Golden Era Game of the Week 3/27/04: Joust

Golden Era Game of the Week
http://www.gegotw.net/

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Golden Era Game of the Week 3/27/04: Joust

Post by Weehawk »

Golden Era Game of the Week

See introduction here

The Game: Joust (White/Green Label)

romname: joust

Reward: $100 (usd)

Deadline for submission to MARP: April 2, 2004 2359 hours GMT

Further Bounty: $250 (usd) for exceeding 1,002,500 by July 1, 2004

Comments: Don't get too excited. The bounties won't generally be this high. I decided to start with a true classic, and set the reward accordingly, also I wanted to start the Golden Era Game of the Week concept off with a bang.

Note Special Rules:
BANNED TECHNIQUE : pterydactyl hunting (the player can get the final hunter enemy to be held by the lava-troll, and then wait on the center ledge for pterydactyls to appear ; the ptery's make a suicide run for the player, and will strike at a perfect level into the players lance - 1000 pts. each)

You MUST use TG Tournament settings or harder. TG Settings are 5th level difficulty, 5 lives only with no extra lives. (This rule enacted July 15, 2000)
The Twin Galaxies record for the arcade machine on 5-man "tournament" settings is 1,002,500 held by Don Morlan. The controls on this game translate well to a gamepad or keyboard control, so I don't see why this one couldn't be beaten with MAME.

A pretty thorough strategy guide (though I haven't examined it carefully for accuracy) is available here:

http://web.mit.edu/kaihow/www/joust.html

And don't worry, there will be plenty of opportunity to compete on rare and lesser-known titles in the weeks to come.

I hope others find this idea as entertaining as I do.
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Re: Golden Era Game of the Week 3/27/04: Joust

Post by QRS »

Weehawk wrote:[The Twin Galaxies record for the arcade machine on 5-man "tournament" settings is 1,002,500 held by Don Morlan.
I´m sure that Mark doesn´t agree with that (internal joke) :)

Btw, cool idea John! You have my support 110% for such a great idea, and personal effort - (money and time!)

Maybe this will wake up Mark from his long sleep? :P If not I predict Gaz as the winner of this round as John is prolly trying to win the deca right now hehe

On the other hand.. you are not so bad at Joust yourself John!

Good luck all!
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Post by The TJT »

That page looks like very good strategy guide, very complete...Sit spots with pictures and all...Keep them shadow lords above you!

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Post by tar »

I am unable to set the dipswitches to 5 ships in service mode. Williams games are not so easy to figure out.
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Post by LN2 »

tar wrote:I am unable to set the dipswitches to 5 ships in service mode. Williams games are not so easy to figure out.
it's not done through the dip switches.

Press F2 to go into service mode. Press F1(or maybe it's F1+F2 at same time...can't remember offhand...one or other) to advance through the tests and setup pages.

The last page you come to will show various game settings.

Here you can make it so you start with 5 men and never earn any extra men...as well as set the right difficulty if necessary.

Press F2 to exit service mode and play the game. Don't press F3 since that isn't saved in the input file. F1 and F2 presses are saved though.
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Post by QRS »

Remember that you have to do this every time you start a new game, as nothing is saved in any cfg file etc.
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Post by JoustGod »

Kyle's how-to guide is very good. He covers all major aspects of the game. The biggest thing with this game is the amount of practice it takes to gain masterful hovering control. Concepts are good, but execution is a whole different thing as this game is devoid of patterns...only tendencies.

Good luck to all in pursuit of this title. I may give it a go or two. I doubt it, though, since I haven't even bothered playing it since my 547K run back in November. It's going to be very tough for either Mark or I to top our scores as it takes near perfect situations to pull it off. I do think Gaz is quite capable of topping his score.

I'm very curious as to who is going to make an attempt at Joust that wouldn't normally bother playing it as JTC has kindly dangled the 100 dollar carrot in front of you MARPers. ;-)
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Post by Weehawk »

tar wrote:I am unable to set the dipswitches to 5 ships in service mode. Williams games are not so easy to figure out.
Once you're running the game keep tapping f2 until you cycle through to the page where these options are set. Then press the "d" key and hold it down until the points-needed-for-extra-man goes all the way from 20,000 to zero.

Then hit f2 one more time and you're ready to go. The rest of the defaults should be okay.
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Post by The TJT »

JG, did you learn anything new from the guide? :P
I did, for sure! Played the game little before(like everybody should have!), my tactics being sometimes very different, going up too much...
Too bad that one week is perhaps too small time to learn the game well enough to beat top-marpers at Joust. Maybe 2 weeks would be enough.

About f2, maybe could do same as I did with 720 inps...Go to service mode, change settings, leave f2 "on", exit mame.
Now you should have default cfg-file(s). then just use it before each recording attempt, when you start the game simply push f2 once.
...That is, if it's ok for playbackers to bother use cfg's.

Then again, why not just count your men?

Bad thing about these TG-5 men rules is that you don't really get to play those later levels, same with Robotron.

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Post by JoustGod »

The TJT wrote:JG, did you learn anything new from the guide? :P
I did, for sure! Played the game little before(like everybody should have!), my tactics being sometimes very different, going up too much...
Too bad that one week is perhaps too small time to learn the game well enough to beat top-marpers at Joust. Maybe 2 weeks would be enough.
TJT
Nothing new for me, Tommi. I should add that the lower middle island has a slight notch at the far right that comes in real handy when confronting enemies from the left. It generally is a decent enough spot for enemies coming from the right as long as you don't commit too early to flapping off the ground.

No harm in you trying to get a decent score for this. Even though I favor Gary (Gaz) for this, it's not a lock as his score is also rather high and will be tough to surpass. But, sadly, this particular title is not so easy to learn the foundation skills within one week if you've never really played.

Good luck anyways!!
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Post by LN2 »

JoustGod wrote:I'm very curious as to who is going to make an attempt at Joust that wouldn't normally bother playing it as JTC has kindly dangled the 100 dollar carrot in front of you MARPers. ;-)
I would if I had a PC to play using wolfmame.

I used to marathon Joust at regular settings...although many have done this.

I have only tried a couple games of it in MAME using TGTS....still rusty.

I still remember my techniques though...and oddly enough those described on that other page match what I did quite well. he doesn't get into stuff like a couple flaps on later levels so a blue dude can fly over you where you can get him on a rebound or on the next pass.

He doesn't get into how the lava troll(whatever) can actually hold the blue guy for a couple seconds...so there are a couple spots to get to where once he escapes he will come right up into you off an island/shelf.

600+k with only 5 men is damn good though. I can see getting 300-400k with some practice. Beyond that will take lots and lots of practice. 1 million is insane with only 5 men....amazing.

I might try it on my mac anyway just to try and compete.

I also might be visiting my friend in another couple of weeks....perhaps can play and set a few scores using his PC and wolf80. I know just even using that for a few scores would help "things".
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Post by Phil Lamat »

Ok I've edited special rules with help for settings
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Post by The TJT »

Since difficulty is default, and I'm using wolf80...

Can I submit without changing amount of extra men??? I'll only count 5 man score, but would like to continue playing after that. Playing with 5 men only is not good practice, and very frustrating to stop when game actually begins.

Just got new personal best with "marathon" settings(extra/20000), about 400k...next game about 600k. I bet can break 1M in couple of days. 5 man score is not very interesting by itself.
My opinion is that extra/50k would be most interesting at marp...it wouldn't prohibit going for 5man score also...What you guys think?
Too late for change? :(

Never was familiar with joust tactics, started playing yesterday, already massive improvement. I believe that 1M TG-record is legit, or atleast doable.

JG, can you marathon romset "Joust"...I noticed that at about 1,5M the game gets very hard, shadow lords don't really die with using "chicken run-face with back-one flap- trick". I was wondering if that's how the game should be, or is it like at Robotron with Mame(more difficult than arcade).
How about using 6-finger technique...many times very effective :P

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Post by destructor »

The TJT wrote: Can I submit without changing amount of extra men??? I'll only count 5 man score, but would like to continue playing after that.
I think no. You want to make two scores for one time (regular and game of week) :) .
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Post by The TJT »

Robotron is played as marathon at marp, yet people do tell 5 men scores in description. Why not allow to continue playing after 5 man score?

Difficulty is default anyway.
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