MAME Tournament Discussion Thread

[scooterb23]

Jibba - it was a blast, I love these kinds of tournaments (played in Twin Galazies MAME Decathlons for 3 years before). I will do my best to be part of anything that comes up in the future...now I need to see what the MAME League has up :) I've been slack in that recently.

[SoulBlazer]

Well, what sucks in the game is that if you die while trying to finish a board, you go back to the START of the board. Board 1 has 2 scenes (you can see the number of scenes left in the uper left corner). So I'll call them 1-1 and 1-2 for ease. Board 2 also has 2 scenes. Board 3 and 4 each have 3. So if you make it to 4-3, for example, and die, then you have to restart at 4-1.

Does that help? :D

For the record, 4-3 is as far as I got in my game.

If THIS game was hard, I'm in pure FEAR of what is coming up next. :eek 2:

[InsaneDavid]

I'm not making excuses, but I just got off one of the most brutal 3 day stretches I've ever had at my job. If I had one more day (I actually have tomorrow off), I could probably get to 25k or better, but in reality...I only had about two hours in the past three days when I mentally felt able to concentrate and play for more than 5 minutes.

I ended with just under 20k. Well done good sir :) I hath been slain.

I only played for an hour or so the first night and about three hours the next. (Honestly I couldn't take any more of this game, hehe) I feel mentally able to concentrate on the competition, but after five minutes with Zzyzzyxx that all goes away. LOL As far as I'm concerned the only reason I'm advancing is that of pure luck.

Fun game but it just gets so damned frustrating during the last lap of board 3 - all of board 3 in fact, when there's ONE open slot in a row you have to get back across and no helmet in sight, and that one open slot has an enemy in it that just won't leave, and all the other enemies are on the same side as you... aaaaaggghhhh!!! @_@

[Mr.FoodMonster]

I kept dying on a part (hell, I dont remember what board it was) and I kept getting 5000 points for all the items I collected 2 or 3 times in a row. That was luck. So, I ended up with 26625. Hopefully, its enough to win. I'll know when I wake up. Mesotired.

[NE146]

Ok.. submitted my score. With all the distractions on a Sunday evening.. I had to tell the wife that I NEEDED to be left alone for a couple of hours. I knew w/ Dr. Morbis being the gaming bad ass that he obviously is, I'd have to really try and max out this bitch LOL.

Anyway... for a long time my high wasn't all that great then I took a break and when I came back with fresh eyes I nailed a score I was satisfied with after about 3 more attempts in. I won't be playing this game any longer @_@ one entire precious Sunday night to friggin ZZYZZXYZ LOL

Welp.. here goes nothing. Personally I kind of think it's too bad either Dr. Morbis or I have to drop in this round... (I think we both would have been good for the finals) :( So either way.. good luck to all

[Jibbajaba]

Playoff braket updated:

http://alaimolabs.com/Jibbajaba/playoffs.jpg

Really interesting scores this week. Dr. Morbis and NE146 had the highest scores of the week, and et one of them has to go home. It seems like each player who won did just enough to eek out a victory, but all of the winning scores were very different. The conference championships are going to be very interesting.

Gapporin is picking the game for this round, so keep your eyes peeled for a post from him this morning.

Chris

[Gapporin]

Like Jibba said, I have chosen the next round's game. And it has been chosen. See the main thread for details.

However, Jibba also thought that you guys might need a little how-to tutorial for this game. So here's the scoop:

The object of the game is to shoot the baddies trying to rob the bank, while letting the citizens deposit their money at the bank. Along with a left-right joystick, you have three buttons: Button 1 shoots left, Button 2 shoots middle, and Button 3 shoots right. Easy, eh? On the top, you will see a taskbar like this:

http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/7660/bank00004qv.png

The bank has twelve different doors in it. (Maybe they would be able to cut down on robberies if they just had one door, eh?) Your goal is to have a deposit made in every door to go on to the next level. Once a deposit is made, you will see a "$" symbol in that door. The red numbers show which doors you are looking at. And the red bars tell how far away someone is (robber or citizen) from reaching that certain door.

And the clock? ...I dunno. It's just a clock.

This isn't all there is to this game, though, by the way. There are bonuses and fairness and bomb threats involved, too, but I'll let you figure that out on your own. :D

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Wow. I won by such a small amount its amazing. Well, atleast I know the lowest I can be is 4th place now! Yay!

BTW, that game sounds a lot more difficult then it is. I like it.

[NE146]

Ahh well... like I said, it's too bad one of us has to go home and this time it had to be me :) If only I had been able to reach that girl that one LAST time (the bonus on her gets huge), I would've taken it.. but alas LOL

Congrats to Dr. Morbis, you are indeed a skilled bad ass :D The tournament was great fun. I regret not playing games like Defender or Robotron, but hey the surprise and randomness of the games made it quite a bit more interesting

If anyone wants to view my .INP, here it is: http://www.users.uswest.net/~userid946/tk/zzyzzyxx9.zip

And with that I will bow out! Until the next time... ;)

[fergojisan]

Dammit. :(

Oh well. Congratulations Mr.FoodMonster! Just making it this far has been great for me. Thanks to everyone who dropped out! LOL

I'll see you suckas in the high score league...

Time for a well-deserved nap. -_-

[SoulBlazer]

HOLY CRAP! :eek 2:

And I was happy with MY score after spending four hours on the game! @_@

My hats off to Dr. Mobius and NE146 for those AMAZING scores. I just don't know how you guys did it. I was eager to get to Board 4 as soon as I could so I could rack up the points there -- looks like you guys managed to get to Board 5.

Quintracker had a good score as well -- I'm glad I kept replaying, because going into Sunday I only had a high of 60k.

Congrats to everyone who has advanced and also to those who tried their hardest. This was NOT a easy game.

Now I have to knock off Mr. Food Monster to get to the finals, someone I was hoping I would NOT have to face again. :P He's been on a rampage and I know I'll need to be on the ball to defeat him. To make matters worse for me, I work second shift every day, which reduces my playing time to a couple hours each night.

Speaking of second shift, Jibba -- when exactly is the deadline for sending in our scores on Thursday morning? I don't normaly get home until Midnight.

Bank Panic -- played it once in the arcades, recall it being a damn hard game. Well, best of luck to everyone who got this far! Even a loss here means you can play in the bronze medal game, so chances are good we all get SOMETHING for just being in the Final Four. 8-)

[Jibbajaba]

Well technically the scores are due on Wednesday night, but my policy has always been that they just need to be in my inbox when I get up the following morning. I check my e-mail at about 7:00. So technically you could play the game the following morning and be OK...

BUT

The "official" deadline is Wednesday night, midnight or whatever (which would of course be 3AM where you are). If I get up at 6AM because I can't sleep or whatever, and that's when I decide to check my e-mail, and I still don't have yours, then you're ass-out. My point is, although I am somewhat flexible, don't push the limits, because I am NOT going to e-mail you asking for a score on Thursday morning. I'm going to give you a zero and be done with it. Best to play it safe and get the score in ASAP.

As soon as the competition is over, I am going to set up "Digital Press world player rankings" much like professional tennis has. Then, based on the results of subsequent league events, the rankings will change, people will change positions, etc. I figure I'll do something like pay the #1 seed 100 meseta every week that they are in the top spot. That's motivation to keep it! Then, who get's into next year's championship tournament will depend on your world ranking. We won't have a "regular season" next year, because we will have these rankings as a result of regular league events. This will also help to ensure that the people in the championship tournament WANT to be there, and aren't going to drop out halfway through. Assuming that we pick up more players after this tournament, next years will be bigger and have one or more extra rounds.

Excited yet?

Chris

[Quintracker]

I'll tip my hat to you SoulBlazer, I knew you would be a challenge. I was actually talking to Scooter this morning about how I should have shot for over 100k because I knew you'd bring all you had. You have my congratulations, and I look forward to challenging you again :)

I'll go on and give another shout out to Jibbajaba as well. Believe it or not, your dedication to this mame league kept me going. When I starting working fulltime 11-7 at night halfway through this league I was ready to give it up, but seeing you continue through even after people started dropping out, questioning your methods, and nagging about updates ( :embarrassed: ), I decided the least I could do was see this thing through to the end. Thanks for a great league, and I look forward to participating in future ones!

[Jibbajaba]

Thanks a lot, Quin. I really appreciate that. Gotta give Gapporin a LOT of credit here, too. More often than not, someone was telling him that his game picked sucked in any given week, but he stuck through it too. Hopefully he helps me run the high score league, too.

You'd better stay in the league Quin or I'm going to have some rectum-mutilating trolls sent to your house to do their dirty work and then post the picks online for POG to find.

Believe it or not, I'm really sad that the tournament is almost over already. Hopefully all of you guys stay on board, and we pick up some new members as well.

Chris

[InsaneDavid]

Oh no, I gotta play against the MAME machine this round. :/ Oh well, I shall do my best. Some very impressive scores last round everyone!

[Quintracker]

You're absolutely right Jibba, I can't believe I forgot to thank Gapporin.

Gapp, your choices were certainly unique and, in a way, that's what made the league a level playing field. By choosing some obscure games you made sure everyone had an equal chance at winning (I still can't imagine someone mastering that baseball card game!). You put up with alot of complaining, but still continued on. My hats off to you.

Again, thanks to both of you for putting on a great league, and to all the players who participated and made it so much fun. Good luck to those in the finals!

[Dr. Morbis]

Ahh well... like I said, it's too bad one of us has to go home and this time it had to be me :) If only I had been able to reach that girl that one LAST time (the bonus on her gets huge), I would've taken it.. but alas LOL

Congrats to Dr. Morbis, you are indeed a skilled bad ass :D The tournament was great fun. I regret not playing games like Defender or Robotron, but hey the surprise and randomness of the games made it quite a bit more interesting

If anyone wants to view my .INP, here it is: http://www.users.uswest.net/~userid946/tk/zzyzzyxx9.zip

And with that I will bow out! Until the next time... ;)
My hat is off to you for spurring me to take it up a notch. If I had been playing anyone else, I would have given up after I maxed out at 170k on the first night after 3 straight hours of play. But I knew you would put in an A+ effort so I kept going till I busted in to level 5 for those 20k+ rewards every time you get to Lola. In fact, no my winning game, I died like 3 or four times in a row on level 4, and on my last man somehow managed to pass level four and rescue Lola twice on level 5 :eek 2: The trick to that game is going up and down, don't hang around on the same horizontal level going for treats that are near the baddies. I actually had lola showing 27 or 32k above her head but I just couldn't make it to her that one last time to pass level 5.

Now it's off to Bank Panic... :hmm: This should be interesting...

[InsaneDavid]

Games I'm bad at... Hogan's Alley.. Wild Gunman... oh, look - Bank Panic.. it's like the two put together.. except you use a joystick instead of a lightgun. :( I'm going to get creamed in this round. LOL I've been playing for hours and haven't got over 40k.

[SoulBlazer]

Okay, Jibba, thanks for the info. So you're on the west coast? That helps, then, since Midnight for you is 3 AM here, which means gaming time after I get home from work.

Also, we're susposed to start at Level 1, right? Just checking.

Hard game. I found it easier to use the keyboard. I did allright tonight after some pratice and can figure most of the things out -- I'm just not sure how to gain letters for the EXTRA in the lower left corner.

Suffice it to say the trick seems to be how fast you can rack up the points in the early rounds, because the later ones are downright BRUTAL!

I also had a bug happen to me in one of the games -- it seems someone dropped the last money bag I needed at the EXACT same time I was shot, and the screen got all garbled. Then it showed me dying a few seconds later. After that, the round continued, EXCEPT I had all the bags there allready! Finally after a few more bags were dropped it registered as stage clear.

Mr. Food Monster is not going to be easy. He rampaged through the last half of the tourny and was the only non seeded player to make it to the Final Four. I'm going to have to be on my top game to get past him into the finals.

[Dr. Morbis]

I'm just not sure how to gain letters for the EXTRA in the lower left corner.
To gain a letter, you have to shoot the hardest guy at 0.00 (the 5000pt guy, not the 3000 pt guy). I've only been able to spell EXTRA once, but it gave me 20k, a free man, and the round was automatically cleared.

And I know what you mean about Foodmonster. He started out at like 1-4 or 1-5 and slowly crept up into the leaders pack as the tourney progressed. I remember when he played you and me back to back and got 4 losses even though his scores would have beat 95% of the other players.

One day to go peeps...

[SoulBlazer]

Well, this game is damn hard. I got another personal high score for me today, but considering I've never been able to pull of the EXTRA trick, I'm damn worried. :/

Especily since Mr. Food Monster has yet to say anything in here since the results of the last round were posted. :eek 2:

Well, being on the east coast helps a little. As soon as I get home from work Wed night, I'll go back to the game and play as long as I can until the Midnight west coast deadline hits. And pray it will be good enough to advance to the finals. :D

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Wow, this game is tough... and judging by the previous scores, I'm sure you guys are hard at it. Well, I'm going to keep on playing until I can get a really high score!

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Well, this game is damn hard. I got another personal high score for me today, but considering I've never been able to pull of the EXTRA trick, I'm damn worried. :/

Especily since Mr. Food Monster has yet to say anything in here since the results of the last round were posted. :eek 2:

Well, being on the east coast helps a little. As soon as I get home from work Wed night, I'll go back to the game and play as long as I can until the Midnight west coast deadline hits. And pray it will be good enough to advance to the finals. :D
Well, dont worry about me not saying anything, I was just... not talking =P
I've not been able to pull off the EXTRA either, the best I got to was EXT, and that wasnt even on my best game. I found anoter way to get some mad points, but its pretty difficult to pull off. And, just so you know, I'm NOT going to be playing this until the deadline. I've only played it for roughly 2-3 hours total, and I plan on going at it some more later on tonight. Good luck, I can tell this is going to be a close one! :D

[DragonMaster Sam]

Jibba, I definitely like your idea of an ATP style ranking system. That would keep me motivated to play hard all the time.

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Well, my score is in. I ended up getting lucky with that game, and never got back up close enough to it. Good luck to all!

[SoulBlazer]

Yup, I just had my best game and figured I could'nt do any better, so I sent mine in. I wanted to make the west coast deadline. :)

Only it looks like Yahoo may be acting up for me, so I'll send it again in a hour, just to make sure.

[Jibbajaba]

Hey guys, I don't actually have time to update the jpeg right now as I am late for work, but SoulBlazer and Dr Morbis both won, and will play in the championship game. InsaneDavid and Mr. FoorMonster will play in the Bronze medal match!

Congrats.

Chris

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Yeah, me and SoulBlazer got antsy and we showed eachother the submitted scores. Congrats to him and Dr.Morbis for well played games. But, I'm not done yet. Me and David will battle it out for the bronze!

[SoulBlazer]

Note that I only asked Mr. Food Monster AFTER the Midnight deadline and after I had played my final game and sent in the scores. :)

Wow, tough game....I'm lucky I had the one good game last night or it would have been him advancing. Tough game all around.

And now I have to go up aganist Dr. Mobius in the finals -- AUGH! Not going to be easy at all. :)

Congrats to everyone so far!

[Jibbajaba]

Everyone remember that the Championship round of the playoffs will not be occurring until Tuesday morning.

Thanks

Chris

[Dr. Morbis]

Well, since the winners have already been announced, I'm going to go ahead and post my score:

368,300.

How did the rest of you do? Let's see some scores.

[SoulBlazer]

:eek 2: :eek 2: :eek 2:

HOLY CRAP!

How the HECK did you get that high of a score? Mine was about 225k and I could only get that high once!

And you wonder why I did'nt want to go aganist Dr. Morbius in the finals. :P

[Dr. Morbis]

And now I have to go up aganist Dr. Mobius in the finals -- AUGH! Not going to be easy at all. :)

Congrats to everyone so far!
...and just for absolutely butchering the spelling of my name, I'm going to rip you a new one in the Championship game ;)

[NE146]

If the championship game is an exciting game to watch, I'd like to see .inps :D

[SoulBlazer]

Sorry, quickly written post, I was still in shock. :P

It has been corrected, and no insult was ment, good sir. ;)

[Dr. Morbis]

:eek 2: :eek 2: :eek 2:

HOLY CRAP!

How the HECK did you get that high of a score? Mine was about 225k and I could only get that high once!

And you wonder why I did'nt want to go aganist Dr. Mobius in the finals. :P
Well, I used the keyboard and had the J-K-L keys as the 3 shooting buttons. I trained myself to just stare at the center of the screen and use my peripheral vision to shoot baddies. I also made sure my fairness value was as close to 0.00 at the end of each round as possible by always making sure not to pull the trigger till after the draw (easier said than done of course). That's 9 or 10k per round right there. My highest scoring game ended on round 11 I think.

Again with the spelling? All the more inspiration to win :P

[InsaneDavid]

How did the rest of you do? Let's see some scores.

155,200 - ooooooh, so impressive, huh? LOL

[Mr.FoodMonster]

How did the rest of you do? Let's see some scores.

155,200 - ooooooh, so impressive, huh? LOL
Oh yeah, I suppose the rest of you would like to know. I got 187150, and I also tried to make the fair shots all 0:00 but I only pulled it off once or twice in that game. No EXTRA for me, either.

[SoulBlazer]

Just to make sure we did'nt miss anything --

When is the last round susposed to start?

[Jibbajaba]

Was going to be tommorow, but would you guys mind if I made it Wednesday instead?

Thanks

Chris

[SoulBlazer]

I have no objection to Wed morning having it start, no.

I understand how busy that you two must be.

[InsaneDavid]

Was going to be tommorow, but would you guys mind if I made it Wednesday instead?

Sounds good to me as well.

[Jibbajaba]

OK, Here we are at the end of the line. The final game of the MAME World Championships will be Pengo.

http://alaimolabs.com/Jibbajaba/pengo.zip

Scores due Friday night.

Chris

[SoulBlazer]

Pengo! A favorite of mine!

:D

Damn hard game, though. And I now the good Doctor is going to come at me with everything he has.

Well, the worst that can happen at this point is a Silver, and not's shabby either. ;)

Best of luck to everyone here.

[fergojisan]

:popcorn:

Official "+1 Post Whore" post brought to you by fergojisan

[NE146]

Hey remember.. this is the championship. Us spectators want to see the .inps . Yes I am the geek at the arcade who watches other players play :D

[Dr. Morbis]

Hey remember.. this is the championship. Us spectators want to see the .inps . Yes I am the geek at the arcade who watches other players play :D
No problem, but I'll have to email mine to someone else who can host it.

I'm soooo glad that all the playoff games have been good old-fashioned games from the early years. If post-1990 games had been picked, I would have been in trouble.

As for Pengo, DAMN - talk about a risk/reward dillemna. It's so fustrating going for the big points and failing when I could have just past the round quite easily, but for substantially less points.

*status set to "A-game"*

[Mr.FoodMonster]

I've never actually played Pengo, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Not a whole lot of free time for me between now and Friday, but I think I'll manage.

[SoulBlazer]

Tell me about it, Morbis......I'm trying to strike a balance between the two myself, and clear the boards ASAP -- if I can get good points for nailing 2-3 of the little bastards at once, so be it, but I'm not wasting time running around trying to set up the 'perfect' shot. :)

Best of luck to you. This is'nt going to be easy for either of us. :D

[Jibbajaba]

You can watch other people play in the arcade?

Chris

[NE146]

You can watch other people play in the arcade?

Chris

Why yes! And it was every bit as dorky as this LOL


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/b2stoys/arcade.png

[Jibbajaba]

Just a reminder, folks. Scores are due tonight!

Chris

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Ugh. I've played for a total of 20 minutes so far. Cram session tonight for sure.

[SoulBlazer]

Does this version have different music? The one I always used to play in my local arcade had a different stage music. Not the 'stage start' theme but the music that plays while you are playing. The one I know sounds a lot more upbeat and fast paced.

And after all these years, I just finally learned this WEEK I can stun a enemy if he's touching the border and I hit the button. x_x Oh ya! I feel confident about winning the Gold -- not! :P

[Mr.FoodMonster]

My embarrassing score is in. I just COULD NOT get the hang of this game well enough to have a good score. Well, 4th place aint bad, right?

[Dr. Morbis]

I just realized, there was no mention made of dip switch settings. I've been playing with the default setting (difficulty = medium), I hope everyone else has too. Actually scratch that - I hope Soulblazer is too, and the other two guys can do whatever they want...

A couple more hours to go... . . . . . . . .

[SoulBlazer]

I did the same thing you did, Dr. Morbis -- assumed default was the way to go since no mention of them was made and have played with those settings.


Actually, I just sent in my score, even though I know I have a few hours left. I'm dead tired from this busy week, have a bad headache, and just don't think I can do any better. These three days were very busy for me and I think I spent less time on this game then on the last two combined.

Still, I'm okay with my score -- not thrilled, but okay. If I've lost, which I expect, you are a hell of a player and deserve the top spot. Congrats on some very tough competition.

[NE146]

Does this version have different music? The one I always used to play in my local arcade had a different stage music.

Pengo has 2 different songs yes. The Jap version (which is the one I grew up with) has the "popcorn" theme music. Whereas the U.S. version has another tune. The U.S. tune is the one that naturally made it into the Atari home ports of the game.

Also some pengo machines have that ice clearing portion at the beginning of each stage whereas others just pop you in without it.

I think I would've gave Dr. Morbis a run for his money in this one had I made it. :D

[Jibbajaba]

Sorry for the oversight. The default DIP switch settings were the way to go.

Chris

[InsaneDavid]

My embarrassing score is in. I just COULD NOT get the hang of this game well enough to have a good score. Well, 4th place aint bad, right?

Well considering I suck at Pengo, I wouldn't think that just yet. This game drives me nuts with the erratic enemy movement - unless you can get into a groove this game just never comes together. I managed to stomp out a bit over 50k. :/

[Jibbajaba]

The results are in!!!

In fourth place with a score of 26,930... Mr. FoodMonster!!!
In third place, with a score of 56,870... InsaneDavid!!!
In second place, with a score of 82,060... SoulBlazer!!!

Thus making your new MAME league World Champion, with a score of 97,810... Dr. Morbis!!!!

From now until next summer, the entire Digital Press community will recognize Dr. Morbis as the best MAME player in the world.

Guys, your meseta is coming right now. Prizes will follow within two weeks. That goes for everyone in the league, as prizes will all be shipped at the same time.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!!

Chris

[Jibbajaba]

Man, I just gave out 17,000 meseta. Ouch!

Chris

[InsaneDavid]

The results are in!!!...

Wow! LOL It's funny, I was working on a Genesis 2 paint mod this evening and all of a sudden I remembered "crap, the MAME competition!" as I'm sure Jibbajaba can attest to given how I sent my score at 11:18pm.

Excellent showing, Dr. Morbis - consistant since the start. Congratulations everyone!

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Well, it was a fun time. I'm pretty happy with 4th place personally, because I hadn't played more then half of these games before. I'm most certainly going to go into the next league, and I hope that all of you do the same. Maybe I can do a bit better with something like a console.

Congrats Dr.Morbis! :bday:

[fergojisan]

:hail: Dr. Morbis! Congrats!

Hey Chris, do I win anything for opening a can of whup-ass on this whole crew twice? Hmm?

Dr. Pushy

You have not seen the last of me! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOL

[SoulBlazer]

Damn. I THOUGHT the good Dr. would have a higher score but I just could NOT do any better. :/

Well, he DID get the best record for the league, and often got higher scores then me. I think the only game I did better then him was Ghosts and Goblins. So he's deserving of first place. Congrats!

Here's what I did to get my score -- and I'm quite sure Dr. Morbis did the same thing.

As you know, pushing the three diamond blocks together in a row or line gives you 10k in points (only 5k if you use the wall). The first board is FIXED as LONG you start the game right away, before the demo starts.

I praticed on the first board until I could get the three blocks together every time.

After you do that with the first board, the game then throws you a bone -- it makes every other board AFTER that a little easier to get the three diamond blocks together. I would start pushing in blocks to make it happen, killing enemies as I had the chance, get the 10k in points, then whomp off the last of the enemies.

Last night I was able to do this for SIX boards before I lost my last life on the 7th. 60k for each board plus what I got for killing enemies and the time bonus equals my score of 82k.

I was hoping my foe did'nt find this trick, but it looks like he did. And it looks like he did it for one or two more boards PAST what I could do! All I gotta say is @_@

Well, I'm not sure how much I would have used the Namco Plug-and-Play joystick or the trivia game anyway, and I AM still getting a nice prize package along with some stuff for having the high score for four games. I just had wanted that gold trophey! :D

Again, congrats to the winners, and to everyone who played, and for the people who ran this!

[Dr. Morbis]

Damn. I THOUGHT the good Dr. would have a higher score but I just could NOT do any better. :/

Well, he DID get the best record for the league, and often got higher scores then me. I think the only game I did better then him was Ghosts and Goblins. So he's deserving of first place. Congrats!

Here's what I did to get my score -- and I'm quite sure Dr. Morbis did the same thing.

As you know, pushing the three diamond blocks together in a row or line gives you 10k in points (only 5k if you use the wall). The first board is FIXED as LONG you start the game right away, before the demo starts.

I praticed on the first board until I could get the three blocks together every time.

After you do that with the first board, the game then throws you a bone -- it makes every other board AFTER that a little easier to get the three diamond blocks together. I would start pushing in blocks to make it happen, killing enemies as I had the chance, get the 10k in points, then whomp off the last of the enemies.

Last night I was able to do this for SIX boards before I lost my last life on the 7th. 60k for each board plus what I got for killing enemies and the time bonus equals my score of 82k.

I was hoping my foe did'nt find this trick, but it looks like he did. And it looks like he did it for one or two more boards PAST what I could do! All I gotta say is @_@

Well, I'm not sure how much I would have used the Namco Plug-and-Play joystick or the trivia game anyway, and I AM still getting a nice prize package along with some stuff for having the high score for four games. I just had wanted that gold trophey! :D

Again, congrats to the winners, and to everyone who played, and for the people who ran this!

Well Soulblazer, I did not think I was gonna win this one. I just couldn't take it to the next level and I knew our scores would be close. I got to Act 11 on my winning game, but for many of those acts I had to forget about the 10k or 5k and just kill the enemies. The greatest challenge of this game is knowing when to let go of trying for the 10k. I'm so stubborn that sometimes I would leave two sno-bees left intentionally and just run around desperately trying to move those 3 blocks across the screen.

My winning inp looks pretty good aesthetically. There were many times that I'd walk right past a sno-bee and he wouldn't kill me, making it look like I really know my shit LOL
I can email it to anyone who wants to see it.

Now, when are you going to insert that huge trophy into my item inventory jibbajabba?

[Dr. Morbis]

...oh, and I forgot to say...

Many thanks to all who played, and especially those who stuck with it until the end and have that competitive drive that is the essence of gaming in the first place.

And most of all, thanks to Jibba Jabba and Gapporin for doing the dirty work of hosting and organizing and reading so many emails (especially in the early rounds).

I'll be in your next league, whatever format it turns out to be, just coasting through the regular season until I get to play either Soulblazer or NE146 again in the playoffs.

Ta ta :P