Bosconian

[hansolo77]

4th Quarter 2018 GOTQ Winner: Cynicaster - 351,570 (link)

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Bosconian Leaderboard

 

POSITION	USER NAME	TOTAL SCORE
1	Cynicaster	351,570
2	Mame Offender	249,800
3	Floyd Turbo	106,820
4	millerbrad	81,230
5	rtkiii	61,450
6	hansolo77	55,640

Last Updated by hansolo77: 12-31-2018

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Please use these settings when submitting a hi-score for Bosconian:

ROMSet: Bosco
Unknown: Off [All]
Freeze: Off
Allow Continue: No
Rank: A [Medium Difficulty]
Starting ships: 3
Extra ships: 20K Then 70K

Special Rules: Continues are NOT allowed!

The green coloured default values match the Twin Galaxies settings.
The red coloured values need to be changed!

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# you can change your Mame dip switch settings by following this guide:
# you can make a printscreen of your hi-score screen by following this guide:
# general rules for submitting your hi-score:

 

[hansolo77]

Bosconian (ボスコニアン Bosukonian) is a multi-directional scrolling shooter arcade game which was developed and released by Namco in Japan in 1981. In North America, it was manufactured and distributed by Midway Games. Bosconian was ported to the Sharp X68000, Sharp X1, and MSX computers.

Bosconian allows the player's ship to freely roam across open space which scrolls in all directions. The game also has a radar, which tracks the position of the player's ship, enemy formation attacks, and space stations.

The object of Bosconian is to score as many points as possible by destroying enemy missiles and bases. The player controls a small fighter ship that can move in eight directions, and can fire both forward and backward. Each round consists of a number of green enemy bases that must all be destroyed to advance to the next round (a semi-transparent automap helps identify their location). Each station consists of six cannons arranged in a hexagon, surrounding a central core. The player must either destroy all six cannons (200 points each) or shoot the core to destroy a station (1,500 points), and in later rounds the core is capable of defending itself (opening and closing while launching missiles).

Additionally, the player must avoid or destroy stationary asteroids (10 points), mines (20 points), and a variety of enemy missiles and ships which attempt to collide with his or her ship. Enemy bases will also occasionally launch a squadron of ships in formation attacks — destroying the leader causes all remaining enemies to disperse, but destroying all enemies in a formation scores extra bonus points. A spy ship (worth a random bonus value) will also appear occasionally, which must be destroyed or the round will go to "condition red" regardless of how long the player has taken.

Throughout the game, a digitized voice alerts the player to various events:

• "Blast off!" (start of a round)
• "Alert! Alert!" (enemies approaching)
• "Battle stations!" (formation attack)
• "Spy ship sighted!" (Spy ship advancing)
• "Condition red!" (enemy attacks become more aggressive; occurs when the player takes too long to clear a round, or misses the spy ship)

Bosconian does not have a definite ending, and will continue until the player has lost all of his or her lives. Similar to Galaga, Bosconian rolls over from Round 255 to Round 0, causing the game to behave abnormally during this round. If the player can successfully complete Round 0, the game continues to Round 1, as though the player had started over. Upon scoring 2,000,000 points, no more lives thereafter.

--- Quoted from Wikipedia

[hansolo77]

Welcome fellow High Score Achievers!  This "quarter's" game (heh, quarters lol) is Bosconian.  It was among a 3-way tie in the previous voting polls, so I used the random number generator to pick the winning game.  I went specifically with the "MARATHON RULES" from Twin Galaxies, as opposed to the 1-life or 5-life rules.  We don't have any way to monitor lives lost without actually watching you play, so a Marathon version, where you can keep playing until Game Over seems the most obvious option.  Just make sure you guys change the DIP setting to disable continuing!

I'm not familiar with this exact game, although I am familiar with a clone of it.  It will be a fun competition I'm sure.  Seeing as how the last game, although voted upon, wasn't very popular, I hope this one will work some magic back into competition!  Happy gaming!

[rtkiii]

i suck at this game but plan to give it a good try 

[patrickfx]

If time, for sure I will try too.  

[rtkiii]

This is not the game I thought it was.  It is better than I thought 

 

Very beatable score.

61,450

 

[hansolo77]

Not a bad run!  I've not had a chance to play yet, but plan to do so on my next day off!

Updated OP, DB, RSS

[Mame Offender]

I will try to get my  "Bosconian" on later today...

[Cynicaster]

224,640

[hansolo77]

WOW!

Care to share any tips on achieving that score?!

Updated OP, DB, RSS

[rtkiii]

Looks like a pint is required.

[Floyd Turbo]

Got to play for a few minutes and get on the board. Good game.  Looks like Cyn has again raised the bar pretty high. Great score to shoot for. 

[Cynicaster]

On ‎10‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 10:01 PM, hansolo77 said:

WOW!

Care to share any tips on achieving that score?!

Updated OP, DB, RSS

 

Bosconian 101:

 

+ The green space stations can be destroyed either by shooting all 6 pods, or by landing a single hit to the center opening.  The pods are 200 points each, and destroying a station is I believe 1500 points.  So if you shoot all 6 pods you get (6 x 200) + 1500 = 2700 points, vs. only 1500 if you go for the quick kill.  Obviously, going pod-by-pod is more dangerous, so there is a risk/reward tradeoff.

 

+ A good beginner strategy is to go pod-by-pod for the first 2-3 stages when the game is still at "starter" difficulty so you can rack up some points, then focus on simply surviving in the levels after that.  In later levels you have to work quickly to clear the level to avoid the dreaded "condition red"

 

+ shooting the spikey mines and space rocks gets you so few points it is not worth your time for that purpose.  However, when you're coming up on a green station, sometimes it's worthwhile to clear some of that stuff out to give yourself some space to maneuver

 

+ It's easy to fall into the habit of focusing on a single green station, destroying it, and then moving on to the next one.  That's fine when the stations are spaced far apart.  When they're bunched together, a better strategy is to shoot at all stations on the screen to take out all pods that are in shooting range.  Remember, the stations use the pods to fire at you, so clearing out as many as possible means fewer bullets to dodge.

 

+ You might have the tendency to always shoot up/down/left/right, which is fine for many situations, but you really need to learn to take advantage of shooting on the diagonal to take out pods and enemy ships from a wider range of angles.  This seems like it should be obvious but there really is a tendency to stick to the cardinal directions, especially with some joystick styles that favor those directions. 

 

+ Always look at your radar to plan your route so that you waste as little time as possible just flying around (remember, "condition red" happens to slow pokes).  Sometimes, the quickest route to the next station is to "wrap around" the screen Asteroids style (i.e., fly off the left side of the radar to appear on the right, fly off the top to appear at the bottom, etc.)  This can save you a lot of time.

 

+ When you hear the game say "battle stations" and the squads of ships attack you in a formation, there is always one ship that is a different color than the rest.  If you take out that ship, the formation will break up and retreat, which can save your life.  You do get a nice bonus for killing all of the ships in a formation, though, so it's something to try if you have a clear shot. 

 

+ The little yellow ship that flies by and says "fighter sighted" is spying on you.  If you let him get away (i.e., fly off-screen) then your threat level changes.  For example, if you're at condition yellow and a spy spots you and lives to tell about it, you'll find yourself in condition red.  So, it's often worth it to try to chase those guys down and take them out, even though they're only worth a measly 200 points.

 

+ yes, a pint is required

 

 

[rtkiii]

19 hours ago, Floyd Turbo said:

Got to play for a few minutes and get on the board. Good game.  Looks like Cyn has again raised the bar pretty high. Great score to shoot for. 

well, we can battler for 2nd! 

[Floyd Turbo]

36 minutes ago, rtkiii said:

well, we can battler for 2nd! 

Let the games begin.  

[hansolo77]

Nice score Floyd.  Thanks for the submission!

And thanks Cynicaster for providing us with some valuable intel.  I will say in my practice runs, I did spend most of my time going after the stations and ignoring the fighters.  It makes sense now, to try to get those fighters first for more points.

Updated OP, DB, RSS

[hansolo77]

This is my result after playing for almost an hour trying to get on the in-game table.    I suck.  But I feel like this game is like most of the others in our competition, that you'll get better over time with practice.

Initials: HAN

Score: 55640

Round: 5

 

Updated OP, DB, RSS

[rtkiii]

I have 24 hours of gaming up this weekend...I plan to play this for a little bit to at least beat Turbo 

[Mame Offender]

Ok.  Time for MO to climb his way into the Bosco Boards...

[millerbrad]

Is this the game that finally adds to my lonely Circus Charlie win?  Probably not. 

But since I finally fired up my cab again, I'm down for an attempt at last place.  Let's do this!

[millerbrad]

There we go... 81,230 Bosco Sticks scored. DIPs all set as required.

[hansolo77]

Works for me.  Way to go.  Wow!

Updated OP, DB, RSS

[Mame Offender]

Ok.  Time for MO to climb his way into this one

[Mame Offender]

is this the right setting, Han?

[Mame Offender]

MO's first effort.

75,560

I forgot how fun this one was....