Thursday, October 25, 2012

Tatsujin high score #2


Man, now that I have an autofire circuit with a split autofire (A with autofire and regular A) wiring harness, I can finally attack this board with some seriousness. I finally blew past my old sticking point around area 90 and though I didn't make it much farther, progress is coming fast. It's brutal and fun at the same time, a great Toaplan title, but I already feel the pull of DDP after getting very close to the second loop a few weeks ago at caldwerts.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

1942 high score #1 (and final) NES


This past weekend I was at caldwert's place in St. Louis and while the meet was totally fun, Friday night was all about this marathon score of 1942, a game I played a bunch as a kid and constantly lost after like 3-4 stages. I think my best was stage 27 back in the day.

Like Castlevania, I thought it was an impossible game to beat. I mean, 32 stages? Too daunting for a kid.

At caldwert's on Friday, we were going through a massive box of Famicom games he just picked up and checking them out and ran across this, laughed and put it in, remembering my dissapointment as a kid.

I died a few times in the first few stages, coming precipitously close to a game over and then - I kind of got the hang of it. I plower through to the 20's, with Bob coming by every few minutes to check on my progress. I wfoulnd the bosses along the way who fired small bullet spreads and got their pattern down and plowed on. I made it into the teens, then declared if I rolled the counter, I would stop playing as it was taking some serious time away from enjoying other great games in the pile.

I counter stopped it and decided to go on and beat the game, seeing the ending screen on my first try of the game in 20 years and man, it was satisfying. The ending screen was short with simple "Congratulation" and some text and then a game over. I finished with 10 lives (which I think is the max) and a big smile. I love taking down games from my childhood.