The office gaming tourney thread - The Bear and Badger

davyK

Atari Tank event tomorrow. Got the 2600 connected up to the projector by connecting the console to a VCR then taking the composite out of the VCR via a SCART lead and plugging that into a SCART to s-video adaptor and then connecting s-viceo and audio leads from the adaptor into the projector.. It works.

davyK

Atari Tank - 2600
It's not often that a group of people in an office sit down in front of an Atari 2600 and play the ancient Combat cartridge - but this lunchtime it happened - and with great success.

Total bemusement - younger ones found it hard to adjust to the controls (some are half the age of the hardware), and the reset switch on the console is a novelty - but that old 2 player versus gameplay is still intact. At times this game was a riot. It went down extremely well.

I had to use the black and white mode because for some reason the assembly of various cables, adaptors and a Sony VCR resulted in loss of colour - but in a way that made it better.

It's pretty competitive and we played the version that allows you to bounce bullets off the walls and obstacles. The mechanics of the game allow for quickly emergent tactics that have modern counterparts such as spawn camping - you can maneouvre your opponent into a position where you can ream off several hits without reply but it makes for comeback play too so its all good. The more complex maze used for the 3rd place play off and final stymied that tactic quite a bit anyhow.

Overall a success - and again seeing those ancient images on a screen-size never imagined by the developers because of a projector makes it great for spectating. I considered this one a bit of a gamble but it paid off - it isn't something to return to in a short space of time but I can see it featuring in the programme in future years should the league live on.

MattyJ

I used to spend hours playing that with my brother when I was younger, it is brilliant.

Mod74

Combat was my first real video game love. Special place in my heart that one.

Moot_Geeza

I bet that Monkey Ball challenge was fun. Did you do Let's Tap in the end? Seems like a perfect choice - easy for everyone to get the gist of what they need to do in a short space of time, but hard to master the timing in a competitive situation. The rest of the games on the disk were pretty dire I thought, but there was a lot of fun to be had with Tap Runner (like the Twisted System mini-game in Fusion Frenzy, but you had to trawl through more dross to find it).

On a similar note, this would be a good one too:

davyK

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Did you do Let's Tap in the end? Seems like a perfect choice - easy for everyone to get the gist of what they need to do in a short space of time, but hard to master the timing in a competitive situation.

agreed.

Let's Tap is scheduled for August.

That Crash Course game looks quite good - Tap Runner looks to have a bit more charm though. Will bear it in mind however.

davyK

Virtua Tennis 2 doubles event planned for this Friday.

Setting the old Dreamcast up in the works canteen tomorrow so people can get a bit of practice in with projector , VGA box and - count 'em - 4 arcade sticks.

davyK

Splendid time had by all.. Virtua Tennis with 4 players is still utterly brilliant.

Moot_Geeza

It's the sort of game that can't really be bettered. Sequels and other tennis games might offer more, but the simplicity of the first couple of versions created an almost peerless same-room multiplayer experience. I feel the same about SFIV - it's undeniably superb, but I'll never bother to learn it and would always prefer to play SFII.

davyK

Delayed the next round in the office gaming league to avoid holidays etc.

Today was 4 player Tap Runner in Let's Tap for Wii. Two groups of 4 played until one player won 3 races and the top 2 qualified for the final which was first to 3 wins.

This really went down a storm and attracted loads of spectators too. We had one day for warm up which meant everyone was pretty close in skills which made for blanket finishes etc. Inspired little game and while it doesn't hold up to extended sessions - for this sort of thing over an hour or so during lunchtime it was perfect.

Even with a composhite (sic) connection to the projector this was fine...if one person lags far behind the camera zooms out to handle it which can compromise the size of everything sometimes but it wasn't really an issue.

real success - this one's a keeper for next year.

Halloween is one month away which means time for Typing of the Dead 2 player versus mode - pure genius.

davyK

One year on - and another Tap Runner competition today. Still a highly competitive game. Great stuff.

Wii U owners should pick Let's Tap up. It will be dirt cheap and while some of the content is hit and miss, Tap Runner and Bubble Voyager are very enjoyable.

Had a Virtua Striker competition in June. Scores were low (all 1-0) as it is hard to hang onto the ball. But we were starting to get used to the semi-auto gameplay - but by then the tourney was over. One of the students on his industrial placement year was the champ - he had to win 3 games on the trot - quite an achievement…

Eric

Just had a look on ebay: £2.04 so why not!

davyK

Tap Runner is OK in 1 player as there are medal times to go for and you have to play it to unlock all the tracks, it comes to life in multiplayer - and it is a joy.

Bubble Voyager 1 player is an endless survival mode game with a nice risk/reward point score scheme.

There's a Donkey Konga clone that really only stands out because of the J-pop and there's a Jenga-esque game where you remove tiles from a stack by tapping which is OK.

There's also a relaxation mode which is just a toy but it seems to unlock stuff as you play - a bit mystifying.

You will be impressed by how sensitive the wiimote is to movement.

Moot_Geeza

Tap Runner is easily worth a decent amount of quid.

Eric

They have just cancelled my Lets Tap order stating that it failed its final quality inspection and has been sent for recycling. Jerks

Moot_Geeza

They should have offered it for the price of postage. Bastards.

davyK

Given what some people rate as 'good condition' the disc must be knackered. There's a few more going cheap on amazon. One or two going for price of postage.

Eric

Cheers Davy. Bought for £2.04 again! (I bet its the same seller!)

davyK

Typing of the Dead (Dreamcast) competition coming up in work this week.

We all have one attempt at the training mode with top 4 scores qualifying for knock-out format using the excellent 2 player versus mode. Always goes down well this one.

davyK

Another success today with TotD. It's a great old game and it's oddness attracts spectators. The genius of the dictionary never fails to raise the laugh.

The 2 player versus is a real test of nerves and the final was really close between two classy typists. Going by the score difference it must have come down to the last word or two.

I only got to the final four and was soundly beaten by the eventual winner so I can take some comfort in that even though I could not have lived with the pace set by either finalist.

As is usual with these events the older consoles are of interest to the young interns. I have to say the Dreamcast is probably the "coolest" console on the planet in that respect. "Oh - a Dreamcast? Wow." Our interns loved it and having an 'oul git like me in the building who goes to the bother of importing games and then setting this up in work seems to give them a wee kick (well, I like to think so).

Tetris next month.

davyK

Just set the program of events for the Office Gaming League 2015.

Jan is Baku Baku on Saturn
March is Kaboom on 2600
June is Virtua Tennis on Dreamcast
Aug is Monkey Ball on Gamecube
then its Typing of the Dead (DC) at Halloween and Tetris (SNES) at Christmas as per usual.

Baku Baku and Kaboom are new entries. Will be interesting to see how they go down.

nick_md

Fucking love typing of the dead, nicely transferable skills from beatmania

Picked up TotD: Overkill last year on steam, lovely stuff.

Overkill's a great game in general, a real surprise when it came out.

Moot_Geeza

I only ever played the demo of Baku Baku. I don't generally like free-falling block puzzlers, but that had something that gripped me enough to almost buy it on a couple of occasions. Tetris, Columns, Puyo-Puyo - I've owned versions of all but I've played Klax or Bust-a-Move more than all of them combined - I tend to appreciate titles with a little twist. Versus Baku Baku will probably be great for an office comp.

davyK

nick_md wrote:

Fucking love typing of the dead, nicely transferable skills from beatmania Picked up TotD: Overkill last year on steam, lovely stuff. Overkill's a great game in general, a real surprise when it came out.

Is there a 2 player mode with ToTD : Overkill? May splash out on that.

nick_md

Don't think there is, which is shocking. We booted it at work some time back for the sole purpose of 2p and I remember being gutted that I couldn't seem to find any option. I'll check tomorrow.

davyK

According to Steam it's 2 player co-op which is a bit of a shame.

davyK

Baku Baku - Sega Saturn was the game this week.

It's a 2 player puzzle game with a simple animal-to-food matching mechanic but it is implemented with that Sega panache - and graphically is a clean yet effective blend of 2D and 3D (the animals eat the food and are rendered as large cartoon-style munching animal heads in 3D). There's a weird soundtrack that features odd sounding instruments that reminded me of mandolins and harpsichords - it still looks and plays great.

After initial bewilderment this one went down really well. Any game that involves monkeys munching bananas and "boxed in pandas" is always going to be good value.

Again, playing this on the big screen via a projector brings the whole thing to life. Even though I could only manage a composite hookup the simple, bold graphical scheme held up well.

A match lasted on average about 3mins - perfect for the office lunchtime tournament.

This one comes with a hearty recommendation.

(I won by the way - was a close final but I squeezed out a victory with both of us with almost full pits in danger of topping out at any time - I just held on for the win).

mk64

who picked who in sf2 turbo?

davyK

It's been a couple of years since we used SF2 Turbo as a tie breaker…..I normally use Ryu but I went for Chun Li as far as I can remember.

davyK

Kaboom! - Atari 2600

day#1

Getting the 2600 set up for big screen play is "fun". It requires a VCR and a SCART to composite adaptor. The resulting image is a bit fuzzy but that's all part of the charm and more importantly it works.

Learning that you have to toggle the reset switch on the console to start a new game is one thing to get to grips with - but the paddle is another thing entirely. Was funny seeing younger guys struggle with the controls and trying a variety of different grips.

Maybe I'm a Kaboom savant but I don't remember finding my first games as hard as the competitors did. Kaboom is a pretty tough game but not that tough. Having said that there are some youtube video that show how hard this game is for a lot of people.

As a kid I played this game an awful lot but the PAL version runs slower as Activision did no PAL optimisation. So we are playing the PAL60 version of the game courtesy of the Harmony cartridge which allows ROM loading via an SD card. Maybe the extra speed is making this tougher on newbies. Speed really does make a difference with this game.

A small number of guys have been bitten by the bug - the top score is around the 1300 mark - not even half way to earning the coveted Activision patch but I guess not bad for a first day of play. Only 2 guys have scored over 1000 with the rest of the field hovering in the 400-600s.

One day to go. Will report back.

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