Retro Game Challenge Part 4: The Nightmare
 

Welcome to week 4! Guess we'll start a new thread each week now.

The Rules:
So far we have only been using MAME to play the games, but that can change.
To enter, you just play one of the games and post a screenshot with your score.
The deadline to post your high scores will be midnight Sun. night/Mon. morning Eastern US time.
When you post a high score, make sure to pick a new game to play by Monday. The sooner the better.
Please don't use continues or savestates for any scores you submit.
I am going to host the current ROMs and list of all the past winners and high scores here.

The Games:
(click the titles for more info about them)

Star Castle (Version 3) - High Score: devilshalo 13230
http://img69.exs.cx/img69/5971/starcas.png<img src="http://img14.exs.cx/img14/1576/starcastle.jpg" height=316/>

Qix (Set 1) - High Score: Mordred 93406
http://img58.exs.cx/img58/5629/qix.png<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v379/Mordred2003/qix0003.png" height=316/>

Flicky (128k Version) - High Score: joeblow69 443970
http://img68.exs.cx/img68/7500/flicky.png<img src="http://webpages.charter.net/joeblow69/flic0003.png" height=262/>


The Prize:
Whoever gets the high score for one of the games picks the next game that replaces it, so we should always have 3 to choose from. The game should be over 10 years old and hopefully easy enough for everyone to get running. You also get your name engraved with a genuine Sharpie on this eye catching trophy!

This Week's Winners:
<img src="http://home.comcast.net/~dvdtalk/trophy.jpg" align="top"/><img src="http://home.comcast.net/~dvdtalk/engraving4.jpg" height="320"/>

My first two attempts:

http://pixyjunket.digitalcrap.net/pics/flicky.png

Do you just want to save us all the trouble and pick your game now? I went through 3 bonus levels and only got 100,000. 400,000 must take forever. You just ruined the only easy game of the week! Now they all are a pain in the ass :mad:

Qix is an evil evil game.

D

Ruined? :(

Also, it didn't take forever, try about 12 minutes.

Hmmm. These don't really seem like my kind of games. I tried playing Star Castle a bit, but didn't really like it. At least Journey was five different games I didn't enjoy. I'll still give them a try.

Heh.. star castle.. The origional game was black and white but they cleverly put colored plastic over the monitor in certain spots to give the "rings" some color.

I promise that if I ever win again I'll choose a game a little more fun :)

I might as well start:
http://webpages.charter.net/joeblow69/qix0001.png
Is this a good score?

I don't know what happened... the first couple times I played, I got to level 3 and only 16000ish,

This time, I got over 30000 on the first level alone! I don't get this game...

In Qix, the more space you color at once, the greater the score is. Filling in multiple small areas is worth far less than filling in large areas. Slow fills (red) are worth more points than Fast fills (blow). There are also other bonus like in levels where there are more than one Qix, if you split them (ie: one on left side, one on right, you successfully draw a line up the middle).

ICEBERG! ICEBERG!

http://fhh1.hamburg.de/fhh/behoerden...er/titanic.jpg

I hope the winners can pick some fun games next week! :)

OK, that may have been a little harsh, but if you knew you were a Flicky pro you could've strung us along for a few days before blowing us all out of the water. :p

Nobody's posting their Star Castle score yet? I went and checked marp.retrogames.com and the high scores only reach 20,000 so 5,000 isn't necessarily as bad as you thought. (Their high scores on Flicky are over 4 million) I guess I'll try it real quick while I can still get my name on the board.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...03/qix0000.png
First time I've ever bested 30k. Was able to double my score by splitting the Qix.

Flicky questions: Why do some of the chicks have sunglasses on? It it just to be cute, or are they worth more or something?

What's the difference between the 64k and the 128k versions?

Yeah, I'm not getting this flicky thing. I'm having a lot of trouble getting past board 8 and 50k score. As for Star Castle I can't figure this game out. The only time I've been able to open up the center, the cannon kills me instantly. My high score is around 3k.

Speaking of Scores I think it's funny how scoring for games changed so drastically so quickly. Look at games like Frogger and Star Castle... a score of 20k is amazing. Then you had games like PacMan come along where a really good score was in the 70k. Then Galaga came along and 250k score games became the norm. Then apparently Sega saw all this and decided that having a score in the millions was best and everyone followed suit.

My question is, does anyone know what the first mega scoring game was (i.e. scores in the millions were normal). Pretty much everygame is like that today, but I'm interested in knowing where it exactly began.

When dropped, the chicks without sunglasses will stay on the ledge they are dropped on.. the chicks WITH sunglasses will run all over the place off of ledges. This makes it harder to rounder up a large group of chicks dropped because the sunglasses ones end up all over the place.

I couldn't get past the first level, so I went and changed the vector settings to be 2 pixels wide so I could actually see and played it one more time. I don't think that was the difference, but I got lucky and blew right through the first two levels without having to move and got this unbeatable score:
http://img10.exs.cx/img10/1562/star0000.png

More Flicky tips. First and foremost, condition yourself to drop EVERY chick in the door at once. Now, these numbers are off the top of my head since I'm at work.. but dropping every chick can land you 10k or more, while doing it 2 or 3 at a time will get you about 2-3k. Speed is the second biggest factor. 30 seconds or under nets a 10k bonus, 20 seconds or under nets a 20k bonus. I've found it best to just ignore the cats, do not waste time trying to off them. Taking an extra 2-3 seconds to kill one could be drop your end of level bonus from 20k to 10k all for a measly 800 points. However, it is important to know when to cap the cats. On levels were there is less space to jump around or there are dead-ends, it's not easy (or impossible) to dodge them without dying or losing your chain of chicks. Obviously, some extra points won't hurt if you can drop a cat on your path, but don't go out of your way unless it's a closed-in level, the time bonuses are much more important. I have no advice to offer on the lizard, that bastard in the bane of my Flicky mastery. Just be extra careful on levels with green or green-ish background, there are some areas where this little turd is hard to see and can get the drop on you easily. The bonus levels, just remember that jumping to catch the chicks is the best method, running back-and-forth grounded trying to catch them will result in failure. I'm actually not very good at these bonus rounds so that's all I have to say on that.

Oh, on my 400k game, somewhere around level 18-20, Pengo showed up in the moon or something and gave me a bonus.. I have NO idea how or what caused that.

I don't know what the difference is. May be nothing because the high scores are about the same for both on MARP. I want everyone to play the same version though since there could be something different, like Popeye last week; the ladder in the middle of level one actually reached the floor so you could climb back up. For Star Castle, Version 3 had a fix to prevent a trick that could let you run up the score.

You lie! Pengo in the moon? rotfl Are you sure you weren't so zoned out by level 20 that you started hallucinating?

Thanks for the tips :up: I might be able to forgive you now ;) You can jump to catch the chicks in the bonus round? Doh!

Jumping! Now why didn't I think of that?!

Meh, I just tried it and I've done better without jumping. At least for the first two, they were easier walking.

OK, how the heck do you split the Qix?

Check my tips above.