January 1985, L.A., California:   North American Video Game Challenge

     The 1985 edition of the North American Video Game Challenge (NAVGC) was the third instance of this annual video gaming event, and was held the weekend of January 12th and 13th.  It was an invitational only contest, meaning that the participants had to be invited by Twin Galaxies in order to participate.  72 players (shown in a list here) were originally invited, and of them, 21 came for this event, plus one more (Tony Weiner, who was only 8) was invited to participate at the last minute.  I (Mark Alpiger) was one of those 22 players, and my first gaming contest was a great experience, overall.

     The location of the event was the Captain Video gameroom, located on Pico Boulevard, in the Los Angeles suburb of Westwood.  I was fortunate enough to be one of the persons invited (though how that came about is a story in itself), and quickly decided that I had to go, and make an attempt to do well against a group of truly elite players.  I ended up only coming in 20th, out of 22 (OK, you can laugh now), and was even beaten by the above-mentioned eight-year-old (now, that hurts !).  Still, since I had no experience with any of the games, except for Karate Champ, I suppose I did OK.  Plus, I did manage to beat a CAGDC 'Hall of Famer', Chris Ayra, who not only was also beaten by the little boy, but came in last place too !  But, I heard that this was mainly because he was more interested in watching others play, than in competing.

    The arrangement was simple - contestants could play as much as they wanted (the games were on free play) on the four contest games, which were:  Mad Crasher, Return of the Jedi, Karate Champ, and Cheyenne.  Each game was represented with four identical machines, so that the 22 gamers all had adequate time to play each one.  I recall having no trouble waiting to get on to play, and I remember trying to raise my score the most on Mad Crasher, and also Cheyenne.  What I didn't think through (which was actually quite stupid, given that I was a math major !) was that because of the percentile system being used, even doubling my score on Cheyenne would have made almost no percentile difference in my ultimate rank, so I wasted much too much time on that title.  I also didn't pay enough attention to the technique (which was a low-skill maneuver that should have been banned) on Karate Champ that enabled even young Tony Weiner to clock the game, especially from the standpoint of my score.  Basically, I wanted to play the games with as little help as possible, which I thought was the honorable thing to do.  Still, I probably should have helped myself by learning the technique, and thereby possibly moving at least 4 spots higher in my final ranking.

    Actually, that brings another point to mind.  As good as it sounds in theory, in actual use, the percentile system that was used to rank players sucked (and it's inexplicably still commonly used in many contests today !).  Here's how it worked; a player's score on a game would be compared to the top score, and then scaled accordingly (i.e., if 80,000 points was the top score on a game, the player that made it was assigned a percentile of 100%; if someone scored 20,000 points on that title, then their percentile would be 25.0%, as the score is that percentage of 80,000).  Next, the four percentages each player made on the four contest games were averaged, and compared, to determine the rankings.  Unfortunately, this is an unfair system, because if there is a game (like Cheyenne) where one player scores very high, and many others are well below it, then if they increase their scores, even by a major amount, the percentile ranking system gives them very little increase in their percentile score.  This was also a problem with Karate Champ, since a few players didn't use the low-skill technique, and their percentiles suffered greatly because of it.  Also, if one player did somewhat poorly on the majority of the games, but great on just one or two, their percentile would be unfairly high, compared to a gamer who did moderately well on all the titles.

    So, what's the solution ?  Simple - use the ranking system (each player would see how many other players that they beat on all the titles played, in order to determine their rank).  Instead of comparing score, you would compare a player's scoring position (or, rank) on a game to other players.  That way, the situation that arose between myself and Tony Weiner wouldn't be a problem.  I actually beat him on three of the four titles, and by a fair to large margin on those three.  Still, using the technique on Karate Champ, he managed to not only beat me in this contest, but he did it by two places in rank !  Needless to say, this was quite unfair, and also a very poor determination of overall gaming skill.

    Well, enough whining.  I'll wind up with some commentary on a few things of note and interest, both during, and outside of, the contest.  I'd say that both Phil Britt and Donn Nauert highly impressed me on Cheyenne.  It was amazing to watch their speed and accuracy at the higher levels.  In addition, seeing all of the gold accumulate, and watching their strategies of when to cash it in, was a real treat.  But, as good as the scores were, Donn later put his 83M+ contest mark to shame, with an ultimate wr score of over 300 million !

    Another game that I enjoyed watching was Return of the Jedi.  Phil Britt and Mike Sullivan (who shortly after made the current wr score) were especially adept, and handled the one area that I couldn't get by: the entrance, and exit, of the Death Star.  I must have tried at least 50 games, but never made it.  However, both Mike and Phil made it look easy.

    The other two games were pretty boring to me, even when I could look at an expert playing them, so there's not much to report there.  However, one thing of great note and interest to me was the title Marble Madness (MM), which was on play test at Captain Videos.  Steve Harris (who I later found out, on multiple occasions, to be a fount of unreliability) had written to me with details about the contest, and later  I was invited to come.  In the original letter, he mentioned that one of the contest games was "very similar" to Crystal Castles, which he knew was my favorite (I had originally contacted TG about how my score ranked, and heard back from him about that).  The title of the "similar" game was MM, and that had me excited.  Later on, however, its appearance fell through, but I suppose that wasn't his fault.

    In spite of Marble not being in the contest, I was still happy to see that it was at least in the arcade, and I both got to play it, and see others do the same, tho at a much higher level !  I wasn't able to get much further than the first third of race 3, but thanks to both Jeff Peters and Phil Britt, I saw all the levels in the game.  Even those great players (both of who are in my CAGDC 'Hall of Fame') weren't able to finish the final race, but their quest to beat each other made for great viewing.  As I recall, Jeff won out in the 'mini-contest' for high score.

    Well, that sums up my overview of the NAVGC contest.  I've OCR scanned in the results that were mailed to me by Steve Harris afterward, and they appear below, in the general layout of the originals, and include all errors and omissions.  Following that are a few pictures from the contest, with the option to jump to a separate browser window, in order to scroll through the complete set.  Finally, some additional material relating to the contest will soon appear in links at bottom, including: stories from some of the gamers, including more details from my story that weren't of enough interest, or relativity, to include in this write-up; the above-mentioned letters from Steve Harris; and the original press release for the contest.  Enjoy...

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