Your top 20 MAME games

[TomcatLeader]

Oh, if you LOVE MAME, go to Youtube and look up "Virtual Arcade from 1984". It Rocks!!!

 

[Phoenixx]

As for games like Battlezone and Robotron, not so well.

BattleZone is actually no problem with a DualShock-style pad.

You use the two analog sticks for movement (left stick/left tread - right stick/right tread) and one of the shoulder buttons for Fire.

The same should work fine for all other games which have two analog sticks as well,...

 

[sleepy]

> BattleZone is actually no problem with a DualShock-style pad.

Yeah, that works for me too.

 

[TomcatLeader]

I tried with Crazy Climber and it was a joke. The right yoke was bass-ackwards from the left. I gave up. I should try to re-configure it. When I get time I will.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

hah! i didn't realise there were two more sequels to CC out there until just now. "hyper CC" and "CC2K", both for PSX.

CC2K for PSX:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeZby1sAlPI[/url]

so that makes five versions of CC in all, counting the unofficial one, firetrap.

 

[Shadow]

This ain't a list . . .but it is about MAME . . .so . . .

Why do all these arseholes around MAME forums clog their harddrives up with CHD images that don't fuckin' work in MAME and then bitch about not getting them verified properly by the various rom managers out there

I'm all for updating the roms - which I do every new issue but there's a vast difference between maintaining just over 20 gigs of roms and trying to house 180 gigs of CHDs - most of which don't even work.

I picked out all the working CHDs this week, updated 'em and wrote them to 5 DVDs for about 22 gigs.

Having 160 gigs of non-working games on your harddrive seems a bit over-obsessive to me

 

[kristian]

Right on... CHD games are a waste of HD space. Only a few of them actually run in any modern computer... Hyper Athlete, KI and probably SF Rush (if you have the hottest out-of-the-box machine)...!!

Maybe there are a few others... but no one can play Gauntlet Legends, for example.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Am I really the only one who plays Xevious?

I mean, that must be the most revolutionary shooter in the existence... a HUGE legend in Japan. Pure skill game, just like Gravitar.

Always been a big fan of Xevious. They used to have it at a college bar I hung out at. "That fucking Xevious killed my brother!" was a frequent drunken battle cry.

@SteveOz: a hit of acid is what finally helped me to overturn the score on a Galaga machine. Impressive what some hallucinogenics can do to help your gaming, especially when the player is convinced they'll really die if they get shot down!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

...especially when the player is convinced they'll really die if they get shot down!

oh my.

...

alright men, now here's the plan...

 

[kristian]

@SteveOz: a hit of acid is what finally helped me to overturn the score on a Galaga machine. Impressive what some hallucinogenics can do to help your gaming, especially when the player is convinced they'll really die if they get shot down!

The only game that I was truly good at was Atari Star Wars... I was able to play as long as I wanted... my record was 40 million (at that point I got bored and hungry) and every now and then I played casually with only one hand on the yoke... I once remember when about 20 Japanese tourists were gathered around the game.... watching me fly it in the amusement park... they were clapping their hands and yelling... shaking their heads in disbelief... that was the highest point of my gaming youth...!! :D

Actually many of the regular guys in my arcade were able to play it as long as they wanted.... when you figure out levels 7,8,9 and 10 you have figured out the game. It's much harder with the mouse... I can only score about 2 mil that way... level 10 deathstar gets really tough with a mouse because the controls have to be quick and precise...!!

 

[StevOz]

I mastered 3 games, that I could play forever, Defender, Joust and Q*Bert, which was really handy when you were down to your last 20 cents. There were a few others that I was almost as good at, well good enough to usually get 30 minutes out of.

Space Invaders of course, usually getting to about 30 000 and resetting the aliens 3 times. Galaxians Part 4 as MAME called it, though it was part X here and slightly different, anyways got to just over 200 000 on that once or twice. After wave 10, the difficulty maxed out and at stage 48 I considered it beat as no more flags could be displayed. I was also alright at Moon Cresta usuall getting 100 000 or so and Space Firebird got just over 30 000 on that once which is a higher score then you might think, those birds go really crazy the second time around and the third time around is just murder.

Oh and Nic, the invasion is not going well....

http://www.overclockers.com.au/image.php?pic=images/newspics/25sep9/9.jpg

But wait.....Success! :D

http://www.overclockers.com.au/image.php?pic=images/newspics/22sep9/10.jpg

 

[elton]

Couldn't put a fav 20 list together if my life depended on it. Puzznic was brilliantly addictive though as I recall.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

The only game that I was truly good at was Atari Star Wars... I was able to play as long as I wanted... my record was 40 million (at that point I got bored and hungry) and every now and then I played casually with only one hand on the yoke... I once remember when about 20 Japanese tourists were gathered around the game.... watching me fly it in the amusement park... they were clapping their hands and yelling... shaking their heads in disbelief... that was the highest point of my gaming youth...!! :D

Actually many of the regular guys in my arcade were able to play it as long as they wanted.... when you figure out levels 7,8,9 and 10 you have figured out the game. It's much harder with the mouse... I can only score about 2 mil that way... level 10 deathstar gets really tough with a mouse because the controls have to be quick and precise...!!

All I can say is "wow". Wait... let me put that in bold: "wow!" I always finished up on about level 3. One of the Gamecube Rogue Squadron games had the original Star Wars and the I-never-saw-it-before Empire Strikes Back game. Made it to level 4 on those. Frakking amazing, kristian!

 

[kristian]

two joysticks, yes. being able to control the treads independently gives a little more control. in terms of input, i usually use keys or maybe a gamepad. "sarge" is also an awesome game if you get into that 'double tread' thing.

i've gotten over 200K a couple times in MAME. usually that involves continually backing away from the enemy tanks (esp. when they become super tanks), keeping them in your forward vision or just outside of it, dodging just enough after they've fired, and pouncing on that short time period that occurs regularly where you can afford to stand line them up and get a shot off.

saucers, i hunt them down and kill them, but i balance that with staying alive. sometimes there's opportunity (like between enemy tank kills) to go after them and sometimes they're basically a trap which will lead to your death.

electric razors, i keep backing up, get his left and right movements centered, and watch his pattern and timing. on his last pass, just before he kills me, i fire just as he's briefly in the middle. people who can time it better can probably fire earlier.

the biggest problem with my 'backing up' strategy is that i'll occasionally bump into an obstacle. i just try to slide off it real quick, but sometimes the delay is fatal. there's probably a way to play it foolproof, but i kind of like having built-in obsolescence. the game can get rather boring after 100K or so, after all...

oh yea, and if you manage to reach the volcano, you win an enormous prize. :)These new and fresh titles have kept my attention lately..... :grin:

I learned Battlezone in 2 days when I put my mind into it... it's actually a relatively easy game... shooting those tanks becomes a bit repetitive.... there's one virtually bulletproof system to execute them... unless an object appears on your back (as you said).... it still looks amazing though (considering it's 32 years old) and has very unique atmosphere... I also use the same method with the supertanks... back off then after they've shot I just run forward and "bump" them with my tank... then reverse and shoot.

The only things that destroy my game are those missiles... sometimes I can shoot 10 in a row without a problem... but they have 3 different flying paths. You can have 2 shots when you back up.... but it's still quite tough. I'm sure I'll figure it out though... there are people who have scored millions in this game.

Not a great score... but a good start after 2 days. If I can figure out a bullet proof way to shoot the missiles, I can score a lot more.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I learned Battlezone in 2 days when I put my mind into it... it's actually a relatively easy game... shooting those tanks becomes a bit repetitive.... there's one virtually bulletproof system to execute them... unless an object appears on your back (as you said).... it still looks amazing though (considering it's 32 years old) and has very unique atmosphere... I also use the same method with the supertanks... back off then after they've shot I just run forward and "bump" them with my tank... then reverse and shoot.

The only things that destroy my game are those missiles... sometimes I can shoot 10 in a row without a problem... but they have 3 different flying paths. You can have 2 shots when you back up.... but it's still quite tough. I'm sure I'll figure it out though... there are people who have scored millions in this game.

Not a great score... but a good start after 2 days. If I can figure out a bullet proof way to shoot the missiles, I can score a lot more.

congrats! i'm laughing pretty hard at the advice i wrote three years ago, there- any fool could have figured that stuff out pretty easily. and as you say, the missiles were harder and more unpredictable than i gave them credit for.

what i really miss is that great defunct site, MAME.DK from denmark. they had reams of cool insider info on most of the games.

i mean, i think an attempt was made to standardise and share that info via the MAME .dat file or something, but the quality of the information was never really the same IMO. one thing i thought was cool about BZ is that the US military was so impressed with it that they ordered a special bradley tank training version of it for their tank corps cadets. i mean, that version did get emulated pretty quickly in MAME, but i'm not sure how many people realised what it really was without the history info to spell it out...

 

[kristian]

No... that info was good.... although you can't really learn anything from ANY written info... you gotta play it yourself... YouTube videos of the gameplay was good help too. And it's not that easy to figure out without seeing it first.

There is also a FAQ by Kevin Butler:
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/592/592021p1.html

MAME Action Replay Page has lots of INP's... some scores over 500K but for some reason I can't get them running at all.... can't find the correct MAME version to play them.
http://replay.marpirc.net/

Yeah Bradley Trainer is pretty cool.... never had time to play with it.... the tank itself doesn't move... only the gun on the roof rotates.

I also miss forums where people could discuss the gameplay.....share tips & videos,etc.... most arcade related discussions are just tech (which is boring). I wouldn't mind buying a few real Atari machines though... but unfortunately they're not available around here.... if I lived in the States I'd probably own plenty.

 

[kristian]

Hey Nic..... getting better..... next goal is 500K. :)

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

wow... nice. that's definitely got me beat. i wonder what the all-time record is?

just for fun i tried it just now in MAME, set 1 ROMs on default settings. among other things, i had forgotten that the super tanks can out-run you even when you're running backwards... so you have to choose the right moment and 'go for it'. i think "stellar 7" for 8-bit computers spoiled me on that. anyway, between getting stuck blind on obstacles and forgetting the pattern of electric razors, i managed 78K. yikes.

there was a really nice BZ spinoff for android called "tanks!," but they seem to have yanked it. i have it on my phone, but was really looking forward to playing it on tablet to revel in the vector-graphic simulation. sucks...

 

[Shockman]

23,000,000 a long time ago.

Not me. The official record. I'm sure that score has been topped a few times.

 

[kristian]

No... the world record is amazing 23 million... amazing because you don't get any extra tanks after 100K.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1980_video_game)

High score

On August 30, 1985, David Palmer, of Auburn, California<sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference">[16]</sup> scored a world record 23,000,000 points while playing at The Game Room arcade in Citrus Heights, California. This game took 23 hours, at the end of which he quit with four tanks still left. On June 28, 1985, Palmer achieved a score of 10,000,000 in the 1985 Video Game Masters Tournament, the score from which was subsequently published in the 1986 and 1987 Guinness Book of World Records (he quit at that score, after ten hours of play and without losing a single tank, because of time limitations in the tournament and his desire to compete on other games).
Palmer also holds world records in a number of other first-person simulator-type games, namely Red Baron, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Star Rider, Firefox, SubRoc-3D and TX-1.<sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference">[17]</sup>

 

[Shockman]

Time limits? What kind of sick joke would a official tournament with time limits be. I think the writer of this is confused.

 

[kristian]

Those world records are totally insane.... Gravitar world record is 8 million (Dan Coogan). He played it with the real arcade machine and it took 23 hours to achieve. My record is now 850K... it took 2 hours (game almost 2x clocked). Took me 30 years to finally clock the game....

Star Wars world record is 300.000.000+... that's insane... even 30 Mil takes hours to play.

 

[Shockman]

I think I could beat the three hundred million on Star wars. Given 300,000,000 tries.

 

[kristian]

When you learn the levels 8, 9 and 10 perfectly.... well after that you can actually play Star Wars as long as you want.... it's only a question about stamina.

It's not a difficult game... but it absolutely requires the original yoke controller.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

wow... just read in the WP article that there was going to be a sequel to BZ produced at one time. that would have been sweet. i mean, despite how much i respect spectre, arctic fox, stellar 7 and the others, i don't think there's ever been a proper sequel to battlezone mode. which is pretty crazy, considering how much has been possible since 1990 or so.

actually, stellar 7 was a damn fine game on the early platforms. but more advanced versions and "nova 9" in particular tended to lay an egg with most folks.

It's not a difficult game... but it absolutely requires the original yoke controller.

really? if it's smooth side-to-side steering you need, then wouldn't a mouse or trackball do an adequate job? or maybe a modern flight controller thingy?