MAME ROW #11: Moon Cresta

meleu

This is the 11th MAME Random Of the Week

The three random numbers for this week are: 336, 1518 and 1113.

336
Game Name: Crater Raider
Company: Bally Midway
Year: 1984
ROM file name: crater.zip
BIOS: -

1518
Game Name: Ribbit!
Company: Sega
Year: 1991
ROM file name: ribbit.zip
BIOS: -

1113
Game Name: Moon Cresta (Nichibutsu)
Company: Nichibutsu
Year: 1980
ROM file name: mooncrst.zip
BIOS: -

Please vote: ~~http://www.strawpoll.me/11803020~~

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!

There's no need to use RetroPie to join the MAME ROW! You can play it on any platform you want.

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):

Parent: (empty)
Rpi 3 Status: (empty), OK, Untested
Rpi 2 Status: OK, Untested
Rpi 1 Status: Untested
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"

Phoenix (not randomly chosen)
New Rally-X (not randomly chosen)

GtBFilms

Crater Raider

Ribbit!

Moon Cresta (Nichibutsu)

Quite a retro-selection this week! My gut-instinct is I'll vote for the classic Moon Cresta, but will give the others a decent try before deciding.

obsidianspider

Crater Raider is backwards on lr-mame2003 and doesn't accept inputs. When you play it with imame4all it displays ok, but seems to require the ability to rotate and I'm not sure how to configure that.

Ribbit is basically Frogger with spiders that can eat you and the Nutcracker soundtrack in the background

Moon Cresta seems like the best this week, but it's really hard to move out of the way fast enough!

GtBFilms

@obsidianspider haven't tried crater raider yet but Ribbit! is surprisingly good fun!

The player movement speed in Moon Cresta is just on the frustrating side of slow!

dankcushions

moon cresta is just like a game i had on the bbc micro (which no doubt ripped it off, like so many bbc games) - 'star striker'

obsidianspider

I really wish there was a way to move up and down in Moon Cresta, not just back and forth. This game is tough because your ship just can't move fast enough when baddies come up from the bottom of the screen.

rbaker

@obsidianspider the secret is not to split them all but one at a time.

GtBFilms

@dankcushions that BBC version seems to be a more manageable speed as well!

meleu

Another fun fact about Moon Cresta is that it won the MAME ROW #11. :-)

UDb23

@meleu ..and a specific overlay is coming right now ;-)

UDb23

@UDb23
New Overlay based on original game Flyer; available for download below.

UDb23

@meleu Dedicated Post with complete set: overlay+cfg files+ install info

meleu

@UDb23 Wow!! It's cool and pretty handful!!

Man, I wonder if we could start a github repository to put some overlays for MAME ROW. What do you think?

UDb23

@meleu Yes, good idea.
But I can't promise I can make a new one from scratch every week :-))

obsidianspider

I love how the overlay file size is 46 times that of the actual game. :)

Now I need to learn how overlays work…

This forum, always making me learn new things.

meleu

@UDb23 it's just fine. Not every MAME ROW game deserves a so neat overlay.
But the simple ones, with the scoring scheme as you made here... it would be really cool. ;-)

mediamogul

@UDb23

Too kool! I've had to put my gaming on hold until I get past some tough work assignments, but man, this overlay alone makes me want to drop everything and shoot some aliens.

obsidianspider

@UDb23 Typo with one of the config files. you have moooncrst.cfg instead of mooncrst.cfg I renamed it to the latter and now it works with my setup.

Also, thanks for that readme, and the overlay. It was very easy to set up.

Does anyone know how to take a screen shot with Retroarch that includes the overlay?

UDb23

@obsidianspider If there's interest I could write a short tutorial on how to create these overlay graphics.
Basically usually it means:

searching the web a lot for good, or at least decent, original artwork (the older the game the more difficult)
clean up and resizing of graphics ( Photoshop Elements)
some vectorizing when needed (Inkscape)
creation of actual Overlay (Inkscape)

UDb23

@obsidianspider thanks for finding the typo. That's what happens when I do stuff late at night !
File & Link updated.