Checking highest score for Klax on Mame on TG settings...

[PC Engine Fan X!]

After browsing on the Twin Galaxies site for the Atari Games' Klax game running on Mame as shown here: http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx? ... 42&vi=7756

That tad bit of just over 2 million score is just pathetic. Plus there aren't any World Record scores on a real Klax PCB btw. That definitely needs to be rectified pronto. Any ace Klax player will tell you that no two gaming sessions of Klax are the same due to the randomness of the CPU generating colored tiles. You play with whatever tiles are given to you at the current time.

So by the time you reach Wave 7 or Wave 8, a score in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 and up is a very good benchmark to aim for anyways. The real trick is to setup the tiles so that you can set off a multi chain of Klaxes that will really crank up the multipler value (but that takes a lot of time and planning to pull off successfully -- most of the time, the CPU won't give you the right colored tiles to pull it off anyways...this is from playing countless games of Klax over the years on the various gaming platforms i.e. NES, TG-16, Atari Lynx II, GBA and of course, the arcade PCB iteration). ^_~

At both the 2004 and 2005 California Extreme shows, Walter Day was there to verify any new WR runs on the classic arcade game cabinets. I approached him and asked if he would watch me try for a WR run on a Klax PCB or Klax romset running on a Mame machine but none was ever found. And that was that. ^_~

Anyways, it will take a good two to two and half hours playing nonstop and warping at the appropiate Wave warp stages to reach Wave 100 (Score 250,000 points on this final Wave). The CPU will give you an additional 1 million point bonus added to your overall score at the conclusion of this particular Wave. Trying to attempt a 1CC on a Klax PCB is more apt to not likely happen due to the law of diminshing returns. If you fuck up on a single wave, that's it and it's back to Wave 1 to try to 1CC it back from "square one". ^_~

The "fast tile" waves are just fucking crazy, you gotta react fast and catch all the tiles while trying to score the require minimum amount of Klaxes for that given wave. It's always nice to catch a "breather" when you reach the beginning of a new Wave with the dropmeter all cleared out. ^_~

Sometimes, there would be times where the CPU would spit out too many Wild tiles and there would about four to five Wild tiles on my tile holder. According to TG settings, if a Klax PCB's Ramping setting is turned "on", that means on any given Wave, the longer you take your time, the more difficult it will become to complete it due to the crazy amount of tiles (more than normal) coming down the conveyor belt.

I just need someone from Twin Galaxies to personally watch and verify my attempt a WR run on a real Klax PCB sometime. That 2 million Klax score on Mame just doesn't count in my book. It needs to be done on the real deal that is a Klax PCB properly.

At the 2009 California Extreme show, there were two Klax cabinets brought in for the show: one was a full sized upright and the other, a mini cab. The upright was running a prototype version of Klax with more different colored tiles thrown at the player to juggle with. If the Klax cabinet controls were replaced with new controls, it would be a stiff 4-way digital joystick layout anyways but they were broken in due to years of use (and abuse) and quite soft to the touch in the hands of a Klax master player.

I recall trying out Klax for the very first time at Great America amusement park in Santa Clara back in April of 1990. I've got to admit that I sucked big time trying it out. It wasn't until that I got a copy of the Tengen NES game of Klax in 1991 that I was able to figure out the nuts 'n' bolts of made what it tick and gel together. And armed with that insider knowledge of the NES game of Klax, the real test was playing on an upright Klax cabinet at a local arcade. I was glad to have the experience and all those countless hours of playing it finally paid off in my 1CC session on a Klax cabinet in May of 1994. Of course, this 1CC session was never officially recognized by Twin Galaxies themselves nor ever acknowledged either. So somewhere out there, there is a lone Klax PCB with my 1CC session -- the CPU does keep track of how long per credit average on a Klax gaming session via Historgram screen when in Operator's Menu mode. I estimated that it was between two to two and half hours roughly of playing nonstop for that Klax cabinet 1CC session with an overall score of 6,000,000+ points.

It's interesting to learn that the Tengen release of Klax for the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16 consoles has even more user changeable options than what was offered on the arcade PCB itself. That is because Atari Games/Tengen went back to the drawing board and asked if there was anything that could be improved upon the intial arcade release of Klax (and they saw to add newer and improved refinements indeed). So you can say that the PCE/TG-16 version of Klax is considered the definitive version to play/own over it's PCB counterpart. You can adjust how many credits to play with as well. Play with just one single credit and see how far you can get. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~