NESfiend

STAR WARS is done. Such a fun playthrough. 

Marble madness. Disappointing score with an embarassing 7 deaths. 

My initial thought is bring the tourney back. This year it didn't land like usual, but most years it does. And we can always tweak the time we do it and format, etc. I am an old sentimental sap, but some of my best memories of this contest are playing the black box games the year we did that (especially golf and soccer) and playing alien syndrome over thanksgiving week with my brother stupidly late at night. I can see why spirits may be down on the tourney after this year, and I take some blame dropping off. But I'm a big believer in not scrapping it. Maybe even shorten the season a little if you don't want it to fall in the holiday scene with thanksgiving or christmas

Edit: Forget shortening the season, we could always start it earlier. Also, alien syndrome freaking rocks. I am going to revisit that one in the very near future. Great example of a classic I never played until this contest gave me the nudge. 

On 12/28/2023 at 7:12 AM, BeaIank said:

I was going with that for the Finals, but I couldn't find a good ruleset to make it work.

Password to level 4. ABAABBBB if memory serves. It keeps score. Was burning lives a concern? I could see that. Its too tough for a 1 life challenge 

On 12/17/2023 at 7:48 AM, SuperJimtendo said:

If we're doing multisports again I vote snoopy silly sports spectacular. 

I cant stress this enough and have already many times. 

AMERICAN GLADIATORS!!!

2 hours ago, Richardhead said:

You’re just mad because you couldn’t find a way to cheat. Happy Christmas.

You and @Dr. Morbis

I will leave the posts about the glitch and put official score here. Damn, @SuperJimtendo! 10 mili impressive 

7,311,710

8 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

@NESfiend @RH

So, these contests don't have any explicit rules against in-game exploits, since under normal circumstances, I'd be inclined to allow them. You discovered a way to up your score faster/more efficiently than you'd normally be able to, more power to you. However... yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and say doing this isn't allowed, scores using this method won't be counted towards the leaderboard. The fact that once the glitch happens, you can literally just sit there and do nothing, and wait for the score to slowly climb pushes it over the edge for me. That ruins both the fun, and the point of this contest. Sorry guys!

@NESfiend I'll still count your 5.5 mil score since that was acquired prior to abusing the glitch, but @RH if you're putting all your eggs in to that basket, well... time to get some more practice in!

I actually think from this point forward, I will probably go ahead and add to the ruleset that you aren't allowed to abuse an in-game exploit like this to up your score, if it completely dodges the need to actually PLAY the game. I'll say in the future, if anyone discovers any exploits like this, ask me about it first before assuming that I'll allow it. Can always PM me if you don't want other people to discover it.

I figured this would not be allowed. It sucks that it ends your run without a mistake on your part. Its not like I was looking for a glitch. It happened to me. But yeah, you cant crown a winner when its blind luck to find that

Well I seem to have broken it. First picture is when the ball first got stuck between two bumpers. I had by far my high score at 5.5 million when the ball got stuck there. Second picture shows it 10ish hours later at 15 million. Seems to go less than a million an hour, but more than 500k. It moves slow and I am about to call it to free up my NES, but it will run forever like that. I posted this in the wrong thread earlier and apparently @RH stumbled upon the glitch as well.  He has been running his NES on it for days and is probably around 50 million now, so first is out of reach anyhow. 

15,015.540

31 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Imagine that,
One big L for the Grinch.
For our hero NESfiend,
T'was but a cinch!

For while grinchy-poo laughed,
his efforts were last-ditch.
Where the Grinch failed to master,
NESfiend found a glitch!

Looks like I posted in the wrong thread. I'll break the grinch's heart in the appropriate thread when I get back from dinner and see if its still going 

Well I seem to have broken it. First picture is when the ball first got stuck between two bumpers. I had by far more high score at 5.5 million. Second picture I took before leaving for dinner. Still going. Should be over 10 mil when I get back. I could let it run another 12 hours overnight. Have to leave town after that

2,065,150

41 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

@Dr. Morbis

”any serious qualms I have in future weeks will be sent privately to the show runners from here on out.”

Oh boy. Please tell me this is a joke.

“With Rolling Thunder, they obviously allowed point-scumming because the game is timed, and you found a loophole by taking advantage of the one point in the game where time does not tick down.  I highly doubt they were aware of the fact that the boss was untimed, and there's a pretty good chance they would have modified the rules in some way had they been made aware of that fact at some point during the week.”

Agree. Should have known that was a shady strat.

There has been a lot of talk about making you a mod next year. Not playing that much, but still active and loved by all. Its a solid fit. May want to see if glovesie can up your inbox storage space

4 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

 The burden of proof should be on the accused

As a criminal defense attorney, this statement is making my head spin. Please, please, if you ever make it onto a jury, please read the jury instructions very carefully several times over. In first world countries, the burden of proof is always on the prosecution for obvious reasons. Its kind of a pillar of civilized society. God knows what jail cell @Bearcat-Doug and @docile tapeworm would be sharing right now without the heavy burden of proof placed on the state in criminal prosecutions. 

That nerdy sentiment aside, I really sympathize with the good doctor, @Dr. Morbis here. From janky photos to seemingly impossible feats, I have always wondered whats up with vega. He is either a savant who can break any game, but has trouble with taking simple photos, or someone who is having a lot of fun with us. And with his passion, which sometimes looks like rage, morbis is kind of the perfect target.

I honestly dont know and would feel terrible if it was all legit, but I get dr morbis calling it into question. 

3 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I take it that you decided to save your thumbs for next year instead of posting a score. 

I had a stupidly involved writing project and a deadline. Ate up a lot of night time. I did make a couple efforts at the 100 yard dash. Even a few quick playthroughs destroyed my thumbs, and I got nowhere scorewise. Being out of the running, it was easy to say no thanks on that..

Rolling thunder Im sad I missed. I checked my local store and no copy. Looked for my adaptor to put on a flash cart and came up empty. That one is high up my buy and try list. 

I love codename viper. You would like it, doug. Worth a playthrough. Someone has to get those 90s drug lords

Reserved 

32 minutes ago, PII said:

My lowest level 1 score was 750 not counting the 5k bonus when arriving at 1-2....

The 5k bonus that is advertised as a 1k bonus on the screen that comes up when you complete a level. I kept hoping it may correct itself. 

Somehow podiumed on a shooter I think? @docile tapeworm very skinny spirit must have been with me....

I cant believe I didnt finish commando. Ended up catching a window and played a lot tonight. Had a good run and choked when I got to the road on 1-4. Wouldnt have made a difference in points, but its just demoralizing. 

2 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

That's a damn shame.  Hudson's Shuwatch saves your high score, and most of the fun for me is pulling it out every once in a while to see if I can top my all-time best performance.

Some of the donors that would work with this ROM have batteries on the pcb and back-up RAM chips, so it's too bad it wasn't programmed to take advantage of that...

The game runs for 10 seconds. There isnt that much variance that you wouldn't remember your high score if you didnt bother to record it. Its one number. Mine is just over half of what gloves got in that example video. 200+ is straight up crazy

Just now, Dr. Morbis said:

I have a Hudson Shuwatch that does the exact same thing (measures your button presses), but they're relatively unknown, so it's cool to see that someone made a program for the pc...

That someone is the very person who posted the video. Schmup speed!

4 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I do a pretty shit job of doing it consistently here, but here's an example I provided to someone else recently. 

 

My god. This is the video game version of 'beauty is pain.'

6 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

Galaga shouldn't be killing your thumb. Mash with your index finger.

 

With the exception of "the wall" event on american gladiators, I have never been able to play NES games with anything but thumbs. 

Speaking of gladiators, the commando challenge is a lot like the assault event on that game. One of many reasons that its killing me how much I suck at commando. 

Im bearcat done. Been 3 places looking for xmas trees and still have no tree. Aside from a last minute game or n 2 at 9:30 tonight, my scores are in. 

4 hours ago, BeaIank said:

Current standings and temporary tournament standings posted.

Thanks, Bea. Always nice to see my name in gold for a hot minute or two while the sandbaggers are still in hiding 

Gold medal challenge - ROUGH on the already sore thumbs. I better ice them up @Bearcat-Doug style