Hello dudes and dudettes and welcome to the latest installment of the most excellent and rad Weekly Contests!  Bimmy-Dude here to tell you about some wicked awesome and rad games going on in the U S of A.  It’s time to leave Mother Russia, so pack your suitcases full of vodka and bid farewell to our firebreathing Iron Shiek look-a-like cuz your next stop is taking you to the sunny California coast for the California Games!  Bimmy-Dude, you say, what’s the California Games?  Well you most excellent gamers, the California Games features some totally tubular and exceptionally exciting extreme sports action!  Pack your skateboard because you’re gonna be hitting the half pipe to show off your rad skating skills.  You’re gonna need the practice to take on Lester later this year in Skate or Die!  Grab your Hackey Sack and toke it up in the foot bag competition.  Besides, who wouldn’t want to play Hackey Sack with this guy?
 

 
Don’t forget your roller skates because you’re gonna be skating down the golden beaches checking out some hot babes.  Schwing!!  Also bring your BMX bikes and show the whole world that Dave Mirra is nothing but an amateur.  And last, but not least, bring your Frisbee for the ultimate game of flying disk and show everyone that all those years of throwing Frisbees in the dog park to show off in front of all the girls has finally paid off.  And if you succeed and dominate the California Games, you can become a big rockstar and live in Hollywood…like this guy:
 

 
Bimmy-Dude, you say, I want to be a big rockstar and live in Hollywood like that guy.  Sign me up and show me the rules!  Well, I thought you righteous and excellent gamers would never ask.  Here are the rules:
 

• Select Compete in some Events
• Register your name and select your team name
• 1 player only
• Select Half Pipe, Foot Bag, Skating, BMX, and Flying Disk
• Try to get the highest score possible in each event
• Take your picture on the High Scores screen.  If you are unable to beat the high scores, you may also take your picture after each event is over.  Be quick to take your pictures if you take them after the event is over since the results screen doesn’t stay up long
• Add the scores of the five events together to get your final score
• Highest combined point totals wins
• GENRE: Sports

The contest ends Sunday, 5/11/14 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed.  You must take a picture of your computer monitor.  There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers.  Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, or save states if playing on an emulator.  Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests.  The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed.  Good luck everyone and have fun

The almighty deathrock!!! I hear he kicks a mean sack!

I really like this game and its' catchy tunes,but honestly I'm quite terrible at it so I'm probably going to get my sack kicked. Wakka wakka!

My next door neighbor had this awesome game lots of fun..... To this day i have never recorded a point in halfpipe haha

I've never completed the bmx or rollerskating courses. It does make me laugh when I see the characters wiping out though. And although we aren't competing in it,it's funny watching the shark go after the surfer after he wipes out.

I played a lot of California Games, particularly BMX and rollerskating, on my C-64 growing up. Hopefully my skills translate to the NES version.

This should probably be forbidden. An excerpt from a walkthrough:

"the score can be run up very quickly by pedaling forward to have some speed, then press SELECT
to apply the brakes. The BMX will now sit stationary but it's wheels will
still be rolling. This will allow the Biker to do a basic Jump and quick
Table Tops for as long as he wishes, possibly maxing out the score."

I'm just worried about people doing "bitchin' ollies" or "gleaming the cube".

dont worry bro

unless Christian Slater is playing this week, NO ONE will be gleaming the cube

Scoring in this game is pretty bizarre.

Seems like the bulk of score is going to come from a REALLY good game of footbag, and then another big bump depending on how well you do at BMX.

I am literally halfway good at this game. I can crush the high scores for the half pipe and foot bag,but just can't beat them on the skating,flying disc,and bmx events. In fact,I have yet to complete the skating and bmx courses. The hit detection for those events in my opinion is pretty crappy,especially the bmx event as often I wipe out when it looks like I cleared an object.

I have no metric of what "good" is in this game.

So far, I have seen:

(1) just over 20k on the half pipe being easily repeatable.
(2) anywhere from 30k - 70k on the footbag (really want to get to the max variety bonus of 99k but I can't make a horseshoe work, at all... also my right outside foot always seems to do a Jester instead)
(3) skating, I might be able to break the posted score, so in the ballpark of 2k, at the moment
(4) I've finally got a bit of a hang of BMX but can't quite break the posted score (so just shy of 33k)
(5) frisbee.. what the fuck... how is 600+ even possible?  Seems like with a perfect green/green, I get maybe 300 points


I've never completed either skating or the BMX course, though, so I don't know if there is any extra bonus for hanging in there successfully.



Update:  still haven't completed BMX, but I definitely think "the decider" on this contest is going to be:
(a) how much variety you can get on the footbag
and
(b) how long you can hang in there and do tricks on the BMX course... I have seen well into the 60's/70's on that course, I wouldn't be surprised if you can get more points on BMX than you can get in all other events combined.

The frisbee you get extra points for the other girl catching it. I didn't realize you could move that character at all. For the longest time I just watched it sail over her head. But basically you want to wait as long as possible to catch it to maximize distance points. Each catch is worth different points. I think it's anywhere from 150-350 points,depending on the difficulty of the catch.

I know you're supposed to be able to, but it seems like whenever she catches it it isn't worth very much.

overall, even a max frisbee score is worth less than one extra 360 on the bike course.

I'm wondering if adjusting the point value of some of these events would have been a good idea. Like multiplying X10 the frisbee score to make it worthwhile in the whole portrait.

Yeah,it's pretty tough. I think the best I've gotten is like 570. The bmx I've gotten around 15kish and skating 1600.

The half pipe is easy to get 20k as long as you don't wipe out. The footbag is probably the most fun event in my opinion. Best I've done so far is a shade over 50k. Doing the variety of tricks is definitely the way to go. And if you can chain them together and save a bit of time,even better.

Too late  (and you'd need to multiply frisbee by 100x to make it matter, I think... even then, it is a fairly "binary" event of success/fail)

And it is tough to say what "good" is going to look like on the other games, anyway.

Yes, a "good" score on skating is probably still only going to be 2 or 3 BMX tricks.

But half pipe, footbag, and BMX all have real value (though only footbag and BMX can break 100k, and BMX may be able to do WAY more than that... tough to tell at this point in the competition)




I think, if anything, it should have been exclusively a footbag or BMX competition, with the logic being that:
(1) skating and frisbee are "throw aways" in terms of being worthless
(2) half pipe is a "throw away" in terms of point differentiation... 20-21k is easy and repeatable, and it's not clear you can do a whole lot better on that one, anyway... so all it does is shift everybody's total score by 20k.


Footbag takes some real practice and creativity to get a good variety going with minimal wasted time and a few of the tricks are pretty tough to do, so that sets up break points in the scoring.

BMX is an interesting beast.  I feel like I've figured out a scoring method that is highly valueable AND repeatable, it is just a matter of me learning the course to be able to stretch it out.

The only thing about the bmx event is the fact that it can be easy point racked using that method I posted. A contest using only the footbag event would probably be ideal,but playing in just one event minimizes the fun factor. Maybe if the bmx event was omitted and the rest retained. That way the footbag would be the major decider with the other events being for auxiliary points.

You have to do a distinct and easily avoided cheat to rack bmx like you are suggesting.


there are still plenty of points in the event without cheating.

This is true although it would prevent the temptation,lol. I'll be hally just breaking the bmx high score.

Well, I haven't beaten the high score on Skating, yet, and I think I've only ever caught the flying disk twice... but I did manage an error free half pipe, only missed the horseshoe on the footbag, and finished the BMX course (though on the BMX course it seemed like it made me ride off the end of the course and wouldn't let me stop on the finish block, so I'm sure I missed some kind of completion bonus).

I'll get a pic posted later but as a placeholder I had:
Half Pipe: 23,535
Foot Bag: 108,000
Skating: No score (it was only around 1000 anyway)
BMX: 103,240
Flying Disk: No score (it was only 300 )

Composite Score: 234,775

Now, I saw the high score video out there for Footbag, and it is possible to evidently get 200k+ on just that even if you do ALL the tricks (I have NEVER pulled off a horseshoe, but if I can figure it out, it would have upped my score by 50k)

I'm sure another 50k - 80k can be extracted from BMX.

You know about the secret trick in the footbag,right?

Yes, but it doesn't count toward your combo total, so I doubt it is worth the effort.

EDIT:  Removed old score of 141,459 (18629 + 87470 + 2070 + 32660 + 630)

It's about time we had an "official" score, so here is mine.  Heck yeah for topping all the high scores!!  =P

I've done all the tricks in footbag (save for the secret trick) and if I can string it all together I can have a much better score there.  BMX really frustrates me ... I think my best in practice was ~40K but I tend to fail often and early.  Everything else is just icing on the cake.  I really wanted to see if I could beat the posted score on everything and I did, so that's enough of an accomplishment for me.

I really wasn't having much fun at first, but I think the game is starting to grow on me.

^^^ I definitely want to break into the high score chart on skating and flying disk, but there are a couple of skating spots I can't seem to navigate (where there are two or three consecutive jumps) and I can't catch that Frisbee to save my life.


EDIT: and I FINALLY pulled off a "horseshoe" earlier this morning, so when I get to put in another solid run-through, I'm expecting at least a 40k-50k jump in scoring on the Foot Bag event.   The trick seemed to be needing to start with my left foot and make the second hit with my right calf (whereas the instructions describe it as hitting it with your right foot).

Now I just need to work on my Doda's (seem to be hard to do than the Reverse Doda) so I don't accidentally do a Jester instead about half of the time.

And seeing the 99k combo bonus is super-gratifying!

Beating the high score on Flying Disk is almost stupid-hard.  You have to have a combination of a perfect/near-perfect throw and a catch as late as possible.  Seems the best way to do that is to dive left at it, which seems like dumb luck until you accidentaly catch it for the first time.  =)

I've got a good idea on how to pull off a great run in Footbag.  Not to get ahead of myself but I think I could have one of the best scores in that event, though I'd be doubtful to cover for that in BMX!  =P