Track & Field PB's

[Vicious Burger]

Since I've had proper arcade controls rather than a keyboard,my personal bests have improved drastically. So at the risk of embarrassing myself in front of others who probably have better numbers,here is a list of mine.
Feel free to add your better PB's to this thread,it will inspire me to beat it !!!! (And tell me how the heck you did it !!!)

100 Meters - 8.67 seconds
Long Jump - 9.62 meters
Javelin - 96.12 meters
110 Meter Hurdles - 11.32 seconds
Hammer Throw - 90.84 meters
High Jump - 2.42 meters

I think all but one of them is a world record,(according to the game!) but i forgot which one,hah !

[Hewskie]

nice, yours are all slightly better than mine (will post later after I check) with one exception, I SUCK at javelin. I can barely break 80m and that's on a good day, I know it's exactly like long jump which I can get 9.5m or so but for some reason I just can't do javelin. Any pointers?

Hewskie

[DillonFoulds]

i'm not sure what it is, but on my microswitches, i can't (only once) get under 10 seconds on the 100m. Long jump on my cab's about 9.5+, javelins is probably low 80's, hurdles i would imagine are close to yours, but it doesn't track hurdles or the 100m. hammer throw i believe peaks at 90.84, anything higher that 100m (unlikely), ends up looping back to 0. High jump, i qualified for the second round, and that's about as high as i've gotten, still trying to figure that one out.

[Vicious Burger]

nice, yours are all slightly better than mine (will post later after I check) with one exception, I SUCK at javelin. I can barely break 80m and that's on a good day, I know it's exactly like long jump which I can get 9.5m or so but for some reason I just can't do javelin. Any pointers?

Hewskie

Only thing i can think of is the way you press the buttons. I guess everyone has their own way of doing it,but I use the middle 3 fingers on each hand in a sweeping motion over the buttons. I've seen people only use 1 finger on each hand but if you use 3 in quick succession it seems to give faster speeds/times. Kinda hard to describe. Instead of using 1 finger each on button 1 then button 2 then button 1 then button 2 etc, I sweep 3 fingers accross each in succession.
 Maybe button layout has something to do with it too. Probably hard to layout the buttons optimally for every game. Maybe i'll do a video clip of the way i do the buttons. I'd like to see how other people do it too. it takes me back to when i was 15 and playing the game at my local swimming pool where they had a Track & Field in the lobby there,and we use to stand there for ages playing it and trying different ways to press the buttons faster. I remember some people used to lick their fingers to make them wet and slide over the buttons quicker, LOL !!

[Vicious Burger]

i'm not sure what it is, but on my microswitches, i can't (only once) get under 10 seconds on the 100m. Long jump on my cab's about 9.5+, javelins is probably low 80's, hurdles i would imagine are close to yours, but it doesn't track hurdles or the 100m. hammer throw i believe peaks at 90.84, anything higher that 100m (unlikely), ends up looping back to 0. High jump, i qualified for the second round, and that's about as high as i've gotten, still trying to figure that one out.

I managed to get to the 3rd round twice i think and screwed the 100m on the 3rd. usually i get bumped off before the end of the 2nd round high jump. I don't think i've personally seen anyone go further,although obviously many people have,gawd knows how,i mean,how the hell can you hit the damn buttons any faster right?
I think my top score is 187,000. I like the fact that T&F retains the high score,unlike a lot of games that don't

[DJ_Izumi]

Electric Knife + Dimmer Switch = Track & Field Victory.

[CheffoJeffo]

Electric Knife + Dimmer Switch = Track & Field Victory.

[angryred]

Back in the day, a lot of black folks carried these big afro picks, so they had a 3" or so plastic handle sticking up out of their jeans' back pockets.  Apparently, white folks decided that we wanted a big plastic handle sticking out of our back pockets too (afros may need regular, measured maintenance, but dammit, so does FEATHERED HAIR!), and so along came the big handled comb. It looked kind of like a little meat cleaver (mine was orange!).

The comb was the KEY to Track and Field.  If you've ever come across a Track and Field with semi-circular raised guards around the buttons, well, you can blame us and our big combs. You straddle the comb across a finger like a see-saw, with each end of the comb on a button, then whale on one end of the comb. That see-saw effect ramped up speeds like crazy, and we were breaking records left and right.

TIME WARP! ...Now I have my MAME machine, and though I no longer have my big orange comb, I found a good enough substitute. But while I can replicate the old see-saw method, I'm not getting anything close to the old speeds. Now, I still have the old button pressing skills-- tensing up my arm, I can still get that jackhammer vibration going (though I admit I can't sustain that pace like back in the day). But I can't get the see-saw speeds to show up again.  I can actually go faster (but not record-breaking) using both hands. My left hand is nowhere near as well coordinated as my right, though, and I miss the comb's effect of having two perfectly coordinated right hands.

The only thing I can think of is that the old Track and Fields must have had leaf switch buttons, and it's a futile effort to try and replicate that effect on microswitches. I seem to remember reading something about that, but I can't fully recall.

Can anyone confirm leaf switches on the old Track and Fields? I'm considering trading out some switches over this issue alone, but I don't know if the microleaf hybrids would be an effective compromise, or if I should just go straight to leaves...

[DillonFoulds]

I, too, am thinking it's all about the leaf switches. I think I'll try and get my hands on a couple for the next night me and my friends are TnF'ing, and let you know what i find out. The microswitches, no matter how fast we go, never max out the speed :S