Looking for feedback on a potential 2022/2023 Off-season Contest

[Red 343]

I've been running a weekly contest for the past five years during the off-season of the NES weekly contests.  I would always have it centered around a different console, the first two years being Sega Master System, then Game Boy, then Virtual Boy, and then Nintendo 64 last year.  If there's sufficient interest, I'd like to run another contest this year.  I was thinking of doing it a bit differently this year though.  Instead of doing one console, each week would be a game for a different console and each game would be of a different genre.  Alternatively, it could be genre specific contest, so every week would be a game from the same genre, but on a different console.

Another variation to consider is an idea @Splain posted during the N64 contest:

"What if there were some crazy meta-mechanic of presenting all 10 games/challenges right at the get-go, then allowing everyone to submit one score per week, whichever game they want. If the problem is that people don't have the same amount of playing time from one week to the next, then they can budget the time they DO have however they want to, and either submit a throwaway score for games they don't really want to sink into, slam out a good score for games they're already good at, save their time for games they want to spend more time on, etc. That would also keep people (to some degree) from hiding their score till the very end of the week; anything they've already submitted can't be improved upon, and everyone else can see what they're up against, bit by bit, as the weeks go on."

I think that would be an interesting twist for a genre specific contest.

Of course, I could just do another contest like I've done in the past.  Maybe do PS1 this year?  Sega Genesis?  Sega Master System again?  Game Boy again, but include Game Boy Color and Advance games as well?  I would like to hear what other people think.

 

[BeaIank 1,360]

I may be able to partake on it this year and I do like this idea, but I will be limited to emulators right now.

[a3quit4s 3,220]

If your allowing emulators I would say run a contest for TG16 - seems to have a pretty good following on here plus the pinball games are dope lol

I do like the idea of having a free for all - here are the contests right up front but I foresee a problem where no one may play lesser popular games. Doesn’t mean we can’t try it though! 

Edited October 1, 2022 by a3quit4s

[Splain 1,982]

I'm in, whatever it looks like.

2 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

I do like the idea of having a free for all - here are the contests right up front but I foresee a problem where no one may play lesser popular games. Doesn’t mean we can’t try it though! 

Everyone still plays every game, they're just playing them in whatever order they want. If a game is less popular, then play it early on and get it out of the way. If everyone else played it early on, then you know exactly what scores you need to beat. There would need to be some details worked out about what weekly threads look like (if any) so that people aren't too silent about what they're working on. The idea is to keep people from hiding their progress all week, but there may be new issues with hiding progress for the whole contest.

[Red 343]

On 10/1/2022 at 9:24 AM, BeaIank said:

I may be able to partake on it this year and I do like this idea, but I will be limited to emulators right now.

Nice.  I seem to recall you wanting to participate in the SMS ones more than you did, but didn't have the free time.

On 10/1/2022 at 9:28 AM, a3quit4s said:

If your allowing emulators I would say run a contest for TG16 - seems to have a pretty good following on here plus the pinball games are dope lol

I do like the idea of having a free for all - here are the contests right up front but I foresee a problem where no one may play lesser popular games. Doesn’t mean we can’t try it though! 

I always encourage using original hardware and software, but I do allow emulation.  TG16 is another one I'm considering and if I go the multi-platform route, a TG16 game would most likely be included.

[Red 343]

Just an update, I'm still working on this and I'm going to try to get it started this weekend, but if not, definitely the following weekend.  It's going to be ten games for ten different consoles.  Each game will be a different genre.  I'm still working things out, but right now, the consoles will likely be:

NES
Super Nintendo
Nintendo 64
Game Boy
Game Boy Advance
Sega Master System
Sega Genesis
PlayStation
TurboGrafx-16
Atari 2600

I may swap out NES and/or PlayStation for Vectrex and/or PC.  These contests were partially meant to be a break from the NES contests, so I'm not sure if I want to keep it in.  As for PlayStation, I'm not familiar with how reliable emulation would be.  Is that something that would be a problem?

I decided against posting all the games and rules at once, so the games will still be played one week at a time.  While I still like the idea of the games being played all at once, I'm thinking something like that would work better with higher participation than I'm expecting.

[Dr. Morbis 1,807]

I think including portable consoles might lower participation.  I don't own any myself, so maybe I'm totally wrong about the general retro gaming population, but I'm just throwing this out there that including Game Boy systems might be an issue...

[Red 343]

On 11/21/2022 at 10:06 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

I think including portable consoles might lower participation.  I don't own any myself, so maybe I'm totally wrong about the general retro gaming population, but I'm just throwing this out there that including Game Boy systems might be an issue...

I don't think having the Game Boy consoles will lower participation.  When I ran the Game Boy contest a few years back, it got better participation than any of the others I ran.

I'm aiming to start this next Sunday and will announce the first game a few days ahead of time.