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Golden Era Game of the Week

See introduction here

The Game: Alpine Ski

romname: alpine

Reward: $50 (usd)

Deadline for submission to MARP: June 3, 2004 2359 hours GMT

Further Bounties: $100 (usd) for exceeding 500,774 by August 31, 2004

Comments: I used to play this in the arcade to relax in between "real" games. I don't remember it being nearly this hard. Maybe my reflexes are just gone.

You get extended time after 25,000 points, and every 12,000 after. Getting to 25k is the biggest hurdle.

On the bonus jump: tap the thrust to start down the ramp, then press it again as close to the end of the ramp as possible and hold it down until you land.

Again, just in case anyone finds a way to play indefinitely, or just gets good enough at the game to play too long, I will impose a one hour time limit. Whatever score you have after 216,000 frames will be the score I count for GEGOTW. I don't want anyone to feel obligated to play for eight hours trying to win the money. The further bounty, however may take more than an hour.

Playback on this one presents a problem I have not encountered before. I was not able to play back my own recordings in any WolfMAME version I tried. They desync. AlphaMAME works fine however.

Let's use AlphaMAME .70 on this one.
http://marp.retrogames.com/exe/alphamame-070-1.zip

And let's have another crack at the arcade machine record reported by Twin Galaxies as 500,774 by Eric Olofson, November 23, 1982.

John, your bounty is using an unfair comparison.


It should be noted your bounties are for playing the game using MAME default/MARP settings....NOT TG settings. TG settings are quite a bit easier.

A quick looksie at the TG settings page for alpine ski shows:

Alpine Ski - Starting game time: 2 minutes Yes
- Additional game time at 10,000 and every 10,000

max jump bonus at 4k

I have no idea if that just over 500k score was played at these settings.

Getting those additional 2 minute loops each 10k results in 20 when you hit 200k at TG settings..which is likely what the 500k score was using..., versus 15 at MARP settings.

Either way, not sure 500k is really possible. On my 200k runs I was nearly "perfect". I had something around 170k before my first crash running at 100% speed almost all the time...yet barely got over 200k.

After so many loops, it gets where the 2/2:30 loop counts down in only a few seconds.

Even with an extra 5 loops of time, that would only allow you to get through maybe 1 more stage.

Perhaps there is some other difference.

I see the end of level bonus for default MAME in modern versions is 0:20 per level. I think when I posted my 200k scores to MARP I was only getting 0:10 end of level time bonus.

That difference means a lot cuz you can stay on that first loop of time much longer...where it ticks down slowly. etc.

This might mean the difference between my 200k scores and the 500k score. I haven't played the game since.

I'll have to bring this up with the TG board as their settings mention nothing about the time bonus for each end of level setting.

Three things:

1) The deadline on the original post should have read: June 4, 2004 2359 hrs GMT, not June 3

2) Frameskip appears to affect playback on this one, so do not use autoframeskip

3) For the "further bounty" you may use TG settings

Results:
1st: Sampras
2nd: SJK

Well, a two man contest this time.

And we have a new winner.

PM me your paypal address, Sampras.

Well done.