The Mame Club! - This Week's Game is Dr. Micro!

[zektor]

This week's game was chosen by AlanD. The next person on the Mame Club list will get to choose their game the coming week and must PM me with the chosen title by Monday night at the very latest.



When writing your review, post it right here in the sticky topic and include any thoughts you have about the game. It would also be nice to let us know other aspects of the emulation. Here are some things that would be good to know:

Did you like/dislike the game? Why?
What type of machine are you running it on? Specs?
What version of Mame?
How long did it take you to beat it? Score?

Again, YOU are the reviewer. Let us know anything and everything you think about the game!


This week's game will be uploaded shortly for all to enjoy!


Club Members

Gamereviewgod
Wisesalesman
scooterb23
ddockery
AlanD
digitalpress
IntvGene
NE146
jonjandran
Flack
IGotTheDot
zektor (me!)
buttasuperb
chadtower
Sotenga
Stark
ECWSandmanECW
christianscott27
TripppsK
vespertillio
ghsqb
TheSmirk
anotherfluke
BHvrd
ManekiNeko
MarioAllStar2600
Ze_ro
slip81
Qbert

IntvGene is next in line!

[digitalpress]

The ROM is now available at our sister site:

http://www.videogamearchive.com/emu/mame_request.htm

[zektor]

The ROM is now available at our sister site:

http://www.videogamearchive.com/emu/mame_request.htm

Thank you Joe! Let the game begin!

[Sotenga]

WHOA! This is highly unorthodox!

It's actually a pretty cool game, even if it does sorta come off as a Donkey Kong ripoff. But it's fun. Not a lot of substance to it, but it's classic platforming at its finest.

[Ze_ro]

Wow, this is an interesting one... It's got a lot of platforming goodness in it, but I'm never entirely sure about what I'm supposed to be doing. I recommend watching the attract mode to figure out what the goal of each "part" is.

In part 1, you're supposed to jump between the platforms (actually, you can't jump, so just fall down to the next one when it's lower than you), and make your way over to the V (?) on the other side of the screen. When you get the V, a burner will light under the flask with green liquid, all the enemies will act stunned, and you'll automatically go to the next level. If you miss a "jump", there is a raft below you that will catch you and launch you back up, but it seems that it can only save you three times (judging by the number on it). It follows you precisely, so you can rely on it being there for you. There are two enemies that will try to get you. The first looks like a test tube with legs that will try to drop red fluid on you from above. Eventually, he runs off the top left of the screen, and reappears on the right hand side (you can shoot him while he's climbing). The other enemy is some green thing with boxing gloves. They spawn from the bottom right, and move towards you. They can punch you if they're on the elevator next to you, or they can launch their boxing gloves at you. They will also jump on each other's backs. I was able to fall on top of one and shoot him before he hit me once, so I'm guessing that touching them is not lethal.

In part 2, you're supposed to jump onto the green bubbles. While on the bubble, you can fire some projectile, but every shot makes the bubble smaller until it eventually pops (try to time this so that you land on another green bubble... otherwise you are an easy target while you fall (you will survive the fall though), and you'll have to jump on another bubble). Green bubbles are not lethal, but can be shot for points... the red things will launch boxing gloves at you, so take them out when possible. I think the red drops that fall from the ceiling can hurt you too. There is also a blue penguin (?) that floats up once in a while. I'm not sure what these do, but you can shoot them if you want (And subsequent visits to this part will see different blue things). You can hit multiple things with a single shot if you're careful. I'm not 100% sure, but the goal of this level seems to be to kill enough of the red things that a vent opens at the upper part of the level (Although I've seen it open at other times, so it may be random, or it may be when enough green bubbles make it to Dr. Micro). The vent will only stay open for a short time, so you might want to hang out near it, or you'll have to start again.

Part 3 is like the cement factory from Donkey Kong... the point is to make it to Dr. Micro at the top. You'll have to avoid all the junk in the level to actually make it there though. Touching the parts on the conveyor belt will kill you, and touching the presses will kill you too (including if you fall on it from above). There are green radios in the level that you can grab for points, and halfway up, you'll grab your gun (at which point you can no longer jump... but you won't need to). You'll have to shoot the parts to keep them from hitting you, and ride the elevators up. The giant robots at the top will take a number of hits to kill. By the way, after this level, you'll go back to Part 1... if you get back to Part 3 again, the conveyor belts will be different!

Was this game ported to the C64? It sounds familiar... or maybe I'm just rembering Mr. Robot or something.

Any high scores? My highest is 72540 so far.

--Zero

[QBert]

HAHA! I could barely get past level 3 most of the time....then I was just playing and doing pretty good then my buddy called, and hes talking and talking and Im just playin and playin and Im barely saying much to him as I zoom past like 4 levels with 1 man(2nd last) before I hit level 8. Then I died.....twice.

Level 8
125650

Thats totally awesome, for me anyways!!

Ze_ro hit it right on the button with his descriptions of the levels.
Very nice job!

I liked it, at first I thought it was kinda difficult, but there is a definate pattern and I began playing with one hand even sometimes, hehe.

Im playing on my 1 and only PC..a PIII 667, 512 MB Ram, sexy 128 MB vid card and win2k
Running MAME32 PLUS! 0.69
And thanks for the hook up DP! I never had this rom or even played the game before so this is so far, a great idea.


Also I cant get the load/save to work for this game! It loads all freaky like.
Oh well, thats cheating/continuing when you shouldnt be anyways.

Qbert

[ddockery]

When diod the load/save get added to MAME? I had stopped folowing it for well over a year (maybe 2) and didn't even know this feature existed!

[QBert]

I couldnt really tell you as Ive only been into MAME for a year or so myself and its always been there for me!


QBert

[Ze_ro]

State saving has been in MAME for a while (somewhere around the 0.5x releases?), but I don't think it works for ALL the drivers in MAME. I think Shift+F7 saves, and F7 on it's own will load... although I almost never use this, so I can't say how good it is.

Dr. Micro, unfortunately, doesn't seem to save highscores Oh well...

--Zero

[ddockery]

Maybe I just ignored the feature since it feels like cheating to save an arcade game.

To get back on topic, I really suck at this game, but now that I at least know what I'm trying to do on board 2, I'll have to gie it another shot tonight.

[Ze_ro]

Is no one else playing this game, or what? I think it's really fun! Haven't had time to rack up any bigger high scores yet though... I'll give it a good run tomorrow.

--Zero

[AlanD]

Well I'm glad a few people liked it so far. It was one I discovered while flipping through screenshots. It reminded me of Donkey Kong Jr in the style of graphics so I booted it up. Played similar also in my opinion so it is one I play occasionally that is the most obscure. I had never heard of it before MAME so hoped others had not either. Few other games I thought of mentioning but figured most people knew about were Cheeky Mouse, Do Run Run, Fantasy and Do's Wild Ride. Overall the game is pretty simple but a nice platformer in the older style of gameplay. I need to play it and see what my high score is now. I have made it to the third set of boards but that was it.
Alan

[slip81]

I haven't had a chance to play it much yet, but so far it's super fun and addictive. i agree with most people in that figuring out the leve objectives can be kind of tricky at first, but the game is so fun overall that i cannot quibble about such minor grievences. anyway my high score so far is 29650, and i've only gotten to level five i think, not a game to start playing when you are supposed to meet your girlfriend somewhere. playing it on MAME32 v 0.77 on a hp laptop with a pentium IV 2.4ghz, 512mb ram 64mb video ram and windows xp pro

[Ze_ro]

Well, I managed to bump my high score up to 91400, but I can't seem to get past that second "robot factory" level. I always either get greedy going for the bonus radios, or I get hit by the gun at the top.

Anyone gotten to the third robot factory? I'm wondering if they keep changing, or if there are only two or three different robot factories that repeat.

--Zero