Scramble Scrapes Through

I’m not particularly happy about it, but I did manage to increase my score on Scramble last week by a measly 3,500 points to 27,940. As a result, it stays in the 100k Challenge for now!

I truly hate this game. The first four stages are relatively easy, but the maze-like fifth stage induces swearing like almost no other game before it (although Mappy and Joust are contenders!)

I don’t think it helps using a microswitched joystick, which is almost too precise when navigating that fifth stage. I have finally managed to negotiate it a couple of times, only to find what must be the most pathetic and annoying end of level boss in the history of gaming – a tiny base that is seemingly impossible to destroy!

Next time around I hope to finally vanquish that end of level nuisance, thus giving the opportunity to surpass 30,000 points, but for now I have had enough of Scramble!

I haven’t decided which game to focus on next, despite it already being midweek, but that’s due to some distractions that I’ll give more details on in my next update…

Monthly Summary – July 2013

Time for a round up of my efforts over the last month or so, but first I should mention how I progressed with last week’s game, Dragon Spirit. The game itself is intensely frustrating at times, but my progress was actually very similar to the previous week’s attempts on Joust.

On my first go last Sunday I immediately posted a new high score of 57,550, an increase of 5k from my previous best. What then followed over the next few days was a number of attempts that got nowhere near that score, one that increased it by just a small amount, and then finally a more significant improvement to 63,820. After that I gave up as the game was driving me nuts!

Interestingly I got the 63k score without making it past level 2, whereas the 58k I got earlier was achieved on my first ever progression to the third level. So there are definitely ways to boost scores on earlier levels, but it seems to be reliant on getting random power ups rather than any actual skill!

So that’s a score increase on every game since I started focussing on one game per week. There have been no significant achievements as yet, but each of the games is edging that little bit closer to 100k. Below is the latest status on all games and a summary of my progress since returning from Funspot in June.

This week I’m concentrating on a game that I have yet to better my score on since starting the 100k Challenge - Scramble. I’ve decided that if I can’t make any progress on the game after a concerted effort this week, I’m going to ditch it in favour of something I actually enjoy playing!

New Year, Same Challenge

Well I've had a week or so off after my holiday but it's now time to start up the 100k Challenge again. I've rather lost track of which week number I'm up to though so I'm just going to call this Week 15!

I'm going to start where I left off in 2011 by trying to crack 100k on Donkey Kong, but I'll also be looking to push up some scores on the games that I've failed to do so on thus far - games like Nibbler, Lady Bug, Rolling Thunder and Scramble.

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.