I'll start a thread here for the Robotron race to 100 million. Feel free to post your progress, your plans, your thoughs...

For me, I plan to do this very soon, if not even this week (4-21 / 4-28 2013)

You can follow my Twitch.tv channel HERE if you would like get in on the streaming action. I will be streaming some practice on difficulty 10 as well as my real attempt/s at the 100m point threshold.


Personal bests are..

5 man 835k
1 hour just over 5m
Marathon Just over 40m

-Ken

Welcome to the Aurcade Community Mark! Yes, Ken is quite the gamer, and promoter of classic gaming.

I've got a ways to go with Robotron. Lately, I've been working on it, and Tempest, the latter being my new favorite video game. As you can see on the Aurcade scoreboard, I'm working on my play and honing my skills to someday be a great player.

Have fun with your marathon attempts Ken! :) I'll be tuning into your streams when I'm able.

Happy Earth Day Everyone!

-Duc
nowornever12001@yahoo.com
www.awakeningthedreamer.org

I'm sure we won't have to worry about Ken rolling the men. They will work something out to keep track of the men won't you, and how did that work last time for you Ken :)
Bummer for Mike, but for the rest of us we get to watch more Robotron, Yay!

aiw2012 Wrote: As I said before, I got a ways to go become skilled at Robotron. I've been watching Ken's marathon stream and last night, caught the first hour of Mike's run. Both are very impressive. In the chat, I read about the rollover of lives. I was not aware of this. That's pretty crazy. I have a question about the scores listed on Twin Galaxy. Just as Doc Mack said in the 2/18/13 Galloping Ghost Arcade podcast, some scores are impossible. I'd like to know, which ones are not?

The top score of 348,691,680 is literally impossible, because all scores in Robotron must end in "00," "25," "50," or "75." Is this a typo? Could be. Is it a reported score that the gamer lied about and it slipped by whoever was doing the TG data entry of the score because they didn't know enough about the game to know what is physically possible? That's much more likely. In any event, it would take over three days of play to approach that score, and that's if the player was able to avoid clocking the extra man counter (rolling it over at 255 back to zero) and also avoid running out of lives just due to sheer fatigue. Oh, and also avoiding the corner rest bug, which is very tough to do over long games.

Eric Ginner was known to be not only a top notch gamer but also a highly ethical person with high standards for fair play, so his ninth place score of 112,000,600 is accepted by most if not all long-time competitive CAGers as 100% legitimate.

I remember reading discussion a few years ago that stated that Leo Daniels' eighth place score of 169,595,225 definitely happened. I do not recall where this discussion took place or who was involved, or who stated that Leo's score was witnessed and documented. Complicating matters is that Leo Daniels reportedly lied about a few scores back in the day. This one I'd categorize as unconfirmed until a couple of other gamers who can legitimately vouch for it step forward.

All Robotron scores above Leo's are questionable at best due to 1) the time involved to achieve those scores, 2) the unlikelihood that scores that high are possible due to extreme physical and mental fatigue in keeping up with such a relentless game like Robotron for so long, and 3) rug pattern resets are common enough on the ROM set revisions that existed at the time that it is virtually certain that no one credit game could last that long without triggering a reset.

Back then if a game reset due to something out of the gamer's control TG allowed the player to add one credit and begin a new game, if they did so immediately, and the scores would be added together at the end. There are likely lots of arcade marathon scores from back in the day that came about this way.

Well, the bar has been set... 50,005,000 .. 4/23/2013 Ended appox 8pm. 11h 30m including the time to kill off the extra men.

Whatcha got???

Scoundrl Wrote: Well, the bar has been set... 50,005,000 .. 4/23/2013 Ended appox 8pm. 11h 30m including the time to kill off the extra men. Whatcha got???

Congrats on a great game Ken and achieving the Robotron Gauntlet T-shirt and John Lexmark bounty! I got nothing yet, haha, my personal best is still only 314,950! I suspect you would've carried on to 100 mil if you hadn't had commitments and responsibilities the following days. Thanks very much Chris and Mark for your insights on Robotron and some of the history—very helpful. That 255 lives rollover is complete bs!

Well, I'm glad I read the chats during the streams, and Ken's own comments during his streams. My questions have been answered. That really sucks what happened with Mike...sooo close. The irony of Mike's stream was not lost on me

-Duc

Congrats Brotha Ken,

50M is a nice score to set the bar. Can you give some feedback how your arms felt when you stopped? Any blisters? was your mind playing tricks at any point?

respectz!

-ez

by the way, I had never heard of anyone clocking the lives in a Robotron marathon before, which we now know is a real threat over the long haul.

So I did a bunch more digging and finally found a reference from 2001. The original info is no longer online, but I found the text from an indirect reference on another site:

Walton Gibson- http://www.tripoint.org/games/games.html
Due to the 8 bit processor, the machine could only count up to 255. Once it hit 256, it “rolled over” to 0. This causes some interesting and frustrating things to happen:
Once you hit wave 256, you started again on wave 1. 2. If you get 255 extra men, and you reach that 256th extra man, the machine will roll over and give you 0 extra men. You still have the man you’re playing.
I lost two 25,000,000 point (6 hours each) games this way. Both times I was going for the record of, at that time, 100,000,000 points. I was quite pissed. I later rationalized it as giving the machine such a butt-whupping, that it quit. Rolling over your men is as close to beating Robotron as you can get.

Matt killed it for 1 hour. I have scored over 5.2 in game but never the FIRST hour. Awesome sauce.

As for how I felt after the game, it was NBD. I felt fine. I had some tenderness in my hands while I was playing but the next day I was 100%.

I would have went strait to the 100 million if I didnt have to work the next AM and just would not have had time to finish before I had to be onsite.

Next time I'll have enough time and I'll power thru.

-Ken

1500points Wrote: You should rethink the 100 million milestone. The facts are pretty evident, the person that does this on 1 play is going to be the only person who ever did it in 31 years of the game (first week of June is the anniversary).

I'm not a marathon type of guy... I've never played a single game of anything in the arcade for more than a few hours at a time. I lose interest once you get to the point where the game has nothing new to offer you. Too many other games I'd rather play to be stuck playing the same one until you get bored (or the game crashes, or you roll over your lives, or whatever). Doesn't help that Robotron is a very physical game, although I've been told that I use a lot less effort on the sticks than most people.

Ken really wants me to join the 50 mil+ club though...