MAME ROW #60 - Mr. Do's Wild Ride
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This is the MAME Random Of the Week #60
The three random numbers for this week are: 1540 452
159421711594 is Sonic Blast Man (Japan) and requires a special hardware to play, so it has been removed from consideration
Click here to vote! Which game do you choose for MAME ROW #60?
The result of the poll is posted on Wednesday, so we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentation.
1540
Game Name: Robot Bowl
Company: Exidy
Year: 1977
ROM file name: robotbwl.zip452
Game Name: Mr. Do's Wild Ride
Company: Universal
Year: 1984
ROM file name: dowild.zip2171
Game Name: Zaxxon (set 1)
Company: Sega
Year: 1982
ROM file name: zaxxon.zipWhat is the MAME ROW?
MAME ROW stands for MAME Random Of the Week. We randomly select an arcade game from the 0.78 MAME Reference Set to play on the week. The idea is to play games we've never played before, interact with other forum members, post hi-scores, share game strategies, fun facts, and (the most important) HAVE FUN!
Notes:
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We usually post hi-scores screenshots after playing with only one credit. If you used more than one credit, please mention it on your post.
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There's no need to use RetroPie to join the MAME ROW! You can play it on any platform you want.
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Feel free to post your hi-score (or any content about the game) anytime you want on the previous rounds topics (link below).
Every Monday we create a topic at the "General Discussion and Gaming > MAME Random Of the Week" forum section with the 3 random games to be voted. And on Wednesday we check the result.
These "rules" are constantly being improved!
Previous Rounds
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@meleu Here you go
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This post is deleted! -
Robot Bowl
Mr. Do's Wild Ride
Zaxxon
I've never seen Robot Bowl before, but Mr Do's Wild Ride was ripped off by 'Kong 2' on the ZX Spectrum. I never actually got to play the arcade version so this will be interesting to try.
Zaxxon of course I was aware of, it's widely considered an early classic, but I never really got into the control mechanism - my brain doesn't really work with that isometric view point and I find it incredibly difficult to avoid flying straight into walls!
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@gtbfilms said in MAME ROW #60:
my brain doesn't really work with that isometric view point
You're not alone...same happened to me when I played it years ago.
Still maybe it's a good opportunity to try again these days. Even if generally brain doesn't get more flexible over time :-D -
I tried these out last night. Here are my thoughts:
Robot Bowl
This one is barely a game by modern standards, it seemed to be almost random how many pins I managed to knock down each time (although I did a lot better on this electronic version than I ever do in the real game!). A good example was when I got 'granny's teeth' - one pin on the far left and the other on the far right left - I somehow managed to take both out - although the ball animation wasn't up to actually showing me the amazing ricochet, it just looked like both pins fell over of their own accord!
It's also not really a game,, there's no computer opponent, and all you can do is rack up the best score possible in 10 frames.
Having said that, maybe I'm being too harsh on it as it's from 1977. It was probably pretty amazing then to have something on a screen that you could control - I don't think I saw video games until Space Invaders appeared in 1978/79. At home I was probably playing my Grandstand/Binatone Pong TV Game - so by that standard, this game probably looked pretty sophisticated - it looks like a real cartoon man!Mr. Do's Wild Ride
This is pretty much exactly the same as 'Kong Strikes Back' on the ZX Spectrum, but of course looks a lot better and the gameplay is smoother. I quite liked the fact it is more of a timing puzzle challenge than a quick-reactions game. Reading the Wikipedia entry it appears that this game originally had nothing to do with the popular Mr Do character, and he was tagged on to it later, so I guess that kind of excuses Ocean Software from just tagging the Kong franchise onto it instead. (Starring Jumpman of course, not Mario!)Zaxxon
Well I still can't get my head round this one - it's widely considered a classic of course, and if I really concentrate, then I can control the ship, left right and up and down, but the minute things get busy on screen, I get all confused and fly straight into a rocket. I thought it was quite interesting that what I refer to as an isometric playfield is actually known as 'axonomic projection', hence the 'axxon' in the game name. Technically I guess this one was before it's time, and certainly would have been a refreshing change from all the vertical shooters that were around at the time.But for play-ability, this week my vote is going to....
Mr. Do's Wild Ride!
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Boaahh... the bowling game is amazing ..... I'm a bit confused about it!
Mista Doooo ;) for RoW ;)
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Better late than never...
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@gtbfilms said in MAME ROW #60:
'granny's teeth' - one pin on the far left and the other on the far right left
That is also known as a 7/10 split.
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20859 just to start:
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21,800... with lots of attempts!
I can't regularly get by that stupid pirate ship at the end of level two, and then end up just trying to rack up a few points on level 3 when I seemingly randomly make it that far.
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I thought this might be a good candidate for my 4-direction joystick, as those ladders can be tricky to hit in a panic.
I gave it a go and it works well with the 4-way joystick.
To begin with I thought the speed-up button press was excellent and used it a lot, then I realized it makes the BONUS go down quickly so needs to be used sparingly. This game seems to be all about the timing, there's not much chance to react to anything, and because Mr Do is on rails, you can't really avoid collisions even if you react in time.
You don't need the speed up on level 1, but on level 2 with the big boat thing I think you have to use it to get past.
It looks like which ladders have cherries on top is quite random. That makes level 2 a bit hit and miss for score, because when you use speed up to get under the boat, you don't have time to climb the ladder (and even if you did, the boat can kill you there) - so I just ignore the cherries if they appear on that ladder - but if they were randomly placed elsewhere on that particular game, you can get them for additional points.Level 3 is all about the timing again, the lifts make it more of a challenge, and I found it quite difficult to see where the tracks went at first. Once you've worked out the rhythm for this one though, it's actually quite easy. Again, use of speedup at the end as you rush towards the exit seems to be essential.
I got stumped on level 4. There are big metal balls on springs that overlap ladders at the bottom right, and I never managed to get the timing right to use those ladders to avoid the cars without getting mashed by the big metal balls.
You get an extra life if you light up the letters E X T R A at the top - these are allocated in pairs at the end of each level (it seems to be pretty random which ones you get).
I eventually managed 25977.
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