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As it came up in a different thread, I would like to suggest Taito's Crazy Balloon.

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Wow that's an awesome score Sniper Honeyviper! I was pretty happy to get to stage 4 after about 10 credits.
Here's my first time score..

I like looking at these types of games, with few obvious descendants. Why didn't they become popular? Also, with simple games like this, it's easy to imagine the design process, even if I get it wrong.

(Kururin is going on my list of GBA games I hope to one day own.)

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maybe we could report first & best scores?

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1ST

(I had trouble getting this to work, as I don't use MAME very often. This page gave me the info I needed to get it working, I think I was trying to load the wrong version without the proper hardware BIOS.)

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Gundhara ate my score!
I guess it was less than 100000... I only got up to the first boss, anyway.

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I don't have what it takes.

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I don't know how well known it is, but may I suggest Rally Bike / Dash Yarou?

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First score for Popeye: 1500

Game is ok, but I can't get over the fact it includes the Popeye characters, which I've always hated.

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For I, Robot

First: 5522
Best: 28154

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i had some trouble getting this to work -- nearly every source i could find didn't include the eeprom file in the archive. this site had it though.

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... Minutes later ...


I had no idea this existed! The Gunbirds are two of the few shoot 'em ups I've played more than once, thanks to a cheap copy of Gunbird Special Edition on the PS2. (I don't play many arcade / MAME games though, and I'd never heard of Atomic Robo-kid or Change Air Blade either. Or Tube Panic or Banbam. Or anything in this thread apart from I, Robot which I'd never got around to playing before and is pretty cool.)

My initial impression is that it looks awesome... it's colourful and light and it seems like they've added enough elements to stop the brick breaking getting boring. My heart sank a little when I saw a boss, but the game kind of made up for that by letting it explode into pastel coloured clouds of smoke. Will play this a bit more and see how far I can get.

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Well, I played this on & off all day, and my high score was 2215800, Marion

I had a lot of trouble figuring out how I was occasionally getting high scores.. it seems like the way to get a big score is to hit long combos whilst also hitting the treasure chests which sometimes appear. Once I got over a million on 1-1 and then barely doubled the score by the time I lost my lives on 3-X somewhere.

Anyone got any insight into the scoring?

I kind of wish there was a home adaptation with a more chilled out alternative mode, perhaps like the non-arcade mode of Landmaker on the PSX, but I don't have much idea of what that would actually play like.

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my first go got messed up by a firefox popup appearing... but it wasn't even close to a rank in. i ended up using a dualshock because my mouse is no good, but i couldn't find a satisfactory way to use a dualshock analogue stick for dial control in MAME.

Best: - cake: 107500


I'm wondering why the different sections exist. My feeling is that the overhead section is the 'real' game, the 3D shooting part is harder & designed to steal some lives, and the tunnel flying is a break section. I like the idea of the firepower/vulnerability tradeoff that one is supposed to make, but I'm not sure it really works in practice, in some part because multiple units generally imply tactical use, and the formation changes don't seem to be user controlled. I also think I'd do better if I had all those lives one at a time.

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Nooooo don't make me play Satan's Hollow. It's horrible (altho' I don't remember the colour changing sky or the Milky Way appearing) and weirdly addictive. I played it for several hours ages ago when it was on one of those 'Midway Arcade Treasures' compilations. I still suck at it. I'm suggesting Satan of Saturn instead.



1ST - cake: 13005
TOP - cake: 22740

how come JP has 12845 in your screenshot?

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My stumbling point with Satans Hollow was always the large waves - altho' it's kind of impressive in its brutality when all the enemies on screen dive at you at once, I couldn't survive it very often.

I quite like Aquaventure. Despite the crudeness of the graphics, it still manages to evoke the underwater environment.. maybe due to the diver animation and the lack of music. The 'revenge fish' mechanic can be used strategically, and both the dodging and shooting work well enough that when I mess up it feels like my fault, which makes me feel like I can do better if I have another go. Also it has raster fish.

I lost my first score due to confusion about whether I was alive or dead or just difficult to see.

Best score:
- cake, 294250

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I've been reading up on Aquaventure, as I was wondering why it was never released, and it seems like maybe there are two versions. Some articles about the game mention that the revenge fish are indestructable (which they aren't in the version I've been playing) and some screenshots look different (the text which is yellow in Sniper Honeyviper's screenshots is white instead). If anyone has found the version with white text or indestructable fish, can they point me at it?

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I don't think my system is up to Gunbuster.

First score:
- cake, 3200

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Yeah... I was wondering if the other version was an earlier prototype and everyone just decided to use the later one, but if that's the case, why circulate the CCE version?

Anyway I looked thru quite a few sites, and then got fed up and played Aquaventure instead. And then remembered that since I now had a working 2600 emulator, I could look at some demos, so I did that too.

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Wow Mad Planets is almost a stereotypical early videogame. It can get really frantic - sometimes I feel in control, and other times I can't hit anything and constantly die. I got my high score on my third credit, and then just couldn't exceed it.

First:
- cake: 8063

Best:
- cake: 55031

There's a large bonus for shooting all the planets in a round before they can form. Also, holding down the fire button limits the range of your shots. I used the second stick of a dualshock for aiming - I had to turn the analogue sensitivity right down, and it was kind of twitchy but still pretty playable.

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Thanks for posting that overlay, Youpi, it's kind of amazing - the contrast between a hi-res static image and a lo-res moving one is pretty interesting. The palette selection for the text screen and starfields seems quite different from a lot of other games, but it doesn't really extend into the main sprites themselves.

Levi, thanks to your scores I went and got the ROM for Rodland (which i guess is maybe too well known for suggesting here?), but it seems the screen I was searching for wasn't in the arcade version. It said something like:

Thanks for playing!!
Please try again ❤

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First:

- cake: 124160

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With Beast Busters I just couldn't find a setup where the cursor would consistently follow the mouse, so I'm afraid my amazing score was achieved using a DUALSHOCK 3.

I can never get into "the zone" when playing computer games, but I imagine it's like completing a fast level of the asteroid section from Cosmic Ark without dying. That part was kind of fun, but elements of the creature abduction felt too arbitrary and after 10 minutes I felt like I knew everything about the game. The stars are nice, though, and the small saucer reminds me of the Catellite from Wizball.

First score:
- cake: 10980

Best score:
- cake: 14530

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This is pretty good! Here's my first and early best:

First score:
- cake: 1860

Best score:
- cake: 12750

I hope you all tried GAME 3 and, if you have a friend, GAME 9.

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Those How to Beat Home Video Games films are kind of wonderful, and the tips really helped me. Here's the Demon Attack cover in better detail:



I'm not sure any game could ever really deliver on that.

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- cake: 1200
- cake: 12200

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Kega Fusion didn't seem to need BIOS ROMs. I got the game ROM from romnation.net.

- cake: DNF, Automatic

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Yeah I can understand that. I used to play this a bit in arcades before Daytona came out, but for some reason (bitter experience, probably) I assumed the home conversions wouldn't be up to much. It's difficult to tell from an emulator but it actually looks quite competent.

(shift + f12 to save a screenshot in Fusion, btw)

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The thing I found interesting about this game was how many elements are recognisable in later driving games:

- high/low gears,
- a timed play period (with extension if you do well),
- moving off the track causes a crash which takes a few seconds to recover from,
- a man with a flag starts the race.

I hadn't realised it was a rip-off of Night Driver, though.

My scores:

- cake: 3.73, Rating 4
- cake: 4.52, Rating 4

Rating 5 only seems to be attainable if you don't crash. I've got it a couple of times, but with lower scores than my best.

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From the opening levels I like the look of this game, but my machine struggles in it's emulation, so I'll have to return to it later.

- cake: 77600, 1-5

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but youpi, i'm using lunix.

for snacks 'n jaxson:

- cake: 280
- cake: 11225

clowns & surrealism don't mix, but respect is due for making something different.

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I found it difficult to be accurate with the controls in Don't Pull, which made it frustrating for me. My high score comes from an attempt in which I died with 1 enemy left, and then immediatley killed it on my next life, earning a 100000 time bonus. In the early levels there seems to be a tradeoff between collecting fruit for lives and scoring.

- cake: 91140
- cake: 241670


I'm getting the impression that I was no good at playing arcade games - for many of these games, it takes me a few goes to understand what is going on and what I should be doing, and in the arcades, I wouldn't have spent money to do that. I would have just played once, considered the game no good and moved on.

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- cake: 8930

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- cake: 290, Perydot
- cake: 63380, Aqua

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- cake: 6350

This feels pretty post-apocalyptic... I'm glad we haven't had a nuclear war yet as I don't think I would be able to survive..

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- cake: 7800

i'm disheartened

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- cake: 322400

a game which realises that simulations don't have to limit themselves to reality.
i think i'd play this quite a bit if it was one of the 6 cartridges i owned.

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demon's world:
- cake: 34600

I can't remember playing this type of game before, I guess I appreciate the fact that it wasn't too punishing. It seems like you can stand on each others shoulders in 2P.


the end:
- cake: 7020
- cake: 9020

I really liked the sounds this made, the echoing shots and short repetitious bass sequence make it sound exactly like an old arcade game. I really liked the gimmick too, until it reached the logical conclusion - I was hoping for some kind of multi-level game.

After extended play: the huge dead zones into which you can't shoot are really annoying. The Stern North American version moves the blue blocks to behind the player, so perhaps they felt that way too.

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Crush Roller

- cake: 4840
- cake: 9550

It feels pretty unfair once the ghosts can move faster than your character.

Schwere Viper, that stuff happened for me too in The End. Pretty nice score, too, I tried for a while to improve, and could rarely get above my initial score.