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Golden Era Game of the Week 9/11/04: Spy Hunter

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:26 pm
by Weehawk
Golden Era Game of the Week

See introduction here

The Game: Spy Hunter

romname: spyhunt

Screenshot:
Image(click to see current MARP scores)

Reward: $50 (usd)

Deadline for submission to MARP: September 17, 2004 2359 hours GMT

Further Bounty: none

I really liked this game in the arcade. The feel of the car, the music. I was never great at it, but I enjoyed playing it probably more than any other driving game.

Took a while to get used to the feel of the controls in MAME. Just now starting to get the hang of it.

Don't think we have any shot at the World Record which, after some controversy, is still Paul Dean's 9,512,590. His tips on the game are available here:

http://www.spyhunter007.com/spy_questions.htm

Use WolfMAME .86

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:53 pm
by BBH
dammit, you pick this when I'm currently without a gamepad... :( oh well, I don't think I can beat my old score anyway.

wolf86? on an analog game? Get ready for some huge .inps...

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 5:59 pm
by destructor
I will not use .86 never. I have low space on HD and on my computer recording on .86 is very slow. :roll:

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:21 pm
by tar
tough control -

the steering uses a wheel ,

the gas uses a pedal ,

brake , gear shift ?

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:27 pm
by Weehawk
tar wrote:tough control -

the steering uses a wheel ,

the gas uses a pedal ,

brake , gear shift ?
There's a key for changing from low to high and vice versa. Can't remember what the default is...left alt maybe?

No brakes.

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:31 pm
by Weehawk
BBH wrote:wolf86? on an analog game? Get ready for some huge .inps...
Gotta bite the bullet eventually.

Didn't have any problems here.

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 5:50 pm
by NotMan
Nice score BBH!

Is John is going allow this game using the speed-up trick. Most Spy Hunter game I played in 80's do not have the speed up trick built in dip switches???
Very few Spy Hunter machine have speed up trick, due us gamers trying to break the god damn steering wheel alas playing Bump'n'Jump.

Are we going to see the infamous ultra rare off road trick which allow you get gazillion points. I seen it once and it really hard to accomplish that trick. Can anybody do it???

I guess the world record is basically on the speed up trick to avoid the spiker and bumpers. I seen most gamers rack up 125-245k without the speed up trick.

Good Luck BBH! One million points is not that hard to get with the speed up trick.

Later,

NotMan

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 10:13 pm
by BBH
NotMan wrote: Is John is going allow this game using the speed-up trick. Most Spy Hunter game I played in 80's do not have the speed up trick built in dip switches???
Very few Spy Hunter machine have speed up trick, due us gamers trying to break the god damn steering wheel alas playing Bump'n'Jump.
I'm not sure what this speed-up trick is? It's possible to accelerate pretty fast in MAME, I don't know if this is related to the speed-up trick, or just a benefit of having non-analog control. (when I played Spy Hunter in the arcades, I was too young to be any "good" at it.)
Are we going to see the infamous ultra rare off road trick which allow you get gazillion points. I seen it once and it really hard to accomplish that trick. Can anybody do it???
If it's the same as the trick that's described in history.dat, I definitely do not think that trick should be allowed as it affects the game in a major way. Sounds difficult to pull off, but still should not be allowed.
Good Luck BBH! One million points is not that hard to get with the speed up trick.
Speak for yourself... :P

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 11:23 pm
by NotMan
Speed up trick is actually a extra turbo speed to avoid the Spikers and Bumpers from tailgating you at the later levels. The arcade version does not allow you to avoid those Spikers, Bumpers, or Big Bad Blue Enemy Weapon Vans at the harder levels. You'll have to knock those guys off the road alas Bump'N'Jump.

BBH! You're probably right that maybe Mame *does* emulate non-analog game.

The trick on the history.dat is slighty different the one I saw. If I could remember how the trick works. At the later level, call your weapon vans up then keep on driving behind the weapons van until you get at least 4-5 or more Spikers and Bumpers at the front of your weapons van. If you get lucky by going in weapons van and the weapons van start knocking the other 2-3 enemy off the road. The sound of the game goes haywire and the machine thinks that you are actually driving the on road instead of driving off road. The score will keep on running while driving off road. It's not easy to accomplish that trick. Sound similar to Hisa's infamous gear gotcha trick on Outrun.

Later,

NotMan

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:47 am
by Patwos
Interestingly in the C=64 conversion of this game they also implemented, probably by accident, the ability to get into offroad point scoring heaven as well. :)

Pat.

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:42 am
by Weehawk
If I'm understanding correctly, this speedup trick would not be allowed for MARP regulation play, nor for GEGOTW.

If there is some sort of trick to score inordinate amounts of points by not playing the game in the traditional fashion, it might be disallowed as well. The deciding factor should be whether it would have the effect of spoiling competition on the game. The community would make this decision for MARP and I would make the call for GEGOTW.

Also this game is affected by the .63 bug. I can play back recordings regardless of this, but if you like, you may use AlphaMAME .62

BBH has already submitted a couple of impressive recordings, beating his own previous first-place score on the game. All the more remarkable is the fact that he is doing this with a gamepad, that is he is not using analog control for the steering and the accelerator. This is a big disadvantage in gameplay. Pretty astonishing really.

I wonder if he has scared off all competition?

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:13 am
by BBH
Weehawk wrote:If I'm understanding correctly, this speedup trick would not be allowed for MARP regulation play, nor for GEGOTW.
I'm worried that I might be inadvertently doing it, because of the rapid acceleration that's available in MAME :( There's not much I can do about that though...
If there is some sort of trick to score inordinate amounts of points by not playing the game in the traditional fashion, it might be disallowed as well. The deciding factor should be whether it would have the effect of spoiling competition on the game. The community would make this decision for MARP and I would make the call for GEGOTW.
If it comes to that, I'm personally all for banning it anyway.
Also this game is affected by the .63 bug. I can play back recordings regardless of this, but if you like, you may use AlphaMAME .62
I may do that anyway just for the sake of smaller recordings. ;)
BBH has already submitted a couple of impressive recordings, beating his own previous first-place score on the game. All the more remarkable is the fact that he is doing this with a gamepad, that is he is not using analog control for the steering and the accelerator. This is a big disadvantage in gameplay. Pretty astonishing really.
The loss of analog control is offset by the advantage of having a more "convenient" button layout, especially for switching gears. Only problem is that the Up part of my directional pad kinda sucks, and since I use that to accelerate... well yeah, that can be problematic. But I'm doing okay for now. ;)
I wonder if he has scared off all competition?
I hope so. :D (I know, it's better for MARP and GEGOTW if there's more competition... but bad for me! haha)

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 2:27 pm
by DRN
Weekhawk wrote:I wonder if he has scared off all competition?
I don't know about that, we just can't control the bloody thing! :wink:

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:48 pm
by SJK
I don't understand what this speed up cheat thing is.. I watched Dax's replay (as none of the new ones playback here) and he uses the gears to get out at some spots where he would have been hit. Is this allowed?

Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 3:58 am
by Weehawk
From Paul Deans's site:
Paul Dean wrote:Some people have made the accelerator go faster by removing certain parts to the game, but this was not done in the case of my spy hunter high score game.
This makes me wonder if there might have been a mechanical restriction in the arcade machine that doesn't exist in MAME. If so, there's not much we can do about it. Just one more reason that scores from MAME and from the real machine sometimes are not directly comparable.
SJK wrote:. I watched Dax's replay (as none of the new ones playback here) and he uses the gears to get out at some spots where he would have been hit. Is this allowed?
Yes, feel free to change gears whenever you like.