Items drop in a fixed order (similar to how The Legend of Zelda on the NES does it), with most of them being fruits that simply give points. However, some of the items are weapons or power ups.

Notably, one scoring trick is to use the bomb weapon on enemies riding on balloons, as it can rack up score quickly. This is because the bomb gives points for every frame, and balloons have a little bit of invincibility before they die.

There are also warps that can bring you to a different part of the current level, or another level altogether.

It gets tough, but it's really fun!

Back to another Atari game. This time, it's Paperboy.

I really love the concept of this game. You play as the newspaper delivery boy, throwing the newspaper to houses that subscribed.

But what about the houses that didn't? Well, of course you force them to read the paper by throwing papers at them too, but through their windows and doors! And run over their flowerbeds for good measure. That'll teach them for not subscribing!

The controls, however, are pretty awful. In part, it may be due to the fact that it's analog and I'm using an arcade stick (which has digital inputs only). But it just feels really unwieldy.

#Paperboy

Like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there are 3 courses/difficulties to select from, with the harder ones yielding more points. For instance, Hard Way has a 3x score multiplier, but you also have to contend with more people, cars and other obstacles getting in your way.

You also get more points if you throw a newspaper into a customer's mailbox, rather than the porch. And of course, you get points for destruction of non-customers' property. A lot of points, in fact.

At the end of each course is a training stage, where you try to hit targets with the newspaper while navigating around obstacles.

After the day is over, any customer who you failed to deliver to or whose property you damaged will unsubscribe from the newspaper, so you'll need to be careful.

The concept is so fun. If only the controls weren't so bad...

Maybe it would be a lot better using the actual bike-like controls on the arcade cabs?

(Btw, if you're playing in MAME, press left on the course select screen to fix a calibration issue. Otherwise, the game will keep forcing you to go left.)

I'll stop the posts for now, since I'm back home and need to finish up as many of the other games as I can.

I have some time, so I'll try to catch up with the posts.

This one is from UPL, and it's called Penguin Wars! This has been a source of rage for many during the event, but personally I thought it wasn't too bad. Nothing has quite been as infuriating yet addicting as Risky Challenge.

How this game works is that you are playing against an NPC. Each side starts with 5 balls, and the goal is to make sure the opponent has more balls than you by the end of the round. If you managed to get all 10 balls to the opponent's side before time runs out, the round ends early with your victory. Same applies if the opponent pulls this off.

#PenguinWars

So what about this game makes people so mad? See, if you get hit by an oncoming ball, you'll fall over and be stunned for several seconds. There's nothing you can do to speed up the recovery. But here's the catch: you can get stunlocked if you are hit by another ball while you are still fallen over. If you get hit just once, the opponent can easily grab nearby balls, throw them at you and hit you before you can get up.

To add insult to injury, the AI is VICIOUS. If it grabs another ball fast enough while you are stunned, it will delay to the last second before throwing the ball, so that it can run down the clock while keeping you stunlocked.

Adding to the chaos, the balls can bounce off each other, causing them to approach you at different angles instead of just head on. Halfway through some rounds, you are also able to throw the balls at an angle (normally you can only throw straight ahead), but I don't know how this ability is triggered.

When there are 30 seconds left, an invincible yellow blob appears in the middle of the board, which will bounce your balls back if you hit it.

Each loop consists of 4 sets/opponents. And from loop 3 onwards, you face off against 2 opponents at once! 

Anyway, for scoring, you want to get as many perfect rounds as possible (i.e. get all 10 balls to the opponent). You get points for every ball on the opponent's side, as well as for the remaining time.

You also get points for knocking the opponent over, but this isn't easy to do.

After each set, there is a bonus stage to get points risk-free.

The biggest source of score, however, is only accessible from loop 2 onwards. There is a different blob in the middle of the board from the very beginning, and this one isn't invincible. Each hit grants you a few thousand points, so you can get a perfect round's worth of score in a couple of hits.

I hope to at least get a 1-ALL of this game before the event ends! And hopefully when I do, I also get to rack up some score in loop 2 from the blob.

Right now, my current PB is the last set of loop 1. Those dang koalas and beavers...

Ladies, gentlemen and fellow Eldritch horrors in between, I interrupt this program to tell you:

I got my Penguin Wars 1-ALL 

Each opponent's AI is quite different. For the beaver, they are particularly avoidant of incoming balls. If you space out the balls close enough, you can throw them rhythmically in quick succession, preventing the beaver from crossing over and grabbing the other balls on their side.

I learned the strategy for this from Zerst, who has a crazy high score of 1.9 million. I only managed to pull it off once in the 3 rounds, but it was enough to give me the boost I needed to take down the tyrannical beaver.

So I lost the first round, got the strategy on the second, and in the last round...

I barely brought the round to a draw, so we move on to the sudden death round. This time, there's an additional bomb, which if the time runs out, will blow up whoever has it.

The thing is, I wasn't sure if this was how it really worked when I was playing, since I never witnessed it myself. But I suspected this may be the case.

The beaver tried to throw it to me when there were a few seconds left, but thankfully I chose to prioritise the bomb and threw it back in the nick of time. And sure enough, the bomb took precedence over the number of balls, so I finally won the set over the beaver!

I proceeded to lose in the first match of loop 2 :P

The tournament ended around 1 week ago, but I'm only getting around to posting the rest of my impressions now (uni student life  ). Most of the remaining will be quite brief, since I didn't get to play them much.

First one is Puzzle Bobble 3, which is a puzzle spin-off of Bubble Bobble. This is one of those puzzle games where there is a cluster of coloured pieces coming down from the top, and you need to clear them by matching them before they reach the bottom.

When you make a match, every bubble that gets disconnected from the anchor pieces will also fall and be cleared away.

#PuzzleBobble3

The more bubbles that fall as a result, the more points you get. The bonus increases exponentially, so for a high score, you need to take the risk of building large clusters, up to around 20 bubbles.

However, there's a catch. If you try to do this without paying attention, you'll typically see the bonus cap out at 1.6 million. So how do you get the big 10 million bonuses? The trick is that the match must be strictly 3 bubbles only (i.e. 2 already in place + 1 that you shoot).

With some practice (and luck with getting the right colours), you can pull this off in round 1!

The best players can pull this off 4 times in round 1, for a whopping 40 million points!

However, doing so can be tricky, as the colours you get are restricted to those still on the screen. If you clear out all the red bubbles for instance, you will not get red bubbles for the rest of this round. And with fewer colours, it gets much harder to build a large cluster.

What kinda sucks however, is that the colours you get are otherwise fully random, so you can get easily screwed over by the RNG. (It feels like the best puzzle games, like Tetris and Puyo Puyo, has rules for this reason.)

You also only get the laser pointer that lets you see where the piece will go in round 1. Afterwards, you have to just gauge the trajectory by eye. Sure, it's a skill, but I feel like it takes away from the puzzle aspect of strategically placing bubbles.

Like Darius, there are multiple branching paths, with each zone having a few rounds. As such, you can pick the zones which are easier for you.

Certain zones have a ring of enemies around them. I've never tried them out though, so I don't know what that signifies 

Next one is SonSon, made by Capcom. It's sort of like a horizontal shooter, in that it is an autoscroller, but it is also a bit of a platformer. There are 6 platforms that pretty much run through the whole game, aside for a few gaps.

The game is sort of based on Journey to the West, so Son Son actually represents Sun Wukong (or Son Goku as he is known in Japanese). Player 2 is Ton Ton, who represents Zhu Bajie.

There are no distinct stages per se, but you do get milestones counting down from 20 to indicate your progress. Which is sorely needed, because this game looks very same-y throughout.

#SonSon

Enemies appear in groups, and taking out the whole group will award bonus points. However, the enemy variety is pretty small.

You also get points for collecting the fruits and vegetables scattered around. Most of these don't award much, but collecting them spawns much higher value food items that give hundreds or thousands of points.

In certain spots, there are also hidden bamboo shoots. They will only grow out when you pass them by, and collecting them grants you 1000 points each.

After every fort, there's the good ol' Capcom Yashichi item, which gives a big bonus that increases in value after each fort.

Now for a game that I've actually played before: Spinmaster. This was featured in La Calice Cup 6 a couple years back. It's a platformer made by Data East, where you are trying to rescue Mary, the girlfriend of Johnny (player 1), while also piecing together a treasure map.

This was also quite a meh game, though I do like it more than SonSon. My only goal going into this was to get close to the score I achieved in LCC6, and I managed to pull it off.

Autofire wasn't allowed for Yolympics, which made it a bit of a pain to play (I have more to say about this, but I'll leave it for later).

#Spinmaster

Most of your score just comes from the end of stage bonus.

You can try to farm enemies, but they don't give many points. If you do, however, it's better to group them up and jump on them consecutively, since the bonus increases by 100 points for each successive jump without touching the ground.

There are treasure chests all over, some hidden and others not. These can contain weapons or piles of gold, the latter of which give extra points.

While there's a variety of weapons, you pretty much just want to stick to the dual shuriken, which is easily the best. Not only does it have the best DPS, you can also attack in every direction easily.

There are also treasure chests which contain life ups which heal you (you have 3 hits per life), bombs or 1-ups.

And yes, like a shmup, you have bombs in this game. Each weapon has a different attack for the bomb, but generally it does damage over a large area, if not the whole screen, and grants you temporary invincibility.

It's an alright game. I do feel a little more inclined to try and clear it some day, after revisiting it for Yoly.

And hey, the other nominated games that I've played before were Risky Challenge and Time Tunnel, so I'm glad this got in instead of those. Wouldn't have minded Special Criminal Investigation though XD

We have another platformer, and this one's a hack and slash too. It's Strider, or Strider Hiryuu in Japan, by Capcom.

I didn't get very far, since I couldn't figure out how to clear the jump in stage 2, but after seeing a playthrough of it, it seems like a really interesting game!

Unfortunately, in terms of scoring, it kinda sucks. You basically just farm points at each section until time nearly runs out, then you move on to the next to reset the timer.

The only attack you have is slashing with your sword, and thankfully we have autofire for this. You can also collect drones to help you shoot at stuff.

#Strider

Unfortunately, we played the vanilla strider ROM, which is a buggy, unfinished version. It doesn't even have the full soundtrack in it, with the first stage music playing for most of the later stages.

This is the result of some weird ruling by the organiser, since the nominator didn't specify a different ROM, so we ended up going with the inferior version. Again, more on this later.

Anyway, this is a cool game. Would like to revisit it some time and hopefully see more of the game.

This next one is a really interesting one: Super Locomotive, developed by Sega. I've never really seen anything like this before.

The goal of the game is to simply get from station to station, but along the way, you have enemy trains trying to ram you, while planes are doing divebombs on you and blimps try to stay above you to drop more bombs.

The screen is split into 2 halves. One shows a top down view, allowing you to see the tracks and help you navigate. The other is a side view, to help you see how high the aircrafts and bombs are.

#SuperLocomotive

There are 2 ways to defend yourself. You can consume a bit of fuel to release a puff of smoke, which travels behind you and destroys the first thing it collides with. The longer you hold down the button, the higher the puff goes before moving back. Good use of the smoke puffs will allow you to take out bombs, aircrafts and enemy trains without resorting to your other option...

... which is an invincibility. When you trigger this, you will increase your fuel consumption a lot for a few seconds, during which you won't die. You can take the chance to move into enemy trains or bombs to destroy them.

However, both of these require fuel, and you will need to use them because the enemies are faster than you are. So now we have to look at the top down view.

Fuel can be obtained from oil towers or trains carrying oil (you can ram into them safely). But they don't come by too frequently, so you have to watch out for them and navigate towards them, while you are also busy dealing with the enemies hot on your tail.

This game requires some multitasking, which results in a lot of hectic fun!

Meanwhile, you also have the awesome Rydeen playing the whole time. Have a listen to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAQOhNmybc

After you reach the station, there's a short bonus round where you try to shoot down planes with your smoke puffs. Unlike the main part of the game, the puffs travel straight upwards, so you can just spam it.

The number of planes that appear correspond to the number of enemies destroyed, and if you destroy all of the planes, you get a 3000 point perfect bonus.

And that's the gameplay loop. The game loops like this infinitely, but with some changes to the track layout, more enemies spawning and aircrafts dropping more bombs.

Really fun game, highly recommend 

The 80s are filled with so many interesting games like this one. If you aspire to be a game dev, you would be doing yourself a disservice if you don't try these games out.

A lot of the most unique games I've seen so far are old, simple arcade games. Sure, not all of them are good, but they still help to expand your horizons. You don't even have to play them for very long or get good at them to appreciate their eccentricities.

Last game that starts with an "S" is Swimmer. This is another old game, made by Tecmo (or Tehkan, as they were called back then).

This is also the point where I ran out of time and couldn't play the games much. Only played a couple of credits to see what they're about.

As the name suggests, you swim around in a river, avoiding enemies and logs. To help you with this, you can dive underwater briefly.

There are 4 stages, and each stage has a different enemy: turtles which freeze up when you get close, crabs which move side to side, water skaters that pause and charge towards you, and fish that swim around randomly.

#Swimmer

From stage 2 onwards, a power up will spawn occasionally (that looks like a bullet, which made me avoid it initially lol), giving you a few seconds where you can swim into enemies to kill them for points, like Pac-man.

At the end of each stage is a giant crab that has to be avoided.

There are also a bunch of fruits, which you can collect for points. On the side, you will see a tracker for strawberries, bananas, grapes and melons. At the end of each stage, bonus points are awarded if you fill out the strawberries. And at the end of the loop, you get more bonuses for filling out each row of fruit.

Filling out the melons can be tricky though. It seems like you need to do something special to make the last melon spawn, or else you'll reach the end with 1 melon short.

I only got as far as loop 2, which has more logs and enemies, but plays out the same otherwise.

Simple game, but it's alright in my books.

The second last game is Tapper, by Marvin Glass and Associates. Wait, it's not made by Budweiser? I would've thought so with how the brand is plastered everywhere XD

Anyway, you play as a bartender serving beer to impatient customers split across 4 bars.

This is another game where you have to multitask, because you need to make sure the customers don't get too close to you, or else they'll drag you away and cost you a life. Meanwhile, customers may send back empty glasses, which you need to catch, or you'll lose a life as well.

#Tapper

To help you with clearing out empty glasses, the bartender can slowly run along a bar, so that the glasses can be collected early. The bartender snaps back to the kegs when you switch bars.

You can also use this to collect the tips that customers sometimes leave behind, for extra points. But you usually can't afford the time for this.

Each time you serve a glass to a customer, they get pushed back a little. If they are close enough to the door, they'll get kicked out, and you won't have to deal with them again.

There's a bonus round after each level, where you have to keep your eye on the correct cup as it gets swapped around.

Time for the final game, ZuPaPa! This is developed by Face. It's a colourful platformer game, where you hit enemies to stun them, then walk into them to kill them.

You can also collect your kids (called Zooks) and throw them at the enemy to stun it. Killing an enemy while a Zook is on them will result in a star bomb, where stars spiral out from the enemy and can kill other enemies. The more Zooks are on the enemy, the larger the range of the attack.

This is the crux for scoring. If you take out all of the enemies with a single star bomb, you get a 100,000 point item. You'll also often get a 2x multiplier item with it.

#ZuPaPa

Often, enemies are too spread out for even a max range star bomb to kill all of them. To help with this, you can use your punch to push enemies around into a better position.

Alternatively, you can chain star bombs and still get the 100,000 point item. So, if you are fast enough, you can quickly collect the Zooks and toss them onto a nearby enemy before the star bomb hits them. Then, when they get hit by the star bomb, they'll release another star bomb!

You can get a power up after throwing Zooks a lot, which allows you to hold down the button to throw more Zooks at once. You can also get a speed up in a similar manner by jumping a lot.

There are multiple worlds to choose from, each with a few levels to clear. With how colourful the game is, the similar themes of the worlds, and the heavy emphasis on memorisation for scoring, it feels really reminiscent to Susume! Mile Smile, which I played in La Calice Cup 6, even though they are quite different in gameplay.

Anyway, this seems like a really fun game, and it's just a shame that I didn't really get a chance to play it during Yolympics.

And that's my impression for all 20 games in the tourney!

I also want to talk about the final day of the event, which was really exciting. My team had the lead, and we were ahead by 200 points (in terms of leaderboard ranking, so we were basically 200 places ahead across all of the leaderboards).

However, by the final day, the lead closed to 50 points, and the second place team was really HOT ON OUR HEELS. Sometimes we stretched the lead out to 70 points, and a couple hours later, it shrunk to just 10 points!

I freed myself up for the last day, so that I can score a few of these games more seriously.

I returned to Puzzle Bobble 3, to get at least 10 million points, since I didn't know about in my previous attempt. And I managed to pull it off!

Then, I played Penguin Wars and got the 1-ALL, which I posted about earlier.

I went back to Darius as well, and properly learned zone B and D, which helped me to double my score to over 1.2 million.

And finally, my team captain noted that I was pretty close to reaching stage 3 in Dogyuun, where you can gain a lot of points. So I buckled down and learned the first 2 stages properly, milked stage 3 with all of my lives and brought up my ranking by a lot.

My team ranking went from 18 to 12 (out of 21). And similarly, I ended up on 44th place on the global leaderboard (out of 84), with a total of 124 points.

Typically in Calice, I'm around the top 25%, so I'm underperforming a lot here. But given how squeezed for time I was, it's a decent ranking, I suppose. Nothing to be proud of, but nothing to feel bad about either.

In the end, we managed to keep the lead, beating the next best team by a mere 11 points! This meant that every bit of effort from every member actually mattered!

It always gets really fun when there's such close competition, no matter who ends up winning ^^