Week 13 and 14 Summary

Last update of the year as I’m off on holiday this afternoon and won’t return until 2012…

I’ve been focussing on reaching 100k on a few games so other score updates are few and far between. As you’ve seen, both Road Fighter and Van-Van Car are now done but unfortunately my aim to reach 100k on 25% of the 40 games fell one short. The third game I was aiming for was Donkey Kong but after playing around 25 games and not getting past 72k, I’ve given up for now – I think the game just hates me!

The only other notable score updates were on Ghosts N Goblins, which I reached level 3 on for the first time and moved into yellow status with a score of 83,500, and Rally-X that saw an 11k boost to 50,200.

So that’s it for this year. Overall I think it’s been good, with my skills and knowledge of some classic games vastly improved, but there’s still a long way to go…

Two more 100k achievements - Merry Christmas!

Never let is be said that I’m not committed to this challenge – on Christmas Day and Boxing Day I put a few hours into playing and managed to reach my target score on two more games…

First up on Christmas Day was Road Fighter. I only just managed to reach the target with a score of 100,250 and annoyingly I grabbed my camera to take a photo the high score table defaulted my name to ‘A’, but it’s another one crossed off the list!

Thanks to tips from JAMMA+ forum member muddymusic on this one - his MAME score on Road Fighter is over a million points so mine pales in comparison to that! The main tips I’d share are that you shouldn’t try and race to the finish line but instead take it a bit slower, avoid hitting any other cars for a large and of stage bonus, and make sure you collect all the bonus cars which increase in value each time you get them.

The second game, completed on Boxing Day, was Van-Van Car and the score achieved was 138,000. To be honest there’s no tips to be shared here – the game is simple enough and there don’t seem to be any secrets to score boosting, so it’s just a case of making your way through the levels without making any mistakes. I quite enjoyed playing the game but it’s certainly not a classic!

Return of the Invaders Gameplay Tips Video

Finally for today, here's some tips on how to improve your score on Return of the Invaders, which I also reached 100k on in week 9.

One thing I didn't mention in the video is that to activate the challenging stages you must leave at least two of the relevant enemies until last, and the more you leave alive, the bigger and more valuable the mothership that is spawned.

Mario Bros Gameplay Tips Video

This is a short video demonstrating some of the techniques I used to reach 100k on Mario Bros back in week 9...

Mr Do! Gameplay Tips Video

Back in week 5 I surpassed 100k on Mr Do! This was rather unexpected so wasn't recorded, but this video shows some strategies that helped me reach my scoring target...

Zoo Keeper Gameplay Video

Also from week 3, here's my video of breaking the 100k barrier for the first time on Zoo Keeper...

Amidar Gameplay Video

Well it's taken some time to get these created but finally I have some gameplay videos. First up we go all the way back to week 3 and my 100k achievement on Amidar. Not much more to be said about this one so I'll let the video do the talking...

Week 11 and 12 Summary

A summary of the last two weeks here, as by the time I got around to writing the summary for week 11 it was already halfway through week 12!

The first major highlight of the last two weeks was breaking 100k on Crazy Kong, but there have been several notable score increases since then as well. The one I was most pleased with was finally getting BurgerTime out of red status. I have been plugging away at this for a while and after getting so close with a score of 34k, I finally broke the 35k threshold in style with a new top score of 57,100! A lot of that was brought about by a fluke of trapping 4 or 5 enemies on one burger with a single pepper spray and then dropping them down, which yielded over 10,000 points. Whether I’ll ever be able to do that again remains to be seen but that is clearly the way to amass the big points.

Another status change occurred on Taito’s Rastan with an increase of nearly 50k to a new score of 86,600. To be honest that wasn’t too difficult to achieve and I think this will eventually go down as a fairly cheap game to get 100k on.

While there weren’t any other status changes, I have managed to boost scores on quite a few other games too, including a 30k increase on Indiana Jones and modest boosts on Pitfall II, Ghosts N Goblins and Ms Pac-Man.

Last but not least came a major breakthrough on Donkey Kong. I negotiated the third elevator stage for the first time, which yielded a new high score of 95,100. Frustratingly I had lost a couple of cheap lives on earlier stages which meant I couldn’t capitalise on my progress, but having done it once I’m sure I can do it again now, so 100k is suddenly within reach!

So, with all the above in mind, my aim for the next couple of weeks is to reach 100k on three more games, meaning I will have completed 25% of my challenge by Christmas...