1CC Marathon 2019

We’ve had some discussion in other threads, but if you like arcade games, you’ll want to tune in this weekend. The schedule is here…

https://horaro.org/onecreditclearmarathon/schedule

The video is here.

They’ll just keep on playing them all weekend long. The goal is to take one run at a game and finish it without losing all lives on a single “coin”. No continues allowed. It’s a One Credit Clear.

So far (Gradius III about to begin) my highlights have been Rush&Crash (hilarious!) and Jurassic Park (not a single second of rest, it’s exhausting!).
Truxton is an horrible game in my opinion, but the play was very impressive.
I missed the Armored Warriors and Outzone playthroughs.

It’s too bad this isn’t more popular with a better production. It’s good variety compared to the numerous speedrun marathons.

It’s an interesting contrast to speedrun marathons, because there are actual stakes here. If a trick is missed in a speedrun, you can either try again, or take a time hit and do it the “bad” way, but there’s no such thing as failure. Here, death can be a legitimate run-ender.

Yeah, that’s what I love about this. They can absolutely fail. I also like that they know and let you know when they’re in jeopardy. It ramps up the tension even more.

I don’t know why, but I woke up after a nap to this unscheduled Cadash playthrough by Pasky and it’s a joy as usual.
… Even though I don’t recognize Cadash. No way this is that intense an action game with me. Maybe that’s why I always ran out of time.

I have to go sleep in middle of an epic playthrough of Knights of Valour by TJ#1, with support translation in chat from a nice fellow. That will likely be lost in the youtube replays, oh well!

Pasky playing Crossed Swords now. He’s a hoot!

The guy is a natural: he’s been online 12 hours to get the marathon going properly, he’s streamed for 4 hours (doing games he already had commented this week during training practices), doing an extra hour of stream to fill in for somebody not able to show up at the last minute and he manages to never be annoying or boring.
If there was a fellow I’ve known only through streams and wanted him to be my buddy, this would be him.

I caught a bit of this and Super Spy. They’re both such a cool, weird alternate arcade/2d take on the first person shooter. They’re among my favorite kinda obscure (but not really) arcade games.

I missed Battle Circuit live, unfortunately.

I missed a bunch on this final day.
What a great event. It was as fun as the 2017 one.
From what I caught (I’d say about 1/3 to 1/2 the broadcasts), my highlights were Rush and Crash, Jurassic Park, Life Force, and Vandyke.
Besides that, anything by Vlud1 was incredibly impressive (that Striker 1945 one was otherwordly), anything by Pasky both entertaining and instructive.
Please share your highlights! Given the buzz, I’ll check Marty’s Metal Slug X.

I was in and out all weekend. Pasky playing Lightbringer for score at the end here was bonkers! I think Crossed Swords was still my favorite. Holy cow he clutched that out.

I have to go back and watch a LOT that I missed. It’s just so much fun to watch all these guys. Vandyke dude was annoying! I enjoyed the game though. :)

Vandyke is a game I never ever heard about and was great. It felt like the perfect mix between Valkyrie Densetsu and Elemental Master. With crazy fun art on top.
It’s amazing there are still such discoveries waiting for me. And given that Nichibutsu appears to own the UPL catalogue, can’t wait for the Arcade Archives ;)

Yeah, I peeked in and out throughout the weekend. Some really fun play, and a whole shit-ton of making incredibly hard things look super easy.

There’s clearly a small community of arcade streamers behind this, and it generally seems like a pretty chill and pleasant group, but I do wish there could be, like 10% less l33t gamer culture in the commentary and chat. There isn’t a lot of it, but it’s just enough to notice.

A few are, but it’s pretty easy to single them out. Some who didn’t stream on the marathon also have nice channels.

That’s the thing that impresses me most about this marathon. They played around 60 games and I think 44 were successful 1CCs. These games are HARD with a capital HARD for the most part and yet they make it look like they’re in total command of everything for the entire run, often finishing without losing a life. When it gets tough, you totally know they’re not shitting you about that because you can see how one wrong move can result in a whole run failing in moments.

Given I’ve played many of these games myself and can’t even get halfway through them on one credit, it’s just completely bonkers to me to see them plow through them. They are learned gamers on the very top of the pyramid of skill and memorization IMO. I love it.

As for the l33tness, I kinda like it since I think there’s a definite attempt to stamp out some of that across gaming. These games come from a different time and I’m fine with how this somewhat insular group has their own lingo that we can hear once a year as we delve into the (largely forgotten) past with them.

I’m looking forward to watching and rewatching this year’s event. I hope it doesn’t take two years until we get another one.

I’ve sticked for a year with a couple of them after the 2017 marathon when I was still in Japan and shared a common time schedule; they were very agreeable, some channels are super well behaved, others are so well-spirited the droppings of f bombs everywhere was not bothering. The chat themselves were never the theater of any drama or flamewars or anything. Again, super agreeable stuff. They were half joking about Pasky banning dudes but, sincerely, I’ve never seen banning happen anytime on any of those retro channels but during those few minutes in that marathon.
The linguo is also quite easy (although I noticed a couple new terms).

When I was watching, most of the streams were focused on practicing or trying out games, the king of super high gameplay shown during the weekend only being on display occasionnaly, when it was the specific goal of the day.
Also one thing I find funny is some of the streamers, as well as a bunch of the audience, are quite young. Too young to have grown with those games.
But is that different from an older fart like me discovering games anew thanks to the quality rereleases of late?

Maybe these kids just have a nose for history — finding out what life was like in the 80s by playing NARC.

To be clear, they seemed like very pleasant, stand up guys. There was a lot of very friendly banter. The biggest argument I saw was TJDicks and Pasky fighting over who was “#1 gamer”. (They each refused the title and said the other one was.)

Compared to average Twitch chat, it was probably one of the cleanest, most congenial rooms around. But there was just enough casual misogyny and homophobia for me to notice. Very tame, and basically de rigeur gamer-culture stuff. But still not crazy about it.

Yeah there is quite a wide divide between streamer’s rooms on that front, I had found.
Some streamers chat were almost devoid of it (half joking about the waifu art and manly man american body dream of the 80s). Others were not (usually because the streamer was encouraging it), and I were out of those.
The rooms I stayed around had quite a few female members, which stayed around because of the lack of penis contest, but also probably helped keep the lockers room mentality at bay in a positive feedback loop I am guessing.