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 3 Summary

Here’s the summary for the past seven days…

Last week was generally a bit of a slow one, with not a lot of progress made on many games. The main reason for this was my focus on reaching 100k on Amidar and Zoo Keeper, which was finally achieved on Saturday night.

Aside from that the only notable increases occurred on Dragon Spirit and Contra, though I’ve also managed to surpass 30k on both Donkey Kong Jr and BurgerTime, something I thought was impossible just a couple of weeks ago!





I’ve realised that since I started the challenge there are still around a dozen games from my list that I haven’t even tried to better the scores on, such as Lady Bug, Commando and Scramble. So my aim for this week is to try and improve my scores on at least a few of those.





Amidar and Zoo Keeper Completed

Well it took a bit longer than I anticipated but I’ve now surpassed the 100k threshold for the first time on both Amidar and Zoo Keeper! Both achievements were recorded and I’ll get the videos along with some gameplay tips online ASAP, but in the meantime here’s some pictures of the high score tables from both games...

Week 2 Summary

Time for a look at how I’ve got on over the last week...

I only managed to reach 100k on one game, Shao-lin’s Road, but last night came agonisingly close to crossing Taito’s Zoo Keeper off the list. Hopefully I can beat that score of 98,420 very soon.

There was some decent progress on other games, with more moving from red to orange status – I now have over 35k on 75% of the games. Significant increases this week include nearly 30k on Return of the Invaders and boosts of over 10k on Centipede, Donkey Kong Jr and Rally-X, not to mention the previously reported updates on Amidar and Donkey Kong.

This week’s aim is to pass the 100k mark on both Amidar and Zoo Keeper, recording a gameplay video for both, and it would be nice to push some more of those red status games into orange...

Amidar Analysis

Over the last couple of days I’ve been working on boosting my score on Amidar. If you’re not familiar with the game then there’s an amusing write-up of it at Classic Gaming that is well worth a read.

One of the best ways to improve your score on this game is via the bonus stages. After each level there is the opportunity to earn 5,000 points by guiding a pig down the correct path from the top of the screen to get to the bananas at the bottom. Yes, I know how silly that sounds! Anyway, correctly guessing the path in real time is nigh-on impossible as you only get a short amount of time before the pig starts it’s way down the maze automatically.

After having a few plays of the game and taking photos of each bonus maze I discovered that each layout remains static from game to game. By backtracking from the bottom of the maze to the top it is possible to work out the correct path for each bonus round, so I did this for the first three bonus rounds and now have a small ‘cheat sheet’ handy whilst playing the game!

The other way to significantly boost your score is to fill in all four corners of each maze, which allows you to temporarily catch the enemies much like collecting a power pill in Pac-Man. Just like Pac-Man each enemy caught increases a multiplier, with 200 points for the first, 400 for the second and so on. With at least five enemies on each screen, that’s a lot of points to be had. Unlike Pac-Man however, the enemies don’t run away from you when you turn the tables on them. Instead they carry on the same path as normal. Since both the player and enemies move at the same speed, chasing after them is futile, so the best approach is to fill the fourth corner in just as the majority of your foes are approaching you. They will carry on heading towards you and effectively become lambs to the slaughter!

Putting these tactics into practice has already seen a massive improvement in my score as you can see below, and I expect to reach 100,000 points within my next few attempts...

Week 1 Summary

Well, one week into my challenge and it’s been great fun! Here’s a summary of my progress so far:

I decided to focus on boosting some of the lower scores, hence the number of games moved from red to orange status. Significant improvements over the last few days include boosts of over 20,000 points on the likes of Amidar, Circus Charlie and Pac-Land, and a vast improvement on BurgerTime that does give me some hope that 100k is actually reachable. The best achievement of the week however happened late last night. After numerous failed attempts to boost my score beyond 30k on Pac-Man, suddenly everything clicked and I logged an unprecedented score of 49,750!

The full list of my latest scores is shown below along with selected photographic evidence of some of my highlights. This week my aim is to reach 100k on a couple of games, though I haven’t yet decided which ones.