Video Game Sage Mixology Championship

[G-type | 2,479]

I wish I had time to have played more of this.. been too busy. But here's a score..

Edited March 22, 2021 by G-type

[G-type | 2,479]

I realized way too late that you don't want to clear them a row at a time... it's far better to pick 1 off each row and cycle through them. Less likely to regenerate that way.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

5 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

@ZeldaFreak is probably holding his 300k score to post at the last minute.

Your wish is my command

Not gonna lie, I was sweating bullets by the end of this run, haha

I'm honestly very surprised I did as well as I did. Just took me awhile to get used to the ᵃʷᶠᵘˡ controls.

I felt bad for skipping out on game night yesterday, but it allowed me to have a lot more time to practice, so I suppose it is what it is. @Jeevan

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

I'm sure Red would've absolutely kicked my ass at this if he was participating, haha

[Jeevan | 8,909]

And with that, final update incoming!!!!!!  gift cards will be passed out as soon as i get the update to the leaderboard done!

[Jeevan | 8,909]

1st --  @ZeldaFreak  312,400

2nd -- @acromite53  289,825

3rd -- @Bearcat-Doug  225,425

4th -- @koifish  130,225

5th -- @ChickenTendas 118,525

6th -- @spacepup  102,125

7th -- @DefaultGen  76,275

8th -- @Deadeye  66,650

9th -- @G-type  32,725

10th --  @FireHazard51  26,975

11th -- @JVOSS  26,175

12th -- @KokiriChild  19,725

13th -- @Mega Tank  14,900

Thanks to all of you for participating and hopefully, with the exception of one , enjoyed playing some old school atari 2600!!!!  I thought it was a good game and deserved a shot at a contest.  Double check everything and if there is a mistake i will correct it, but the gift cards should be incoming soon.

[JVOSS | 1,762]

8 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

1st --  @ZeldaFreak  312,400

2nd -- @acromite53  289,825

3rd -- @Bearcat-Doug  225,425

4th -- @koifish  130,225

5th -- @ChickenTendas 118,525

6th -- @spacepup  102,125

7th -- @DefaultGen  76,275

8th -- @Deadeye  66,650

9th -- @G-type  32,725

10th --  @FireHazard51  26,975

11th -- @JVOSS  26,175

12th -- @KokiriChild  19,725

13th -- @Mega Tank  14,900

Thanks to all of you for participating and hopefully, with the exception of one , enjoyed playing some old school atari 2600!!!!  I thought it was a good game and deserved a shot at a contest.  Double check everything and if there is a mistake i will correct it, but the gift cards should be incoming soon.

WHOOOOOOO I'M #1  AFTER #10

Edited March 22, 2021 by JVOSS

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

Just now, Jeevan said:

Thanks to all of you for participating and hopefully, with the exception of one , enjoyed playing some old school atari 2600!!!!  I thought it was a good game and deserved a shot at a contest.  Double check everything and if there is a mistake i will correct it, but the gift cards should be incoming soon.

Even though I was most certainly not a big fan of the controls, this was still honestly a fantastic game for Atari standards. Even though it was definitely frustrating on occasion, I still had a good time playing it, and I could honestly see myself coming back to this game in the future. Thanks for arranging this contest, I never would've known about this game otherwise! That was a good time

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

Honestly if the graphics were updated a bit, it could totally pass as an early NES game. Definitely was fairly impressed with this game.

[Jeevan | 8,909]

@ZeldaFreak  @acromite53  @Bearcat-Doug

Please let me know if you have any issues with the gift card codes, but should be in your inbox!

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 hour ago, DefaultGen said:

Guys I don't think I'm going to hit 300k. 67275. 76275.

I'm not gonna lie, for a second I thought you were going to say "I don't think I'm going to make it to 300k" and then keep updating your post with higher scores in 10 or 20k increments over and over again every 30 seconds or so until you passed the 300k mark. That would've been hilarious

[DefaultGen | 5,399]

3 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

I'm not gonna lie, for a second I thought you were going to say "I don't think I'm going to make it to 300k" and then keep updating your post with higher scores in 10 or 20k increments over and over again every 30 seconds or so until you passed the 300k mark. That would've been hilarious

My goal was 100k and I couldn't even hit that. You blew away people on AtariAge in their weekly contest. Although to be fair they were probably playing on Atari joysticks like maniacs. Jeez, the delayed controls plus having the play with an Atari joystick, it doesn't even seem possible.

Your score would've been the high score on Twin Galaxies at the time! (Todd Rogers scores are fake). Edit: Maybe not, they played on difficulty A/B. I still have faith you're the true world record holder.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/181766-high-score-club-910-tapper/

Edited March 22, 2021 by DefaultGen

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

4 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

My goal was 100k and I couldn't even hit that. You blew away people on AtariAge in their weekly contest. Although to be fair they were probably playing on Atari joysticks like maniacs. Jeez, the delayed controls plus having the play with an Atari joystick, it doesn't even seem possible.

Your score would've been the high score on Twin Galaxies at the time! (Todd Rogers scores are fake). Edit: Maybe not, they played on difficulty A/B. I still have faith you're the true world record holder.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/181766-high-score-club-910-tapper/

Yeah, I know a lot of people prefer playing on actual controllers, but for me I usually do better just playing on a keyboard, especially with older games like this. I've been used to emulators my whole life (A lot of the SNES games I played as a kid were on an SNES emulator) so it's what I'm more used to. Plus being able to physically, definitively feel a key being pressed when you input a command helps a lot for me, as compared to joysticks which can sometimes be a bit finnicky for me in that regard.

And yeah, I'm not sure I'd call myself a world record holder, but I definitely appreciate the sentiment a lot! I mean hell, if this was on novice difficulty, I'd hate to see what expert is like

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

On 3/18/2021 at 8:29 AM, ChickenTendas said:

I struggled with this one at first, and the controls are a little wonky, but I eventually got the hang of it. Through some playing and some Googling I’ve learned a few things: 

-Though you can run left and right to grab empty bottles, it’s best to minimize your horizontal movement. For some reason, likely a developer oversight, when you run to catch a bottle and fire one immediately after that, all patrons will throw their bottles back. Basically, you can minimize the number of bottles coming your way by minimizing the amount of times you run across the table to catch a glass.

-Due to hardware limitations, there can only be three bottles on a table at once. So if you’re wondering what’s causing your bottles to not dispense correctly, it’s this. The worst part is that the bottles that fall victim to this will often fire late, which can lead to sending down an extra one accidentally and smashing it. The best advice I can give here is to lay off the fire button and only shoot 2 at a time. 

-As to the bonus rounds, really all I can offer is to follow the can as best you can. Only two swaps can happen at once, so that makes it a little easier. This one just takes time to get down. Remember, the order of rounds to bonus rounds is as follows: 2 screens of the first (normal bar) stage, bonus stage, 3 screens of the second (stadium) stage, bonus round, 3 screens of the third (left and right) stage, bonus round, 4 screens of the fourth (neon/space-themed) stage, bonus round, repeat. 

-I find that slinging two bottles per row at the start is the best way to begin a round. I usually go for the shorter counters first, then work my way up to the longer ones. This doesn't apply to the third stage, since all of the tables are the same length. 

-Finally, the patrons are assholes with literally 0 patience. Also, they look like Sour Patch Kids

And if anyone wants it, someone on AtariAge made a chart of the layouts and number of customers per table. That post can be found here

Hopefully these tips are helpful and good luck everyone.

By the way, I'd like to thank ChickenTendas for this post, as the thread he linked to and the tips he said here, as well as a lot of the stuff that was discussed in that thread on AtariAge helped me out a ton in figuring out how to maximize my score.

[acromite53 | 337]

Thanks for running the contest! It was a lot of fun with good competition.

I chose to play by maximizing score per level vs. getting as far into the game as possible. For instance, you could get like 50,000 just on the first screen. You could quickly throw 2 glasses down the row and immediately run towards it. They will throw them back and each glass you catch is worth 100 points. As long as you don't clear all enemies, the level will go on forever (its just really boring). After each bonus round, the points for clearing an enemy increases. It goes from 50, 75, 100, 125?, then maybe 150. If you loop the game after the sci-fi bar, back to level 1 loop 2, the enemies are only worth 50pts again, but the game difficulty is still higher. So it is worth it to hang around before looping and score points on double glass throwing (200 pts) while also clearing enemies at 100 or 150 per enemy rather than progressing through the game. In my experience.

Edited March 22, 2021 by acromite53

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

7 hours ago, Jeevan said:

@ZeldaFreak  @acromite53  @Bearcat-Doug

Please let me know if you have any issues with the gift card codes, but should be in your inbox!

No issues here. Thanks for doing this again!

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one struggling to play the game.  I was hoping to crack the top ten.  But I had a fear that only ten people would play the contest 

Edited March 22, 2021 by FireHazard51
Typo fixed 😊

[G-type | 2,479]

I'll keep chipping away at this even though the contest is over. I really want to break 100k...

 

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

6 minutes ago, G-type said:

I'll keep chipping away at this even though the contest is over. I really want to break 100k...

 

Go for it man, you should totally be able to break 100k!

[koifish | 555]

I was sitting on the early maps, but I didn't think to try farming glass returns.

Is there any twin galaxies rules about what controller you're allowed to use? Plenty of different sticks out there for Atari, I could see it being way easier with some of the later sticks (especially later ones made for home computers)

[koifish | 555]

Another useful trick (maybe) is that as you stay on a screen the difficulty increases until you either finish or lose a life. The life counter goes up to 5 but no higher, and you gain lives at 20k, 70k, 110k (and beyond that I think?). Something I tried was getting as far as I could in some levels pre-20k, then purposely losing a life so that the difficulty reset and I could keep on doing the same farming techniques. You can't get more than 5 lives anyway, so there's no reason to not lose one to regain it and set the enemy behavior on that screen.

[acromite53 | 337]

@koifishthat's a great strategy. That's what you do in Kaboom. Die right before the 1up. I thought of doing that but I didn't have time to test it out in Tapper.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,011]

So I was scrolling through the thread ànd I don't think anyone submitted a score on original hardware. I lost my ftype to coax piece in the reshuffling of the game room and finally got it in the mail. I know it's late and doesn't count but here is tapper on the heavy sixer.

Ol girl doesn't see too much action anymore.

Edited March 23, 2021 by RegularGuyGamer

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

5 hours ago, koifish said:

Another useful trick (maybe) is that as you stay on a screen the difficulty increases until you either finish or lose a life. The life counter goes up to 5 but no higher, and you gain lives at 20k, 70k, 110k (and beyond that I think?). Something I tried was getting as far as I could in some levels pre-20k, then purposely losing a life so that the difficulty reset and I could keep on doing the same farming techniques. You can't get more than 5 lives anyway, so there's no reason to not lose one to regain it and set the enemy behavior on that screen.

Yup, that's what I did. Over two thirds of my points I got during the first loop of the game, partially thanks to doing that.

[acromite53 | 337]

36 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

So I was scrolling through the thread ànd I don't think anyone submitted a score on original hardware. I lost my ftype to coax piece in the reshuffling of the game room and finally got it in the mail. I know it's late and doesn't count but here is tapper on the heavy sixer.

Nice setup! I was using OG hardware as well. A light sixer. Old reliable. You've got a different cartridge varient than me.

Edited March 23, 2021 by acromite53