ZeldaFreak

1 minute ago, Strange said:

Total necromancy here, sorry, but I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong. I love the Steam Deck. It’s my main gaming device now. I still use my PS5/Switch/regular PC occasionally but the SD has become my go-to.

I've also been enjoying it quite a bit, though I figured I probably would so slightly different situation on my end.

I dunno if I'll have PGA beat tomorrow, but definitely should have it done by day after tomorrow if not.

11 hours ago, ndsnfr said:

I don't know if I should update my previous post or make a new one,

RH is right that it's more convenient for me if you update the original post, but you're not required to, it's not an outright rule. You can update your original post or make news posts, either way the score will be counted.

2 hours ago, BlackVega said:

I originally wanted to go higher but oh my god I hate this. I hated playing every single second of this crap and this is the prime example how NOT to program a game. Whoever programmed this should be banned from making any future games. Seriously I've never played a pinball game this unresponsive where flippers barely push the ball or often times they don't even register anything at all. Nintendo Pinball literally looks like an Oscar masterpiece in comparison. I once got a score that was a little over 3 mil but meh fuck it. Also I don't want to be included in the raffle, meaning I don't want to get the cart with this game

I'm not sure why you participated at all if you didn't enjoy the game and didn't want to be included in the raffle but alright

4 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Okay, scratch that.  I did some digging, and found a playthrough where the guy didn't win the Rumble.  It said to try again and no credits.  So yeah, I'm gonna have to attempt winning the Rumble to make sure.

You think you'll have time to beat it? I assume you will, it sounds like you're pretty close to the end but just want to make sure. I can always pick it up after I'm done with PGA if not.

3 hours ago, twiztor said:

not sure why my Secret Santa was, but super happy with what i received.  two games from my list, plus an amiibo that i'm missing. can't wait to dive in and add these to my backlog. i really dug the first Bomberman R despite its reputation, and have been curious about Starfy for quite a while. thanks again!

and @AverageOliver98, glad you enjoyed your gift. when i saw that you were a fellow Mega Man fan, i knew i just had to help your collection with that series.

 

 

I was your secret santa, glad you enjoyed everything!

I do have one question though; what's your damn shirt size?! Because you said you were a big fan of the Zelda franchise, and you also liked hawaiian shirts, so I was originally going to get you a Zelda-themed hawaiian shirt as well, but you didn't specify in your list what size to get, and I didn't want to anonymously ask what your size was since that'd kinda ruin the surprise, haha. Still glad you liked everything though!

My Secret Santa was @SNESNESCUBE64, and he did great! He got me a triforce coin bank, which honestly I'm probably just gonna use as a display piece since it looks REALLY nice, as well as a brand new copy of Super Mario RPG for the Switch! Really excited to play that since I haven't played the original in a very long time. Thanks bud!

Firstly, Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a good one

But secondly, quick reminder that tomorrow will be the last day to submit new scores, so get 'em submitted while you can!

I'm glad Nugfish mentioned his brother's strategy, because I had way more luck that way than with his strategy, first time I felt like I could somewhat consistently get strikes. After many hours of experimenting both today and yesterday, what I ended up settling on was using the Speed Zone ball, max curve, standing a bit to the left of the center, aiming the top of the red line either just slightly right, or slightly left of the center pin. Which side was better seemed to depend on the oil, so a lot of the time you still just had to flip a coin and try one or the other and hope you got lucky. I also tried to aim for the green in both the power and accuracy bars, I would've gone for max power every time since that's one less variable you have to worry about, but it seemed more inconsistent that way, it either really worked or REALLY didn't work. Aiming for the green in both meant that even if you guess wrong on whether or not aiming for the right or left of the center pin was best, you'd still usually at least be able to get a spare, so it seemed to be a little bit safer. I actually did manage to shoot one 300 when the oil wasn't feeling too cruel which I'm quite proud of, haha.

Anyway fuck this game I'm moving on to PGA since it sounds like @the_wizard_666's almost done with Wrestlemania.

Any luck @Splain? I tried to figure out the strategy Nugfish was talking about for the past hour or so and honestly I feel like I'm doing even worse now so I dunno. All I know is I do not enjoy this game, haha. Been trying to find that magic spot where Nugfish's strategy gets me a strike and I can't seem to figure it out, so I dunno if I misinterpreted what he said and I'm just doing it wrong, or if it's a VERY particular spot where it works.

2 minutes ago, RH said:

I see now.  No, nevermind. That run was shaping up to be a bad one.

OK, yeah if that 7mil pic was a fair bit after the ball initially got stuck then I wouldn't count it, sorry.

2 hours ago, RH said:

If you will except @NESfiend’s 5.5m, will you accept my photo that over 7m? Why I ask and it might be relevant is when I saw the ball was locked, I put it down and let it run—I didn’t want to touch any buttons in case you could shake/tilt this system.  That’s why I even asked. I intended to tilt the unit (if that was possible) after 10m.  Later experimentation, some time after 18m, I picked up the device, took a photo and then messed with the controls to see if they’d shake the ball loose.

So, in a way, I didn’t know it was a fully locked glitch until about 18m but I do have an early photo around 7m before I ever tried to free the ball.

Well, do you recall what your score was at when the ball was first locked? If your 7 million score was around the time it first got locked then yeah, I would allow it so long as you have the photo.

56 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

@Splain what's the verdict on Wrestlemania 2k?  is that one still not beaten?

Nope. That, Brunswick and PGA European Tour are the last three.

10 hours ago, Nugfish said:

My brother & I used to play this all the time and got to the point where we routinely shot 300s. Its not as random as it may seem, but it does require near perfection to win a tournament. Unfortunately, it wasn't as intuitive as I was expecting when I came back to it as an adult, but is is beatable. My strategy is throwing the Speed Demon at max speed and full hook on a tight line. The game makes sure not to put you back exactly where you lined up on your previous shot so you will have to adjust every frame. My brother always used the Strike Zone with a slower speed and wider line so I know there are other strategies that can win. Hope that helps you guys a little.

OK, I'll have to try that out. I'll let @Splain make the call on whether or not you have to get 1st place in a tournament before continuing to play though, don't want to waste time on either a tournament or a skins game if the other ends up being what you need to play for it to be considered "beaten."

I updated the ruleset, for this contest and all future contests, to just blanket not allow in-game exploits/glitches that allow you to increase your score/progress in a way that wasn't intended, figured that'd be simpler.

Feel free to give your opinions on this change though, as I know not everyone would agree with that decision and I'd be curious to know everyone's thoughts on the matter.

@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.

1 hour ago, Splain said:

Really? I don't think it's all that bad. I get better scores on like, Nester's Funky Bowling because you can do the same thing over and over for all 10 frames, but seemingly not here. Maybe we can win a Skins game and call it beaten, but even then, the game makes no effort to declare a winner of skins matches, so it's either the number of skins or the total winnings. Shrug.

It's definitely odd in that it focuses so hard on being a professional bowler, and everything you do contributes to your career earnings and records and such. And playing the cosmic bowling mode is like "welcome professional bowler SPLAIN for an exhibition game!!" and you can't just, like, bowl a quick round without it playing somehow into your total career. It makes me wonder if there's some kind of end to it all when you earn enough money or something. But the manual says nothing and nobody on the internet has said anything.

There's a guy on YouTube beating all the N64 games, but he hasn't gotten to this one yet. MeridianPrime back in the day just got second in a tournament and called it good. So it's the same question as in other games that don't show credits or do anything special when you win a tournament.

It's just because (from what I've played so far, anyway) it feels almost completely random. I figure out a way to get a strike, and think "Cool, OK, that worked. Let me try that again." Then I try it again and something completely different happens. Even if I line up the next shot the exact same way, hit the accuracy and power meters on the exact same spots, it's impossible to predict what's actually going to happen. So it feels like skill is barely even a factor at play, it's just random chance. I understand not ALLOWING you to hit the same shot over and over and over again is in theory good, but at least doing that requires some amount of skill and timing to actually line it back up and hit the meters in the exact same place again (since if you're even SLIGHTLY off with either of the meters, the result will be completely different most of the time.) Doing it this way leads to it just feeling totally random which I never enjoy in any game.

Plus honestly I think I just don't like bowling games in general since the gameplay is just... I dunno. It's just so basic. Nothing about it is engaging to me in any way, haha. So for me it's a combination of boring + frustrating. If it was one or the other I'd be fine, it's the fact that it's both that is already making me REALLY not enjoy this one. Not to mention I generally prefer games which I can beat, ones that actually have an ending of some sort over something like this. The wrestling ones I honestly didn't mind at all, I had some legitimate fun with those, this is just... yeah.

Plus I don't generally go out of my way to play bad games so I haven't actually played very many to be fair, haha. I know there was infinitely worse games than this out there, it's just that of the ones I'VE played, this one's pretty shit.

For skins games, if they don't ever end (I got to frame 12 and by that point just assumed it was kind of endless) it says at the beginning when you boot one up that $250,000 are on the line. If they are indeed endless (sounds like they are based on what you said) the win condition could be to get to $250,000 before any of the other players do. That at least feels like it'd have more potential to be fun compared to getting 1st in a tournament if nothing else, haha.

1 hour ago, Splain said:

Three hundy!!!

@ZeldaFreak let me know what you think of Brunswick. You don't get credits when you win a tournament, or skins game, or anything at all. But you can stumble through a tournament and come out the other side with a terrible score, so it still seems appropriate to have to WIN something to call the game beaten. Nugfish legit won a tournament last year, so I just haven't figured out the secret I guess. But you have to get a LOT of strikes to even compete with the CPU players. And the game kinda prides itself on having the oil patterns change on the lanes as you wear them down. So the stuff that gets strikes at the beginning of the tourney won't necessarily keep working as you go. I've been through a bunch of tournaments by now but I haven't placed 1st yet. I'm hoping you'll waltz in with beginner's luck and just destroy the first tournament you enter. I'll take the embarrassment for the good of the thread lol.

This is already one of the worst games I've ever played in my life.

I thought Ogre Battle was bad, Jesus. That was just in a genre I don't like, but at least the game itself wasn't horrible.

Attitude done, indeed damn near identical to ECW in many ways. MEANT to get it done like a couple days ago, but had the worst bout of sleep deprivation I've had in a long time so that kinda made it hard to work up the motivation to keep playing for a little while there, haha.

So next I'm gonna do Brunswick since @Splain asked about it, then I'll circle back around to Wrestlemania if that's not still done, then finally PGA if that also isn't done.

52 minutes ago, RH said:

I'm not cheating when I say this, but I can commit to the statement that the score does NOT roll over back to 0 at 10,000,000.

Everyone, if they ever get that high can take photos before hand but you don't have to drain a ball to be safe (assuming you trust me.)

11 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

I believe.

High scores for 2016 were 50 million plus on the AVS scoreboard.

Good enough for me! Rule updated

2 minutes ago, RH said:

Am I eluding to the fact and/or bluffing that I've broken this game?  Maybe...

We'll see I guess, haha. I don't generally test score rolling so I was just making a safe guess in case it does roll over at that amount, obviously if it doesn't  then I'll update the rule for that.

17 minutes ago, RH said:

Score updated.  @ZeldaFreak you have a few minutes to update the board, especially since @CT has posted a killer score, and @The Grinch has posted an update?

Done, was about ready to do that before you pinged me actually.

.........Grinch is kicking your guys' asses, step it up fellas! Haha.

2 hours ago, RH said:

Oh, also, is @ZeldaFreak or @retroUSB, is there an instruction manual to this game that explains scoring and how bonuses work?  I have been trying to keep track of changing and blinking lights and I can't make heads or tails on how to strategize anything, or build to a specific goal.

"Shoot the ramp, aim for the targets, and light up "SANTA" for big points. If you're skilled enough you can even unlock multiball!" Is about as good as you're gonna get as far as I can tell, I'm afraid!

5 hours ago, ZeldaFan042 said:

My ball got stuck, and now it's soft locked

As always, I'm pretty lenient about this so I'll still count this score, but please do not forget:

"When you submit your score, make sure your VGS username is visible somewhere within view of the photo/screenshot of your score. It could be a slip of paper with your VGS username written down on it, or a text document displaying your VGS username. Use whatever method you like, so long as your username is clearly visible alongside your score."

7 minutes ago, ZeldaFan042 said:

I've been really busy the past few days, so I'm not too deep into it. 

I figure a lot of you guys will be throughout the holiday season, so I'm hoping to help with that by rapid-firing through some of these last few games.

5 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

25+ Survivor game badge I like the optimism. @ZeldaFreak get crackin'.

no

And yeah, when we were planning out these badges, I did point out "Hey, uh... the actual Survivor show took 12 years to get to 25, I dunno that we're ever gonna make it to that point, or even 10 honestly" haha. But hey, if VGS is still around in the 2300s, it's there for when we need it.