OK - here's what I've noticed

1st - the 9,999,990 scores in wardner were DQed for leeching - BBH and Game Guru I hope saw that one coming :)

warofbug - I was seeing a lot of just leaving the last "centipede" alone and shoot for 5,000 point bugs - I'm thinking of trying to make that a banned techique because the person is not proceeding in the game...

wwestern and wwester1 - NONE of the games played back - is this one of the games that won't playback wheater you like it or not?

Thanks for reading - GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), March 25, 2000

Answers

Man, I tried to bring up the Wardner leeching a while back but noone listened to me. It's just as well that they were deleted, but I want to point out that the leeching really only helps in the long run as long as you can finish the game, since it's used to build up the amount of gold (which can give you a lot at the end). Yeah, it's a lame tactic, but at least we reached the end of the game, right?

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), March 25, 2000.

BBH, I think u r right in what u r saying... The final score depends on how much gold u get in the game, this is going to get really silly, for instance; if u score say 1.5 million it's obvious i'm going to take my time finishing the game to beat your score, thats the way it is even in the arcade... when do we draw the line????? seeing as though u and me seem to be the only players who can finish the game I think those scores should have been left... anyway, thanx in advance for reading.....

ps. i'm waiting for this scoreboard to calm down before I upload any more recordings... ;-)

later

www.game-guru.co.uk ;-)

-- Game Guru (gameguru@cableinet.co.uk), March 25, 2000.

"when do we draw the line?" indeed. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort that's being done to police all the questionable recordings on MARP. But let's take another look at the "leeching" that Game Guru and I did...

I'm not sure of the exact amount, but going back and forth killing those birds on Stage 2, you can only gain about 50-55k on one life. Bonuses are awarded every 60k. So you can't do this forever, in the long run you'll end up losing all your lives if you keep doing this. The primary goal of this is not to build points, but to build gold. The end of the game awards bonuses for time left, lives left, and more importantly, gold. If you build up a ridiculous amount of gold you can get a ridiculous bonus. If you do not reach the end of the game, then you wasted your time.

It's also important to note that wardnerj and pyros give you a full minute less for each life, so you can not leech as much. I don't think maxing out the score is possible on these romsets.

So if we're forced to go straight through the game without leeching, you can't get much of a score. And then we have to find ways to "accidentally" die in other areas to try to build up a little more gold there. A score from excessive leeching might not be a good indicator of skill, but if one can finish the game to receive that huge score, then what more do they have to prove? The game has an end, and the player is eventually reaching it. It'd be nice if there was some bonus for finishing on one life, but alas there is not. So if you can find ways to earn more than 80k per life (which is what the game awards for lives remaining at the end), then I say go for it. And how much leeching is "too much"?

Finally, although I'm sure that others on MARP could finish this game if they put a little time into learning it, there's noone on here besides me and Game Guru who have finished it... hell, there aren't even any recordings for the romsets from anyone else! And I never got around to Pyros yet, there's an easy 2nd place waiting to be lapped up as well as 3rd place on all three romsets!

So I say keep the leeching and give us back our 9,999,990 scores dammit. :)

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), March 26, 2000.

I thought there was a discussion awhile back about leaching and games with ends. Like what to do with the extra lives.

Blacktiger/dragon is a game with an end and most players who finish have several lives left over. IMO, games with endings should be allowed to leach as long as the ending is reached and the lives are not awarded by the less than the amount of leaching (IE. 55K leaching and lives awarded every 50K).

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), March 27, 2000.