Yes, a few days ago I passed the 100k landmark on
another game, Namco’s Metro-Cross. This one came about due to the game being
the focus of the latest JAMMA+ Forum High Score Challenge. I was already
getting around 80k or more per go (with a personal best of 93k) but having
picked up some tips I soon achieved the target score.
The
screenshot shows three scores over 100k, but the first one I got was 108,050. I
didn’t record a video for this but since I’ve already managed to get over 100k
on several occasions and will continue to play this as part of the JAMMA+
challenge, I will get a video done to show off the scoring techniques.
As I
mentioned, progress has been so slow recently that I’m now doing monthly rather
than weekly updates...
So minimal
progress overall this month, but reaching 100k on two games, Flying Shark and
Pooyan, means that the games I have improved have been significant improvements
at least!
July’s
target is to reach 100k on another couple of games - I have Contra in mind
along with the usual ‘holy grail’ of Donkey Kong – and I’d also like to get a
few games from orange to yellow status.
Here’s my
recording of my 100k achievement on Pooyan from this past weekend.
As you’ll see, the key to getting decent scores on this game is accurate use of the hunk of meat that appears at the top right every so often, usually when a large group of enemies are travelling up or down the screen. Each
eliminated wolf gives a Pac-Man style score multiplier, i.e. 200 for the first,
400 for the second and so on. Also bear in mind that after wiping the wolves
out with the meat, the balloons stay on-screen and can be shot for an extra 200
points each.
Yes indeed,
there has been some serious pig rescuing done a couple of nights ago, as I
smashed through the 100k barrier on Konami’s Pooyan. My final score was
115,950...
The
video for this one will be uploaded in the next few days, but that’s two games
done in less than a week. Hopefully I’m on a roll!
Can you
tame a shark? Who knows? Anyway, after a long period of relative inactivity (at
least as far as actually increasing scores goes) I have finally achieved
another 100k score. Taito’s Flying Shark is the game in question and the score
is 100,780.
To be
honest I didn’t expect to reach this score so easily, as previous time
dedicated to this game has seen only minimal increases and usually a bit of
practice is required before I can tackle the first level. However this score
came on just my second attempt so there’s no video, but it wasn’t a
particularly noteworthy performance anyway.
Still, it’s
another game off the list with 29 still to go. Most of my recent focus has been
on Donkey Kong, on which I’ve logged several 90k or higher scores over the last
week, although none higher than my current best. It’s surely just a matter of
time though!
Given
the general lack of progress at the moment I’ve basically given up on the
weekly updates and will now just post to the blog whenever I improve a score,
and then summarise my progress at the end of each month.
Well it’s been a month since my last update due to my holiday and then running the HISCORE Classic Arcade Tournament in Manchester. During that time very little has been done on the 100k Challenge so I thought I’d kick things off again with a look back at HISCORE. Check out my video diaries of the tournament...
It was a great event both in terms of the way it ran – everyone had a good time and lots of great scores were logged – and also from a personal point of view. There were several high points for me, including taking fifth spot in the final rankings, and achieving a couple of notable scores. My score of 50,130 on Ms. Pac-Man was the best of the weekend, a personal best ‘live score’ and the only one to beat the 50k mark.
Also early on day one I got my best-ever score on Donkey Kong, almost reaching 100k with a score of 97,700. The cab in use for the event has the Japanese DK boardset which has a different level layout, so even if I had topped 100k it wouldn’t have counted towards my challenge, but I was still very pleased given it was my first (and only) attempt of the weekend!
If you’re interested in seeing how everyone got on at the tournament then do check out the results page at the official HISCORE site.
One last thing - going back to Ms. Pac-Man, the night before HISCORE I decided to have a bit of a practice on my home machine and managed to increase my score to 55,790 – obviously that practice paid off given my achievement on the day!
So that’s it for now. I’m now back trying to increase my 100k Challenge game scores when I get the chance, and hopefully will have some updates soon...
I’ve been playing a lot more games over the last two weeks but haven’t made a lot of progress...
The most significant increase was a breakthrough on Lady Bug, with a new score of 83,150 taking that game into Yellow status at last!
Aside from that I’ve been focussing on some Namco classics and managed to post a 12k increase on Mappy, pass the 50k mark on Ms. Pac-Man and get a nominal increase on Rally-X. A lot of swearing took place during the achievement of all these scores!
That’ll be it for a few weeks as I’m off on holiday tomorrow and then when I get back I’ll be preparing for the HISCORE Tournament...
