High Score Competition #166: Fast Lane

[yamatetsu]

High Score Competition Rules and Scoreboard

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Game Name :   Fast Lane
ROM Name  =     fastlane
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Settings:
   default : 3 lives / bonus lives 20k 100k 200k 400k 800k / difficulty medium

Controls:   
    4 way joystick, 'turbo' button, 'special weapon' button





Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Lane_%28video_game%29

KLOV: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7761

Description from KLOV: You control a red sports car that attempts to avoid crashing head on with a blue truck. Drive through the maze to "eat up" the grass or asphalt. Complete the maze to advance to the next level. Avoid the trucks which will try to stop you.
Drive through the beach ladies to obtain powerups which will help you complete your level:

JUMP - Allows you to either jump over the other vehicle or jump on top of it.
SHOOT - Allows you to fire a bullet at the other vehicle.
ATTACK - Allows you to charge into the other vehicle.
FLASH - Allows you to stun the other vehicle from any distance.
? - Can either be OPTION which fires forwards or LINE which shoots vertically. Both also help you complete the maze.


Last day: Sunday, May 30 2015 midnight Pacific
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- Quest for the Bronze Joystick! The most successful competitor of each calendar year will possess & display the BYOAC Bronze Joystick Trophy. See this thread for details:The BYOAC Bronze Joystick.
Happy Gaming!


1st :   Mr_Numbers,      a couple of millions
         WakiMiko,           also a couple of millions
         yamatetsu,          another couple of millions

2nd :   ---

3rd :   ---

4th :   epetti,                508,120

5th :   popsicle,             370,780

6th :   JDFan,                158,440

7th :   harveybirdman,   130,120

8th :   jasonbar,            127,440

9th :   j.fitzenr,               94,140


Since there usually are 6 points to be distributed, the three first placed people each get 2.




edit : Added results to first post.

[WakiMiko]

Oh man what is this? Pacman meets Gradius meets Micro Machines

What I gathered from my first few games:

Collecting chicks advances your power meter and your killing potential. Unlike in Gradius, it does not loop back to the beginning.

Killing enemies makes a item box appear. First time touching opens it, 2nd time collects it.

W = Advances you to the next stage
B = Bonus points, no idea how its calculated though
1UP = Take a guess

Maybe there are more, I dunno.

142,260




Also thanks for picking a 4-way game, saves me the trouble of switching my stick for TGM and back 

[epetti]

Looks like modern Head-on or Crash.

[harveybirdman]

This game is the tits, thanks for choosing!

[harveybirdman]

First play 130,120. Waki and Yam are going to get out of my league soon but at least I don't feel bad posting this on one of my favorite little games.

[yamatetsu]

This game is the tits, thanks for choosing!

De nada. Seems to be a fun game.

Waki and Yam are going to get out of my league soon but at least I don't feel bad posting this on one of my favorite little games.

We shall both strive to make your prediction come true 

[popsicle]

142,060 166,760

I can't believe I've never seen this game before.

[harveybirdman]

My favorite thing I've ever done is on level 5 I jumped one truck and landed on the othher destroying it somehow instead of dying.

[JDFan]

Might as well get a score in -- 142,980 158,440
Interesting little game should get interesting by the end of the 2 weeks !!

[epetti]

Fun game. 142,940. Small increase. 159,480.

[jasonbar]

Miami Vice Head-On

127,440.

-Jason

[yamatetsu]

178,760

[yamatetsu]

The gods of the Holy Extra Box smiled upon me. 5 lives / first level.

You see the way the red car is heading ? Guess what happened immediately after the screenshot.

[WakiMiko]

Starting to dislike this game. 

It's easier to just grind the early levels over and over again instead of advancing to the later levels where you will lose your lives in no time, especially when it's a scrolling level and you cant even see which lane the enemies are on.

254,000

[yamatetsu]

Starting to dislike this game. 

That was fast 

264,780



Have tried playing it 'chronologically'. Absolutely HATE level 6. Now hate level 7 too.

[WakiMiko]

Grindtastic!

348,840

[j.fitzenr]

Just to get a score on the board to start.  Only given it about five spins - my brain doesn't quite accept the lack of changing direction, but I'm almost getting it. 

94140

[epetti]

How are you guys getting such high scores just in Stage 3? I look at yamatetsu's scores and the higher the score goes up the lower goes.

[Mr_Numbers]

115,040

[harveybirdman]

How are you guys getting such high scores just in Stage 3? I look at yamatetsu's scores and the higher the score goes up the lower goes.

Sacrificing thr time bonuses to blow up trucks a ton more and picking up the bonuses in spades I imagine.

[yamatetsu]

Like Waki said :

It's easier to just grind the early levels over and over again instead of advancing to the later levels where you will lose your lives in no time

Stay in level 1, don't finish it, collect babes, shoot the truck, collect the bonus, collect babes ... After some time a second truck will appear, things get a bit more interesting then. Sometime after that I think the trucks speed up, so the grinding won't work anymore, that's why I finished level 1 and got to level 3, otherwise I would have stayed in level 1 the whole time.

Playing the same level over and over again gets real old real fast, though.

[yamatetsu]

477,300

[WakiMiko]

You can just stay in stage 1 forever. Sometimes the 2nd car never even appears

At one point I had 8 lives.   

[yamatetsu]

10 lives was my max. Didn't do me much good, though.



One game, I had about 415,000 points, 8 lives left, then I accidentally finished the level  and got slaughtered in level 2.

[WakiMiko]

It's really weird, I played 2 games (first one got me that score, the 2nd one to confirm), and the second car did not appear. I don't get it. I checked my DIP switch settings and they are set to the defaults.

And yeah, finishing level 1 is a death sentence.

I say we skip this game

[yamatetsu]

That's weird. I always get company. It may take a while, but the second truck will appear eventually. Anyway, just to annoy you, my new score :

893,320

[WakiMiko]

What if we both counterstop it? 

[popsicle]

This game is broken from a scoring standpoint, it seems.  Grinding on level one isn't that much fun.

[yamatetsu]

Of course it is not much fun. But playing the game again and again just to miss the highscore is not much fun either 

So, what to do ? Scrapping the game would cost me probably two, perhaps even three points, which naturally I'm not thrilled about, since I've spent some time (and curses) to get this far.

Maybe end the game this Sunday, saving everyone one week of unfun ?

[harveybirdman]

Sorry for a buzz kill of a suggestion,  I just enjoy the game for what it is.

[yamatetsu]

What if we both counterstop it? 

If by 'counterstop' you mean getting a higher score than the game can handle, that would be an interesting situation. That one actually happened to me when I played Tetris in an arcade. Made more than a million points, discovered that the thing only could handle up to 999,999 points and got my score reset to zero. Great fun to play it again and get a score just shy of a million.

Sorry for a buzz kill of a suggestion,  I just enjoy the game for what it is.

No need to be sorry, the game is fun, it's not your fault that we play it in a different way than intended.

[popsicle]

If the goal was to see who could clear the most levels, that would be interesting.  As it stands, the game was picked according to the rules, high score is the goal, and we still have a week+.  There have been other examples of weird happenings (remember the glitch-y 'The End'?) and we toughed it out.  I'll do my best to grind to 3rd place and pick the next game
   

[JDFan]

If the goal was to see who could clear the most levels, that would be interesting.  As it stands, the game was picked according to the rules, high score is the goal, and we still have a week+.  There have been other examples of weird happenings (remember the glitch-y 'The End'?) and we toughed it out.  I'll do my best to grind to 3rd place and pick the next game
   

Maybe multiply the final score by the stage reached ??

[j.fitzenr]

It's sad I did enjoy this game a lot more playing 'straight' before the optimum grinding strat was figured out.  This is faaaarrr from the only game that loses plenty of charm when it's played optimally though.  I mean, Pac-Man has patterns, Berzerk you basically repeat four rooms until you screw it up.  I'm still really good at about 16-20 stars from Mario 64, and mediocre at the rest of the game.  I also used to be really good at the glitches that let you finish the game with only 16 stars instead of the normal 70.

If somebody wants to vote to end early, or whatever, go to town.  I'll do whatever, since I'm not competitive at all in this thing.  I'd vote 'yes' if people wanted to end early, but whatevers, if not I'll give it a few more spins.  Funny enough, since I haven't really gotten the hang of the level 1 grind and I've been 'running bad' recently, with most of my boxes being of the 'no points' variety my highest score (around 140k) was playing 'straight'!  Weird. 

Still a cool game, and still really oddly satisfying to jump-crush the bad guys, Bump 'n' Jump style.

[yamatetsu]

So, my vote is for keeping the schedule, then.

[dmckean]

You could add an honorable mention to whoever gets to the highest stage.

[yamatetsu]

Bad news. Reaching a million is not a good idea.



At a million, the score is reset to zero, after that point you suddenly get heaps of points, I think 10 times as much as before, at least every babe is now worth 5000 points.
So after one mil it's no problem to make another, and another. Sadly, the score display is not up to it.

Made 3,204,260.



As you can see, the display in the highscore table is off, there's no way to prove my 3 million 

I see no way of proving the score higher than one mil short of recording every game and then posting the vid. Which would take things a bit too far IMHO.

[j.fitzenr]

[WakiMiko]

Hahaha, very nice Yam.  That's exactly what I meant by counter stop (I think it's a Japanese term ), though I was hoping for the counter to actually stop and not roll over. So what do we do? I'm gonna try to grind the 1 million points later, but after that there really is no point to keep going for the reasons you pointed out.

Also did you actually go to stage 5 or is that due to the bug?

[yamatetsu]

So what do we do?

If you can do the mil, we've got a situation. If you don't, I win 

Also did you actually go to stage 5 or is that due to the bug?

Yep, I did go to level 5, but that was an accident. I got the extra that finishes the level, tried to avoid it, cut it too close, the car snagged on a corner and turned into the wrong lane. End of level 1.
At that point I had 7 lives or so and managed to get to level 5.