Klov High Score Contest #4: Mario Bros.

tbbk

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This is just a friendly messageboard high score competition.

The game in question is Mario Bros.

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You must achieve your score during the competition, which runs from 10/15 and ends sunday evening 10/21 at roughly midnight central time. No using your old score from last year. Current and former Twin Galaxies world record holders on Mario Bros are not eligible to win this contest, although they are encouraged to submit a score for exhibition purposes.

Please attempt to photograph your score in some manner if you can.

Dip switches must be set to 3 lives and a bonus life at 20000. Difficulty can be set on whatever you want it to be.

Mame, real pcbs and multiboards are all appropriate platforms to play the game on. Any version is fine on real hardware provided it doesn't have any cheats installed, and isn't one of the versions that award bonus lives every 20,000 or 30,000. The playchoice version is not eligible to win the contest, but go ahead and post your playchoice scores if that is the only version you have.

No mame cheats, games achieved using emulator save states or modified roms please.

Please post your scores in this thread. Go ahead and post your score even if it isn't competitive with the others (I know mine won't be).

Winner of the competition may select the game for the next competition. I suggest you go ahead and post your selection for the next game when you post your score, that way I don't have to have any delay between contests. If you pick something obscure that gets no buzz then I reserve the right to replace the selection.

You are also certainly encouraged to use this thread to post your Mario Bros tips, tricks, stories and technical information.

Previous Contests
Donkey Kong Junior - Winner JamBurglar 101000 points http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=252356
Galaxian - Winner dr.detroit20. 109820 points http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=251610
Scramble - Winner Steve W. 313770 points. http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=250843
 
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Tell me about it, I am running the contests and so far they have all been games I am terrible at.

My Mario scores are piddly, but maybe with a few tips/tricks from some good players, I can post a respectable score!
 
It would be helpful to everyone for people to post up tips and tricks to help play the game. Any tricks or pattern or advice to help improve scores would be welcome. I doubt I have played Mario brothers more than a handful of times
 
I'm not a great Mario Bros player but I'm okay.

One trick to improve your score is to get the enemies lined up in close proximity to each other (you can flip over an enemy or two to act as baracades and the othe enemies will get grouped together). Then use the "pow" bock to turn over a buch of enemies and when you kick them over your score gets multiplied when the enemies are close to each other. Of course, doing this sort of thing puts you at greater risk of dying too.
 
FYI,

I'm assuming that when the original poster says "extra life at 20,000" that means no use of the revision that keeps giving you an extra life at every 20,000 points. You can pretty much play forever under that revision.
 
sweet, I have a mario, I will be in this competition.

I won't win, but I will be in it!
 
I just loaded it in mame and wrote down the default dips. I didn't realize there was a rom version that allowed marathon play.

If you have that version then please use lives 4, extra life none. In fact, everyone can use that setting if they wish.

FYI,

I'm assuming that when the original poster says "extra life at 20,000" that means no use of the revision that keeps giving you an extra life at every 20,000 points. You can pretty much play forever under that revision.
 
Well.....first game of the day. Pretty crappy, but someone has to go first.
 

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I just loaded it in mame and wrote down the default dips. I didn't realize there was a rom version that allowed marathon play.

Yes, there are two: the Japanese ROM set ('mariojp' in older versions of MAME; 'marioj' in newer versions) awards extra lives every 30k (also, the number of phases between bonus rounds and the order in which they appear are also different!), and the U.S. ROM set revision 'F' awards extra lives every 20k. When playing on a real PCB you will want to avoid those revisions for this contest. Probably not an issue for most, as rev 'F' is not very common in the states and I imagine the Japanese version isn't either. Until someone pointed this out in this thread, however, there was nothing stopping me from heading down to Dorky's in Tacoma and putting up a 980k kill screen on their cab on my first try since it has a rev 'F' board, the first and only one I've ever seen.

MAME has some complications. First, you specified to use the 'mario' ROM. If using WolfMAME 0.106 like many people do (because that's the version Twin Galaxies has required for the last six years) then there is no problem with extra lives using the 'mario' ROM set. In this version of MAME, however, the dip switch settings were backwards. Yes, it displays 'Easy' as the default but that setting actually plays on 'Medium,' and if you were to change it to 'Medium' as per TG rules it actually plays on 'Easy.' TG's rules point this out, or at least they did until the company was sold and the site subsequently went offline (should be back relatively soon). Anyway, if playing on an older version of MAME like WolfMAME 0.106 you can just play at the default settings ('Easy') and you will be playing the same game as those playing a real U.S. PCB on 'Medium.'

These issues in MAME were fixed more recently, however, and a couple of ROM dumps have since been added as well and consequently the parent ROM was changed. If playing in a relatively new release of MAME the 'mario' ROM is now the rev 'F' set that awards extra lives every 30k. You will instead want to use either 'marioe' (U.S. Revision E) or 'marioo' (U.S. Unknown Rev). That "unknown rev" ROM very likely is revision 'G,' which is the PCB ROM set revision that corrected that inadvertent extra lives bug from rev 'F.' I have rev 'G' in my own Mario Bros. widebody cab. It plays correctly -- medium difficulty, 3 lives to start, 1 bonus life at 20k.

If you have that version then please use lives 4, extra life none. In fact, everyone can use that setting if they wish.

I'm not positive but I believe it is not possible to set a fixed number of lives on revision 'F.' That ROM set revision has a bug (it's a bug according to the MAME devs who examined the code) that causes extra lives to be awarded every 20k, and when your score exceeds 980k the game ends. I believe that happens because the code checks for the score needed to award the next extra life, and since Mario Bros. has six digit scoring it adds 20k to 980k and gets zero, and it freaks out. The game slows down dramatically -- both the graphics and sound stutter badly -- and a few seconds later Mario dies and it displays "GAME OVER."

So, if your arcade cab awards extra lives every 20k (U.S. rev 'F') or every 30k (Japanese ROMs), I'd say that board should be ineligible, but it's not my contest. On all other board sets you want to set the dip switches to give you 3 lives to start, 1 bonus life at 20k, and 'Medium' difficulty.

For MAME, see the details above to sort out which ROM to use based on what version of MAME you are using. I would imagine most people are using either a new(ish) version of MAME that is 0.140 or above (the most current release is 0.147) or they are using WolfMAME 0.106 for Twin Galaxies. I don't remember off the top of my head when the MAME devs fixed the backwards dip switch settings (it still defaults to 'Easy' but now that setting actually plays on 'Easy' and not 'Medium'), and I don't know when the default parent ROM was changed to revision 'F.'
 
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Yeah, what Sante said, don't play the version that awards endless extra lives. Set your difficulty however you wish. I edited the original post to reflect these new details.
 
Here's the Twin Galaxies settings I'll be going by

Variation: TGTS - Single Player [TGTS]
Platform: Arcade
Rules: Dip-Switch Bank 1:
A-G = OFF
H = ON

Note: The above Dip Switches, when properly designated, will give the following Twin Galaxies Tournament Settings, used for this title;

Number of Mario/Luigi Per Game: 3
Extra Mario/Luigi At: 20,000 Points
Difficulty: Medium
NOTE - single player ONLY
 
I'm streaming my games right now if anyone wants to watch. Probably be playing for the next couple of hours.

http://www.twitch.tv/sante2

I'm playing on TGTS also. Just got a 396k a little while ago.

Right on! I am going to check out some of your gaming. Mario Bros. is not a game that I have played very much and I am horrible at it.
 
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Well, I topped my personal best tonight by a whopping 370 points. I'd be fine with that except for the way it ended. :aargh4:

I had an epic start, reaching phase 41 and 356,070 on my first man. Kept it together and didn't die again until after I'd passed my previous personal best of 400,810 on phase 46. At 401,170 I had a total meltdown, netting only ten (10) points as I lost my last three lives in rapid succession. This game is painful.

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For anyone wanting some game play tips, I'm no expert but you can watch the carnage here:

Mario Bros. 401,180 (1st man 356k)
http://www.twitch.tv/sante2/b/335742594

Pardon my language. :D

I intend to play this a lot this week and will be streaming all of my attempts. I've been working on this game for the last month or so anyway. Keep in mind I'm playing on TGTS, which is Medium difficulty. On Easy the fireballs and icicles will not spawn as quickly, so you won't be able to duplicate my strategies faithfully; the patterns and situations will be different.

If I win my choice for contest #5 will be Moon Patrol. I expect Steve W. to take this one though. I was keeping pace with him but he just had a breakthrough game recently...
 
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