I used to be king of the arcade!

[Daliman]

Ok, so i see these threads talking about the best arcade games ever, and it brings back lots of memories, for back when arcades first started being huge without pinball being the main draw, I was an arcade urchin.

durinf the summer, since my home life sucked, I would go spend 2-10 hours a day at the arcade. Being that income potential for 13 year olds was as limited in 1983 as it is now, I wasn't constantly playing games, nor even often going there with more than $1 in my pocket, but I had my ruses;

-Ripping up pieces of paper and shoving them in the coin register with a butter knife. When coins/tokens would get stuck, I'd shove the butter knife in there, half would fall in the game, half would fall into coin return.

-Also, not only was I a cute kid, but I was also very smart, and looked 4-5 years younger than I was,(still do, if not more so). Lots of GI's would be nice/take pity on me and give me tokens/money to play.

-For some reason, lots of GI's thought I was the base general's son, mainly because my first name was the same as his....I did not dissuade them from this.

-I would give "lessons" to people, helping them at parts of the game they were bad at, giving them hints, or just playing past a certain part for them. I would often get some change for this.

-I would play people for $$$. I never played for much, but I would usually score so many points on my first turn that people would give me the $$$ and walk away, allowing me to play their turn too.

Ah, the salad days....

Anyways, I was just thinking about all the arcade threads, and it reminds me how good I used to be at all these games. Anyways, here are my highest scores in every game I can remember beeing far better than average at. If you've done better, let me know, or just add your own. P.S. none of these were done with "cheats", such as the Galaga Cheat.

Galaga 2.35 million
Zaxxon 1.07 million
Q*Bert 335k
Star Wars 2.2 million.
Donkey Kong 3 240K
Dragons Lair Perfect score w/ no deaths
Ms Pac Man 139k (fast machine) 116k (slow machine)
Track and field 84k
Punch Out Could go through whole lineup twice without losing, but bald bull third time always beat me.
Mat Mania 297k
Pole Position. Don't remember score exactly, (78k?), but i was like 54 secs in first round, and 3-4 secs ahead of field in second.


all I can rememeber at the moment.

[YourFoxyGrandma]

[ QUOTE ]
Galaga 2.35 million

[/ QUOTE ]

Guh?! I thought that I was a decent Galaga player, but 2.35 million is rediculous. What level do you hit 2.35 million?

[Sponger15SB]

Back when Blockbuster did the "World Video Game Championships" (or do they still do this) where you played 3 different video games and got points against people at your local store, I won my store, and then made it to the San Diego finals at Sea World where I made it to the quarter finals (1st gets a trip to florida for the finals) where my Sacremento could not beat the other guys Sacremento.

It was so sick, I got to play on like a massive screen with an audience and my mom, dad, brother, and godfather were there cheering me on.

That is about the extent of my video game bragging.

[Daliman]

like 228. I had 650k before I lost my first man, and 1.1 million in my first 3. Took me about 4 hours, I think.


P.S. This was on a machine that gave a bonus ship every 70K.

[Dominic]

In my 14th year, I was king of Asteroids and Tron!

Great memories.

[JustSomeJackass]

Did that game (Galaga) still get progressively harder as the stages got up above 50 or 60? From what I remember, once you mastered avoiding the kamikaze style enemies and learned how to hide from the barrage of bullets they would unload on you, you could almost play forever...or until your mom came to drag you out of the arcade.

On a related note, I bought a video game (joystick with 4 games built in..plug it in to the TV and play) that had Galaga and a few other games (Mappy, Pole Position and maybe Galaxian if I remember right). I broke that piece os $hit in no time, but it was a nice trip down memory lane.

JSJ

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyways, here are my highest scores in every game I can remember beeing far better than average at. If you've done better, let me know, or just add your own.

Mat Mania 297k

[/ QUOTE ]

I actually wrote down my best MatMania score but that's on a scrap of paper back in Massachusetts. But, I do remember I won about 70-75 consecutive matches. I played for several hours on one quarter that day. I have never seen anybody else make it even halfway that far.

[Daliman]

I don't know that mat mania got progressively harder, but I do remember getting sick of the game when I scored that, and I ended up losing by running out of time in the match with the ref less than 2 seconds from counting my opponent pinned. I got to the point where I would just milk my opponent for points and always pin under 0 seconds to go. I used to average about 18k or so per match, i seem to remember.

[JustSomeJackass]

The other game on that Joystick piece of crap was Ms Pac Man. I think a game of that is what finished it off. The only time I have played Ms Pac Man in the past 10 years or so is at an arcade where she has super speed...well, the home game she does not. Couple her slow speed with erratic controls and you have a recipe for disaster with me at the controls..."GO LEFT DAMNIT!!"....<jerk on controller> ((crack))

JSJ

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
Did that game (Galaga) still get progressively harder as the stages got up above 50 or 60? From what I remember, once you mastered avoiding the kamikaze style enemies and learned how to hide from the barrage of bullets they would unload on you, you could almost play forever...or until your mom came to drag you out of the arcade.

On a related note, I bought a video game (joystick with 4 games built in..plug it in to the TV and play) that had Galaga and a few other games (Mappy, Pole Position and maybe Galaxian if I remember right). I broke that piece os $hit in no time, but it was a nice trip down memory lane.

JSJ

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I didn't really get progressively harder, just stay at the difficulty level it hit after stage 11. The main problem was that when you DID lose a ship, you'd usually lose the other in fairly short order, and single-shipping late stages is VERY hard, as is re-linking with all those ships/bombs whizzing by. Losing 3-4 total ships before getting relinked was/is common, and if you have a relatively full screen of enemies when you relink, fuhgeddaboutit.

Also, I forgot this part. In the same game, I went at LEAST the first 2 full rounds of bonus stages without missing a single enemy. I ended up blowing the streak on my third crack at the first round bonus stage(the easiest by far(!@&*%#) /images/graemlins/mad.gif

Finally, just remembered this too, 73% was a VERY common # for me in shot accuracy, and I've done 74.7%. I've never seen anyone else get over 70% while scoring over 200k, and when I play it nowadays, i get 66-68%.

Ah, to be young and nimble of trigger finger again....

[Daliman]

Those things seem cool, but it also seems to me that if the joystick isn't stable, meaning you can't tilt it from side to side w/o whole thing moving, etc., it definitely hurts the playability and feel of the game.

[Nepa]

geez Daliman you must be my stunt double. [ QUOTE ]
Mr. Mom/SNG pro/limit fish

[/ QUOTE ]

and I also use to kick ass a galaga. I think I was about 13 in 1983 as well.

[Slacker13]

I still love the old games so I built an arcade game for the house and it has every game ever made up to 1998 (over 4000 games). Basically every game you can possibly think of is in it and it's great for those who get sent to the rail when we play poker. I built it for around $1100.

Here is place to get started if your at all interested.
The game files are and they are free (http://www.mame.net/)
This is the control board (http://www.slikstik.com/)
These are the actual game files used in all arcade games. Galaga, PacMan, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Centepedes etc...

This is not my actual machine but it looks the same except for the top glass which I have logos of all the top games.

http://www.bargainranch.com/images/arcade2.gif

It's all ran by a cheap cpu and has a $100 tv for a monitor. Very easy to set up. You can also hook up a PS2 or Xbox.

[Daliman]

Yah, i got a friend who has this, and I'm DEFINITELY getting one for my game room when I get the basement finished (only 2500 more $200 SNG's to go!) /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Slacker13]

[ QUOTE ]
Yah, i got a friend who has this, and I'm DEFINITELY getting one for my game room when I get the basement finished (only 2500 more $200 SNG's to go!)

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL, well good luck. If you need any help when you get ready to build it feel free to ask me questions.

[MMMMMM]

Wow those were fun games, though I didn't play as many different types as you did.

Q-Bert: 4 hours on a quarter, don't remember score

Arkanoid: to the end of the game

Hippodrome: to the end of the game

Ms. Pac-Man: Best game ever in my opinion.

I was a real Ms. Pac-Man fanatic.

I scored over 200K on many occasions on standard arcade machines, best I believe was 248K. I had a good friend back in the early/mid 80's and we used to compete on this a lot; he got over 200K on multiple occasions too. Most of our cometitive games ended around 190K-210K.

You did reach the later pink boards where they monsters no longer turn blue, they just reverse direction, right? Well a while after that come the boards where they also don't even reverse direction anymore. After that come the "slow-down" boards where you also can't run as fast as the monsters anymore. These are the truly murderous boards. Mr. Red then especially can run you down and catch you on a straightaway, and if he is tailing you, you can no longer shake him off by going around corners.

As for scoring: to get the really high scores it is essential to get nearly every point possible on the first few boards, which means taking the time to line up the monsters for quad-monster-munching. You should be a bit disappointed if you don't get a perfect 29,400 on the first series of three easy boards. On the next blue boards you should quad-monster-munch at least twice, same on the red boards. It is a grave sin to miss a pear or banana.

[Senor Choppy]

I can't even complete a game of Galaga anymore, my right hand cramps up after 5 minutes or so since I only play it once in a blue moon.

Those are some really impressive scores across the board.

[Senor Choppy]

[ QUOTE ]
It was so sick, I got to play on like a massive screen with an audience and my mom, dad, brother, and godfather were there cheering me on.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's awesome.

[daryn]

like in "the wizard" w/ fred savage

[ddollevoet]

Slacker. You are my hero.

[MMMMMM]

^