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RickR

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  1. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in Star Wars Day 2019! - Celebrate May The Fourth in the Forums!   
    I've added STAR WARS DAY as a new event to our Community Calendar which we will be celebrating every year! Join us for a day of Special Events in the Forums this Saturday, May the Fourth to celebrate the World of Star Wars! Events include a special High Score Squad Challenge, and YouTube Creators sharing their special Star Wars Day content! I hope to see you there! 
     
     
    Celebrate Star Wars Day
    in the forums May the 4th!
     

     
    *SPECIAL EVENT!
    Celebrate The World of Star Wars in the forums every year on May the 4th!
    Join us for a day of special events!
    Special High Score Squad Challenge Event!
    YouTube Creators Posting Special Star Wars Content!
    Be There!

  2. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in Squad Challenge - Night Stalker (Intellivision)   
    Night Stalker
    Intellivision
    Controller: CONTROLLER / MULTIPLE CONTROLLERS / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE
    Difficulty Level: Game Speed 3 (Button 1)
    SINGLE LIFE: Achieve high score using only one life to win challenge
    Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / MAME / Emulation OK! ✔
    Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST May 14th, 2019
     
     
    OBJECTIVE: Play for the highest possible score using the difficulty settings defined in the challenge. Post a photo or video of your score in this thread. Scores must be achieved between May 1st through May 14th, 2019. Screen captures are not allowed as they are easily manipulated for falsified scores. Multiple submissions are permitted. The player with the highest score at the end of the competition is the victor!
     
    ELIGIBILITY: Anyone can join in. All players are welcome!
     
    PLAY RULES: Games may be played on real hardware, Flashback or emulation, using any controller or keyboard, following rules and game settings as delineated in the Squad Challenge. The use of multiple controllers is allowed in this challenge. Enhancements, rewinds and hacked versions of this game are not allowed.
     
    DIFFICULTY LEVEL: Speed 3, Single Life Run. Speed 3 is the next-to-fastest play speed for this game. Please take note that Speed 3 on the Overlay is actually BUTTON 1 on the Controller itself. It's weird and confusing that they would do this, especially given how often players lost their overlays.
     
    SINGLE LIFE RUN: You are only allowed ONE LIFE to achieve your high score in this Squad Challenge.
     
    FAIR PLAY: Players should play fairly, be honest, and have fun! Falsified scores will result in your immediate removal from the site. It goes without saying that no use of cheats, hacks, cartridge frying, enhancements, rewinds, Photoshop, subterfuge, or any other unfair advantage is allowed. Everybody hates a cheater.
     
    MORE: To review detailed rules on how to play, please visit the High Score Squad page here: https://forums.atari.io/topic/1219-high-score-squad-how-to-play/
     
    MESSAGE: Welcome to our 58th Squad Challenge! This will be our third Squad Challenge for the Mattel Intellivision and for one of the system's pillar titles: Night Stalker! This is a SINGLE LIFE RUN Challenge, and you are only allowed ONE LIFE to achieve your high score in this Squad Challenge. ROM, Instruction Manual and Controller Overlay are provided below. Good luck to everyone playing!
     
    NOTE: Our next High Score Squad Challenge will be a special one-day event challenge coming up this Saturday, May the Fourth. Be there!
     
     

     
     
     
     
    Night Stalker.pdf Overlay - Night Stalker.pdf Night Stalker.bin
  3. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    Congratulations Kid A!
     
    Congratulations @Kid A on an primo score! R-TYPE is only our 2nd Squad Challenge held exclusively for a TurboGrafx-16 game. Our first was Bomberman three years ago, and of course we recently held a Devil's Crush Double Feature for both TG16 and Genesis. Turnout and enthusiasm for R-TYPE was great! I've always been a huge fan of the TurboGrafx-16 and on a personal level I've really enjoyed seeing Members here getting more into the TG16 systems, they were always so underrated in my opinion. Thanks for turning out guys, I hope you enjoyed this one! And to welcome new member @Control Issues to the forums! 
    Kid A achieved the High Score for this Squad Challenge with a score of 212,100. Control Issues took 2nd Place with 186,100 points, and @RadioPoultry was right on his tail with 182,900 points to take 3rd. I played R-TYPE almost every chance I had and was barely able to scrape by with 151,200 points. What a challenging game this is! @RickR brought his A-Game with lots of effort and nerd cred, racking up a whopping 101,400 points, @atarilbc checked in with 76,300 points, and @Atari Creep got things started for us with his YouTube video achieving 39,000 points his first time out. Great showing guys! Congrats to everyone who played! I'd like to welcome Control Issues to the Atari I/O Forums and encourage Kid A to post his new high score on the Scoreboard, and maybe this Challenge can continue on! 
    Our next High Score Squad Challenge will be for the Intellivision and will begin later this afternoon! We will also be having a special one-day event challenge coming up on May the Fourth as well.  See you there!
     
     
    R-TYPE FINAL STANDINGS
     
    1   KID A                                   212,100
    2   CONTROL ISSUES            186,100
    3   RADIO POULTRY               182,900
    4   JUSTIN                               151,200
    5   RICKR                                  101,400
    6   ATARILBC                             76,300
    7   ATARI CREEP                       39,000
     
     

  4. Like
    RickR reacted to Control Issues in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    Well, I think this is as good as I'm going to get for the time limit.  I'm probably going to keep working on it, though.  186100
     

  5. Like
    RickR reacted to RadioPoultry in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    182,900. I know I'm getting better, but I still haven't been able this score of mine from a few days ago.

    I was watching a video of the arcade game,  and I actually prefer the rendition of the music in the TG16 version! Only small weakness as a port is a bit of flicker in a few places.  Also, a high score table would have been nice. And maybe a difficulty select? Because it occurs to me--WHY IS THIS GAME SO HARD, MAKE IT STOP 😭
     
     
    Fun though.  
  6. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Atari Creep in Restoring a Big Trak   
    That's right Justin.  I've been thinking about getting one of those.  They use fewer batteries, which is an improvement in itself. 
  7. Like
    RickR got a reaction from RadioPoultry in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    I made it past boss #2!  101,400.
     

  8. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    I made it past boss #2!  101,400.
     

  9. Like
    RickR reacted to Control Issues in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    Okay, I think I've got the third boss figured out now... 
    Get around underneath... grabbing the red powerup...  get around to the front of the boss and get your pod in back (shooting backwards)...  use it to take out all the random cannons on top.   The eye part of the ship moves in and out.  It moves out and shoots bubbles, then moves in and exposes the weak point.  Stay above it and a little forward to shoot the bubbles as they come out behind you.  When it stops and goes back in, move into the small area and shoot... then fly out and shoot the bubbles again...   There's one time when it goes really close to the left side of the screen and I don't trust myself to be able to fit in the gap, so I wait until the next go around.  Seems to take shooting the eye like that, with turbos on, twice to kill it.
    Was just playing for about an hour and this seems to be working for me at least.  It worked the last couple of times at least.
  10. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Control Issues in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    I made it past boss #2!  101,400.
     

  11. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    @RickR Here's my strategy for getting past that big ship in Stage 3. Something strange happened last night though, and I wanted to share this with you. When first approaching the ship from the previous Stage, I'm usually armed up with all of my power ups. That means the big pod at the front of my ship with the Blue Lasers. Approaching the ship from the back I fire at the center of the ship where the rocket is about to detach, as well as the top half of the ship to take out some of the guns towards the top. Once the rocket detaches from the back of the ship, I focus entirely on taking out the guns in the middle where the rocket housing is, and then take out the guns on the top of the back end of the ship. There's just enough time to do that before the ship starts moving up again. MEANWHILE I'm AVOIDING the two Yellow power ups, because I prefer the Blue Lasers for this stage. 
    Then I CAREFULLY approach underneath and attempt to take out the guns down below. I shoot out the big pod from the nose of my ship, let it go ahead of me shooting at the guns from the underside of the ship, while I keep my ship back and behind the ship where most of the gunfire can't get to me. Then once I've made a good sweep of the guns I reattach the big pod to the nose of my ship and move forward underneath shooting Blue Lasers which ricochet and bounce around hitting multiple targets. Everything I do down here I tend to do in a rotating sequence - one wave of shooting out the big pod from the nose of my ship to go ahead of me and do the dirty work, followed by a second wave of reattaching the big pod to the nose of my ship and using my Blue Lazers to take out everything with a little more precision. I go back and forth and this usually works.
    When you get toward the front of the ship I use the same strategy but change my angle of attack. First I shoot out the big pod from the nose of my ship to take out the big cluster of guns at the front of the big ship. I do this two or three times until I've cleared most of the guns out. Then I reattach the big pod to THE BACK of my ship. I attach the big pod to the back of my ship so that it shoots BACKWARDS at the ship behind me. Your ship will be flying toward the right edge of the TV screen, and you have to be very careful not to run into anything that you can't see off the edge of the screen, but mostly you are using the big pod to fire at the ship behind you. Take out the guns, move your ship to the top right of the screen and slowly start moving your ship BACKWARDS back over the top of the big ship. There is a large pink phallic-looking drill in the middle-front of the ship that moves in and out. You have to shoot this a few times to destroy it. The safest and most effective way of doing this is to shoot out the big pod from the back of your ship to move back and fly over the drill and shoot down at it. You will have to do this a few times as your pod moves back towards you and reattaches to your ship. It's also possible to shoot the drill with your Blue Lasers if you can get the angle right.
    Here's the weird thing that happened last night that I've never seen before: I was at the top using my Blue Lasers to shoot at the phallus, but kept missing. I did NOT destroy the phallus, new guns regenerated at the front of the enemy ship, and this went on for a few minutes. I couldn't get the right angle to get my Blue Lazers down there to take out the phallic-looking drill. Apparently though I survived long enough for the game to end on its own. The stage just ended. It went dark, gave me my score, and moved into Stage 4. It was almost too easy. So you don't actually have to destroy the ship, you just have to survive long enough that the game gets bored with you and moves on. 
  12. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Justin in Sega Master System Request   
    The Game Gear is essentially the same hardware as the SMS. 
     
  13. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in Have You Ever Found A Red Quarter? What Did You Think It Was?   
    💰 Have you ever found a Red Quarter? What did you think it was? Red quarters are known as “shills”, “house coins” or “freebies.”
    If you’ve ever found an old quarter that was painted red, (usually dated before the ‘90s) those were used in Arcades to count free plays.
    Whenever the machine ate your quarter without giving you your game, you’d tell the attendant who would give you a free game to make up for it. Sometimes they had the key to open the coin mech and hit the switch, but in many cases Arcade owners didn’t trust their teenaged employees to have coin mech keys where they could reach in there and grab a fist full of quarters.
    Instead, Arcades would have extra quarters called “shills” or “house coins” used for this purpose. Sometimes these could also be found in laundromats and diners with jukeboxes. House coins were painted red so that at the end of each week, when all the quarters were counted from the coin box, they would subtract the red quarters from their earnings and return them to the attendants to be used again. Over time most of these quarters have made their way back into circulation.
    The next time you come across a red quarter dated before the early 1990s set it aside! You never know if that quarter worked long hours at an old Tilt or Aladdin’s Castle somewhere.
  14. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Control Issues in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    This is just like those after-school meet ups with friends in the 1980's...take turns playing and learn from each other what to do and what to try.  So much fun!  I love this game. 
     
     
  15. Thanks
    RickR got a reaction from Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    This is just like those after-school meet ups with friends in the 1980's...take turns playing and learn from each other what to do and what to try.  So much fun!  I love this game. 
     
     
  16. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    Oh wow, that snake in level 2 is part of the boss!  I watched your video Justin and saw how to "park it in the safe spot".  I'll try that next.  Thanks!
     
     
  17. Thanks
    RickR got a reaction from Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    I did it!  Thanks to your tips, @Justin and @Control Issues, I made it past that first boss.  New high score = 86,700.  Thanks very much!

    Now I need tips on how to get past that stupid snake on level 2.  Maybe I should watch Justin's video above to see.
     
     
     

  18. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    Here is my Instagram Livestream from Friday night. I wasn't able to top my score but was able to play through the game to Stage 3 a few times. Good luck everybody!
     
     
  19. Like
    RickR reacted to Willie! in The Toy Tomb Podcast Videos   
    I dig these cool 3D games by Tomy from the 80's!
  20. Like
    RickR reacted to Justin in What Movies Do You Associate Most With Atari?   
    Another movie I always associate with Atari, although indirectly, is Poltergeist. There's an Atari 2600 on top of the TV set that Carol Anne is drawn to. Also Poltergeist feels so connected to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, it's almost as if they exist in the same universe. For me, anything to do with E.T. has always been a reminder of Atari. They were both filmed around the same time, in the same area featuring similar houses, and both were Spielberg films. Poltergeist was directed by Tobe Hooper, but it's long been thought that Spielberg "directed Poltergeist through Tobe Hooper".
    A clause in his contract with Universal Studios prevented Spielberg from directing any other film while preparing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Time and Newsweek tagged the summer of 1982 "The Spielberg Summer" because E.T. and Poltergeist were released a week apart in June. Suggestions that Spielberg had greater directorial influence than the credits suggest were aided by his comments: "Tobe isn't ... a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming, I'd jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that became the process of collaboration." The Directors Guild of America "opened an investigation into the question of whether or not Hooper's official credit was being denigrated by statements Spielberg has made, apparently claiming authorship." Co-producer Frank Marshall told the Los Angeles Times that "the creative force of the movie was Steven. Tobe was the director and was on the set every day. But Steven did the design for every storyboard and he was on the set every day except for three days when he was in Hawaii with Lucas."
     


  21. Thanks
    RickR reacted to Control Issues in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    Also, although I'm no expert at this game... here's some tips that helped me out...
    1.  Turbo fire.  It's on the real TurboGrafx controller, so I use it.  I know you can do charged shots and all, but that just seems distracting to me and if you have the turbo on level 3 for button II, you can mow through most things pretty easily without bothering with charging shots.  If you're playing with an emulator, you may be at a disadvantage.  The emulators I've used at least, while they have an option for turbo fire, it's at a different frequency or does bursts then pauses, then bursts.  The third level turbo fire on the real hardware pretty much gives you a steady stream of bullets out the front of your ship.
    2.  Use your pod.  Pressing button I shoots your pod out from your ship.  Pressing button I again, brings it back to you.  While away from your ship, the pod continues to fire, and if you've got it leveled up to the second level, it fires in four directions.  This can help destroy enemies that are hiding behind walls or around corners.  Also, the pod itself is indestructible, so the pod itself can be a weapon and shield.  Use this...  get handy with switching it from the front of your ship to the back... use it to kill enemies coming from behind or to block bullets.  Shoot it into the weak point of bosses and keep firing and let it do the dirty work.  On the first boss, there's a weak point in its middle... shoot that bod in there, then move your ship up to the top of the screen (kind of in front of its eye) and keep firing.  The boss can't hit you there, and he'll (he?) will go down quickly.  On the second boss, the weak point is an eye that opens up on top.  Put your pod on the front of your ship and nestle down right next to it so that every time it opens, the pod is hitting it, and just sit there firing.  Gotta play with the hitboxes some to get in there as it doesn't look like it's possible, but it works... does take a bit of finesse, though.
    3.  Memorization.  R-Type is definitely a memorization type of shooter.  Knowing where the enemies are going to come from and getting ready to shoot them before they come on screen is super helpful.  This isn't a game where you should react to things, this is a game where you plan.  Trial and error in unfamiliar stages will help you learn patterns and which weapon you want to have.  For example, I used the blue ricochet type lasers (blue powerup) exclusively for the first three levels, but it seems that the red and blue forward lasers (red powerup) are better for level 4.  So near the end of level 3, I picked up the red powerup... so I'd have it at the beginning of 4.  But I didn't know to do that until I got to level 4 a few times and figured out the blue weapons wasn't that helpful.
     
  22. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Atari Creep in What Movies Do You Associate Most With Atari?   
    Bladerunner  
  23. Like
    RickR reacted to StormSurge in Who Wants StormSurge's Junk?   
    It's looking like there may be a console or three included in this purge. 😔😬
  24. Like
    RickR got a reaction from Justin in Squad Challenge - R-TYPE (TurboGrafx-16)   
    I need help getting by the first boss.  Is it a matter of shooting him right in the center?  Does it require super-charged shots? 
     
  25. Like
    RickR got a reaction from MaximumRD in What Movies Do You Associate Most With Atari?   
    Bladerunner  
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