Cynicaster

Yeah, there is no Pepper I. I heard that the “2” is meant to represent the dual “angel” and “devil” personality of your character. This is a great, addictive game; I hope everyone gives it a chance. Unfortunately, due to the quick movements needed, it is very difficult to play with a d-pad so arcade controls are pretty much mandatory. I’d use a keyboard over a d-pad.

Let's shake this sh*t up a bit: 213,440

Xevious is a stone cold classic IMO, but Luigimaker is right, it's extremely similar to Dragon Spirit. The most glaring similarity is the dual weapon thing, with one button for air targets and another button for ground targets. The fact that both games are from Namco suggests that the similarities are not mere coincidence. I've played this game here and there over the years but I've always had the difficulty on "normal." It sure was a rude awakening changing the difficulty to "hard." As MO said, we used to play a lot of Xevious on Atari 7800 back in the late 80s; we got that console for Christmas in '87 and Xevious was one of our first games. That version is very solid, and definitely makes my list of "top 5 console ports of arcade games." I still play it in emulation every now and then. 153,670

I know I can do better than this but I just want to get on the board here... 52,750

87,230 I hope this photo is OK... I accidentally duffed the initials entry and put CZN instead of CYN, so I held up a hand-written card.

123,485

Funny thing is, I just said "ice cream shop" to sound more generic. We actually always called the place "ice cream parlor" when talking about it.

Cyn's Easter weekend score blitz - 5 of 5 109,330 (see 2nd place single-credit score). This game used to be at an ice cream shop about a 15 minute walk from my childhood home. Never really got into it, but I must say it's pretty fun.

Cyn's Easter weekend score blitz - 4 of 5 101,800 (see score #4. Ignore the higher scores -- they are saved scores that pre-date this competition). I forgot how fun this game is. IMO, this is a very underrated game from Namco.

Cyn's Easter weekend score blitz - 3 of 5 Strength - 97.0 This game lives on for me, mostly for the nostalgia. I know I can do better than this but the score blitz must continue on other fronts.

Cyn's Easter weekend score blitz - 2 of 5 277,930 I must say, this is a really fun game. It's kind of like a creative take on the classic Asteroids concept of "shoot big things and break them into multiple smaller things." I'll have to play this one some more.

Cyn's Easter weekend score blitz - 1 of 5 8,030 (Elf) I remember seeing this game at the local rollerskating rink in the 80s; I didn't understand the appeal at the time, and still don't. It's OK I guess... but it just seems ridiculously unfair.

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Yeah, this game is a bit of an adjustment from the typical vertical shooter in that the size of your character makes it feel like you have nowhere to go. But once you get used to it, it's not so bad--you just have to make small, precise movements. The ground targets are a pain in the arse because they fill the screen with slow-moving bullets that you have to dodge. So, I think it's a good strategy to take those out ASAP. It helps to learn the layout of the levels so you know where the targets will appear, which enables you fly to the top of the screen and take them out early. Another thing is it takes some practice to efficiently switch between shooting air targets and ground targets. I think there is probably a tendency to continuously mash both buttons simultaneously because it feels easier, but this is a bad strategy because the game doesn't let you fire both weapons at the same time--I learned this the hard way.

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82,560

As a heads up, the only way I could access all of the DIP settings was to enter the service menu (press F2 as the game loads). The usual method of TAB -> Dip Switch Settings did not show all of the items. Maybe that is due to my older MAME version (v122)? Anyway, per tradition, I'll get the ball rolling. 49,920

40,400 The number of enemies simultaneously on the screen gets pretty ridiculous in this game, but it's nice that it doesn't slow down like Double Dragon when that happens. I find that for most of the game the only way I can survive is to spam the jump kick move because it knocks guys down with a single hit. If I do anything else that takes more than single hit, somebody will attack me from behind. This reminds me of how you pretty much get forced to use nothing but the elbow smash in Double Dragon.

Cool. Does that mean you have 2 player, 4 buttons per side control panel (Neo Geo)? As for cutting card stock for a monitor bezel, I tried that on a project and couldn't get it to look right. I ended up folding black electrical tape around all the edges to hide the white "inside" of the paper, but that is a hack solution. I think the trick is to probably use a really sharp blade to get the cleanest cut possible. For my main cabinet, the bezel was created by masking off the monitor area and spray painting the back side of the plexi black. Works very well, but makes it difficult to do anything other than solid color.

Hey rtkiii a bit off-topic, but I'm just curious about your MAME cabinet there... any links to info on the build I can look at? Looks pretty cool from that closeup.

You're probably right about this. Unfortunately, I think lots of players just aren't interested in treading off the path of nostalgia, so they just want to play the same 10-15 "recognizable" games over and over. I don't understand that, myself. There are several thousand games playable in MAME, and there are lots of hidden gems to discover. It's true that there are also lots of duds, but competitions like this provide a platform for people to suggest the "hidden gems" they've discovered, and a platform for players to have "vetted" game suggestions served up to them on a silver platter.

I wasn’t trying to be a wet blanket. But please consider where I’m coming from here. We get like 8-10 people voting a game like this in, and only a few bother to show up over 2 whole months to post a single score. One of which is always me, whether I like the game or not, because I want to support the comp. If everyone else did the same for games they’re not crazy about, imagine the activity we’d have. I’m not saying this because I think I’m owed anything... but I’d think it would put me in a position to speak freely about the game that gets voted in. Regardless, what I say is just one man’s opinion, and you’re of course free to take it or leave it.

Great... another 2 months of a beat-em-up game that hardly anybody will play because these games are dull button-mashers without the multi-player social aspect. Oh well, can't win 'em all... luck of the draw I guess. I did my part last night and played one credit to get the ball rolling... I don't anticipate very many more attempts. 11,900

I'm playing on a 2P cabinet as well. Since we're not using the 2-player ROM, I've come up with a pretty convenient workaround to use for this competition: - go to configure inputs (this game) and map all (4) of the turtles' up/down/left/right/jump/attack inputs to the same joystick and 2 buttons on the control panel - go to configure inputs (this game) and map (4) otherwise unused buttons on your panel to the (4) coin-in buttons for the various characters When you set it up like this, you "select" your character based on which coin-up button you use. Regardless of which one you select, the controls will work the same because they're all mapped to the same controls. I actually set up my player-2 joystick to handle the credit buttons. Up = Leo, Right = Mike, Down = Don, Left = Raph Of course, this set up won't work if you want to play 2P simultaneous, but you can't do that for the competition anyway, and if you wanted to do it you could just load up the other ROM.

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