International Classic Video Game Tournament - Day Four

I just returned from Funspot in Laconia, NH and am completely exhausted after Day Four of the 11th Annual Classic Video Game Tournament. Today concluded the tournament and my time at Funspot. I was able to meet a nunmber of very nice people, including several of the top coin-op players in the world. I was also able to do numerous audio interviews with the contestants, event organizers and even spent some time with Walter Day of Twin Galaxies discussing his experiences in the arcade culture since his start in the early 80's. As I have stated numerous times over the past few days, Walter is a very gracious individual who I have come to admire greatly. I hope to have all the audio edited and posted (with the help of DSMooth) as quickly as possible. In the meantime, here are some more pics from the last day of the event.

After hearing about Wacky Gator on the latest edition of the Retro Gaming Roundup Podcast (www.retrogamingroundup.com/), I was able to track down an example of the sequel, Wacky Gator Too, at Funspot. This game is very similar to Wack a Mole with regard to play.

Right next to the Wacky Gator Game, I found this arcade version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. I owned the Milton Bradley home game when I was a kid.

A film crew from ESPN (?) was on hand to record the last day of the event and to get some footage of Walter Day for an upcoming piece.

Here is a picture of Walter in his early days in California before the gaming urge took over. This picture reminds me of Pacino in Serpico (a concept that Walter would fine preposterous I am certain).

During an interview with Gary Vincent and Bob Lawton of Funspot, we were shown an area above the bowling alley that will hopefully house a future expansion of the American Classic Arcade Museum. If Bob & Gary can secure funding for this expansion, it will add almost 200 games and a vintage home console section (with playable games) to the current coin-op collection.

Eric Stone set four new World Records for Pinball today, including this high score for Jokerz.

Michael Sao Pedro set a new world record for the somewhat obscure game Cheeky Mouse today. Cheecky Mouse is one of the many titles that I have never heard of prior to attending this event.

Gary Vincent doles out prizes as part of the charity raffles that they held over the weekend. They gave away four coin-op cabs, a Vectrex home console and an Atari 2600 VCS. The 2600 was donated by yours truly in the name of 2old2play and was a very popular item in the raffle.

Gary Vincent kicks off the Awards Ceremony

Michael Sao Pedro accepts and award for winning the Mystery Game Challenge today.

Tom Votava accpets the award for second place in the tournament.

Jason Cram takes first place in the tournament for the third year in a row - Congrats Jason!

My Personal Experience

Though I certainly do not have the skill set to compete with these guys on their level, I was bitten by the High Score Bug and chases a few personal records over the weekend. My favorite coin-op game of all time has to be Robotron. After spending time with, and getting tips from, several players, including Michael Sao Pedro, I decided to attempt to set a personal best for this game. At the end of the weekend I suprisded myself and logged what I think is a rather respectable high score of 495, 100. According to the Twin Galaxies list of high scores for this game, this score would have been put me in 22nd place worldwide for this game. Unfotunately, all of the official game referees had left the building when I made this score, so it was not official. All high scores must be verfied by a judge or video taped to assure accuracy. I did take a rather crappy pic of the leader board though, with my initials "TDT" at the top. I also discovered that Michael lives in Malden, very near my home and has a cocktail version of Robotron at his house. So I hope to be able to practice up on my Robotron skills and who knows . . . .

Twin Galaxies Live Stream

Dennis Weaver from Twin Galaxies was recording video updates and streaming them via their web site during the event. He even took a few moments to interview me on camera. So be sure to check out my Twin Galaxies premier at the link below. Also, keep an eye out for the full set of audio interviews that I did to be posted soon.