I overlooked this post.

Your score can be okay cause it wasn't intentional, but we require everyone to press on pause as soon as possible when 0 appears on the life counter to take a picture of their score. There's still a slight chance an egg come right in the way and you press a few miliseconds later, but as long as you honestly try your best to pause the game fast it is okay.

Yeah, I've seen that video before, but I dunno where that version even came from.  I haven't seen anything better on NES though.

I used to play Joust on a NES multicartridge when I was young and it was this title screen, so I always thought it was the Famicom version, could it be right?

Tier 3 score of 117000



I managed to kill a few pteradactyls this time around, still bit it hard core from them.

I will gladly never play this game again.

I'm not sure the increment, but on wave 10 I counted from when the last buzzard spawned to when the pterodactyl appears and got 12 seconds. Not sure what it is prior or after, but either way you don't have much time.

Don't expect to finish levels without the pterodactyl showing up.

a key part of the game is learning to survive him at least half the time, so that you aren't rushed when fighting the enemies, since trying to speed through the levels is a disaster.

But it is worth noting that I see a HUGE variance in score between games where I am lucky enough to spawn-kill a bunch of enemies and games where I pick the wrong spawn point and kill none.   Saves a TON of time to kill them that way and declutters the level to make it safer in general.

Well, here's the best I could muster up. I didn't give this game too much of a chance even though I like it. I thought my skills from the Gameboy version would translate well here. Boy, was I wrong, as this version is much more unforgiving:

Score: 118,750 (Tier 1)

245,250 (Wave 29) - TIER 1

Picture taken on Sunday afternoon.

Only had ONE shadow lord left roaming around and was killed by a pterodactyl... very frustrating since the Egg Wave would have been worth another 6k, or so, putting me well over 250k, total. A lucky spawn-location pick in Wave 31 could have meant an extra life on top of it...


Note the reflection... yes I am wearing a baby.  Imagine how well this round could have gone distraction-free!




I hesitate to give a great set of tips to the competition, but I like to see everybody do their best:
(also, selfishly, I saved the tips for Monday, so hopefully I'm still top 5 )

(1) pterodactyls -- get to either the top-center or bottom-center platform for defense.  The bottom one is best.

From those locations it is MUCH easier to judge a safe-hit against the pterodactyl AND you have some runway to ram them when they look safe, rather than sit passively and get killed by them maneuvering at the last second.

Definitely the difference between life-and-death on MANY levels.

(2) spawn killing -- killing enemies at spawn points is CRUCIAL for a high score.  There are levels where you can luck out and kill all but one or two of the enemies before the level even really starts.  If you're REALLY lucky, you'll only have red guys left over.  

The only thing to worry about is the dreaded tele-frag...

(3) avoiding getting tele-fragged -- so at first I thought the trick was to hover at the ideal height above the spawn location.  WRONG.  It is easy to mis-judge height and either accidently put your feet down at the wrong moment and get tele-fragged, or be too high and get the kill but miss the catch-bonus on the eggs.

The RIGHT answer... stand on the spawn point.  As soon as you see an enemy started to come out of the ground under your feet JUMP with the B-button (one tap is all you need).  You WILL kill them and get the egg 100% of the time...SAFELY.

Learning that trick was probably a 50k-100k point difference in my score.

(4) flight dynamics -- I know it can be REALLY frustrating to know EXACTLY what you want the bird to do and not having it be able to respond... but that's where 90% of the game's difficulty comes from.  

It is extremely helpful to have a strong sense of how much "excess power" you have in any direction to know your ability to either add or subtract momentum in any direction, at any time.

If you're a pilot, it is second-nature, since it is really about recognizing the performance limits at each flight speed, and sort of having a mental image of what maximum changes in trajectory look like so you can make the right decision about attack-vs-dive-vs-left-vs-right.

Hard to learn over a week-long contest if it isn't already ingrained in your brain, but the big takeaway is STAY IN CONTROL at all times.  Uncontrolled flight or randomly injecting too much momentum will get you killed.

Lol, that's awesome. Some of my best scores have come with my kids sitting on my lap while I'm playing. Sometimes a little distraction makes me do better for some reason.

Nice.  Yeah, might have been easier if she'd been willing to just sit in my lap and watch, but at least she feel asleep in the Ergo, so it was more the fact that I had to stand to play (while bouncing in place) rather than being able to sit on-level with the TV.

Like others (I'm sure!) I ragequit this game last night so no further improvement for me. (My wife was sitting there with me when that happened ... that was NOT a good idea!) I can consistently get into the 100K-150K range but I either end up getting unlucky with the spawns or just have bad luck/bad playing overall.

My new technique for spawn-killing is to actually stand on the spawn point and jump whenever an enemy appears from it. This method is a bit riskier but I had better success grabbing the eggs this way. The egg collision in general in this version is a little off so any advantage is worth trying.

I wasn't paying attention and posted the same thing you did about this.  Great minds think alike!

I actually found it to be consistently SAFER than hovering.

Hovering it is too easy to pick the wrong height by just a tiny offset and get tele-fragged.

Jumping, you are at exactly the right height every time, AND the spawn-time is slow enough that successive jumps have very natural timing (in my opinion) that makes it easier to execute than hovering, since if you're too high in hover you might bounce away or if you drop too low to grab the egg the next guy will tele-frag you for sure since you can't add moment fast enough in-flight (versus jumping) to safely make the altitude change.




Still, for the high score runs (>200k) it is an ENORMOUS luck-factor to pick the right spawn location to minimize on-screen enemies in each level.

(unless there is an obvious algorithm that dictates where they come from and we just don't know it yet)

I had a few instances where I died performing this method ... usually on consecutive spawns where my tapping wasn't quite right. Of course dying at that time puts you in a really bad situation for that wave.

On the other hand, I had a couple of waves this weekend that felt like I was watching a TAS. Those are super satisfying and definitely the highlights of my play this week.

Definitely.

My favorites were if I started on the upper-most platform, managed to spawn kill some guys to thin them out, and then had enough platforms in the way that as the enemies climbed, I was able to simply run off the platform, at speed, kill them, get the egg, and end up back on the platform to do it again to the next guy.

Well now that Balloon Kid has posted his score I'm definitely not advancing. I won't be able to play at all today and my best score was just a little over 106k. Probably won't even bother to post it since it won't change the outcome and makes it easier to tally. So it's between BK and Billtown town now. Good luck everyone.

You might be surprised.

Arnpoly's top score right now is in the 170k-range, but in my experience the leap from the 106k you're seeing to having a lucky round and breaking 200k can happen suddenly and sporadically.

My "average" game was definitely much closer 100k than 200k.



If you used the spawn-jump technique (with a dose of luck) and kept your cool while dodging or killing pterodactyls, I'd bet you could beat the score Balloon Kid posted, since it really only represents a wave or two of difference.

Well,I won't be able to play at all today since I work both my jobs. And the two hour gap in between is used to take a much needed nap. So yeah,I am done.

I'm sorry to hear it.

Pretty sure you cleaned up on genre awards, though, so you having SOMETHING to show for it

126,750 Tier 2
I had one good run all my other scores are in the 60,000's. So I doubt I will get another nice score.

Say it aint so Guts, say it aint so...  You can always call out of work, tell them you got bit by a copperhead snake and then crushed it with a giant rock. Just put a fake bandage on your leg and show them the picture of the crushed snake. Sounds good right!?

Hah. Funny you say that. I saw another one last night and tried to get that one too but missed...twice. I think there may be a nest somewhere.Ugh. Anyways,no big deal getting bounced. I'm simply not good at this game. I tried,but just couldn't put up anything good enough. Ironically in between Joust sessions I played Battletoads. Was going to play GnG too,but I was trying to pass the speeder bike level....didn't happen.

Yeah, I guess its just the luck of the draw from here on out. Can't wait to see which game Bimmy picks next...

I'll pretty much just disappear from this thread for a few weeks. I'll probably check back in to see who won each tier though.

And I guess I'll post my score even though it doesn't matter at this point. See everyone in the second half.

106,250 (Wave 16)

Tier 1 206,000

man

Got this score saturdayi thought i would have some time tonight but no dice.  This game is crazy!  my second highest score was 142,500 i just got on crazy roll as soon as i noticed i was approaching 200k i paniced and died 3 times between 196,00 and 206,000

Glad it is over  but was an interesting game

Congrats on all he ridiculous scores 300k is insanity!