Since there is not a way to reach ScalNeCuS via e-mail, I'll use this board and hopefully it will get his attention and possibly throw this particular game into the debate mill.

Concerning your (ScalNeCuS) latest submission for qbertjp, you have stated that TG settings were used. TG settings for Q*Bert and its clones have been re-adjusted as of 6 months ago. The new settings for the TG (or tournament) is 5 lives only. As there is no way to set the DIP switches to reflect this, you have to monitor yourself as to when your 5th life has been used. In the case of this recording you've made, your score would need to be changed to 133810. However, I don't believe that there has been a concensus for this game in regards to restricting submissions to "TG Only". In that case, your claimed score of 178580 is OK, but needs to have the TG tag removed.

So, I believe we need to make a ruling regarding this game and its clones. As was proven at Deca2000, TG settings are most likely the preferred way to go as was the case with Joust. Ken Thomas with his 7 million + score (with tons of extra lives in reserve when he stopped playing) is all one needs to see that this game is definitely in the "infinity marathon" category. TG settings is much more challenging and MUCH easier on reviewers of .inps. ;-)

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), August 17, 2000

Answers

I'm going to second what JoustGod said. I know... dittoing another person ain't original... but he nailed it... ask me when I went through the very small number of Q's I did... two of them were 2 million point Qbert games where I was pacing saying "get this game over with!" So that's now 2 - 0 in favor of using 5 lives and no extras in Qbert. Yes - it's a little more responsibility of the judges to count the number of lives used... but it's worthwhile and makes it more competitive.

GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), August 18, 2000.

Although I can't argue with what JoustGod says, does anybody else see this game's TG settings as a really poor way of setting up settings? Why not play with no extras? Failing that, even playing infinity marathon style makes far better sense than forcing a player to quit at an artificial game-over.

Meh. JoustGod is right, this matter should go to vote. My preference (in order: 1) 3 lives, 2) no extras; 3) current default settings; 5 lives -TG settings) is shown above. What do other MARPers think?

Sincerely, Q.T.Quazar, MARP Rules Coordinator

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), August 18, 2000.

Correct me if i4m wrong, but didn4t i mention Qbert beeing a marathon game (on default settings) on the "marathon discusion" in the beginning of the summer?

I could easily marathon qbert and at least get a couple of millions on it, but i prefer the 5 men only settings..(strange that there are no way to change it to five men only in the dipswitches..)

Regards

QRS

PS I understand QT4s point about the artificial death.. but as long as you only use 5 lives it doesn4t matter i think..

ps

-- QRS (qrs@telia.com), August 20, 2000.

It's my understanding from Deca2000 that there are actually 2 different TG settings for Q*bert. The default settings are TG for marathon games and the 5 man TG setting is for tournament games. The entire reason that there's a 5 man TG setting in Q*bert and some other games for tournaments is so that the people who can marathon the game will have to play more skillfully with the limited lives and thus truly use their skill to achieve a good score. It basically levels the playing field for everyone involved in the tournament.

I know that I got better at Q*bert while playing my 7 million+ marathon game and then rethought my strategy again to improve my Q*bert score when I was restricted to only 5 men.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether the qbert TG settings should apply to qbertjp or not. It's been a quite a while since I've played qbertjp, but I remember it being harder than qbert. Qbert doesn't seem to get any harder after about level 6, but I believe qbertjp continues to get harder after level 6. I think that everything continues to speed up, but I don't think I've ever made it to level 9 on qbertjp.

I know that there are other games with clones where I can tell little if any difference between the clones, frogger being an example. Donkey Kong Jr. is another example where there are some differences: screen order, enemy movement slightly different, etc. However, the differences in Donkey Kong Jr. don't make the game more difficult, just a bit different. So the same TG settings for the clones make sense.

I don't think it would be nearly as easy to do a marathon game of qbertjp as it is on qbert, so the same settings may not make sense in this case. However, since I did improve on qbert during Deca2000, I'd have to take a look at qbertjp again to see if I can get farther than I did 1 1/2 years ago when I last played it. If anyone has managed to get to level 9 and hold their own on qbertjp for even a short marathon session, I'd like to see the inp.

Kenneth Thomas (kft)

-- Kenneth Thomas (kenthomas@aol.com), September 11, 2000.