Golden Era Game of the Week 9/25/04: Congo Bongo

[Weehawk]

Golden Era Game of the Week

See introduction here

The Game: Congo Bongo

romname: congo

Screenshot:
(click to see current MARP scores)

Reward: $25 (usd)

Deadline for submission to MARP: October 1, 2004 2359 hours GMT

Further Bounty: $250 (usd) for exceeding 1,506,300 by January 1, 2005

I really want to do Kick-Man this week, but the analog overflow just makes it completely unplayable for me in modern MAME versions. Very disappointing. It seems to play smoother (and maybe slower?) in MAME .34 and earlier, but I didn't want to use them.

So once again I'm forced to look for a last minute substitute. In these cases I like to look for a classic, that I probably wouldn't normally play myself.....

Congo Bongo! This is not my type of game...in the extreme. I imagine the sales pitch would go something like this:

Salesman: "So yeah, you've got this little slow-moving hunter guy and..."
Me: "Uh...where's the fire button?"
Salesman: "There is no fire button."
Me: "So how do you kill the bad guys?"
Salesman: "You don't. They kill you."
Me: "Yeah, thanks. Do me a favor...tell that guy from Cinematronics to come in on your way out."

Anyway, I played just long enough to finish the first loop and start over, that's about enough for me.

I also felt like the scores on MARP for this title were a little soft compared to the arcade machine considering there shouldn't be much of a control disadvantage here. In the summer of last year Jason Cram eclipsed the previous world record on this title with a score of 1,506,300. An obvious target for a further bounty.

Use WolfMAME .86 or .87

[Ian Sutton]

Jason's score for each stage is really impressive. 33600 for the first stage alone! The top MARP score and my few games typically score only 20k for the first. Does anybody know what technique he is using to rack up so many points per stage? My only thought was that he was leeching (or whatever you want to call it - point maximizing) a lot on the charging rhinos with the pits.

[destructor]

Yes, only way are pits,, but how? I don't know. Game looks not hard but how do 35-40k per level?

[LN2]

I really want to do Kick-Man this week, but the analog overflow just makes it completely unplayable for me in modern MAME versions. Very disappointing.

yeah...many games..even ones I can play decently in MAME....are limited by the overflow issue.

if I can get my own build of macmame going, this is near the top of my list of things to overhaul.

[tar]

[Zhorik]

Jason's score for each stage is really impressive. 33600 for the first stage alone! The top MARP score and my few games typically score only 20k for the first. Does anybody know what technique he is using to rack up so many points per stage? My only thought was that he was leeching (or whatever you want to call it - point maximizing) a lot on the charging rhinos with the pits.

Yes, I think most extra points must come from the Rhino stage. When you get to the two pits in the upper right, you will only have one rhino and you can cycle between pits quickly for 1000 a pop. I've gotten over 34000 on the first level, but it was pushing harder than I can safely do. Average first stage score is more like 28K. You can also leech jumps on the 4th screen. Each jump of or on an "active" object is worth 100 pts on level 1, then 150 on level 2, 200 on level 3 up to a max of 350 pts. You can leech this a bit by either jumping rhinos at the end of the stage, or jumping up and down on a lily pad at the start of the stage.

-George

[Ian Sutton]

Jason's score for each stage is really impressive. 33600 for the first stage alone! The top MARP score and my few games typically score only 20k for the first. Does anybody know what technique he is using to rack up so many points per stage? My only thought was that he was leeching (or whatever you want to call it - point maximizing) a lot on the charging rhinos with the pits.

Yes, I think most extra points must come from the Rhino stage. When you get to the two pits in the upper right, you will only have one rhino and you can cycle between pits quickly for 1000 a pop. I've gotten over 34000 on the first level, but it was pushing harder than I can safely do. Average first stage score is more like 28K. You can also leech jumps on the 4th screen. Each jump of or on an "active" object is worth 100 pts on level 1, then 150 on level 2, 200 on level 3 up to a max of 350 pts. You can leech this a bit by either jumping rhinos at the end of the stage, or jumping up and down on a lily pad at the start of the stage.

-George

I see now. And gastrainga has kindly given a demo. Thanks.

[destructor]

Yes, thanks for demo. Now I think that 1,506mln is possible score.

[destructor]

Jason 298k only.

[Weehawk]

Results:
1st: Jason Cram
2nd: Ian Sutton
3rd: gastrainga

Quite a surprise there at the end. I had no idea that was coming. I checked with about nine minutes left and figured that was it. Nobody's ever submitted that late before. I checked a little while later just to make sure and laughed out loud when I saw Jason's entry.

And at the risk of convincing people to submit even later, it appears that Jason waited until the regular snipes came in with about an hour left, saw what he needed to beat, and did it in the last hour!

Welcome to MARP, Jason.

And this points up why I have requested players not previously known to me to notify me via email or PM before they submit their entry - I can only assume that the new forum member jkc is you, Jason. Anyway, I don't think anyone would go to too much trouble to try to scam me out of 25 bucks. PM me your Paypal email address Jason.

[dbh]

And this points up why I have requested players not previously known to me to notify me via email or PM before they submit their entry - I can only assume that the new forum member jkc is you, Jason. Anyway, I don't think anyone would go to too much trouble to try to scam me out of 25 bucks. PM me your Paypal email address Jason.

Sorry, part of that is my fault. Jason happened to stop by my house yesterday as he was helping another friend to move a couple of arcade games to my house for storage. I had mentioned to him before that CB was the game of the week, so he played a couple of games at my house. It literally was in the final hour so we were a bit rushed to set him up with a MARP account and a forum account, and I had completely forgotten about the pre-notification rule. But, yes, the new "jkc" account is his. It wasn't intentional to wait until the last minute, but he was very busy all this week helping his brother move.

Jason 298k only.

I think he only played three or four times total on MAME with the keyboard. I know he hasn't been playing much even on the real machine so his timing was off a bit (and if you watch the recording, that jump into the water was partly due to him being distracted). Plus, TGTS is on a harder difficulty and he said playing on the default easy difficulty was quite different. The behavior of the various creatures was different from what he is used to.

[Zhorik]

DBH, you mention that TGTS are more difficult than MAME defaults. MAME seems to default to Medium according to the Dip Switches, which is the same listed difficulty given in the TG writeup on Jason's world record, and is the same difficulty listed on Mark Longridge's TG MAME site. I'm sure if Jason sees a difference in behavior, it is real, but this makes me wonder if the Medium dip switch setting in MAME is actually correctly implemented, or if the TG writeup is incorrect and Jason's world record was on harder settings than Medium.

Or maybe I'm reading the MAME defaults wrong, but if I do a "clean" install, start the game, and check the dip switches, I see them as set to Medium.

-George

[destructor]

Yes, default is medium. I set hardest difficulty yesterday and I don't see any difference between medium and hardest.
Jason play on keyboard for GEGOTW (not on arcade controler) and this can be shock for him

[Zhorik]

The difficulty setting definitely affects the number of jumps you have to make to get the monkeys off your back on the first phase. It is Easy = 2 Jumps, Medium = 3 Jumps, Hard = 4 Jumps and Hardest = 5 Jumps. I don't know what else the difficulty setting affects.

-George

[dbh]

Zhorik,

You are correct. The default difficulty is indeed medium, and the number of jumps to get the monkeys off your back is the primary indicator. When Jason was playing, he said that the rhinos where behaving differently than what he was used to. He said that's normally the easiest board for him but he was losing men on that screen. I'll mention this thread to him and perhaps he will be able to respond.