Changing Joust to TG-only settings is being talked about by several players on MARP. Skill levels on this game due to the general interst in it and the pracitce gained by some players at D2K leads me to conclude that the current settings will lead to the same kinds of ultra-marathons that we were witnessing in Bombjack, currently the only other game that has TG-only settings status.

If anyone can think of any other games that might also benefit from TG-only settings, please post to this discussion as well.

Q.T.Quazar Rules Coordinator

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), June 29, 2000

Answers

QT, I agree since it's possible to play Joust forever with default settings if you're god enough(there must be dozens of people that can do it). Anyway it would be good to have one romset/romsets kept for marathoning purposes, if someone wants to do that. Should marathon scores be played on TG-version(no pause) is another issue, in my opinion yes.

Default for Joust is 1 man every 20K. Marathon settings could be man/30K (Yes, it's still possible to marathon on those settings). Why not have one romset to be devoted for man/every 50K(To my knowledge marathoning on those settings is not "possible")? Joust W/G would be of course played with TG-settings. I think this would make competition on Joust more interesting :) How do you feel about this Mark/JoustGod...?

My proposition 1 is:

Joust W/G - TG-tournament settings(only 5 men) Clone1 - marathon(man every 20 000/30 000) Clone2 - man/50K

proposition 2:

Even one of Track&Field clones could be devoted to marathoning(but NO freemen), if anyone wants to do it...

proposition 3:

I even would like one of Hypersports clones to be devoted for one- round-only, this is the way I used to play it(scored about 190K).

proposition 4:

One more proposition: Divide Paperboy to three games: easy street,middle road,hard way. Game lasts too long if you have to play all three "districts" on one game. There could also be a fake romset that adds these three scores to one overall score. That is the way that old TG-records for PP are made anyway. And furthermore, USE TG-SETTINGS for Paperboy, current settings are ridiculously easy.

What do you think?????????

-- Tommi (tiihoto@hotmail.com), June 29, 2000.

Yup, I'm all for TG settings on Joust and I also think it's a good idea to set the 3 clones on the difficulties you suggest. The Joust in my local arcade was set at extras every 25,000 and that was enough for a marathon game.

I remember when I scored my first 10 million; at around the 8 million mark I died in the middle of one of those waves with 3 pterodactyls and the screen was full of shadow lords, it was my last man. Somehow I managed to survive and went on to score 12 million :O).

-- LordGaz (garyjlee@hotmail.com), June 29, 2000.

I have to agree with you Tommi. In fact, I don't even see the point of a Grand Slam setting. It seems like a 'fun' sort of tournament variation, but its justification as a separate event seems decidedly weak.

So tack this one on to the current discussion. PaperBoy should indeed be split, but should Grand Slam be kept as a submittable recording?

As for Joust, one TG set sounds good. The other sets will be open competition I suppose, and if you want to play at harder settings, you're welcome to.

Q.T.Quazar

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), June 29, 2000.

extra men every 50K, well you could probably get pretty far with this, but it's a much better test than extra every 20K. You can get easily over 30K per screen, so this is pretty generous.

Extra every 50K is probably still a marathon, but not like factory. I would think 10 million is still possible, but it would be a much more conservative game, not as fun to watch as LordGaz's go to the top on the triple pterodactyl waves, but a lot safer.

I think John Rhodes, myself and Gary (and probably a lot of other guys, once they get the rust out) could easily marathon Joust at extra men every 20K. So I really think 5 men only is the best way to go. Extra every 50K sounds good too (and it's good practise).

I think we will see some really amazing games, once everyone gets a little more practise, and probably before the end of this year, someone will get over 1 million on 5 men.

-- Mark Longridge (cubeman@iname.com), June 29, 2000.

An interesting topic even know I really haven't participated in any of the tournaments here on marp I thought I'd still put in my $.02 about settings for this game. Being that I've talked to Mark many times about Joust and I myself have marathoned the game (20M 130+men left) many years ago, for a tournament like the one marp runs, I think it would be best to play the game on the TG tournament settings which is 5 men and no extras. Mark will highly agree with me because he has been after the Brett Watt record he has in the TG book of 1.5M on these settings and strongly believes it's no way possible. It would be interesting to see what kind of scores would turn up with these settings and also makes it more interesting and challenging. Deca 2000 changed the Qbert settings from marathon to 5 men only when hugh scores were being sent in. It made the competition heat up 5x because of the change and I feel Joust should be the same.

Mark? John?

Regards, Steve Krogman

-- Stream Line (skrogman@concentric.net), June 29, 2000.

I'll make this short and sweet...a TG, 5-man setting is the ONLY way to go at this point for ALL versions of Joust. Competition would certainly be more interesting at that point.

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), June 29, 2000.

Well,

I'd just love to see one of you guys do a 1M+ game on Joust. Personally I found it to be, by far, the hardest game to learn in the Deca2000. One of those rare games where it is almost all skill... hats off to Mark and John for their scores..

Regards

Phil

-- Phil Chapman (pchapman@qspinc.com), June 29, 2000.