Congratulations to Phil. You were really dedicated this tournament
and seem to have used more or less the same tactics as I did in T2.
You must have played an awful lot and studied every game very
carefully and it showed in the results.
<p>
Congratulations next to Ian. You more or less used the same tactics
as I during this tournament: You submitted to games one by one and
the times in between were long. Really early on, I already saw you
because your average was usually a tad higher than mine, but since
you always seemed to have one less game played than I, you were still
behind me until you submitted your 10th game.
<p>
As for me, I did a lot better than I had expected, even more so
because I suffered BBH's "disease" about one week before the end of
the tournament: Burnout.
I had planned to put in a long day the
final day of the tournament, but I could only bring myself to play
games I more or less liked, and the week leading up to that, I didn't
play at all. My goal this tournament was to finish first in at least
one game. Early on, seeing how I scored relatively easily on that
game, I decided it was going to be 10 Yard Fight. I stopped
submitting on that game, but I didn't stop playing it; I played it
almost every day. In the end, I was really surprised to finish with a
total of not 1, but 3 first places. And, just having checked
Gameboy9's statistics page, I am also surprised that I scored the
most points over all 10 games combined. Funny how that was the only
overall leaderboard in which I did *not* finish first in T2, and now
it's the only one in which I *did* manage to finish first.
<p>
In a way, this was a silly tournament, because at least 4 games had
silly scoring systems:
<p>
Gauntlet II: The 8k Deaths. Killing dozens of enemies doesn't give
you anywhere near as many points as killing a few 8k Deaths. I was
happy to see that the top 2 in this game still showed a lot of skill.
Tommi's amazing score was even more amazing considering that he only
got 1k for the first 8 or so Deaths he killed, and Ian's also amazing
score was reached while leaving quite a lot of Deaths alive. I was
very impressed with both performances.
<p>
Burnin' Rubber: This game is also known as Bump 'n' Jump, but "bump"
is exactly what you shouldn't do to get a great score. Don't destroy
any enemy vehicles, and you'll get a 50k bonus for every stage you
complete that way...
<p>
Ninja Kid II: Keep hitting enemies while they're falling and your
score will skyrocket. I think I had 180k after stage 1-C, and I think
Phil even had 200k... . Fortunately, Blost still showed that skill
prevailed.
<p>
Xenophobe: With a bit of practice, it's not too hard to clear the
first two stages. After that, find the code (the piece of paper) and
order the base destruction. The game randomly puts the code in some
room, but the rest of the game is fixed. So I had drawn maps of
stages 3 through 6. I knew where to go for food and I knew where to
go to destroy the base as soon as I had found the code. I did better
than I had expected, so when I got to stage 7, even though I found
the code early on, I had no clue where to go (I hadn't drawn a map of
stage 7). The silliness of the scoring system in this game lies in
the fact that you get credited for each piece of hardware you pick up
when you finish the stage. 1k a piece. But... when finishing, you get
credited for *all* the hardware you've picked up during the entire
game so far, not just the hardware from the last stage. In other
words, by the time you finish stage 6, you'll have been credited 6
times for the hardware picked up during stage 1, 5 times for the
hardware picked up during stage 2, etc...
<p>
To Tommi: Great performance on Tron, although I didn't enjoy it too
much. I didn't have my new machine yet when I verified your recording
and since Tron doesn't run without sound, hitting F10 didn't speed it
up much, so it took me quite a while to watch your entire recording.
Couldn't you have waited a week or two until I had my new machine?
<p>
I'd like to thank Pat, Gameboy9, all the judges, and all the
participants for a pretty smooth tournament.
<p>
Cheers,
Ben Jos.
--
walbeehm@walbeehm.com