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Whoa... level 22! That's crazy good. Okay, I've now capped the attacking speed in the newest build so it doesn't increase after level 21. Btw, have you tried Cuphead LCD? With your reaction speed I'm sure you would do really well.  Currently the  best time on the leaderboard for Game A is 2 minutes and 45 seconds. 

Thanks for the suggestion!

The instructions are now available for Space Bridge :)

No problem. It's now set to 5% :)

Thanks so much mate! I'll let you know when I've updated Space Bridge with these great scans. As always, your contributions are greatly appreciated. 

Thanks! Do you own any of these?

No problem. It's easy to change. It's now 7.5% in the latest build.

I managed to find the issue with DK Jr! It's now fixed for both tabletop and panorama  :)

Okay, I've updated the build and went with increasing the speed of the sharks coming at the player. From Level 15 onwards the speed will increase by 10% with each new level. If it gets too fast too quick I can drop  it back down to 5%, but with 10% you should definitely notice the increase in speed. Let me know how it goes.

Thanks for your feedback. In Diamond Hunt the 50 points is awarded for crossing the middle screen only if you are playing  just Game B.  If you're playing all three games together (Game ABC) then it doesn't add 50 points. 

Thanks for reporting  your issue with Donkey Kong Jr. I wasn't able to replicate the problem in a few quick playthroughs that I did just now (I was able to unlock all 4 chains without any problem), but I'll keep trying to see if I can recreate your scenario with more testing. 

Great idea. Definitely worth a try. I'm currently knee deep in refactoring the RetroFab core, but as soon as I have it stable again, I'll update the build. Possibly some time this weekend, or at the latest Monday when the next RetroFab release will come out. Cheers.

Thanks for sharing! Apparently there are  around nine games in this  'Long Screen' series by Tiger Electronics. Looks interesting. 

Thanks!

Ah, that's interesting! Thanks for letting me know. And thanks, once again, for all your help in making this simulation possible. Hopefully I'll be able to eventually add the other two games in the series, Planet Zeon and Jungle Fighter, to RetroFab as well. Cheers.

Thanks! It's great to hear these enhancements add to the experience of playing these vintage electronic games.

It's at the max already. There's probably something else that needs to be tweaked to rebalance the game at these speeds, but given I don't have a way to play the original game myself it's going to be hard to nail down. I think taking a break from it for while and then relooking at it again at some point in the future might help. Fortunately most people will still be able to enjoy the game without hitting this problem. 

Okay, I've upped the amount of sharks that can be spawned for level 8 and up, but how many rise up to attack will be limited by the rule that prevents three at the same time (or the player will have no where to go to evade them). I've kept the cap at  level 14 since increasing the speed won't solve the problem of the amount of sharks. Hopefully this change means a few more sharks will rise to attack and make it difficult enough from level 14 onwards. Otherwise, I think the only way to make the game harder for you is to play it blind folded ;-)

Hmm... that's going to then create a big jump in speeds between level 7 and 8 though. Maybe let's try this first. I've updated the build so the cap is now at level 14 instead of 12. This way you'll get the speed boost for both the bottom and rising sharks, but there won't be a big jump in speeds between level 7 and 8. It's probably going to be too fast at level 14 (well for most humans anyway ;-) but I can always then reduce the speed till it's just right. Give it a try and let me know.

No problem. I've updated the build and increased the speed of the sharks at the bottom by 20% between levels 8 and 12. Give it a try.

Shark Attack is now released!

My pleasure! And thanks for your note (pun intended) about the tune at end of the game. I've kinda gotten to use to it as signalling game over so I'm going to keep it as is. Btw, if you have Android, the game should also work on your smart phone :)

And we managed to do it in just 5 days, too! I'm so glad others will get to try out this game now too. Okay, I've updated the dev build if you want to try out the new fire repeat rate before the release.

Thanks. That's great! I think the auto repeat on the fire button makes it a bit faster than firing manually so I'll add a slight delay on the auto repeat. I'll let you when the release is live!

Thanks for the feedback. New build with latest updates now uploaded. 

Auto repeat on fire button turned back on. Redistributed the speed of the attacking sharks between level 8 and 12 so the speed at level 12 now matches level 14 from the previous build. And increased the rate of the bottom sharks speed between level 8 and 12 to be 20% faster. All speeds remain constant from level 12 onwards.  Everything between levels 1 to 7 remain unchanged. Let me know if all feels right now. And thanks again for your contributions to make this simulation possible! It is much appreciated. 

Okay, I've uploaded a new build for you to test. I tried your suggestion of bumping up the speed of the bottom sharks by 20% at level 12 and it worked great to allow more sharks to get pass the line of fire forcing the player to move out of the corner. However, it obviously doesn't solve the problem in the levels leading up to level 12. So I got to thinking, what if instead I compensated for the increased player fire rate (which is the root cause of the problem) by adding a small delay before they can fire again. And it looks like that does the trick. Now after level 7 a lot more sharks at the bottom get through the line of fire even if the player is spamming the fire button. 

The only question remaining now is at what level to cap the speed of the sharks rising up to attack the player after which they will remain constant. It should probably still be around level 11 or 12,  based on the previous build, but I've set it at level 14 in this build, just so you can test out level 13 and 14 if you want to see how it feels. Then again, it might need to be even earlier than level 12. It's your call.

Overall though I'm feeling good about the build. I still can't make it past level 7 without cheating, but on the plus side I'm doing much better in  the bonus rounds. Almost certainly because of the faster fire rate, but I'm telling myself its because I'm getting better ;-)

Thanks for testing. Sounds like we're much closer now. Yeah, it should be possible to increase the speed of the sharks at the bottom by 20% at level 12 and then remain constant. And thanks for the note on the number 7. As for the score having a minimum of 2 digits displayed, this is only on the RetroFab enhanced artwork mode so it's more visually balanced with the added level display. If you switch to the original artwork mode it always starts with 1 digit as per the original game. 

Thanks! I will definitely keep your generous offer in mind when I'm ready to do a major refresh of the G&W collection on RetroFab. Wishing you all the best with your website and keep up the great work! 

Your input is greatly appreciated mate. Especially given how familiar (and insanely skilled) you are with the game. I especially like your suggestion of having one rate at which the speed increases from level 1 to 7, and then have a different (faster) rate after level 7 which will ramp up the speed much quicker. 

I've updated the dev build so you can try it out. I've increased the speed between level 1 and 7 so that by the time you get to level 7 it's a little faster than it was in the previous build. I've also made the rate of the player's shots faster to balance out the increase in the speed for novice players. After level 7,  you should notice the enemy attack speed increase a lot quicker with each level since I can now set a different rate from that of level 1 to 7. Just let me if you think the speed in the levels after level 7 ramps up enough, or if I should increase the rate some more. Should be lot easier to increase the rate now if needed since it won't affect the speed for levels 1 to 7.

I didn't change anything specific to fix the issue where sharks in the left and right channel sometimes don't attack upwards, but I didn't get it while testing the latest changes. Perhaps I changed something inadvertently with the latest updates, or maybe it still happens but I just didn't notice. Let me know if you still find some sharks don't attack upward when they should. 

If all goes well I'm hoping to release Shark Attack on Monday.

Thanks again for the feedback. I'll see what I can do regarding the speed, but as I mentioned earlier if I'm having trouble at level 5 and 6 then I think more casual players will too. I'll look into why the sharks going down the sides don't always come up, but I suspect it's because of the constraint that doesn't allow all channels to be attacking the player at once (otherwise they'd have no chance to escape). Thanks again for taking the time to review the build. I'll work on the updates and let you know when it's released.

Hi there. Thanks for the offer but I'm good with the scans of the originals I already have.

Thanks for the great feedback. I've updated the dev build with the following changes for you to try out. Sharks in the left and right channels now always attack upwards. Overall game speed is increased by 10%. Any more and I think us mere mortals wouldn't be able to get past level 5 ;-) The speed of the sharks as they attack upward will still continue to increase (like Sky Attack) beyond level 7 so pros like yourself should still find it challenging in later levels. Thanks for highlighting the non-standard 9 in the score. I've fixed it now. As for the artwork not centered, this was a challenge since the image is always taken through one of the eyepieces so it's hard to find one that is centered. But I've made my best attempt to manipulate it manually so it's more centered now. It's still not 100% but any more and it would start to look too distorted. 

I thought I'd try throwing together a quick simulation of Shark Attack :) You can play it here. I've reused most of the code from Sky Attack, so it has the exact same difficultly progression. This includes the increase in speed with each level of the sharks that rise up to attack the player, which correspond to the enemy missiles in Sky Attack. The instructions are still not great, but it's probably going to have to do for a public release until I can find better scans. I was also inspired by your Sky Attack gameplay video to add the level number to the RetroFab version of the artwork. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the video!  That's very helpful. This game is kind of on the back burner for now, but when I have some time I  definitely intend to revisit it. Thanks again for suggesting it and for the video playthrough.

Thanks for playing! Unfortunately, mobile orientation is an itch.io  project setting and there isn't a way to set it differently for phones versus tablets :( 

Not sure what my highest score is, but I've never made it past Level 11.  And I suck at the bonus rounds... way too slow reaction times. I'll stick to coding ;-)  

Theoretically you shouldn't get the popups on a mobile device, but it's probably recognizing your iPad as a desktop with a touch screen because of the high screen resolution. If there is anyway you can reduce the screen resolution on your iPad it might work.  Unfortunately RetroFab doesn't officially support iOS devices since I don't own one to test on. 

Level 18! That's impressive! I'm getting better after all the testing but no where as good as that. 

I'll be sure to let you when I start working on it so you can contribute... especially with testing.

Thanks! I'm still hoping to find someone who can scan the original so it's closer to the Sky Attack scan quality. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Ah great! Thanks for letting me know.