Is Gypsy Juggler racist?

So I go nearly two months without posting, and now, I come back with the sole purpose of answering this question.

The answer is, I don't know.  I honestly never thought of juggling eggs as a thing to stereotype Gypsies with.  However, I have heard that it's spell "I got Gypped." not "Jipped" so that's a discriminatory remark that I last made when I was, like, 8.  So I'm sorry to any of my Gypsy friends if my words 23 years ago hurt you in any way.  Also, I've read that the Romani people don't like to be referred to as Gypsies...so I'm sorry to any of you who may be Romani and are offended too.  Damn...this is getting to be a controversial blog entry. 

So the game...it's an arcade machine from 1978, where you juggle 1, 2, 3, or 4 eggs.  The more eggs you juggle, the more points you get for every bounce.  I say bounce because the game pretty much plays like breakout, if the paddle physics were reversed.  If an egg hits the arm on the left side, the egg goes right and vice versa; if it hits your head, you get no points and it only goes up a little.  The head is a good tool to slow things down later on in a round when things are getting hectic.  That doesn't sound like a double entendre at all.  If you drop an egg, it hatches and a chick walks off the side of the screen (I guess they didn't want to risk getting an M rating for breaking the eggs for real). So after about 10 minutes and half a dozen quarters, it gets kind of redundant.  Not a bad 10 minutes, though!

How many quarters would it take me to get to 37 million in Q*Bert?

So, after 30 years, the Q*Bert World Record was broken last week.  George Leutz scored over 37,000,000 points during an 84 hour marathon session on one quarter.  This astounded me, mostly because I suck at Q*Bert.  So I wondered how many quarters it would take me to get to 37,000,000.  Now, I'm obviously not going to play that many games.  So I will see how many it will take me to add up to 37,000 and multiply that by 1,000.

So my first game went bad because I can never remember which way Q*Bert jumps with which direction.  I lost my last 2 live consecutively this way, and ended up with 625.

My second game went much better, but I'm still not very good at this.  I managed to get to the third round and score 4,900.  Total so far: 5,525.

Now I'm getting somewhere!  I managed to make the snake kill itself twice and made it to Round 4.  I even managed an extra life...which I then wasted due to hitting up instead of left.  8,250 for a grand total of 13,775.  Over a third of the way there on ONLY 3 quarters.

On my 4th quarter, I came up just short of my high score and got 7,750.  Four quarters in, and I'm over halfway there, 21,525!

On the 5th, I reverted to form and scored 550.  I really am really bad at this game.

Got my mojo back for my 6th game, 10,320, AND I reached level 2.  PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF:

Of course, level 2 SUCKS because you have to hit every platform twice.  I didn't even get out of the first round.  As a matter of fact, I only got about seven platforms before losing my last life.  32,395.

FINALLY, on my 7th quarter, I broke 37,000.  I lost my first 2 lives quickly, but recovered for a score of 5,150...giving me a grand total of 37,545.  So you give me 7,000 quarters and I will crush that dudes record.

Hook!

Last night, I randomly found out that they made a Hook beat 'em up game for the arcade.  I decided at that moment that I MUST PLAY THIS.  Sadly, it was late and I'm old so I went to bed.  However, I made up for it today by playing it!

It was...fine.  You get to play as five characters from the movie including Peter Pan, Rufio and the fat kid.  Each of them have different power, reach, and speed.   I played most of the game as the fat kid as he is awesome in this game with max power, though little reach and speed. 

So the first level has an SNES version of the music from the movie, so I was really getting into it.  It was basic beat 'em up fare with pirates, but Hook music!  However, by the second level, the music got generic, and the game started to slowly regress into repetitive.  About the only interesting moment from stages 2-5 was the boss battle of 3 where you fight 2 Hook?s.  There is a nice little attention to detail, in that SPOILER just like Hook in the movie, the Hooks were wearing wigs, and they had to take time to pick it up when it came off.

Sadly, I was unable to capture the wig coming off as it was very quick when it happened.

 The game picks up again in the sixth and final stage with some cool little details, such as Smee running off with treasures (if you are able to hit him, he drops his sack along with at least half a dozen treasures), and the final battle occurring right near the crocodile, just like the movie.  Sadly, no ticking sound.

The sixth stage of the game really saved it for me.  I will definitely pick it up to play again some time, I'm sure.  It's about 40 minutes, so it's not a large time commitment. 

Bad Dudes (Again?)

After some taunting from a dude named Clive, I decided I'd try Bad Dudes again...for Arcade!  The arcade version is called Bad Dudes vs. Dragonninja and this title screen looks REALLY good (for, you know, 1989):

The game plays pretty much the same, but it looks good for 1988, so I slogged through it.  The fact that 99% of the non-boss or mini-boss enemies die in one shot kind of bored me after awhile.  It was fine early on in the game, but when I'm late in the game and I'm still cutting through dudes like butter, then it just gets ridiculous.  

The highlights for me were a boss that looked like Robocop and Sloth's lovechild

Whenever he lifted his arms to swing, I was waiting for him to shout "HEY YOU GUUUUUYS!" but he pretty much just said "DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUR" every time.

The second highlight for me was the picture when the credits were rolling

Nuff said.

Rainy Saturday? Gonna play Pac-Man!

After 8 consecutive days of driving a train (making Train Simulator 2012 my 2nd most played game ever on Steam) I've decided to take a little break from that and do something different today.

Even though it's summer and I'd much rather be outside swimming, it is raining, so I guess I am stuck inside.  Alone.  With my computer.  Now, instead of wanking, I've decided to play one of my favorite games, Pac-Man...but not just any Pac-Man.  I want to see how many Pac-Mans (Pac-Men?) I can play, including clones, Hacks, sequels, offshoots etc.  I'm hoping to do at least eight or nine today, so my descriptions/reviews are going to be short.  So here we gooooooooooooo...

#1: Puckman 

The one that started it all.  That's right, Pac-Man was originally Puckman (or Puck Man) when it was released in Japan.   Rumor has it that they ended up changing the name because they were afraid that us silly Americans would scratch out part of the P to make it say Fuckman...pretty smart thinking, actually, if that is the case.  It pretty much plays exactly like the original Pac-man (that's next just to confirm this).  It feels somewhat slow to me, but this is probably because most of my Pac-man and Ms. Pac-man playing has been on Anniversary machines that have the speed hack on (I love that, I'll have to do that later.)  I was always decent at Pac-man, always able to at least get an extra life (10,000 points). 

 #2: Pac-Man - Arcade (1980)

As expected, the game plays identically to Puckman, as far as I can tell.  There may be little AI differences that I wouldn't be able to tell in just playing one game of each.  One thing that's becoming abundantly clear, though, is how superior Ms. Pac-Man is, if for no other reason, than the maze changes every few levels.


#3: Pac-Man 25th Anniversary Edition - Arcade (2005)

 While this wasn't the first way I'd ever played Pac-Man in the arcade this was definitely the most common.  With the "speedup hack" on, it makes the game much more playable in these modern times as it plays much quicker.  This maze is getting really boring now.  Which means it's time for a hack!

#4: Hangly-Man - Arcade Hack (1981)

Well, I wanted a different maze, and I sure got that, but there were two more unique features to Hangly-Man.  First, in the second level, the maze disappears when you get the first power pellet.  Secondly, the maze changes in the third level...to no maze at all...it's just an open room with pellets in a formation as if there were a maze.  That was the most unique level of all.

#5: Ms. Pac-Man - Arcade (1981)

This is by far my favorite Pac-Man game of them all.  Even more than the modern Pac-Man Worlds, etc.  First off, the maze changes, so I don't get bored of doing the same maze 10 times in a row.  Second of all...look how cute she is!  Lara Croft may have bigger boobs, Aeris may be more of a sweetheart, and Jill Valentine may be more of a bad ass, but Ms. Pac-Man is the video game woman for me.

Like Pac-Man, she plays much better with a speedup hack, but Ms. Pac-Man is a little faster even without it.  Another gameplay difference is that instead of staying stationary in the middle of the screen, the fruit bounces from one end of the maze to the other.  At times this makes it easier, others it makes it harder.  I've been well on my way to an excellent score, when suddenly I'm down a couple of lives for trying too hard for a couple pears (2,000 points) or bananas (5,000).

One of my favorite memories of playing Ms. Pac-Man was on a Walt Disney World trip in 2000.  The 20th anniversary cabinet had just came out (yes, speedup hack was on) and I was determined to reach 100,000 points.  One of my last games, I fell just short.  I was so close, that I considered putting a quarter in, since this machine allowed you to continue...I decided that it wouldn't be right.  As you can see from the screenshot above, I did eventually hit 100,000, and well beyond just about a year ago, but I'll always remember the dozens of games I played on that Disney World trip, fondly.

6: Pac-Man - Atari 2600 (1981)

This game is shit.  Next! 

There's actually four ghosts here, but the 3 in the chamber are overlapping each other.

#7: Ms. Pac-Man - Atari 2600 (1982)

While the arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man is my favorite, the Atari 2600 version is probably the one I played the most, especially as a kid.  It was far, far superior to whatever the hell the Pac-Man for 2600 was supposed to be.  For one, the fruit actually looked like fruit, and while not nearly as graphical or advanced as the arcade version, the game actually plays much closer to its original than Pac-Man.  My favorite feature of this version is the ability to play with only one ghost.  This allowed me time to come up with strategies for playing the game when I was growing up, and something I will still do once in awhile, just for fun.


#8: Pac-Man - Atari 5200 (1982)

This was a much better effort than the 2600.  It actually looks and plays like Pac-Man.  The home consoles still weren't up to par with the arcade machines of the day, but it was much much closer with this iteration.  The game is hard, as it seems the ghosts are just a tad faster in this version than in others.  Not so much that it's unplayable, but enough to make it a challenge to get through the first couple of levels.

#9: Pac-Man - Nintendo Entertainment System

Sticking with the 8-bit systems a little longer, I decided to try out Pac-Man on the NES.  I've actually never played either Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man on the NES.  The game looks better than the less powerful 8-bit systems could provide, but the arcade version is still superior, and Pac-Man looks huge, in comparison in this one.  This game is actually slower than either the 2600 Ms. Pac-Man or the non-hacked arcade versions.  It's actually a little depressing.

#10: Ms. Pac-Man - NES 

Other than using the Ms. Pac-Man theme and mazes, and being a little faster (but still slower than the arcade version) this game is identical to the Pac-Man NES game. 


Well, that will wrap up this play session.  It's getting close to dinner time, though there are still many, many iterations of Pac-Man to go.  I'm sure I will revisit this again, possibly on another rainy Saturday.