Lemon/EAB Super League 2013 - Round 3: The New Zealand Story

[mihcael]

Lemon/EAB Super League 2013 - Round 3






Rules:
This round starts today and will end Saturday 23rd March, 11:59pm UK Time.
Score as many points as possible.
Post screenshots of your high score in this thread, and write the score underneath.
Screenshot maximum size of 400px width please, or use a thumbnail.
Don't cheat! No continues or passwords.

Game Info:
The New Zealand Story Lemon Page

Get the Game:
[ADF]
[WHDLoad] (direct link)

Round 3 Final Scores:
Pos.... Name............................................................. Score............ Pts

1. capehorn (EAB) ........................................ 923,061 ........ 15
2. LinesMachine (LA) .................................... 500,010 ........ 12
3. TurricanX (LA) ........................................... 472,291 ........ 10
4. Hungry Horace (EAB) ................................ 456,687 ........ 9
5. lifeschool (LA) .......................................... 345,443 ........ 8
6. Biscuit (LA) ............................................... 305,492 ........ 7
7. john4p (LA) .............................................. 248,129 ........ 6
8. Bamiga2002 (EAB) ................................... 232,560 ........ 5
9. ChrisN82 (LA) ........................................... 230,540 ........ 4
10. premmisseth (LA) ..................................... 230,520 ........ 3
11. shotgunfacelift (EAB) ................................ 166,184 ........ 2
12. Ze Emulatron (LA) .................................... 133,110 ........ 1
13. Graham Humphrey (EAB) ......................... 124,482 ........ 0
14. Parpala (LA) ............................................. 115,302 ........ 0
15. Loki (LA) ................................................... 102,611 ........ 0
16. eMTe (LA) ................................................... 99,500 ........ 0
17. Simon Humphrey (LA) ................................. 82,803 ........ 0
18. jPV (LA) ...................................................... 60,258 ........ 0
19. Lonewolf10 (EAB) ....................................... 54,216 ........ 0
20. mailman (EAB) ............................................ 52,875 ........ 0
21. mihcael (LA) ............................................... 44,591 ........ 0
22. Harry (EAB) ................................................ 42,325 ........ 0
23. dirk_the_daring (EAB) ................................ 37,991 ........ 0

Lemon (374,273) vs EAB (380,595)

Extras:
EAB's Round 3 thread is HERE.
Check out the C64 Games Competition at our sister site Lemon64.

All new players are welcome at any time. Join us!

[LinesMachine]

This is gonna be a shameless nostalgia fest for many players I reckon.

I must confess to having been practising last week when I was supposed to be writing a report for my boss.

[lifeschool]

I see EAB has made the first move, so lets see if we can't make some progress:


Score: 75,773

I have to say I'm not all too keen on the milking possibilites in this game with all the respawning enemies appearing from windows; but I guess there is a limited time limit in this game so there is no way to leech forever. I find the game annoying in quite a few ways actually, not least the collision detection.

Tips: (contains Spoilers)
. Try to complete the level as quickly as possible. You get more bonus for completing a level in a shorter time, so on level 1 you can come out with 12,000 if you are fast.
. Most creatures you can walk straight through except for the fire and yellow spiky creatures - which kill you on contact.
. Pulling back on the stick whilst on a hover platform will make you jump off it, very handy when other floating enemies are around as they will fire very accurately at the players head.
. Entering water means you have a limited time to hold your breath before you die. Swim to the top of the water and press fire to take a breath and blow a jet of water out which kills enemies.
. Bats will drop their bombs only if you walk directly under them.
. Fire creatures and yellow star creatures will 'breed' if you leave them alone.
. Extra lives are awarded at certain score checkpoints and also for collecting the EXTRA letters.
. The first boss is a whale. If you walk into the whales mouth you can attack it from the inside!


I also have a few questions:

1. Warps are available as hidden objects in many of the levels. How do you find warps? Is it worth going through a warp to skip hard sections?

2. Is there any way to keep your weapon after freeing your buddy and getting to the next level?

3. Do weapons appear at random or are they always fixed into a specific enemy when destroyed?

4. Are there more weapons in the game apart from Laser, Bombs, Fireballs and Arrows?

5. What is the best way to grab a hover platform from an enemy? Is the Rubber Balloon better than the Hot Air Balloon, Rock Platform and the Flying Duck? How many hits does a rubber balloon take? Do Rock hover platforms protect against spikes?

6. Are there any special pickups? Like.. What do the joystick icons do? I picked one up and it didn't seem top do anything.


ok, all help on these would be great.

[ChrisN82]

63,461

[capehorn]

Seeing as I first played this game aged 4 and completed it aged 6, and having played it many times since, I'll have a crack at answering your questions.

You can detect warps, if you fire into empty space and find that your bullet disappears for no reason, that means it has hit a warp, fire at it five more times to make it appear, then walk in. I don't think there is much use for warps in the competition, most of the time it skips you ahead many levels, which just means that you lose out on points. Maybe there are one or two exceptions, i.e. if you find a particular level difficult.

You start with a bow and arrow on every level.

The items that appear when you kill an enemy are entirely predictable. You always get 7 fruit/flower items, followed by a special item. Then 7 more fruit items, followed by the next special item. Off the top of my head (and this could be very wrong), the specials go bomb weapon, balloon control (when you are on a balloon it will not fall to the ground if you release the joystick), haystack weapon (that's what I always thought it was, it looks like a flying haystack!), bow and arrow (avoid!), laser weapon, alarm clock (all enemies freeze), potion (invincibility, all baddies die if they touch you), book (kills all enemies on the screen), EXTEND letters in turn.

There is a pretty rare baddy that controls a spaceship, jump on top of him to highjack it and you get a laser weapon.

The different balloons have different virtues. The duck balloon is smaller and allows you to access certain areas you wouldn't with a larger one (have a play on level 1-3 and see if you can work out what I mean!), the metal one cannot be destroyed but it is unwieldly, the rubber balloon won't disappear until sustaining 5 hits, the balloon the bears have can't do anything special but the bears are very easy to subdue so it is the easiest to get. The red balloons belonging to the arrow-throwers are the same as the bear balloons, but are much harder to come by!

You can't beat the whale without letting it swallow you, so stand still and let it!

EXTEND is difficult to complete without killing enemies and collecting the tokens. If you don't do that, you'll be waiting until level 4-1. I think it's just for points, does it really give you an extra life?

There is an area at the top level of level 1-2 which is impossible to access in the Amiga version.

My parents told me that the Kiwi you control is called Tiki, and the walrus is called Willy the Walrus. Whether any of this is true, I don't know!

Score leeching will be an issue because I believe it is reasonable to kill some enemies until you have a good weapon. Perhaps once you have the bomb weapon, you should stop and continue with the game. If you accidently pick up the bow and arrow, then you can continue until you have the laser weapon (it's only 8 enemies in both scenerios). I don't particularly like the idea of saying that there is a time limit therefore leech away, because the time limit is very liberal (there is very little pressure to complete levels fast), and it could just result in people running back and forth between the respawns for five minutes until the hurry up message arrives, which isn't what the Super League is about.

[capehorn]

You know something, I'd suggest that, as long as we all agree not to use warps, a better way of scoring this would be the level in which we die, leeching will be incredibly easy otherwise.

[mihcael]

You know something, I'd suggest that, as long as we all agree not to use warps, a better way of scoring this would be the level in which we die, leeching will be incredibly easy otherwise.

I like the the method of Highest level, then lowest score as tie break! Dont think we have ever used in in this competition though.

[john4p]

I like the the method of Highest level, then lowest score as tie break! Dont think we have ever used in in this competition though.

Yes we did - with Wizkid. That's the only way NZS could be fairly played competitively.

[lifeschool]

Does that mean I can hop over and avoid all the enemies and get to 2-1 with a low score and come out on top? And yes, warps agreement, otherwise there's a risk of someone using warps to get through the game on a mega low score (warps can be chained from level 1).

[lifeschool]

@ Capehorn - Thanks for those tips!

Tiki Wiki and Willy the Walrus is correct to the best of my knowledge. Yes you get an extra life at score checkpoints, I think the first one is 50 or 60k; I certainly had an extra going into 2-1. You must have been a very good player to complete this at 6. I couldn't get far in Bounty Bob Strikes Back on the C64 at 12!.

[LinesMachine]

New Zealand Story, The (1989)(Ocean)[cr QTX]_001 by Linesmachine, on Flickr
84889

Quick first score just to get the ball rolling. I was just exploring the game play aspect, trying to remind myself of some of the best techniques with balloons etc.

Have we made a decision re; scoring or levels?

P.S. This is a cool game and anyone who doesn't like it just hasn't got a heart. I mean to say, this bully Wally has essentially kidnapped 20 INNOCENT Kiwis, there are 5 species of Kiwi in NZ; two of which are officially "vulnerable", one of which is endangered and one of which is "critically vulnerable". Wally is not taking them to place them into a newly built sanctuary....he intends to eat them. I cannot stress the gravity of the situation more than that.

[capehorn]

I'm ambivalent about some of these ideas. Highest level/lowest score of course has it's virtues, but killing enemies is all the fun in NZS. Getting a balloon and a bomb and raining constant bombs on a host of enemies below you is great! I am imagining trying to sneak through the game with as few confrontations as possible, trying to avoid bullets and having to fire at enemies... it does show the most skill, but would it be fun to play?

Another issue is that the high score table only shows the top 5 scores, so if you forget to screenshot when you die, you will lose your lowest score. The level you are on is not displayed on the gamescreen, so it would be difficult (although possible) for the mods to verify it from a game map.

On one level, scoring this by level of death is a good method because some of the later levels are very difficult, but I'm inclined on second thoughts to score it purely by highest score. The reason for this is because, although score leeching is easy to do, we all know not to do it, and overt score leeching will be pretty easy to spot. If someone posts 400k on level 2-2 when everyone else is on 250k at 4-3, we'll know why.

This way the game is entirely open. You can take a warp if you wish, or blast a screen full of baddies for fun, as long as you don't hang around and move on through the level afterwards. It's the fun aspect I'm thinking of here, lowest score as a tiebreak might make the game... to restrictive.

Any more thoughts?

[john4p]

Any more thoughts?

Yeah, the game is nice and cute and all. But just not suited for competition.

[LinesMachine]

New Zealand Story, The (1989)(Ocean)[cr QTX]_002 by Linesmachine, on Flickr

99034

I agree that it might be best to score by level of death. It is indeed a tricky game in the later levels.

In case of equal level reached (or game completion) then lowest score wins? although you still have the issue of the high score table. Already I have decided to reboot the game and lose high scores each round so this does not happen.

BTW: The stones octopuss is a bitch if you only have arrows.

[mihcael]

The score method will not be changed at this stage. There are already 6 score in. Changes should of been proposed before the round started.