Karnov And Breakthru

Karnov and Breakthru are on their way... I got confirmation this evening. They were shipped like last Wednesday so it's possible they are resting in my PO Box.



It's comforting to know that a 22 year old game can inspire memories. I first played Breakthru at a Pistol Pete's Pizza which was basically a Chuck E Cheese. I can to this day recall all of the games that place had.

Insomnia

It's 1:00am. Sunday. I work in a few hours and unlike the poor grammar of the Japanese I "cannot feel asleep."

Other Nintendo games have pleasant sleep scenes... like the ending to Super Mario Bros. 2.

Despite the ringing in my ears from the three fans blowing in the room I can hear every noise in and outside of the house. This reminds me an experiment I want to try... details coming soon.

Another eBay Spending Spree

Money was a little bit loose this week so I splurged on a few titles from my favorite seller Pedro! (read my review of PedroGames.Com at http://www.videogamepriceguides.com/).

The last time I played Street Fighter 2010 I was in the 9th grade... 18 years ago! At the time Street Fighter 2 was popular but this game is nothing like SF2- its just a typical platform game with good music.

I only discovered Cobra Command a few months ago... I guess it will be the closest thing to Choplifter for the NES outside of the atrocious Famicom version. Nice music and scenery- you can smell the jungle mist.

Renegade. Not as good as the arcade version which was a blast. I believe this was a precursor to River City Ransom.

Radioactive Man. Never played it, but if it's like the other Simpson games I'll probably be disappointed. Perhaps it will be worth trading for a Balloon Fight or a...???

That last auction shown in the photo was a surprise to me. If you're interested you'll just have to search the item number.

So with those six games plus Karnov and Breakthru hopefully in the mail I have 8 games to look forward to.

Ebay and more Burgertime Progress

I won Karnov and Breakthru earlier this week for a penny each with reasonable shipping. Both are made by Dataeast which by the way (oh my!) Burgertime is well. I broke 50k, this afternoon on the forth level. Perhaps its a cheap victory because I was able to group and drop all of the hotdogs eggs and pickles all at once for 8000pts. before they regrouped and killed me

Burgertime New Personal Best

My personal best at Burgertime still sucks but its better than what it was thanks to the 5th level.

Burgertime 5th Level

I finally made it to the 5th level of Burgertime at the expense of ripping some hair out...

Golf Manual

I'e been working on the manual for Golf. It's almost finished!

Burgertime Progress

Compared to others this Burgertime score sucks. But it's the highest I've gotten so far. The forth level always seems to get choppy for me. I'm pretty certain it's only because of all the stuff on the screen... several burger ingredients, the chef, the egg, the pickles, the hotdogs. It seems that when the programmers of NES games encountered a situation like this they always had two options... the first is to let the game suffer the slow down, and the other was to compensate with 'flicker'. Super Mario Bros. encounters this a lot. But I guess in a game like Burgertime choppiness is better than flicker because who would want Mr. Hotdog creeping up on you like a ghost?

Rygar

Rygar had a beautiful sunset. The Nintendo version (pictured above) was no where near as beautiful as the arcade version but it certainly gets the job done. The parallax scrolling is a nice effect and really adds a nice layer of depth to the game. It's amazing how something simple such as a stationary graphic can bring realism to a game.

Nintendo Golf Label Is Done!

The label for Golf is now attached! I'll be giving it away at www.videogamepriceguides.com in the month of September. More details coming soon...!

Mmmm... Burgertime

Burgertime is a beautifully designed game. It seems so simple: Avoid Mr. Hotdog, Egg and Pickle, while stacking up burger ingredients. But it's not simple. It's hard. Damn hard. Except in the video below this guy makes it look simple. Embarrassingly simple.

While still plugging away at the Popeye record I'll take breaks from time to time to play Burgertime. As a child I remember my mom laughing at the live actor commercial for Burgertime. I'm not sure if she knew it was for a game or not (she hated video games) but it is a definate memory I'll take to my grave. The commecial always reminded me of a cross over of a Fruit of the Loom commercials. Perhaps they were conceived by the same marketing firm.

Anyways it seems the key to this torture is to group the enemies so you can drop them with the burger pieces for big points. Sounds simple. Again, its not. Again, this video makes it seem simple.

The AI seems simple enough which is probably what makes the game so difficult: Move towards the chef. If you approach a ladder and he is above or below you take the ladder in that direction. Repeat. Perhaps the true difficulty is keeping track of that many enemies. Usually I find myself trying to force an enemy in one direction and not realizing that I'm sending another enemy either right towards me, or down a path that will eventually box me in.

Another difficulty is that you need to be aligned perfectly with ladders walk off them. This isn't so difficult at the top or the bottom of one, but if you're trying to step off in the middle of a platform good-luck.

Rastan World Record Video Parts 2, 3 and 4

Here are the remaining parts of my Rastan World Record Attempt. Part 1 can be viewed here: http://www.salzmafia.com/2009/08/rastan-world-record-video-14.php

Part 2


Part 3


Part 4

Vacation

Well my four day vacation is near an end. About 90 minutes and I should be walking through the door. I took some time and checked out a game store at Ocean Beach California called Luna City Games. It got great reviews on Google but it was nothing special. An NES and some games. A TG-16. A PS3. It was located in a converted house, which it seems most businesses in Ocean Beach were. There is no parking in the town and I had to squeeze between two cars several blocks away from the store. Anyways the store stocked what appeared just to be someones private collection of games that were delusionally over priced. $17.99 for Super Mario / Duck Hunt. $7.99 for Golgo 13. $5 for 10 Yard Fight. For $99 you could get an Atari 2600 and 30 games. In my quest to find the store I ran into the local color which seemed to include the riff raff you'd find at any hostel in America. Just a bunch of punks with nothing better to do than get tattoos, smoke cloves and do nothing with their lives. And they, like the Luna City Games, stunk worst than a Dutchman's throw-up. If San Diego means a "whales *agina" as explained by Will Farrell in Anchorman, than Ocean Beach must be the whale's yeast infection. Perhaps I'm just spoiled from living in Las Vegas or I'm just a jerk, in anycase Luna City Games was a waste of time.

The Rastan World Record Video 1/4

I've posted before about acheiving the Rastan World Record for Taito Legends on the PS2. Amazingly the disc didn't work once it reached the ref. I still have a copy but have been so disenchanted over the whole thing I haven't bothered to send it in.

Instead, I'll publish it on YouTube for all to see. Here is part 1 of 4:



Keep in mind that there are other Rastan videos on YouTube with better (and in some cases questionable) performances. This was merely an attempt, and although the game wasn't completed, the acheivement of the highest score was.

Popeye World Record

I'm still working on the Popeye World Record for Nintendo. My last update was on April 25th, where I really didn't have much progress at all. Setting a world record is very difficult when you're displaced. It's even more difficult without a television!

Although I'm still displaced, I finally got a television, and have been mulling the Popeye World Record again. Like most things I've been studying it programmatically - looking at how the programmers actually designed the game and to look for flaws in it for an advantage. Not necessary glitches as that would distract from earing an actual record, but more along the lines of knowing how the AI was designed.

I haven't been able to figure it out completely but I am certain that Bluto can be controlled. He only has a few "modes" to which he operates:

1. Search: When he's "looking back and forth for Popeye"
2. Chase: When he walks in the direction of Popeye
3. Attack Above: Jumping up to hit Popeye
4. Attack Below: Reaching down to hit Popeye
5. Throw Bottle: Throwing a bottle

To determine what triggers each of these events simply takes some studying. If the modes are triggered by events within the game then it should be pretty easy to figure out. However if there is a random element to it, it will be more difficult.

It seems pretty obvious that the direction of "Chase" is simply a matter of determining if Popeye is to the right or left of Bluto and simply to start moving in that direction. Never once have I observed Bluto to walk in the opposite direction of Popeye when they are on the same level platform after completing a "Search Sequence" (unless of course you've eaten the spinach.) This is the easiest of the AI to figure out (If Popeye is LEFT of Bluto then Walk Left, else Walk Right).

"Search" seems to be the most difficult for me to figure out. What the heck actually triggers Bluto into "Search Mode"? I'm suspecting it has something to do with the animation frame that Popeye is currently standing in but I haven't been able to prove it. This is actually important to figure out because if you can trigger Bluto into "Search Mode" on the first stage while under the barrel you can knock it down for big points. The lower down on the screen Bluto is the higher the point value becomes. Of course the timing becomes more difficult too.

Again however, if these events are triggered randomly, such as a random number generator then it won't do much good to decipher the AI... infact it might be impossible to do so.

There is two ways that this can be figured out. The first is to use a debugger on an emulated version of the game, but thats the cheap and chump way to do it. The honest way to do it is to try to create a pattern not unlike the PacMan pattern. If you can move around the first stage in a predetermined way and have Bluto follow exactly each and every time then you can be certain that its not random.

Having the next two days off will give me ample opportunity to experiment!