Golden Era Game of the Week 10/21/06: Pandora's Palace

[Weehawk]

Tuesday's bonus points to Tekkaman.

[Weehawk]

Clean sweep for Tekkaman on the bonus points, but I see we have a new leader.

Like I was telling Marco several weeks ago: for any game you can name there's a world-record holder hiding out there somewhere...

Welcome to MARP, Jon.

[The_Pro]

Damn, the Jon that Robert was talking about I assume.

[RTM]

Hello fellow gamers:

Say hello to a good friend of mine, Jon, whom I've known for the past 20+ years.

His last PP score was done several years back for Mark Longridge on MAME 32 build 58, so this is his first foray into a WolfMAME submission for the title.

Congrats, Jon !!

Robert

[Weehawk]

Results:

1st: JsD (1,276,810)
2nd: Tekkaman@AIVA (276,830)
3rd: Phil Lamat (168,720)


Tekkaman takes 2nd and 6 bonus for 13 total.


Honorable mention to RTM, who reports reaching 346,920 on default settings, but was using WolfMAME .101 and did not upload to MARP. (He already had a higher score on the easier TG settings). Perhaps he would share it with us here.


Eligible for the random prize:

Don Hayes (1-9)
Gerhard Schindler (10-18)
JsD (19-27)
Kasumi (28-36)
Phil Lamat (37-45)
Tekkaman@AIVA (46-54)


55 and 56 are unassigned.


Watch at 0300 hours GMT for the numbers drawn here:

http://www.txlottery.org/online/winmegamillion.cfm

which will determine the winner. The first ball drawn under 55 will be the winning number.

[RTM]

Hi Weehawk:

Here's my 346K on "Normal". I will keep trying...I like this game a lot !!

Robert

[RTM]

Hello fellow gamers:

Seldom can I claim to finding a secret that no one else has in an established arcade title from the golden era, but I think I just did find such a secret, purely by accident !!

In the enclosed zip file, the secret is uncovered in stage 4 which is one of the two stages that no secret has been found in thus far...until now.

Somehow I caused a moving white "money bag" to come out, and stupidly died before picking it up as you will see.

If anyone can take this discovery to the next level, that would be greatly appreciated. Tahnsk.

Robert

[RTM]

Hi LN2:

Much appreciated for the observation. I will certainly experiment with this over the next week and see what I can find.

Thus far, I'm stil llight years behind my friend Jon. I have hit the following ceiling thus far...

Normal difficulty - 359K reaching stage 15
Easy difficulty - 369K reaching stage 19

I found that running selected stages helps get thru, but you sacrifice points in the process. But no matter, stages 18 and up and where the game difficulty ramps considerably, and it does so again after that loop is completed. I am not 100% sure if it ramps up after that. There are indicators in each stage to show how difficult it becomes after each bonus round.

For example, look at the stages with the conveyor belt of fires. Eventually, the double fireball comes out which is pretty nasty, and the spacing of the fires is much closer in terms of count of bricks. Plus, the diamonds move faster on the underbelt, so timing of not just each jump but when to try the run is critical.

I still have no idea what bonus can be found in the final stage of each loop, the one with the Pandora's Box. I am guessing it has something to do with the bottom set of rising and falling platforms but have not found anything out as of yet. I already tried thru sake of necessity runningback and forth over the upper level of moving platforms but that has yet to yield anything positive.

As for Jon, I watched his round 205 5 million point game at "Difficult" years back, and his 4-man 800K performance at "Very Difficult". He's definitely in a class by himself when it comes to this title.

Robert

[Weehawk]

The winning number was 32. I'll be adding the comic book to Kasumi's record book mailing.

JsD, PM or email me your Paypal info.

[RTM]

Hello fellow gamers:

Just upped the settings to match MARP on this title to "NORMAL" difficulty level for marathon mode. So now we're in synch for the title.

Robert

[Weehawk]

Hello fellow gamers:

Just upped the settings to match MARP on this title to "NORMAL" difficulty level for marathon mode. So now we're in synch for the title.

Robert

Ironically, as long as those were the TG settings they were legal for MARP regulation play as well. Now that TG setting is difficulty=normal, any recordings made with difficulty=easy are no longer compliant.

[RTM]

Hello fellow gamers:

Using gamer "LN2's" suggestion, I tooled around with the stage and caught that mysterious money bag. Like the frog it is worth 5,000 points.

You will see in the INP that follows I made several attempts on the same life, the last of which did the trick.

What I am still unsure of is this...must you walk back over the ramps once you cross them, or can you do this on the first attempt ?

I won't post again on that matter, but here is the zipped INP showing how this secret is done. Still no idea if any remain in the Pandora's Box stage before the end of each loop, though.

Robert

[RTM]

Hello fellow gamers:

I believe I am the first gamer to discover the secret to stage 1 !! Took me long enough as "Weehawk's" competition ended seven months ago.

Oaky, in this enclosure (WolfMAME 106), all you need to do is watch what I do on my third (3rd) life in stage 1. I still am not 100% sure what the cause is, but the bird comes out and carries a much needed surprise at such an early stage...but I stupidly did not pick it up as the arc differs from when it drops extra grapes.

In any event, I hope you enjoy, and I am very happy that after 22 years I discovered two secrets on this game.

Robert