Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Weekly Contests!  This week's game is going to be P.O.W. Prisoners of War.  Here are the rules:

• Play until Game Over
• No point racking
• If you score less than 20,000 points, be ready to take your picture at the Game Over screen (it doesn’t stay up long)
• If you score more than 20,000 points, start a new game to get your score
• Each extra life remaining after beating the game adds 5000 points to your score.
• Highest score wins
• GENRE: Beat ‘Em Up

The contest ends Sunday, 11/16/14 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be written on a piece of paper and 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

Alright, been looking forward to this one. Haven't played this game in a long while, but this contest is a good excuse to finally give it a good thorough playthrough.

This game is way harder than I remember.

Lots of ways to get a cheap instant-death...


EDIT:  also, definitely one of those game where once you die, you will probably die repeatedly since you lost your armor and your brass knuckles...

After a couple of games I was able to make it to the jungle (level 3) without dying.
But if you lose your armor in the jungle you are pretty screwed...


2nd EDIT:  I noticed 1-ups at 40k and 60k.  Anybody know if the trend continues?  (apparently no 1-up at 80k)

I THINK the next 1-up is at 120k...

Score-99700 Middle of 4th Level

Im almost positive I got a 1up @ 90K...seems like every 30K you receice 1

We should probably all post exactly where we got our game over so we can all weigh in on point-racking concerns.

BTW, up to the middle of level 4 the only real point-racking spot is the 1st boss, since everywhere else is a fixed amount of enemies.



Made it to the last boss with a continue and the only other point-racking zone is Level 5 which is one big boss fight against a tank.



Interesting scoring/pacing observation:

Level 4 is worth around 50k points by itself, and you end up with around another 40k for completing Level 5, making Level 4 and 5 together worth more than Level 1, 2 and 3 combined.

Level 6 is short and not worth very much (around 10k just for the shotgun guy), but I suspect the last boss has a big kill bonus.

EDIT TO ADD: looks like a 50k bonus for the last boss.

So as a reasonable top score (killing pretty much everybody, clearing all buildings, but avoiding grinding boss 1 or boss 5) I am seeing:

(including boss bonuses of each level)
Level 1: approx +20k -- total 20k
Level 2: approx +40k -- total 60k
Level 3: approx +30k -- total 90k
Level 4: approx +50k -- total 140k
Level 5: approx +40k -- total 180k
Level 6: approx +60k -- total 240k

Game Complete Target Score -- approx 240k


If anybody manages to do much better than that pace, please explain yourself, because I was pretty thorough in my play through, I think.

The only thing I "missed" was managing to consistently kill the motor cycle guys, and I have no idea how much they are worth.


2nd Edit: I just check twin galaxies, and Tom Votava had a 254k top score, but that involved being able to re-enter huts (which I didn't realize was even possible).  If you can re-enter huts, there are at least 2 or 3 huts with shot-gunners, and a number of other huts with 6 blue guys, easily making up the difference between the 240k target and Tom's score.

I don't think there is any way to get that high with our rule set, though, since re-entering a hut is DEFINITELY point-grinding.

Sounds about right.

I always thought it was kinda silly that Twin Galaxies had a no-point racking policy but still allowed multiple trips through all the doors.  The rulemakers seemed worried about people DQ'ing their runs by accidentally re-entering rooms.  Never made sense, since you could just as easily DQ by going through a door 3 times.

Well, I can think of a few places where re-entering the room to get a fresh power-up would be nice (whether some extra health, or to get another suit of armor if you died and the door was still visible).

I made it to the 2nd-to-last boss last night, so I suspect we will have multiple "games completed" this week.
(probably would have beaten the game, but for some reason I let one of the knife-wielders in Level 6 wipe out my extra lives...)

Any thoughts on tipping the final scoring balance by rewarding lives-remaining? (pic would need to be taken after the background goes black when the last boss dies)


I feel like it would reward solid play (where reaching the end on 1-life would be worth considerably more than scraping by on your last man)
and would simultaneously smooth out the variation of "accidental point pressing" on Boss 1 and Boss 5 (since the scores on both of those segments is a function of how efficient you are at wiping out the boss -- with efficiency being penalized in our contest).

Something like 10k per life would be ample, I think.


Thoughts?

I honestly wouldn't want to do extra lives for "bonus points" mainly because I like when the final scores can come down to only winning by 100 points. I believe it makes the game a little more competitive without penalizing individuals who may die a little easier. Just my opinion.

It is a trade off between penalizing somebody for not accidentally point pressing and rewarding them for strong survival play.

The problem with with winning by 100 on his one is that it is the difference between killing one extra guy during a boss fight, or not, possibly in violation of the rules.

Extra life bonus points (which we have done in previous contests) would completely eliminate the variance due to how long it takes you to kill boss 1 and boss 5 ( in both situations the lesser player is rewarded with more points unfairly)

So I beat it last night by the contest rules and was a couple hundred points over my 240k estimated target.
(only had 3 lives in reserve, 2 of which were awarded for the boss bonus rolling up the score)

FOR THE JUDGES: I can say with certainty that the only way to do better than my score is to either:
(a) kill more guys during Boss 1 and Boss 5 (questionably against the rules)
or
(b) somehow rifle-butt kill everybody in the game so that you can shoot the assholes that come on from the left-hand side to shoot or throw knives/grenades
or
(c) actually kill a large percentage of the bikers

I killed every normal enemy (obviously), cleared every room, and killed every "right-hand-side" enemy.

Given that "accidentally" milking Boss 1 or Boss 5 is the most likely score differentiator (+/- 1k-2k pts, probably) I STRONGLY recommend my notion of awarding bonus points for lives remaining after the final boss.

You get a bonus life every 30k pts, so a "perfect" game would yield: 2 starting lives + 30k + 60k + 90k + 120k + 150k + 180k + 210k + 240k

So 10 lives remaining for "perfect" play.

(BTW, If you beat the final boss you will probably have 2 lives remaining, since he is worth enough to roll you from below 210k up to 240k, awarding 2 lives in the process)

What about turning this into a furthest progression + lowest score? It would get rid of the accidental point pressing problem in bosses and would only change slightly the best way to go through the game?

We could just turn you into a lowest score + furthest progression instead! Silly Canadian Frenchies I kid

If point  pressing is an issue, that would probably be the best solution IMO

That would be a sane way to handle it.

It rewards maximum efficiency on the bosses and it rewards skipping power-ups if you're really hardcore, while simultaneously eliminating any inadvertent unfair advantage gained from point-pressing.

I intend to start playing this one tonight, so someone decide before I start playing, please.

I'm good with either option suggested so far (extra lives bonus or furthest progression).

That was my reasoning based on the last time we played this game in the constest. If you don't need to go in hut taking some power ups you also avoid oppotunities to boost your score.

LMAO! It is very hard to go any further through me while keeping a low score, lol.

Actually, I take that back.

It breaks the current rules since you can't record progression easily with the current rule set.
At least with my way you have some time to pause and take a picture after killing the final boss... I don't think that works on your last life in a normal game.


Bonus points for lives after the final boss solves the problem 100%, IMO, while keeping the current picture taking rules in tact for everybody who doesn't beat the game.

Low-score/progression introduces a can of worms for everybody else that they just don't need to deal with.  (for 90% of the people playing progress will be directly indicated by a "high score" attempt, anyway)

Can you pause the game after losing your last piece of life?

Yes, just checked, you can pause as you die.

Some of the scenery might be ambiguous, though (internals of special rooms, for instance).


I'll leave it to you to decide which you think is a bigger hassle to judge.

If the furthest progression + lowest score is that problematic, I'd go with a reasonable extra point rewarded for beating the game with extra lives. Last time we didn't had this problem cause we played it 1-life.

How much one could muster by intentionally spoiling a life on boss?

What do you mean in your last sentence?




Yeah, it's just unfortunate how ambiguous certain areas are (things that repeat, etc) since I doubt anybody is nearly as familiar with this game as we were with TMNT 2 or any of the other "progression" games.

Lots of places just blend together.

I guess the reason I like the bonus-points-for-lives idea is that it is a change that ONLY impacts people who actually beat the game.  Everybody else is going to be differentiated by score, and that score is more-or-less a direct function of progress in this game.

I meant, how much points can be earned in extra if someone die on purpose at a boss?

You don't get points for dying on purpose.

You respawn immediately in this game, so you don't retread levels or anything like that.

Ahhh, nice, so does 2000k per extra lives sounds good?