I mean since this is a fun contest with basically all friends i cant see anyone cheating either way. We could either do low score take 2 pics one of the level and one of your score or score as you are fighting last boss??

Or a high score no racking honor system would be my second choice but i think a low score pic followed by a second pic of where you are would be funnny

Side note point racking although infinite would be a total pain as at least as far as i can see is pretty tough as many of the hits i took were from changing direction and getting smoked by respawn

I tend to agree.  There will be issues no matter what the rules are and we will have to eventually use the honor system with whatever we agree on and a high score contest would be the easiest and least confusing, with the score screen not showing with the actual gameplay. 

The only other thing I'd throw out there is maybe everyone say what level they were on at the time of their score,  just for some indication.   I know we can't see it with the score, but it at least gives an idea where they were at the score and it can be used to cross reference.  Again, there are issues with that idea too, but whatever. 

I'm fine with a high score contest using the honor system, that plus I need the rules in place ASAP since I'll be gone this weekend and my time will be limited after tomorrow.  Selfish reasons, I know, but I'm honest

Alright, we'll go that route Bimmy!

Okay everyone, this will be a high score contest with no point racking allowed. We will be using the honor system here with point racking. I will update the rules in the first post to reflect this. I hope everyone enjoys Talespin this week, as I think it's a pretty fun game. I played it thoroughly for the first time last year and really enjoyed it. I feel it is a hidden gem on the NES.

Agreed!! I beat it today for first time very fun hidden gem. Thats what i love most about this contest it gets me to play games i never would. Love it!!

That's the main purpose of the contest!

How about playing for high score AND low score?

Explain yourself my good sir.

We could play one game as highest score and one as lowest score and average it out in the standings. E.g.,someone places 1st in high scoring and 3rd in low scoring. They get a composite placing of 2nd. I'm sure no one wants to do it,but it would make things interesting.

I was re reading the rules and noticed it said to take a picture when you lose your last life. Is that only if you don't clear the game? I'm asking because there's tons of 1ups in this game, and it would make my current high score with a life stock of 22 null and void. Do we have to suicide down to 0 if we reach Don Karnege?


Also, I was perusing the GameFAQs FAQ for this game and it's horribly inaccurate on bonus areas. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe there's 2 bonus stages in every level save the last one, which has none.

Off topic,but I'm glad you have joined competing in these weekly contests! We need more gamers like you involved in these threads.

83,400

This will be my only posting for the week since I'll be busy the rest of today. My plans have changed so I'll be leaving tomorrow and now not be back till Monday.

I got as far as to level four, to that wall with the hands. The level three boss took most of my lives thanks to its annoying randomness. Finding all the bonus stages is definitely a must.

I wish I had more time this week since I left room to improve. This isn't a bad little game and somehow was the only Disney/Capcom game I overlooked. I hope everyone has fun with this one.

63,600




Reached the 3rd boss and had my butt kicked a few times.

Only chance I'll have this week, due to the holiday weekend.

Can't say I'm really loving this game. The upside down flying to reverse-scroll is interesting, but I feel like it is badly implemented.
The shooting is super-clunky, and the enemy-killing is pretty unsatisfying.

Have you found 2 in level 1?

Alright everyone, I did some homework tonight, and there are indeed 2 bonus stages in every level save for the last. So with 7 out of 8 stages having bonus stages, that brings the total to 14. Not only that, but each stage has the same exact bonus stages, and in the same exact order. I'm going to refer to them as bonus stage A and bonus stage B.

Bonus stage A will always be the first bonus stage you encounter in any of the 7 stages. If you run into bonus stage B first, that means you flew past bonus stage A. In bonus stage A, you can collect every single piece of fruit from the balloons. You can accumulate a max of 9,400 points per bonus stage A. Bonus Stage B is a little trickier. You can't grab every piece of fruit in this one. Instead, you have to figure out the optimal route. I believe I found it, and depending on how quick you are with Kit (It's easy to get snagged on the clouds since his hit box is larger than his sprite)you will get a point total of either 11,200 or 11,700, the extra 500 coming from a banana bunch you can barely grab if you're moving through the area flawlessly.

So with those values multiplied by 7 and then added together, you can gain between 144,200 - 147,700 points just from the bonus stages. That's roughly 3/4's your total score. Factor in about another 25,000 from hidden fruit throughout the game, and an extra 15,000 - 20,000 from random enemy drops (minor point racking is unavoidable if you're searching for every hidden fruit/1up/money bag), and a score around the 190,000 - 200,000 area seems to be the max for this contest.

I managed a score of 186,200 tonight, but forgot to include my screen name in the picture so... another attempt tomorrow I suppose. I flubbed on a couple of the bonus stage B's so I know I could have done a little better in that regard.

Also, since 1ups are quite abundant in this game, is there any chance we could factor extras into our final tally ala the Jackal contest bimmy_lee?

Thanks I am on the hunt now.

Aww geeze, your making me blush.

I get a  kick out of 1cc'ing  8-16-bit games in my downtime.  After joining NintendoAge and finding out about this contest, it seemed like a sure fit.

I don't have this one but im going to play Karnov next week.

We've already played that one. :/

This is my first entry- and I know its a shitty score but I just wanted to try. I am not a huge fan of this game.

In fact, I stumbled into this problem Yesterday. I think there's a flawwith the fact you can actually get a higher score by either legitly losing or wasting your lives to restart the stages over. We could value each extra lives remaining when taking a score at 10,000 points, which would most potentially void any advantage in losing lives.

Thoughts?

I'm all for giving out bonus points with Talespin for lives remaining like we did with Jackal. Does 1,000 points per extra life sound reasonable to everyone?

1,000 points seems okay. Finally got a chance to dig into this game. It's not bad at all but two things about it drive me nuts. One is you start off with only one shot on screen at a time. Really?! I know you can upgrade,but for a shooter this is inexcusable in my opinion. The other is that items will always be scrolled by going off screen,yet enemies will always respawn. And often if you go upside down and backtrack,you'll spawn an enemy which will be unavoidable. And is it me,or does it seem like there's often a delay in response when trying to use the upside down maneuver?

1000 points is not enough cause it advantages someone that would lose lives over someone who doesn't. The purpose of giving points for extra lives here need to take in consideration the potential points someone could gain from losing a life and rebeating a stage (collecting points in doing it). From my observation, 10,000 would do the job for sure.