Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Weekly Contests!  This week's game lets you play as the Trojan Man....what did you think I was talking about?  You play as a Trojan soldier and bash some skulls in Anicnet Greece in, what else, Trojan!  Here are the rules:

• 1 Player Only
• Play until Game Over
• Take you picture on the Title screen
• Highest score wins
• GENRE: Beat 'Em Up

The contest ends Sunday, 9/28/14 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

All right, back to a fun game

What about point racking? Don't the enemies respawn in this game?

You only get one 1up from points and that's at 2000.  Other than that, there's two you can collect in the later stages of the game, one being completely random out of three objects to hit.  Now, I don't know if you can collect them, die, and collect them again, but if not, I don't see the issue to point racking.  It would be similar to Karnov earlier this year.  This game has a short countdown timer so learning how to maximize your scoring potential is going to take skill and is a major risk/reward deal since it's really easy to die if you screw up in this game.

Does anyone else's copy of this game kinda do a little screen flicker as you're playing?

Just had my first few tries and scored just under 40k. Trying to max out points by killing people until the time runs out could turn out to be a little bit tricky. If you aren't careful the enemies can drain your health pretty fast.

It happens in mine too.  I wouldn't be surprised if Pony Canyon programmed this game like a lot of other early Capcom NES ports.  Their efforts are... average at best.

Ah, I forgot it had a time limit!

If you manage to survive until the time runs out and waste your lifes like that you can get 100k just by farming the enemies in the first level. The second level boss is a pain to beat but if you make it past him there's a 1Up waiting for you in level 3

Going to try and post a score this week.

Who's been posting the top scores the last few weeks?

1-life rule would be pretty rough on this one (given that it is an already brutal game), but if grinding is that valuable, it kind of sucks the challenge out of that first tier of scoring, since on a normal play-through, you only have around 40k pts by the time you reach the second boss... (didn't grind at all, so not sure what the base time would convert into on a single life)

So whether grinding is allowed or not, I got 117,950 without leaving the first screen.

So, are we allowing point racking this week? I played through last night with no point grinding and only made it to the 4th boss stage at around 60K.

If you can get nearly 120k without leaving the first screen, I think we should make it a one life contest, since "accidental racking" is sure to happen given the constant onslaught.

Similar to what we had to do on kabuki quantum fighter.

Kabuki Quantum Fighter turned into a one-life contest because you could score points fast enough to keep on earning lives.

I think Trojan will play out more like Karnov where the best scores were with selective grinding plus progress.  Based on what I've played so far, I get the feeling Trojan will skew toward having a more competitive score just by grinding Level 1 than when we played Karnov, but the best scores will still come from striking the right balance.  So I think the current rules are fine.

That wording is horrible so I hope I explained myself well enough. 

The only reason a one-life contest would be interesting here is because the difficulty seems pretty high for that kind of challenge, at least to me.

Yeah, I see your point.

The good grind-zones in Karnov involved actually getting somewhere, though, versus just battling on the first screen.

I suppose the upside for difficulty on Trojan is that the health and timer are shared for every two stages, meaning you can't reliably get your grinding done early AND make progress.

Final Stage 540,450



I've been practicing this game quite a bit since I'm on vacation from work this week, so let me tell you why point racking should be allowed.

1. Lives are finite. You only get one extra life from points, and as far as i can tell, there's only 3 1up icons throughout the game you can collect, one being a roulette situation that's not even guaranteed.

2. Point racking takes skill in this game. It's a major risk/reward situation. I don't want to give away my high score secrets, but I will tell you now that point racking your first few lives on stage 1 is a huge waste of time. There's much more lucrative (and very dangerous) spots to point rack at later on.

3. Strategy is key. While you'll want to find an optimal spot to point rack your lives away in this game, you'll also want to do light point racking on almost every stage, figuring out how much of the timer you can waste on doing so while still being able to clear the stage.

I left at least 10,400 points on the table since I didn't defeat the two mini-bosses or the final boss(worth 10,000 pts. alone).  I like to point rack this last section with whatever extra lives I've accumulated after Stage 3 since you can get high jump boots to kill the flying enemies, but it's rough not to get hit when the regular baddies keep coming at you from left & right.

Wow. Nice score.

Would it be easier to make it a low score contest this week?

That would certainly motivate efficient and aggressive play.

My only concern would be distinguishing where you are.

Maybe taking a picture on your last life?

I mean in terms of that picture adequately revealing where you are in the game.

I probably haven't looked at enough of the game to get a feel for how much contrast there is, but it all kind of blends together to me right now

I thought I had mentioned it on the first day of the contest, but apparently I did not. Point racking will be allowed for this contest since there is a timer. If anyone knows of any spots where you can exploit point racking to create an infinite life loop, please mention it here so we can make it forbidden to do so.

I completely forgot to mention it as well, sorry guys.

Point racking is allowed for this contest, and Balloon Kid pretty much explained why it is the way to go. There's no loophole in the game to make extra lives, you only get one with the score and a few 1ups in the game that you can only collect once.

Use the timer wisely and try to find the best spots for point pressing!

512,800 Final stage