The proposed rule change isn't for Galaga, 1942, 1943 or Donkey Kong 3. As the subject of this thead states, this is for adding a 5-ship Special Rule for just the Asteroids parent romset.homerwannabee wrote:This is a horrible idea. It's not right. Create a different track if you have to, but it's preposterous to take marathon scores, and only count the first 5 men. Now I am not saying don't create a different 5 man track. I am saying don't castrate some pretty historic marathon scores, and make them 5 man. It would be sort of like saying OK you know all those Marathon times runners have been doing for decades. Well they don't really count anymore. Instead we are only going to count the first 5 miles that all these runners did, and create a new 5 mile standard, and see if modern day runners can beat their 5 mile times.
For instance I can see already the meaning of many scores getting destroyed by a rule change like this. The best example would be Krogman's 20 million point Galaga score. I can't imagine only taking just the first 5 men, and only accepting that. It would be like taking the Mona Lisa, and cutting out just her face, and burning the rest of the painting. Another good example would be the 1942, and 1943 scores. Games that actually have endings, but give out more than 5 men. For many that is a huge accomplishment to get to the very end of these games. With the 5 man rule it's basically throwing that accomplishment into the trash.
This also affects me on a personal level. I take a lot of pride in my 13.95 million point DK3 score. It took me over 10 and a half hours without any breaks to get that score. I didn't go into that game thinking. "Oh I have to get one of my best 5 man starts of all time." There are 37 men given total in the game. What you do in your first 5 men is not a huge priority because it all evens out when you are given that many men.
So here is my suggestion. If you are completely against keeping track of marathon scores, than put all marathon scores in a different category, and suspend taking any more marathon scores. I say suspend because who knows, maybe 15 years from now a different hierarchy will want to keep track of marathon scores again.
I really think this is the wrong path to take. Let's not screw with the historic scores on this website. We owe those who spent their time, and effort on those games that much.
The current top score on the romset is by John McAllister (333,330). John is the arcade marathon record holder on Asteroids, and in his comment he specifically says "Can we get this track to be 5 ship only.......score for 5 ship is 168490". So the guy with the top marathon score on the romset, and who knows marathoning Asteroids better than anybody else on the planet, is asking for the parent romset track to be 5 ship only.
In addition, Dick Moreland, the guy who started this thread, has the current top overall Asteroids marathon score at MARP of 3,511,160 on the asteroid2 romset. So the 2 top marathon Asteroids players at MARP both would like the parent romset to be 5-ships only, and if you want to see a marathon replay, the asteroid2 romset already has a marathon score more than 10x higher than the current marathon score on the parent romset. I'm not sure what "historic scores" you're looking to protect in this case.
Again, the proposed rule change is only for the parent romset of Asteroids. There are currently only 3 scores on that romset that use more than 5 ships that would need to be adjusted.homerwannabee wrote: Sides wouldn't going through every single game that gives out more than 5 men, and keeping track of the first 5 men actually be harder than continuing to accept marathon scores. I mean this database has been around now for what 17 years? That is a huge amount of games to go through.
-George