MAME ROW #5: Raiga - Strato Fighter

[meleu]

This is the 5th MAME Random Of the Week

Update: "Raiga - Strato Fighter" is the winner game.

This week I've got only 2 random numbers and I'm using the 47 (American Speedway) from the last week. So, the numbers are: 47, 701, 1842

47
Game Name: American Speedway
Company: Enerdyne Technologies, Inc.
Year: 1987
ROM file name: amspdwy.zip
BIOS: -

701
Game Name: Halley's Comet
Company: Taito America Corporation
Year: 1986
ROM file name: halleys.zip
BIOS: -

1842
Game Name: Raiga - Strato Fighter
Company: Tecmo
Year: 1991
ROM file name: stratof.zip
BIOS: -

Please vote: http://www.strawpoll.me/11495117

We will check the most voted game on Wednesday. So we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentations.

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 ROMset 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!

Every Monday we create a topic at the "General Discussion and Gaming" forum section with the 3 random games to be voted. And on Wednesday we check the results.

The current week's game thread is just where there are more people interacting/talking about the game(s). Feel free to post your hi-score (or any content about the game) anytime you want on the previous "rounds" topics (links below).

These "rules" are constantly being improved!

Explaining the randomness of the process

I took the 0.78 compatibility list and applied the following filters (in this order):

1. Parent: (empty)
2. Rpi 3 Status: (empty), OK, Untested
3. Rpi 2 Status: OK, Untested
4. Rpi 1 Status: Untested
5. Manufacturer: clear the "bootleg" checkbox

Saved a new spreadsheet with only the results of those filters here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13Q7QEqV5lUo662nvAC3zS_AvQvsjspEcGHVhaHcyzbI/edit?usp=sharing

And then went to www.random.org and generated a random number between 2 and 2185 (ignoring 1 because of the column headers).

Links to the previous "rounds"

1. Phoenix (not randomly chosen)
2. New Rally-X (not randomly chosen)
3. Bosconian
4. Blue's Journey / Raguy
5. Lizard Wizard
6. 4-D Warriors

[dankcushions]

raiga seems cool! mame2003 says it has incomplete graphical emulation, but looked fine to me. even so, i set it to load with lr-fba-next (the same rom works fine).

[obsidianspider]

American Speedway

Halley's Comet

Raiga - Strato Fighter

[cyperghost]

As always great selection :)
Well... second chance for American Speedway? Personally the two shooters are fine :)

[obsidianspider]

@cyperghost said in MAME ROW #5:

As always great selection :)
Well... second chance for American Speedway? Personally the two shooters are fine :)

Thanks to @dankcushions American Speedway is now playable, but wow, it's tough. Halley's Comet and Strato Fighter are both quite fun.

[meleu]

Strato Fighter is the winner. Happy shooting!

[cyperghost]

Yeah! Out of my way Alien!

[GtBFilms]

Excellent! Sorry I didn't get time to vote this week, but I did get a quick chance to try all three games and was going to vote for Raiga - Strato Fighter anyway.

All three were interesting games, which is why the ROW is great fun. I thought Halley's Comet was a bit too frustrating with it's high speed and crashing comets - all of these sorts of games are a test of memory to a certain extent, but I like to think skill also plays a part. Raigo - Strato Fighter seems to have less of the "unfair death/didn't stand a chance" challenge of Halley's Comet.

American Speedway seems to be a Super Sprint clone, but not quite so well implemented. Pickup collision detection seemed to be a bit random, not least with the points floating around the track - it's difficult enough to hit a stationary target with these sorts of games!

All three were good fun though, and worth taking a look at.

Right, now to set my Raiga - Strato Fighter high score!

Edit: here's my early attempt (74460), I'm sure it will quickly be surpassed:

The second level appears to be a nice homage to R-Type level 3, with the added feature that you can turn your ship around. Like R-type though, it suffers from the 'lose a life when fully tooled up and you don't stand a chance with your remaining lives without all the powerups' resulting in a rapid game over after that initial mistake.

Despite that, I think this is a pretty awesome game, look forward to getting a bit further.

[meleu]

I'm enjoying playing this game. Nice graphics and cool weapon upgrades... My arm is burning after a session, I think I've got R.S.I., but I'm still wanting to play more! :-)
My score was something near to 70k but I had to leave in a hurry to go to work.
Will try harder later and post my screenshot.

Edit: Totally agree with the @GtBFilms

it suffers from the 'lose a life when fully tooled up and you don't stand a chance with your remaining lives without all the powerups' resulting in a rapid game over after that initial mistake.

[cyperghost]

OMG! 70k ;)
That's a lot more than mine :)

[meleu]

I've been playing with a arcade-like joystick, my right forearm is burning, but I finally got 100k and put my name in the first place! :-)

I have to be honest with you, I cheated. But I'm not sure if it contributed to my score. My cheat was: after finishing the stage 2 I paused and rested my right arm for one minute. But as a side effect I think I lost my "warm-up"... I lost a life early in the stage 3, all the powerups was gone, and, as @GtBFilms said, I didn't stand a chance with no power-ups. Even with 3 lives remaining... :(

[dankcushions]

my score is 71380 so far. only had a couple of goes. this game rules!

doesn't seem to save hi score in FBA for me... let's see if i can do something about that...

[meleu]

@dankcushions
I've just realized that we can use the MAME ROW to enrich the mame2003 compatibility list spreadsheet.

I'm not sure if anyone can edit the spreadsheet and maybe I won't find time to keep it updated. But, if a kind guy wants to update the file, here is what I know since we started this all (I only tested on raspi2).

 ROM name | raspi2 status 
----------|---------------
phoenix   | working
nrallyx   | working
bosco     | working
kabukikl  | working
tdfever   | working (but I don't know how to play it)
lizwiz    | working
amspdwy   | working, but needs to configure the dpad
4dwarrio  | working
spacduel  | didn't test
halleys   | didn't test
stratof   | working

[dankcushions]

@meleu anyone can update the spreadsheet :) i don't even think you need a google account

[R1n0X]

My Score: 131330
OS: Windows 7
Emulator: MAME 0.139

[meleu]

@R1n0X
Damn'it! My forearm will burn again trying to beat your score!

[R1n0X]

@meleu This game is a destroyer of buttons and forearms!!!!

[meleu]

@R1n0X Maybe @dankcushions could implement some way to enable turbo. But it is cheating! :-)

[lilbud]

@R1n0X In response to your score...

[mediamogul]

@meleu said in MAME ROW #5: Raiga - Strato Fighter:

Maybe @dankcushions could implement some way to enable turbo.

I don't use it myself, but you can always add turbo to any controller with xboxdrv by adding --autofire BUTTON=FREQUENCY to a standard configuration. For example:

--autofire A=250

You can also tell another button to act as a separate turbo option like you see in lr-fceumm with a --buttonmap modifier like:

--buttonmap x^autofire:250=a