Golden Era Game of the Week 8/6/05: Robotron: 2084

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Post by Weehawk »

dbh wrote:Yup, that's the hard thing about this game. One good run of boards in a game in not uncommon, but having two or three is extremely rare (unless your initials are ABA).

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Post by The TJT »

Watched top2 scores. Looks like both can do still better. Donald lost some early points at brains, handled brains at 15 nicely. Matt fooled the tanks with ease, nearly escaped deadly crossfire at 18 on last man. Nice!
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Post by BBH »

The TJT wrote:Watched top2 scores. Looks like both can do still better. Donald lost some early points at brains, handled brains at 15 nicely. Matt fooled the tanks with ease, nearly escaped deadly crossfire at 18 on last man. Nice!
I got too greedy at the end :(

Yeah, of course we both can do better. But the Brain waves after the first one totally screw me over, getting through Wave 10 or 15 without dying is a very, very rare occurence for me (which made Don getting through 15 very impressive). I've been experimenting with a new strategy that's working a little better, but I still always die at least once. It's frustrating. Also, it's always seemed to me like the Brains fire their annoying bullets a little less often until they turn the first human into a Prog, and then they go nuts. That makes finding that one human they all go after all the more crucial on 10 and 15, but.... ya know, there's just so much going on at once, it's hard to pick out the exact one. Damn this game. :) (if there's one thing I really want to see about Abdner's play, it would be how he handles these waves)

although I had good luck with the tanks in that game, I still die on them fairly often. I'm trying out a couple new plans of action for the tank waves too, but... you can never really be 100% prepared for a level because of the random nature of the game.
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Post by Weehawk »

Tuesday's bonus points to BBH.

http://www.gegotw.net/robotronresults.html
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Post by dbh »

Tuesday's bonus points to BBH.
And I'll predict a clean sweep for BBH, especially since I'm heading off to London later today for CGE UK this weekend. I doubt I woud be able to match his latest submission, though, as the game has been kicking the crap out of me the last couple of nights. Not counting all the times I restarted after dying unfairly on wave 3 or 4 (and there were a lot of those), I think my best run was about 450K.

Even though the emulation seems to have improved, I believe it still plays harder than the actual arcade machine. The other thing I noticed was that the robotryo romset appears to play easier. I'm fairly sure my machine and the one at Funspot are both the yellow-orange variety so maybe that explains why the robotron romset appears harder to me. I'd actually like to get a solid-blue PCB so that I could compare the two.

Congrats again BBH...nice game!
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I'm fairly sure my machine and the one at Funspot are both the yellow-orange variety so maybe that explains why the robotron romset appears harder to me.
Hmmm...if that's really the case I'm tempted to allow "robotryo" for the further bounties. Of course that would probably mean that the recording could not be submitted to TG, since they generally require the parent ROMset for MAME entries. I'll mull it over.

In any case, we'll stick to "robotron" for this week's entries.

Also, I notice that first place at TG's MAME track on Robotron is 595k, held by Leslaw Skrzypek of Poland. Does anybody here know him? Is he a MARP member?
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Post by dbh »

Also, I notice that first place at TG's MAME track on Robotron is 595k, held by Leslaw Skrzypek of Poland. Does anybody here know him? Is he a MARP member?
Yes, Leslaw is "SLA" on MARP. Not sure where he is now but I think he may have moved to California a couple years back. Haven't heard from him in a while.

He did that 595K using a keyboard for BOTH firing and moving.
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Post by The TJT »

dbh wrote: He did that 595K using a keyboard for BOTH firing and moving.
Not to mention the score was at harder emulation!

Not sure about that keyboard thingy though...So he said, but it looks damn much not played with keyboard!

p.s. Pretty bold brain tactics this time BBH ;)
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Post by Zhorik »

dbh wrote:
Also, I notice that first place at TG's MAME track on Robotron is 595k, held by Leslaw Skrzypek of Poland. Does anybody here know him? Is he a MARP member?
Yes, Leslaw is "SLA" on MARP. Not sure where he is now but I think he may have moved to California a couple years back. Haven't heard from him in a while.

He did that 595K using a keyboard for BOTH firing and moving.
But did he use mapped diagonals?
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Post by destructor »

Off topic.
Leslaw Skrzypek 2-3 years ago was in Poland. Asn007 bought from him HotRod. He observe Deca2004 in previous year and some tournaments on MARP.
But now I have no contact with Leslaw. No reply for my emails but email seems as good.
In last email he talk me that he has no time for play (work, work, ...) but maybe he will play in futures Deca on TG.
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Post by destructor »

Zhorik wrote:But did he use mapped diagonals?
I don't know, but I think play with mapped 4 diagonals+4normal directions on keyboard in Robotron is too hard than play without mapped diagonals.
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Post by Weehawk »

Zhorik wrote:
dbh wrote:
Also, I notice that first place at TG's MAME track on Robotron is 595k, held by Leslaw Skrzypek of Poland. Does anybody here know him? Is he a MARP member?
Yes, Leslaw is "SLA" on MARP. Not sure where he is now but I think he may have moved to California a couple years back. Haven't heard from him in a while.

He did that 595K using a keyboard for BOTH firing and moving.
But did he use mapped diagonals?
Oh good. Go over to TG and start some shit about that.

:wink:

Hell, though, now that I think about it, since our recordings on this particuar game aren't legit for MARP anyway, I couldn't care less if people use mapped diagonals.
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Post by BBH »

dbh wrote:
Tuesday's bonus points to BBH.
And I'll predict a clean sweep for BBH, especially since I'm heading off to London later today for CGE UK this weekend. I doubt I woud be able to match his latest submission, though, as the game has been kicking the crap out of me the last couple of nights. Not counting all the times I restarted after dying unfairly on wave 3 or 4 (and there were a lot of those), I think my best run was about 450K.
Dang, that's some pretty unfortunate timing on your end.

Restarting after just Wave 4? Hell, I always hit Esc if I die on Wave 5... sometimes I even hit Esc if I get an unfavorable level layout that prevents me from protecting the Mikey in time. But yes, I've been getting my ass handed to me so many times, I'm really not at all consistent at this. I'm just persistent I guess...
Even though the emulation seems to have improved, I believe it still plays harder than the actual arcade machine. The other thing I noticed was that the robotryo romset appears to play easier. I'm fairly sure my machine and the one at Funspot are both the yellow-orange variety so maybe that explains why the robotron romset appears harder to me. I'd actually like to get a solid-blue PCB so that I could compare the two.
It's hard for me to make a judgment on it, as I've never played on TGTS on an arcade cabinet... only the marathon-friendly defaults. I had a much easier time in the arcade though compared to MAME, but that could've been because the arcade machine was most likely set to difficulty 3 instead of 5... plus I do feel more comfortable with the dual joystick control of course.
Congrats again BBH...nice game!
thanks!

The TJT wrote: p.s. Pretty bold brain tactics this time BBH ;)
yeah, getting past Wave 15 without dying was a nice treat. No such luck on my next submission, though. :X
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Post by BeeJay »

With an appropriate keyboard that has no ghosting/collisions with any of the possible "legal" combinations of the 8 keys you're using, it is definitely easier to play Robotron without using mapped diagonals than it is trying to add in even more buttons for mapped diagonals.

By "legal" combinations, I mean combinations you would get on an 8 way joystick, not something like up & down simultaneously. My favourite choice did have collisions with that sort of combination, but as you never actually do that when playing the game it didn't matter.

Unfortunately I can't try out this new version to see how much the difficulty has changed as my Robotron romsets are too old for these recent versions of Mame.... but I suspect any attempt would have been feeble and pointless anyway compared to those scores by Matt and Don. :(
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Post by Weehawk »

Yes, it's a clean sweep for BBH on the bonus points.

http://www.gegotw.net/robotronresults.html
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