MAME ROW #168 - King & Balloon

[obsidianspider]

This is the MAME Random Of the Week #168

The five random numbers for this week are: 385 872 236 299 1519

Click here to vote! Which game do you choose for MAME ROW #168?

385
Game Name: Dark Warrior
Company: Century Electronics
Year: 1981
ROM file name: darkwar.zip

872
Game Name: King & Balloon (US)
Company: Namco
Year: 1980
ROM file name: kingball.zip

236
Game Name: California Speed
Company: Atari Games
Year: 1998
ROM file name: calspeed.zip

299
Game Name: Clash-Road
Company: Woodplace Inc.
Year: 1986
ROM file name: clshroad.zip

1519
Game Name: Riding Fight (World)
Company: Taito Corporation Japan
Year: 1992
ROM file name: ridingf.zip

The result of the poll is posted on Wednesday, so we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentation.

What 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!

We will play the winner all next week.

Previous Rounds

[IanDaemon]

Riding Fight is kinda like Road Rash...kinda.

[AdamBeGood]

I'll have a look at these. Does California Speed run okay? It looks pretty fancy!

[IanDaemon]

@AdamBeGood I haven't tried California Speed, but it does look nice. I don't have a spinner and I wonder if it'll steer OK with a trackball.

[WeirdH]

Pretty sure Riding Fight doesn’t run (well) on mame2003-plus and fbneo. On a Pi 3b+ at least.

[IanDaemon]

@IanDaemon said in MAME ROW #168:

@AdamBeGood I haven't tried California Speed, but it does look nice. I don't have a spinner and I wonder if it'll steer OK with a trackball.

I can't get it to run with MAME-2003, -PLUS, 2010, or 2015.

[AdamBeGood]

@IanDaemon Seems okay with Neo on my 4.

[IanDaemon]

@AdamBeGood You mean FBNeo (Final Burn Neo)?

[AdamBeGood]

@IanDaemon Yeah I'm pretty sure that is what I am using for it...I'll check now.

Yep, lr-fbneo. I just tried it again. Seems good to me.

[obsidianspider]

This week's winner is King & Balloon

[IanDaemon]

[IanDaemon]

I'm sure someone will come along and get five times that score. :)

[AdamBeGood]

Dang! I would have voted for Riding Fight! Snooze you lose I guess

[IanDaemon]

King& Balloon is interesting in that you don't lose a player when you get hit by a falling bullet or balloon. You are destroyed, sure, but you re-spawn and continue playing. You only lose a life when the king is taken off the screen by a balloon. This really extends game-play with a layer of "risky timing shots".

This is a great choice for RoW. I just found out that this game is referenced in the 3DS entry of Smash Bros. I also found this write-up that echoes some of my comments.

This page has some interesting thoughts relevant to King & Balloon.

[IanDaemon]

@obsidianspider What was edited? Did I say something wrong?

[obsidianspider]

@IanDaemon I updated the title to include the name of the game. I also added flyers. I do that every week, but today has been busy and I didn't get a chance to do that right away. I can't edit your posts, only mine.

[IanDaemon]

I get a "samples not found" warning when I boot up the ROM, but I'm not sure what I'm missing. I can't find any evidence online of samples. I'm hearing everything being talked about. Does anyone else have this issue? (It's not like the Donkey Kong samples that are obvious when they're missing.) The flyer above even states "all audio is in the software". Might some audio have been "moved" when emulated?

[IanDaemon]

5640

[AdamBeGood]

@IanDaemon I found this an interesting Rom, when I ran it on MAME 2016 it ran quite slowly (I didn't realise that was wrong though), and there were no stars in the background.

On FBAlpha2012 (I think...) it ran much faster, and there were multi-coloured stars as a backdrop. I didn't get the audio warning at any point.

Anyway, I think this is a pretty bloody good game actually. I don't truck with the really old stuff too much, but I thought this was decent fun. I like the dynamic being a bit different to the norm, with the King being the focus rather than the player's sprite.

I got 4,040 - which I am disappointed with, but that is the score I got on my first full credit. I will go back and try and get something better tomorrow.

[IanDaemon]

Hmm, I'm using MAME2003 so maybe that's the audio warning issue and as you can see from the screenshot I'm not getting the stars in the background. The game seems to be running full-speed though.

My issue with high-score chasing is that I rush and am always trying to do three things at once. I'm sure if I sat down and focused on it I'd reach a higher score, but as it is I'm just getting minimally better each time. (I play Spatter and Mr. Do! almost every day.)