International Classic Video Game Tournament - Day One

I just returned from Funspot and wanted to post a short report of my first day at the International Classic Video Game Tournament. As Thursday serves as a soft opening to the event, many of the top players will not arrive until tomorrow night. However, I was able to meet several individuals who had formerly held world records and it was nice to check out the event early to get a feel for what the next few days will be like. I also was able to spend some quality time with several of my personal favorite games and set two new personal best high scores: 350,000 on Robotron 2084 and 1,500,000 on Pinbot. I also interviewed several folks including Bob Lawton, Founder of Funspot and current General Manager of the facility and Gary Vincent, Curator of the American Classic Arcade Museum. I will be interviewing players who will be participating in the tournament throughout the weekend and hope to have these posted as quickly as possible. For now, here are some pics from today's action.

The Tournament Lineup of Games

Some of the Contestants in Action

Some of the Games, Like Cheeky Mouse, I had never even heard of until today

Joel Hedge Chills out playing Ataxx. Joel is the former World Record holder for Xybots and is ranked 5th in the world currently for the games Enduro Racer and Depth Charge

Derek Litton Plays Pooyan as part of the Tourney. Derek is currently ranked in the top 10 for several arcade games including Tempest, Time Pilot and Stratovox

Derek Litton's Game Face

Russell Archey of Indiana attending the tournament for his third year. Check out the sweet Mega Man T-shirt Russell is Sporting.

Nick Ortakales - Funspot Employee and one of many  official score keepers for the tournament (and a mighty fine Robotron Player to boot)

My first 1,000,000 plus point game on Pinbot. I hit 1.5 mil later in the day. Only 15 mil more to catch up with world record holder James Shird

Check out Funspots new dual-monitor PC-10 Cab

The Newly Refurbished Deathrace Cab - one of the rarer coin-ops in the collection at Funspot.

It was a fun first day of the tournament. My personal goal, in addition to bring you great coverage of the event of course, is to break 1 million on Robotron by the end of the event. To put this in perspective, the current world record for this game is 348,691,680 points and is held by Brian King. It seems I may have a long way to go to reach that level of play.

Stay tuned to my Twitter feed for more updates from the event and check back here at my blog for daily reports as well. In the meantime, head on over to the Twin Galaxies web site (www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx) for live streaming video from the Tournament.