Kid Dracula

Hey guys! How ya been?? I've been following this thread as I always do. Are we slowin' down here? Do you need some help with Arkanoid and all the shooters? I have faith in you all. If it gets dire in a few months I'll start chipping in!

On 4/27/2023 at 7:18 AM, RH said:

Well, interestingly enough, the guy last visited this site 9 hours ago, but you posted your comment 8 hours ago.  He was just here!

He appears to be a lurker.  He signs in, reacts on rare occasions but hasn’t posted since 2020.

So, eh, @Kid Dracula, not trying to be creepy but if you see this, I would mind seeing someone rejoin these comps that can break some games! And if your not interested, then Hi! I think we might have made a trade or sale once or twice in the past.

Hey gang! 

I still check the site nearly every day and still have a big NES collection and play games when I can. I have a 3 year old and a 3 month old so it's busy around these parts! I heavily considered entering the "Can VideoGameSage beat every NES game in a year "competition to try to give nerdynebraskan and Gaia Gensouki a run for their money but I knew I wouldn't have had the time to take it as seriously as I wanted. I had a great time in the weekly contests the couple years I played.  Damn you Bert Sampson!  Glad to know I was remembered for one reason or another. Hope everybody is well! I'll try to do a little better than lurking. 

Lots of excellent suggestions! For the Canadians that grew up in the 80's/90's remember The Raccoons? Very underrated cartoon!

I know disappointing, I thought I could get away with leaving it to the second last day! Perhaps in a drunken fury I’ll burn through the game? 

The game does get a lot easier when you realize you can shoot those fans in level 1! I left this too late and have plans most of the day (involving Caesars and IPAs) so even if I do have time later it could be ugly. 

62k slight improvement 

I was thinking I’d cruise through this having knocked it off for the contest earlier this year but after a half hour I still haven’t passed stage 1 . I seem to have retained nothing of value. I will take a closer look at it Friday or Saturday. For now I am trying to finish R-Type on the PC Engine mini.

It makes sense that we’re not allowing a regular playthrough of California Games, World Games, etc when the records are there to be taken down. For consistency why do we not have this rule with championship bowling? It has a high score of 200 but we’ve never cared about that? 

Nice work guys. I hope to help out for at least one more clear. I was briefly giving QBert a go but couldn’t handle it’s difficulty. The isometric jumping was hard  on my brain. Avoiding the enemies is very tough. Then you get into the polarity element...yikes. Mad Respect for anyone taking that beast down. @Tablew/chairs nice work!

Hopefully I’ll have a bit of time to work on Kung fu heroes.

You guys are actually hilarious. And too kind. I’ll be celebrating my first father’s day tomorrow so unlikely I’ll get another run in. I got super lucky on the timing on this. If I had finished off the last boss a single second later it would have been a time up Game Over. One thing I learned is that the in game time of Recca is faster than actual time . So I had to do some basic math. This was a 2 death run, one on boss 10 and one on boss 11. I hope somebody beats my score! 

5.39 million 

3 minutes ago, BeaIank said:

If the score attack timer wasn't only 2 minutes, I would have went with it.
For now, I think high score is the best option to go for Recca.
And it is Wednesday. Bit too late for a significant rules change like that.

Totally fair! Yeah 2 minutes isn’t long enough. It is only a 30 minute farm window so not a big deal. 

I just did a run to test it out. Got to level 4 and started farming and made lunch. Came back half hour later to finish the game but I didn’t do so well. Still got 4.6 million and there was 4 bosses left to go. Only issue now is it doesn’t show your time on the game over screen. I guess you could have a stipulation that a completed game is the number one priority. From there score used as a tie breaker amongst those that completed it (and hopefully a time maximum).

After Mario Bros week the less farming the better in my opinion.

5 minutes ago, 42 foot tapeworm said:

its only broken because in order to maximize score you have to nearly limit the timer. which means like hey ive finished the game but this guy is going to score more points than me because it took him longer to beat the bosses where i wiped them out quick. imo the ladder is more impressive... 

Have these contests ever done a speed run instead of high score? Could be interesting. I still think high score (with a time limit) is more impressive but I’m fine either way. We’ll leave it up @guillavoie and @BeaIank whether any rules modifications will be in place. 

3 minutes ago, 42 foot tapeworm said:

its mind blowing they put together a competition cart with broken scoring

Well didn’t they use the score attack portion of the game for the competition? I actually don’t know that’s just what I assumed. That part is timed and wouldn’t be broken. 

3 minutes ago, 42 foot tapeworm said:

idk. scoring seems kinda broken  we could use the timer to determine a winner between finished games but that would eleminate the skill of staying off the "b" button.... idk...

Why would you say scoring is broken aside from that? I think the developers actually put a lot of time into the scoring. Collecting multiple items when fully powered up gives you 10,000 so the game rewards you for not dying. Definitely should stay high score and not fastest win I think. I wouldn’t be opposed to limiting it to 30 minutes (which is more than enough time to finish the game). If it stays 60 as is that’s fine it won’t affect things too much. You’ll just have to energy ball farm for 30 minutes or so every game if you want to go for top score. Which takes the enjoyment down for me personally. 

17 minutes ago, 42 foot tapeworm said:

@Kid Dracula lol you let the game run for an hour to test that timer/score system. respect.

Haha I did.You get 60 minutes to beat the game but it only takes about 22-25 minutes. So you could still farm energy ball for points for 35 minutes which is pretty boring. Should we cap the time limit on the game at 30 minutes to prevent this unnecessary farming? 

12 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Yes, but will you be the same?

BTW, Boss number nine is tricky, too.

Boss 9 is my least favorite!

17 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

The guy who phases in and out? No, he's number six of eleven.

I can see why you thought that, as the swarm stage before his is longer than the ones before the others, but no, you're just over halfway through it, dude.

Final boss has his own special intro. When you meet him, BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING! SERIOUSLY, DON'T STOP BOMBING!

Yes sorry I was wrong. There are 11 total. I was trying to think what you meant by mirage. The last boss enters from below and comes up. Bomb then just straight fire or risk charging up more bombs and dying.

5 minutes ago, 42 foot tapeworm said:

how does that timer/score system work during boss battles? does it freeze? if not you could just rack points during boss battles by intentionally lolygagging.

I did test this and you get game over after 60 minutes in game time. You only build up a score of a million or so for the entire time.

2 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I think the game is only four stages long, so I might have been able to come close to finishing it with a full week. I made it to the second boss on my last run so I was halfway there.

Nice! Keep going, it's a rewarding shooter. You'll get further every time you play (just about) and the runs are short. Only 4 levels but the final boss rush of 11 in a row is tough. Just learn their patterns, increase speed when necessary and use the energy bomb a lot. 

3 hours ago, 42 foot tapeworm said:

nice @Kid Dracula i meant to clear this thing last night but i passed out with the console running lol. 

is the "mirage" kinda fella the last boss? 

Yep! Final boss is number 11 of the rush. The game is fairly generous with 1ups so even if you get to him with a couple extra you can take him down. 

1 hour ago, Tulpa said:

 Wait until you meet the final one.

How many bosses in the rush have you seen?

Haha I'm not sure probably at least 6. Ridiculous final boss? Fitting.

3.52. The boss rush is getting intense. Must be getting close to the end?

Mappy is much better than Mappyland. That should be a fun arcade week. 

Updated to 2.87. Definitely a fun game. So much happening onscreen with little slowdown! 

7 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Oh yeah, if anyone was still curious. It's impossible for the fireballs to hit you when you are half way between screens. So, hiding there on the lowest level lets you hit the icicle without anything being able to damage you. 

That’s the way I figured it out. I didn’t even pause the game when I took breaks.