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There have been two games in recent uploads that have marathon settings where you could play forever if you didn't get tired of the game. It seems both games have rules we coule add to make them more interesting action replay wise.

A racing game that can be played for a long time by simply losing the race each time. Jyd demontrates that it's not necesarily marathonable but close, finishing about 90% of the games in last he gets a first place marp score of 84. We could add a rule where you must come in first or second to consider a round won. Or we could use a gambling rule where the score of the recording is the amount of money you have when you press esc.

http://marp.retrogames.com/r/grudge

Then there is eyes a completely marathonable game where the difficulty and speed does not change after level 8. We should keep the parent clone as marathonable just because a lot of effort can be put in to continue play. But one of the clones could be score on the first 8 levels alone with a bonus of lives left after the 8th. To promote efficiency of play

http://marp.retrogames.com/r/(eyes,eyes2,eyeszac)

good or bad to add more rules?

I'm also in favour of special rules avoiding marathon.
We have already some, the most famous is 1 loop only for Track & Field.
But I think this is a "case by case" basis.

For example, "eyes" can be patterned and we can have ties

You should probably add Juno First and Gyruss to this list as well. Both of those games are marathonable even on hardest settings, so a 5 lives rules for both of them as per other games is probably worth considering. As per others perhaps have one of them as allowing marathon settings for those that want to do this?

Cheers,
BeeJay.

How about score divided by frames times a constant sufficient to give a whole number.

If you're going to do this, better limit the score to after the first 5 lives for marathonable games like Gyruss, Galaga, Bump and Jump, Robotron, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluke, Time Pilot, etc.

A major problem with this would be, what do you do wth existing scores?

Frankly, I think it's better just to leave existing games alone and perhaps deal with new games as they come up.

-George

yeah for shooting games, limiting to 5 lives sounds right. Though when there exists an indestructable pattern for maze games, 5 live limiting continues to make it a marathonable game.

When it comes to gyruss, I would gladly have my scores deleted and upload new 5 ship only scores later on. Preferably on TG settings I understand that others might not want to do that though.

Or we could simply adjust the existing scores to that achieved after 5 lives.... I also have no problems with my Gyruss or Juno First scores being adjusted to the 5 lives values.

Cheers,
BeeJay.

Gyruss: 5 lives (but would be better to have two scoreboards, one for marathon's settings and the other with onl 5 lives)


Eyes: notingh to do that accept marathon's score and that's because of the limited number of lives (max 7) and because if you consider only the score of the 8 levels it's too easy to find tecnichs for hidden leeching ...

Eyes can be abused a lot in terms of leeching. I like the seed of the idea with limiting one game to marathon standards yet treating the clones as limited men/time style games. Needs more discussion as players will hopefully reveal the good and bad of any given game being limited.

The thing about making the clones limited life games is that the romsets are sometimes very different. Twin Cobra for example has significant differences between US, world and Japan romsets. Even if they're found to be the same, what about the already submitted scores? I think it would be a much better idea to just add a 5 life track to various games rather than overlap an existing one. No harm to previous scores and gives a fresh challenge for those who want to revisit certain titles.

JoustGod wrote:Eyes can be abused a lot in terms of leeching. I like the seed of the idea with limiting one game to marathon standards yet treating the clones as limited men/time style games. Needs more discussion as players will hopefully reveal the good and bad of any given game being limited.

Eyes has limited lives, so it's a nonsense "treating the clones as limited men ... style games". No much difference to have 1 life or 7 lives, when you are a master of the patterns.
Perhaps it's possible to think something about a time trial, but in my opinion also in this case would be better to have different rankings, for point and for time.
Eyes is one of the classic game of the 80's who was imagined for points, that's why the programmers didn't think about random ...

For Gyruss the better idea is to copy TG (marathon setting and tournament setting).

Marco Marocco wrote: Perhaps it's possible to think something about a time trial, but in my opinion also in this case would be better to have different rankings, for point and for time.

That's not bad too, adding speed runs to the MARP roster sounds interesting. Something of an untapped segment, never seen MAME speed runs about.

I like your idea, Marco. Timed games would be a very good idea. The only game I can think of with an actual clock on screen is Centipede - timed version. That was a lot of fun to compete on that title as it presented a more aggressive approach to playing. Exactly how to go about running a timed game might pose a problem. But, problems are made to be solved.

Eyes can be abused in a limited level/ one man game as you can simply sit at the bottom and pick off enemies infinitely. That's what I was trying to point out. I know those of us who have mastered Eyes patterns can play the marathon game. I'm just giving a tipoff to potential problems for attempting to limit Eyes in terms of levels or men earned.

oh yeah about the enemy pick off squaters. agreed, non marathon eyes should be timed and not level/life limited. I guess when phil comes back he'll have something to think about.