Season 4, Round 2 - Fortnight Challenge, Hunchback and Pioneer Balloon!

GackAttack

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Season 4, Round 2 - Fortnight Challenge, Hunchback and Pioneer Balloon!

The Weekly Game Challenge - Click Here For The Current Scores

Season 4, Round 2 - Fortnight Challenge, Hunchback and Pioneer Balloon!

Hunchback
Settings:
Unless proven otherwise, there are no optional settings for this game!

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_______________________________________________

Pioneer Balloon
Settings:
3 Balloons to start

images




Tue January 16th 8:00pm - Tue January 30th 8:00pm (PST)
Play in whatever format applies: Dedicated, BitKit, MAME, Arpicade, ArcadeSD, XXX-in-1, Internet Archive


A new pair of games every 2 weeks with an open tournament challenge
The tournament closes on Tuesday Nights at 8:00pm PST where we announce the winner on the Arcade Hangout live on Youtube.

ArcadeHangout.jpg


To enter and post your scores, register for free at www.ArcadeIcons.com

Log in and then...
- Click 'Tournaments'
- Click - Register for Tournament (Big Blue Button)
- Choose the tournament from the drop-down menu and click register (no code needed).

Now you're entered and ready to play and post your scores.
- On your Phone/Tablet/Computer click The Weekly Challenge Banner on the top right of the Home Page.
- Use the 'Submit Score' button at the top of the page to enter your scores.
- Play as many times as you like on whatever system you like, post your scores as you go.
 
This will be interesting. I am pretty sure I have less 4 quarters worth of experience between the two...

Actually I've not even played Hunchback.
 
My challenge will be to get a arpicade or mame up and running to play hunchback in 2 weeks.
 
I recommend playing the Hunchback rom on Scramble hardware at least in previous versions of MAME the other roms had a dramatic speed reduction on the game that made it unplayable (moreso than it already is).

Have fun, very challenging game.
 
I recommend playing the Hunchback....

Interesting!

If anyone wants easy access, you can play online here as well:
https://archive.org/details/arcade_hunchbak


I am fond of the game myself :) I have the CVS/Century/Tuni version as seen in this video :D:



Although since shooting that vid, I currently have setup as Dazzler. But I did convert a DK boardset to Hunchback which is my current setup as well. I plan to shoot some live feed stuff tonight, most likely on FaceBook Arcade Hangout group....

-GackAttack
 
I need to play some HunchBack!

New personal record, and finally made it to Round 4 on Pioneer Balloon. The first two stages of Round 4 play more like Round 2, but then the red birds are super fast in the water/gorilla stage!

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FWIW I am trying... but my god... the "quality" of ... well ... BOTH of these games ... leaves me pining for Atari, Midway or Williams (or Konami, Sega, Seta, etc.. etc.. etc..). Pioneer Balloon is at least... playable. As for Hunchback... my lord, I think I programmed higher quality titles in Basic right out of one of my old Commodore 64 magazines. Crazy bad. Maybe even bad enough to actually grow on me... we'll see... I only have 3 games in thus far.
 
FWIW I am trying... but my god... the "quality" of ... well ... BOTH of these games ... leaves me pining for Atari, Midway or Williams (or Konami, Sega, Seta, etc.. etc.. etc..). Pioneer Balloon is at least... playable. As for Hunchback... my lord, I think I programmed higher quality titles in Basic right out of one of my old Commodore 64 magazines. Crazy bad. Maybe even bad enough to actually grow on me... we'll see... I only have 3 games in thus far.

I have not played Hunchback yet, but I found that Pioneer Balloon really grew on me. It is really a shooter, although it doesn't seem that way at first.
 
I recommend playing the Hunchback rom on Scramble hardware at least in previous versions of MAME the other roms had a dramatic speed reduction on the game that made it unplayable (more so than it already is).

I wanted to follow up on this. I played a handful of times over the weekend and started to note a few things during game play. I did a few 'live' video feeds on FaceBook if anyone might be interested in watching. I've been playing my 'dedicated' Nintendo conversion, which was a kit designed to convert a Donkey Kong PCB (either 2pc or 4pc PCB version), mine being the 2pc PCB version.

I also have the Century/CVS/Tuni version PCB/cabinet, but currently has Dazzler installed. I plan to swap Hunchback PCB back soon so I can do a side-by-side comparison. I'll post my findings here for reference.

From memory, the main difference I recall is the color palette on DK conversion looks off/different. I suppose maybe I put a chip in wrong socket to change colors, but not sure.

One thing I noted over the weekend was the lives/extra lives on DK conversion. Mine is set to start with 3 lives, then I believe you have to clear 5 levels in a row without losing a life to get another bonus life. This is indicated by the bells that appear on the top left of screen. When I completed the 5th level (in a row without losing a life), I would get an extra life and approx. 25k bonus points. I was able to achieve another 5 in a row bonus a 2nd time on a few games, but was EXTREMELY difficult. My best score of the weekend was 118,500. On my higher scoring games, I was able to get (2) bonus lives giving me a total of 5 lives....not sure if more bonus lives are possible.

After digging a little deeper, it sounds like there may in fact be a few differences with settings and other version PCB sets. I just re-watched the video I did last Summer on my CVS version. Mine was set to start with 5 lives, then looks like only the 1st 10k you get a bonus life, and when complete 5 bells you get 25k bonus. So in that case, I had a total of 6 lives.....also not sure if more bonus lives are possible.

From the Arcade Restoration website, it looks like there are possible (5) different rom versions :eek:

http://www.arcaderestoration.com/games/4206/Hunchback.aspx

Then on this page (and posted below) there are potentially different dip switch settings:

http://www.arcaderestoration.com/gamedips/4206/All/Hunchback.aspx

Note that there is a disclaimer on the top that says some settings are reported incorrectly:

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Now I really want to see and try the different versions/settings!

-GackAttack
 

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Great info on Hunchback!

What I love about these challenges is all the quirks, secrets, and lore that are discovered as everybody dives deeper into games they may not be that familiar with.

JimboDeanny discovered a bug in the SNK version of Pioneer Balloon that none of us were aware of before. When completing a round of Pioneer Balloon (going through all the stages and getting a bonus, before going back to stage 1) your life counter will sometimes decrease by one as stage 1 starts again, robbing you of a life!

At first this bug was only happening in MAME, but after a dozen or more games on the BitKit, I was able to reproduce the bug. My guess is that since the timing is slightly off for Pioneer Balloon in MAME, the bug happens more frequently. Jim reported that in MAME, it was happening 50% of the time it seemed at the end of Round 2 & 3.

After some digging in the Pioneer code, the only real difference in the Rock-ola version is a fix specifically for this bug. The issue was caused by the timing of the collision detection between your balloon and the fort that you land on to end the Round.

So for future reference, play the Rock-ola version of Pioneer Balloon, no surprise deaths!
 
Great info on Hunchback!

What I love about these challenges is all the quirks, secrets, and lore that are discovered as everybody dives deeper into games they may not be that familiar with.

JimboDeanny discovered a bug in the SNK version of Pioneer Balloon that none of us were aware of before. When completing a round of Pioneer Balloon (going through all the stages and getting a bonus, before going back to stage 1) your life counter will sometimes decrease by one as stage 1 starts again, robbing you of a life!

At first this bug was only happening in MAME, but after a dozen or more games on the BitKit, I was able to reproduce the bug. My guess is that since the timing is slightly off for Pioneer Balloon in MAME, the bug happens more frequently. Jim reported that in MAME, it was happening 50% of the time it seemed at the end of Round 2 & 3.

After some digging in the Pioneer code, the only real difference in the Rock-ola version is a fix specifically for this bug. The issue was caused by the timing of the collision detection between your balloon and the fort that you land on to end the Round.

So for future reference, play the Rock-ola version of Pioneer Balloon, no surprise deaths!


Glad I ain't the only one... I also have been having issues with Hunchback... if I do really well and make it all the way to the girl with a single man, I get a bonus then ... game over.

To be honest, I've pretty much stopped bothering improving my score on this title because of it.
 
Glad I ain't the only one... I also have been having issues with Hunchback...

Last night I spent a few hours messing around with my CVS Hunchback and DK conversion Hunchback. Long story short, I couldn't get both to do the exact same settings. I'm planning on doing some live feed game play on FB before tonight's Hangout, then might do some presented game play on the Hangout as well....

In the meantime, any suggestions for the next fortnight challenge?

I'd prefer to keep limited to vertical games for now, probably more 4 way stick and one or two button games if possible (mainly because that's my current multi game machine :)) - but open to suggestions for now or future challenges!

I've got a couple in mind already, and will probably finalize in the next couple hours.

-GackAttack
 
Last night I spent a few hours messing around with my CVS Hunchback and DK conversion Hunchback. Long story short, I couldn't get both to do the exact same settings. I'm planning on doing some live feed game play on FB before tonight's Hangout, then might do some presented game play on the Hangout as well....

In the meantime, any suggestions for the next fortnight challenge?

I'd prefer to keep limited to vertical games for now, probably more 4 way stick and one or two button games if possible (mainly because that's my current multi game machine :)) - but open to suggestions for now or future challenges!

I've got a couple in mind already, and will probably finalize in the next couple hours.

-GackAttack

DK3
Warp Warp
Ali Baba and 40 thieves
DK Jr Remix
 

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