Tournament: Vector War VIII (10th Nov - 17th Nov 2018)

[jbrodack]

Great competition everyone

[Malban]

Thank you Helmut for the Tournament and the organization!

[VectorX]

Bah ha ha, a little too late for bumping up my Asteroid Cowboy score by a few minutes! Oh well, just didn't have enough time today to improve a few scores. Too bad with Scramble last night too, as, like with Chainsaw, I had several "stupid mistakes", as twice I crashed with over 100,000, yet it wasn't during the fifth round, all I was doing was firing at targets during the first round and accidentally pulled down on the joystick, ramming my ship into the ground. Dunno what happened there, but it was fairly late and I was tired. I could've made in the 120,000 range but again, oh well.

[darrin9999]

Happy I got to play again in this years war! even being at the bottom again! Thanks again..

[fruktodlaren]

Nov 17, 2018 23:48:07 GMT -5 darrin9999 said:

Happy I got to play again in this years war! even being at the bottom again! Thanks again..

You weren't at the very bottom thanks to my son who lifts you above the bottom line.

[nexus6]

Concratulations to the winners and thanks to Helmut for the organisation of the tournament!

[fruktodlaren]

Thank you Helmut for organizing the Tournament!
Very fierce competition this year. Me and the kids had no real chance but it was a learning experience to go up against some of the best vectrex players in the world and still hold my ground a bit. Len and Moyu were very excited when they both managed to qualify for the competition and say that they both want to compete in next years war. Len had a mindblowingly good score on Pole Position considering that she played it for the first time. There definitely is some potential there for even greater scores. See you next year.
/Tony

[Chainsaw]

First also thanks to Helmut for organizing everything.

Thanks to all for participating and playing and submitting scores. There are not 2 winners this year -> I think everybody who joined Vector War is immediately a winner: Because you are playing games on a amazing over 36 years old game system :-)

Also it was fun to compete against very strong players again, this year especially Malban, but I always had respect and was "worried" about other great scores of other players. And it was great to see a lot of the old gamers that participated last year.

And thanks to Vector War, I discovered the games Release!, Floor is Lava and Asteroid Cowboy - all these are great homebrew games! (The other homebrew games are also great certainly.)

Thanks to all, wish you a nice Sunday...

[VectorX]

Nov 18, 2018 5:39:37 GMT -5 fruktodlaren said:

Len had a mindblowingly good score on Pole Position considering that she played it for the first time.

Just remember that once she gets old enough to drive (hint, hint)

[Rapetou33]

Thank you Helmut! This competition keeps our beloved console alive New forum members and VW participants, really good homebrews ... What a pleasure at seeing this enthousiasm!
Thanks to all, to the participants,to the donators ... I am a bit far from the Vectrex scene currently as my life changed months ago, but I was really happy to fire up my vectrex and play for a while..(but remain a vectrex "archivist" and a collector despite)

[VectorX]

^Yeah I haven't played that much in the last year either, unfortunately. Will never sell my collection or anything though.

[fruktodlaren]

I am in stand-by for sending my donated prize to a winner, should anyone pick it from the prize table. Which reminds me that I haven't polished the push buttons yet. I will fix that today after work.

[jbrodack]

I thought I'd give an overview of my thoughts on the tournament and the games played.

First off huge thanks to Helmut for organizing the tournament, everyone that donated prizes, and everyone that participated. I really needed something fun to look forward to at that time and the tournament was great. Playing at night after work and checking forum activity during the day was exciting.

I only have 1 minor complaint about the tournament. I got confused on when the last phase of the tournament started. I figured that it would start with the last code that was given at 2am est. It seems the last phase started at 12am instead. Would reduce confusion to have the code change and the last phase where you can only submit 2 games happen at the same time.


My thoughts on the games:

Bedlam: great game I'd love to see a sequel to. I was doing well until the part where everything spins with your movement. I could see myself improving at this once I figure out that part.

Blitz: this never looked good with the x and o graphics but was surprisingly fun to see how much you can score in 5 minutes. It's stripped down American football but not bad for what it is. The active cpu player moves really fast so its hard to break away and get a lot of yards in one play. I'm surprised at some of the top scores.

Pole Position: fun game but can almost feel random getting a high score once you get good.

Scramble : fun when everything is going well but so frustrating to suddenly crash when you thought you were safe. At least with some advice I was able to get past the labyrinth section and loop around a few times. I could definitely do better in this but just need a run where I don't crash and then get frustrated and keep crashing.

Spike : enjoyable at the start but seems to get frustrating quickly. Also annoying that the voice samples are so loud compared to the rest of the game.

Star Hawk: sometimes I hit almost everything I aim for sometimes all my shots miss. Fun when you get into a good rhythm of time extensions and bonuses.

Web Wars: I hate this game. Whenever I start do do good I start crashing into every creature I try to capture. The shooting gameplay and graphics are some of the best but I get so frustrated with capturing.

Asteroid Cowboy: while some crashes into the asteroids are frustrating this is a pretty ingenious homebrew that is well executed. The risk and reward of going for multiple asteroids make this very repayable and exciting.

Floor is Lava: another great student game. Musix and gameplay are great. I only started memorizing which platforms loop around and which go to the the edge later on in the tournament. Definitely going to go back to this one. I also appreciate the tournament version.

Release!: seemed random at the start but started learning the patterns. Intense and easy to get into game with only one button needed. Got my best score by concentrating hard and sitting as close as possible to my Vectrex. Easy to look to the edge and miss attacks right in the middle.

Vector Patrol: such a great game but that high score was unbeatable so I concentrated on other games I hadn't played as much. Definitely going to try to improve my score in the future.

[Chainsaw]

jbrodack cool thoughts about the games... I also want say some things to some games:

- Bedlam: Yes I love it... And I would like to have a debugged version. Because if I have 6 lifes or more, then the game has slow downs, some shots going randomly through enemies - until I lose lifes and have only 5 lifes or less. Does this also occur on US machines, or only on European ones? And level 6 is very hard to beat, one time I got to level 7 that is unplayable hard... I'm wondering if ever somebody got to level 8 ?

Scramble: If you learn to fly through the labyrinth, you can go up to level 5... There you will die because the fuel is running out too fast... But I love Scramble, and I already loved it in the arcade in the 80ies...

Spike: I like it, but playing it for Vector War was no big fun anymore. After 70000 points the platforms are so fast, that I only tried to kill the enemies to switch the direction of the platforms from left to right and back from right to left, to not fall down... It is a lot of luck then also... Don't know if other players have other tacticts there? And it needs time to reach these scores...

Star Hawk: This is normal: In the manual is something written, that hitting enemies is easier at the beginning and will be harder with higher scores. There are some tactics to beat the game, we also had "marathoning" in a old Vector War.

Web Wars: One of my favourite games... Also some tricks are necessary: The first creatures are easy to capture, the later ones need some tricks. I love the speed of the game and all these nice creatures. And: There are more than 20 ! The 21 is invisible, but you can capture it if you always press button 3 until you capture it. The 22 until 24 are strange lines and dots in the trophy room, I will try to capture more of them... I think the coders made only 20 creatures, maybe the 21 is invisible on purpose (that you die when crashing with the invisible creature) and then the game goes into unexpected memory areas and get some "scrap data" for the creatures...

Yeah I also liked the music in Floor is Lava, also the game is nice.

Release: Also a great game and very good playable. Motivates me still after Vector War to make higher scores.

Vector Patrol: A highlight, as already Vector Pilot was... Very great Vectrex port of the Moon Patrol...

And I could continue writing, also about all other Vectrex games... Nearly all of them are just great ! Vectrex forever!!!

[VectorX]

Nov 19, 2018 15:28:20 GMT -5 Chainsaw said:

- Bedlam: Yes I love it... And I would like to have a debugged version.

Or perhaps a sequel would be good, with different-shaped screens this time around, one of which puts you on the outside lanes like with Tempest

Nov 19, 2018 15:28:20 GMT -5 Chainsaw said:

And I would like to have a debugged version. Because if I have 6 lifes or more, then the game has slow downs, some shots going randomly through enemies - until I lose lifes and have only 5 lifes or less. Does this also occur on US machines, or only on European ones?

No, it's on the U. S. version too. I think it's when there's too many enemies onscreen where it does that, plus the bug needs to be fixed when you hit Zap but one or more of the enemies are still there; urk!