was 8 hits on a bear, but I yesterday I figured out the rhythm(Side note, I think rhythm might be the most consonant word in the English language), and now I can do 21 hits until the bear speeds up yet again.  Also I was able to clear the bottom of the row on level 5, and even had half of the 2nd row cleared.  Then I choked, and it all fell apart.  With Galaga, I feel like I'm almost to where I was back in April with this game.  Was 30k off my all time high.  A million might be just around the corner.
Carnival
New High score
40,510

Time spent yesterday 2hrs 29 minutes.  Time spent total 9hrs 42 minutes

Galaga
New High scores
479,870

Time spent yesterday 2hrs 26 minutes. Time spent total 6hrs 44 minutes
570,230

[johnmcallister]

Well still improving so that's a good sign.  Doesn't seem like you've run into any walls yet either so keep going and keep us updated.  I got to see Fred play Carnival and I saw him shoot and clear all 4 bears on the bonus stage.  He maxed every bear and never missed. 

[homerwannabee]

Well still improving so that's a good sign.  Doesn't seem like you've run into any walls yet either so keep going and keep us updated.  I got to see Fred play Carnival and I saw him shoot and clear all 4 bears on the bonus stage.  He maxed every bear and never missed.

Is hitting the bear 21 times maxing it, or is there more than that?

[Barra]

I always thought you could keep hitting them forever. I know very little about Carnival

[homerwannabee]

Well this thread may very well go to a screeching halt as I found that my Internet Explorer no longer works with Retro Uprising.  I also found that my computer can't play video games on Wolfmame 106 at full speed.  Before this happened I did manage to play 37 minutes on Carnival, but that's it no high scores. 

I sort of have a work around, but I don't want to go that route.   It would involve using my old 2011 computer that plays wolfmame at full speed, and then transferring the files to my current computer just so I can submit to MARP.  I'm afraid of putting my old computer online because I feel that it might get Windows 10 downloaded on it, and I suspect that Windows 10 is the reason why my current computer isn't playing MAME games at full speed.

I also tried to upload wolfmame 191,but that didn't go so great.  Maybe I'll check out some MAME installation videos on Youtube.

Time spent yesterday on Carnival 37 minutes.  Time spent total 10hrs 19 minutes.

[homerwannabee]

Well Retro Uprising still doesn't work for me.  So instead I decided to download WolfMAME 185.  I for some reason couldn't get the Namco version to work on this version of MAME.  I was able to get Carnival to work.  So I decided to change things up.  Moon Patrol is probably my second favorite arcade/MAME game of all time.   I remember playing a port of this on my Commodore 64; and playing it on computer.  So because of that, I decided to switch things up.  Replace Galaga with Moon Patrol.

Carnival time spent 1hr 24 minutes; Time spent total 11hrs 43 minutes

Moon Patrol time spent yesterday 3hrs 49 minutes; Time spent total 3hrs 49 minutes