the_wizard_666

The only problem I have with the ruleset from Gradius II was literally that you had to be good enough to get through the first level in order to contribute. My best run was only a third of the participation score, which is incredibly prohibitive for a lot of people. I don't like minimum scores to contribute, but understand the need...but in such a difficult game, make it something that's achievable with a reasonable amount of trial.

Dude, I didn't do that at all. I literally just paused at the end of the match, before the score came up, got the camera ready, and unpaused it. Did you seriously figure that since you couldn't wait at the high score screen that you were screwed? Jeez dude, that was a grave misstep for ya Also, my first score's picture was blurry too. As long as it's legible, being blurry isn't an issue. But seriously, unless you consider pausing the game as "emulation shenanigans," there was none of that here. But I will say, you admitted I had you beat on Saturday when I ran through it at your place Oh, and while you're reading this, I know you had questions about where the game "actually" ends. I'll say I don't recall seeing repeated tag teams until near the end of my run. Doing the math, with 6 characters remaining after you choose them, there should be 21 unique matches, so that fits with my experience. The rings have no discernable pattern after the third match, so shouldn't be considered. You can make your "AdamL" requirement to beat all 21 unique opposing teams.

Also, I think @Dr. Morbis may be out of town for the long weekend...if that's the case, I think I've made me another $20

Ugh, that's some BS right there. I don't mind the electric rings so much, although it does kill my strategy of "let the guy get the ball and bounce off the ropes repeatedly to kick his face in" The ice rings are the ones I truly hate due to pretty much not being able to land anything and being an utter crapshoot unless you have the power up ball.

I dunno, I think a worn out game like that with predictable results should simply not be played in favour of something else entirely, but that's my take. And like I said, that put me off playing the game entirely. But what do I know.

That was my guess - that it's a matter of hitting more moves and that time doesn't matter. That's something I'd probably only want to do (intentionally anyway) on the regular levels though...the ice and electric ones I'd want to just get past ASAP.

I have the cart, but I sold the box and manual to @Dr. Morbis ages ago for a bit more than I paid for it sealed (it was rising exponentially even in 2010 ). I suppose you could argue that because I made money off it that it was essentially free, but a loose cart still won't touch a loose Samson.

With Battletoads, my point is that if the ruleset needs to be that complicated, it's better just to play a different game, period. With regard to World Games, some minor tweaking after certain things came to light is alright, but the scoring turned out to be entirely broken on most events. That's a tough one to justify ever using again, although it was fun while it lasted for sure. Conan 100% would not work for this competition, unless you went for distance and score, as one can max out the score easily by taking advantage of the infinitely respawning enemies at the start of the game...which I actually did when I was playing it because I wanted to know if there were free lives to be had (there are not - you get three, that's it). I like the game, but it's not really a good pick for a competition. The tournament perhaps, but not the wider competition. Also, I wouldn't rate Rollergames that high, but it's definitely a fun game. One of the few true hidden gems left, since damn near nobody talks about it.

522846 471718 415496 Well, unlike @0xDEAFC0DE, I have NOT figured out the scoring, but I seem to land around 40K every round, so I'm okay with this score. (old picture was here) I know I could improve though...this run was absolute shit, especially with this shit PC controller, due in part to the random ring selections. Went like this: Normal: Round 1, 7 Ice: Round 2, 4, 5, 8, 10 Electric: Round 3, 6, 9 If @Dr. Morbis is free tomorrow, I'd love to knock this out at his place where I can play it properly. If not, I'll just keep trying to get better at the game. I know speed seems to be irrelevant, so maybe it's the moves used that affects it? It's weird, but even losing a round (and thus 5K) doesn't seem to make much difference, as I seem to score the same regardless. I'm not sure if match type factors in either, but I would assume not, as I didn't have any noticeable score changes between them, just more frustration having to deal with the absolute worst match type 5 goddamn times! EDIT: Decided to play out the rest of the run. Got over 1.1 million points by Round 26 before dying. Oddly, I only saw the electric round twice more (including the round I died), and roughly two thirds of what was left was ice rings. For whatever reason, this run hates me. But yeah, not sure why we didn't just go to game over on this one, since it actually displays scores over 1 million, and the difficulty does seem to ramp up significantly - on later levels it's actually pretty tough to hit anything! I seem to have bumped my average score up a bit too, but that may be because it took me a LOT longer to actually win rounds (time was in the mid teens rather than 24+), so scoring may have something to do with moves, move variety, total damage dealt, or something that isn't clear because the score is hidden during the match. SCORE EDIT: Yeah, it does seem like beating down the opponents is the way to maximize the score, but after around round 5 it gets a bit tricky. This run I only lost one round as well, so only lost 5K points...not sure if working three round matches is the way to go point-wise though, but I'd hate to ruin a run by intentionally losing one match and getting beat legitimately in the third. I did have a couple close ones though...two matches ended with >0.5 on the clock, and since I had one round that awarded the decision to the other team despite me having higher health AND a special ball when time ran out, I'm glad I didn't have to rely on the computer's decision SCORE EDIT 2: BOO YA! Cracked the 500K plateau!

Pretty sure they'd surrender long before that happened anyway

What to do when you want to know something about an NES variant: Step 1: PM @Braveheart69 Step 2: Await Response At this point, if he doesn't have it, and it's not on his radar, it likely doesn't exist

Only if WATA grades it...

Crazy part is that at the time it was only half the retail price...

You know, I don't think that's such a bad idea. Only downside is that someone who joins in, say, June, might still have a shot at making the tournament, but they'd pretty much be out of contention for the overall leaderboard, so it may end up discouraging participation from people who just discovered the site. The tournament also gives people a reason to keep playing if they're out of contention for the top of the list, as they could still end up making the cut. Okay, so no matter how it's done, people aren't gonna like it. See, this is why I hate running shit

Little Samson cart only. Paid $40 Canadian.

I suppose the suggestion is one you only need to consider if you're making this into a public thing. If you're just keeping it personal, and you don't personally need it, it's not as good a suggestion as it sounded initially What do you think this place is? NintendoAge?

Be happy your high school English teacher isn't here to shame you for that!

No, that's really it. They've been around forever and as far as I'm aware they haven't done shit even remotely like this. Putting aside my distaste for the company, they're definitely more trustworthy than WATA will EVER be at this point.

They grade anything! I once sent them a pound of cocaine that someone claimed was from Pablo Escobar's personal stash. I had my suspicions, but they sent it back with confirmation! So much more than I expected from a video game grading service!

I will say it doesn't look as attractive as other sites right now, but if you're just trying to do it personally and not try and be Backloggery 2.0, then it's perfectly fine. It's also, as you said, the best way to ensure you have everything you actually want in a tracker. I'd like to see it again in the future when you have more to it. Personally, I haven't found anything that includes everything I'd like it to. I like RFGeneration because it has pretty much anything you can think of and 800 variants of it, but the lack of a mobile tracker hurts it's usefulness when I'm out hunting for shit. I use (and paid for) Retro Game Collector, which is great except it doesn't track everything I have, so if I'm looking at VIC-20 games (for example), I'm SOL.

The reason is none of the investment types know what VGA is, and any actual collector who knows they're the more trustworthy brand realizes that even the minimum bid is massively overpriced and ain't worth bidding on in the first place.

He hates minorities and wants to bang his mom?

I mean, you could always translate it. Or if it's too much work, post it anyway and we can just run it through Google Translate ourselves. It's the 21st century, we don't need to learn a language to be able to read it

Some games have value due to achievement hunters (Avatar: The Last Airbender is the most egregious example of this - 1000 gamerscore in under 10 minutes). Others are actually pretty tough to find (Raiden V for example). Of course, the majority are due to pure stupidity. F'n WATA.

That's Koreans...