weekly contest VGS Weekly Contest - 2020 Tournament - Bubble Bobble + Circus Charlie

[Richardhead | 2,813]

3 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

Me and you and @ninjistar next year, tag team that old dirty bert   

I just need to put in more effort. Been slacking on the NES these days. Spending lots of time with my PS2

[Richardhead | 2,813]

And Rush N Attack. Can’t really explain that one. Woke up at 3 am the other day and just wanted to play some Rush N Attack. 

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

30 minutes ago, Richardhead said:

And Rush N Attack. Can’t really explain that one. Woke up at 3 am the other day and just wanted to play some Rush N Attack. 

that fucking game. no death low score. i can never play it again after that.

[ninjistar | 517]

 

1 hour ago, Richardhead said:

And Rush N Attack. Can’t really explain that one. Woke up at 3 am the other day and just wanted to play some Rush N Attack. 

I love me some Rush N Attack!

55 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

that fucking game. no death low score. i can never play it again after that.

Was that the 2015 or 2017 weekly's?  I think that was the last time I played it as well!  I've been playing through Final Fantasy again for the first time in ages. 

[guillavoie | 1,208]

Here we are, at the end of the line, with our 5 remaining heroes battling in a combo fight of Bubble Bobble and Circus Charlie for the title of the title, 2020 VGS NES Weekly Contest Champion! After a week of holding their cards, here are the results of the final round :

Bubble Bobble

1st @bertsampson 1,950,890
2nd @Richardhead 1,041,940
3rd @Tablew/chairs 934,610
4th @0xDEAFC0DE 560,450
5th @Gaia Gensouki 401,590

Circus Charlie

1st @0xDEAFC0DE 87,790
2nd @bertsampson 84,870
3rd @Gaia Gensouki 81,140
4th @Richardhead 44,100
5th @Tablew/chairs 11,750

Total

1st @bertsampson 33 points
2nd @0xDEAFC0DE& @Richardhead 22 points
4th @Tablew/chairs 16 points
5th @Gaia Gensouki 9 points

Congratulations to bertsampson for winning the 2020 VGS NES Weekly Contest Champion Title, making it a third consecutive champion title for Bert in the NES Weekly Contest. That's an incredible exploit that will be hardly repeated in the future. Since he started competing in the NES Weekly Contest, Bert has constantly proved that he was one of the best player to ever compete in it, and he showed us once again that he was on the top of the game! Way to go Champion!

Let's also give a warm applause to our co-runner up for this year, 2016 Champion Richardhead and the new sensation 0xDEAFC0DE! Both had a wonderful tournament run, and only fell short to the mighty defending champion who brought his 'A' game for the final round. Richard is the only player breaking the million mark this week at Bubble Bobble along with Bert, and 0xDEAFC0DE is the only player that managed to beat the champion at a game in the final round by taking 1st place at Circus Charlie. Congratulations for the excellence of your performances in the year end tournament!

Coming in 4th place is contest's elite player Tablew/chairs, who despite having difficulties to play one of the final round game, tried his best to achieve a score and gave all he got at Bubble Bobble. Table is always a contender whenever he's around, as last year final round prove it when he almost got the best out of Bert. He will be around in the years to come as well. Last of the final round, but not least of the 2020 season, Gaia Gensouki had his first deep run in a NES Weekly Contest tournament, which accounts for important experience that will help him doing even better in the future. He showed us many times how skilled he is at video games, and given a different roll of the dices may as well succeed to go all the way up any time soon!

I will extend once again my gratitude to @BeaIank for all the great work she did for the contest this year! I can't say enough how important you are for the competition. Not so long ago, we had Bimmy Lee among us and we couldn't think for a minute that he would just vanish into thin air all at once. One of the last decision we took together was to reach out to you as soon as you declared to be out of the competition, and it is quite obvious now that we made the best choice! It is, and will always be a pleasure to work things out with you for the contest!

Now, let's all profit from a well deserved break to enjoy the Holiday season and a new year to come. We'll all come back at it soon enough when the 2021 season kicks off!

Thanks to everyone for making the VGS NES Weekly Contest well and alive in 2020!

 

 

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

As much as I was shit talking about my Circus Charlie score, it was far from optimal. But, I found a trick that I don't think anyone else fully understood. I noticed that occasionally on stage 1 when jumping backwards over a fire, a coin worth 5k might pop out. I reverse engineered the game and discovered that this happens when the bonus is 43xx, 37xx, 23xx, 17xx, and 3xx. So I went for all 5 coins and then coasted through the rest of the loop (except for going for triple/quadruple bounces in the trampoline stage). When I was testing with save states I got a score of 92k when I didn't go easy, and I'm sure another several thousand would be possible. 

[bertsampson | 345]

38 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

As much as I was shit talking about my Circus Charlie score, it was far from optimal. But, I found a trick that I don't think anyone else fully understood. I noticed that occasionally on stage 1 when jumping backwards over a fire, a coin worth 5k might pop out. I reverse engineered the game and discovered that this happens when the bonus is 43xx, 37xx, 23xx, 17xx, and 3xx. So I went for all 5 coins and then coasted through the rest of the loop (except for going for triple/quadruple bounces in the trampoline stage). When I was testing with save states I got a score of 92k when I didn't go easy, and I'm sure another several thousand would be possible. 

That's interesting.  I didn't spend the time to figure out when the coins would show up, but I feel like there may be other triggers as well.  I was able to get two coins to pop up on back to back backwards fire jumps.  Pretty sure I only got four on my 84k run, so I would have been right about your score had I gotten the fifth.

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

Three-peat!  Damn, Bert be like the 92 Chicago Bulls up in here.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

three peat never been done before?

[Ausden | 323]

Nicely done @bertsampson. Congrats to the finalist as well.

[Deadeye | 1,596]

Congratulations Bert and the rest of the finalists 0xDeafC0de, Richardhead, Tablew/chairs, and Gaia Gensouki! 

You have all inspired me to make more of an effort for the next competition and participate in as many rounds as I can.  I don't have a shot at getting to the finals, but I do want to see where I end up with the effort put in.  

Great competition all around.  Thank you Guillavoie and Bealank for the all the work you do to host these.  

[mbd39 | 2,020]

Congrats Bert. I can't believe that Bubble Bobble score. I can't even get a million using all my lives. Congrats to everyone else who made it to the finals.

 

[SuperJimtendo | 1,121]

Congrats sampson

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

4 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

three peat never been done before?

That is crazy. Good job @bertsampson.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Bearcat-Doug

[NESfiend | 1,515]

Human cyborg strikes again. Congrats on a well earned win. Look forward to getting my ass kicked in by bert all over again in 2021. 

Cant send enough praise to @guillavoie and @BeaIankfor a tremendous season. The schedule was awesome. I learned about so many great games I never would have gotten into otherwise. Cant wait to see the 2021 schedule and get to practicing. 

[mbd39 | 2,020]

23 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

Human cyborg strikes again. Congrats on a well earned win. Look forward to getting my ass kicked in by bert all over again in 2021. 

Cant send enough praise to @guillavoie and @BeaIankfor a tremendous season. The schedule was awesome. I learned about so many great games I never would have gotten into otherwise. Cant wait to see the 2021 schedule and get to practicing. 

My favorite games this season were Adventure Island, Kung Fu, Tetris and Super Mario. I'm good at Target Renegade but it's not a good game.

Heavy Shreddin was pretty cool too once I learned the controls. There's a steep learning curve.

 

[BeaIank | 1,618]

Congratulations to @bertsampson for taking the 2020 VGS Weekly contest tournament championship!
The laurels are yours and yours only!

Thank you all who partook in our little weekly contest. You all are what make it special and the reason we keep carrying it year after year. We will be back for 2021 with more NES action for you all to enjoy!

And a big thanks to my partner in crime at the contest organization, @guillavoie. Couldn't run it all without him!

I hope you all enjoyed the 2020 contest. Have great holidays!
Early 2021 we will be back with news!

[NESfiend | 1,515]

51 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

My favorite games this season were Adventure Island, Kung Fu, Tetris and Super Mario. I'm good at Target Renegade but it's not a good game.

Heavy Shreddin was pretty cool too once I learned the controls. There's a steep learning curve.

 

All great games, but all games I had played before except target renegade, which I actually did really like. The games that come to mind for me are mappy, recca, krazy kreatures, alien syndrome, and karate champ. All games I had never played before and ended up loving. Beat Karate Champ in competition and went back and beat kk and alien syndrome after the competitions were over. I actually beat alien syndrome last night with 5 lives to spare! I think I could 1-life it if we ever play it again. I got back to recca a few times, but I never went the distance. One day maybe. 

Ironically, I was annoyed when I saw Famicom games on the schedule because I am a tech dinosaur. They ended up being some of my favorites and I look forward to a few more being mixed in next year, hopefully. Thanks again to @Gloves for selling me a flash cart on the cheap. Made the contests way easier and really transformed how I game in general. It also is AWESOME for travel. I used to pack 20-30 NES carts into my suitcase wrapping them in clothes to keep them safe. Now I bring one cart and can add any games I want to play when I get there! I haven't flown this year, but the next time I may be the first time in years TSA doesn't search my bags with all the nes carts scattered about. 

Edited December 14, 2020 by NESfiend

[Jeevan | 8,910]

1 minute ago, NESfiend said:

All great games, but all games I had played before except target renegade, which I actually did really like. The games that come to mind for me are mappy, recca, krazy kreatures, alien syndrome, and karate champ. All games I had never played before and ended up loving. Beat Karate Champ in competition and went back and beat kk and alien syndrome after the competitions were over. I actually beat alien syndrome last night with 5 lives to spare! I think I could 1-life it if we ever play it again. I got back to recca a few times, but I never went the distance. One day maybe. 

Ironically, I was annoyed when I saw Famicom games on the schedule because I am a tech dinosaur. They ended up being some of my favorites and I look forward to a few more being mixed in next year, hopefully. Thanks again to @Gloves for selling me a flash cart on the cheap. Made the contests way easier and really transformed how I game in general. It also is AWESOME for travel. I used to pack 20-30 NES carts into my suitcase wrapping them in clothes to keep them safe. Now I bring one cart and can add any games I want to play when I get there!

ya, I plan on getting some of the famicom carts for sure!

[BeaIank | 1,618]

Famicom games will become more common in the contest from now on.
The experience this year proved to be successful and all the famicom games played were well received and loved.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Congratulations to everyone that played this season. Take a break, you earned it!

[mbd39 | 2,020]

47 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

All great games, but all games I had played before except target renegade, which I actually did really like. The games that come to mind for me are mappy, recca, krazy kreatures, alien syndrome, and karate champ. All games I had never played before and ended up loving. Beat Karate Champ in competition and went back and beat kk and alien syndrome after the competitions were over. I actually beat alien syndrome last night with 5 lives to spare! I think I could 1-life it if we ever play it again. I got back to recca a few times, but I never went the distance. One day maybe. 

Ironically, I was annoyed when I saw Famicom games on the schedule because I am a tech dinosaur. They ended up being some of my favorites and I look forward to a few more being mixed in next year, hopefully. Thanks again to @Gloves for selling me a flash cart on the cheap. Made the contests way easier and really transformed how I game in general. It also is AWESOME for travel. I used to pack 20-30 NES carts into my suitcase wrapping them in clothes to keep them safe. Now I bring one cart and can add any games I want to play when I get there! I haven't flown this year, but the next time I may be the first time in years TSA doesn't search my bags with all the nes carts scattered about. 

Target Renegade is better when not played for score. The high score strats make it so much more tedious.

Mappy is a great port. I dunno why it wasn't released in the US.

Alien Syndrome is okay, I guess. The the fourth level frustrated me so much trying to one life it. But I really got into Gyruss. Such a unique game for NES. I still have the cart coming in the mail.

 

[Richardhead | 2,813]

1 hour ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

Congratulations to everyone that played this season. Take a break, you earned it!

Kind of like how you “took a break”?

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

A busy year full of NES games is slowly coming to a close. Thanks a lot to @BeaIank and @guillavoie for organizing this cool event. I've played much more NES games than ever before in my life and I tried a lot of games that I would probably never have played if it wasn't for the weekly contest or the completions thread.

Games that were surprisingly fun to me were Kung Fu, TMNT III, Recca, Gyruss and Alien Syndrome. Contra Force, Micro Machines, Target Renegade, Monster in my Pocket and Zombie Nation were pretty good ones too. Other games however, like Star Force, Adventure Island and GnG were already extremely difficult, but the extra challenge made them insanely punishing.

I also liked the inclusion of a few famicom games here and there. They were a nice change of pace by offered something a little different. I'm looking forward to some more challenges next year and enjoying the break until then.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

58 minutes ago, Richardhead said:

Kind of like how you “took a break”?

Exactly! Enjoy the off season!