The upcoming 2008 CAGDC Tourney at Pro Putt FFC

[MDARULZ]

Hi gamers !  I've got another update for you.  The Capcom Bowling game is currently out of operation, and after looking at it extensively today, two techs couldn't get it going.  So... it looks like it's substitute time !

If the game isn't working on Friday morning, we'll definitely put one of the four substitute titles in its place, and I've decided (if needed) the title will be Discs of Tron, with a threshold score of 10,000.  That's probably too low, but I can't play it on MAME, with the poor control, so we'll err on the side of caution.

OK, the other 'news' is giving you all an opportunity to read the entry form 'rules' preview page, which is here.  I say preview, as the Mystery Title is not listed.  Again, that will be listed early (perhaps just after midnight Central Time, tho more likely in the daylight early morning hours) on Friday.

I just got my order of CAGDC shirts in, and they look really sharp.  Thanks for your orders, guys !  For those who don't know, I'll be stocking CAGDC shirts soon, and decided to roll them out at this event.  Here's the artwork that will appear on the back (the logo alone will appear over the pocket, or the pocket spot if there's no pocket, on the front).

That will be it from me until Friday, unless I need to announce something tomorrow, after I get there and see everything.  If nothing is posted tomorrow (Thursday), check the forums for the post on the 'Mystery Title', early on Friday.

[MDARULZ]

Well, I made the 4 hour drive to Pro Putt in Bloomington, Illinois today, and I'm glad to report that all the games (save Capcom Bowling, which is out of the event; Discs of Tron is 'in') were put together in one area that will be super easy to referee.  Mark Boolman, who lives in town, was there to help me check the games out, and see that all were on the factory settings.  A few were 'off', but we got them all set up, and other than a few tweaks before the contest beings at 2 PM on Friday (today), we're ready to go !

While Mark and I were finalizing the settings, I got a call from Pac-Master Douglas Loyd, and he is likely going to make it out on Saturday.  It'll be nice to have another entrant from out-of-town.

OK, now for the info you (or, at least, the contestants) want.  The 'Mystery Title' for this year's event is... Thunder Cross !  It's a nice side-scrolling shooter with a lot of interesting ships and obstacles to overcome.

Well, that's it for now.  I'll likely update who's done what late on Friday, or early Saturday.  Stay tuned...

[Dr. Boom]

Sweet- A shooter!    I'll have to hone up on my R-Type type skills and maybe rack some points up on this one!

[Welby]

We had a TV station 'crew' come by just after starting, and paper coming tomorrow.  Contest is off to a good start.  With the exception of a couple of button issues(and Capcom Bowling ), everything seems to be working 100%.  Spirits are high and smiles wide.

[Super TNN]

     Well the list of games is okay but I hope to see a Midway cabinet version of BurgerTime, Gaplus (not Galaga 3 model), and of course Kangaroo lol.  No I wasn't on ehre to vote but i certainly would have for this title!  Yep it's quirky and certainly different from DK.  Yep both games had a big ape but you can punch the smaller primates and their apples!  That bell tune was pretty cool and I ahd played it plenty of times on MAME!  Wish I owned the arcade cabinet! 

    Mr. Alpiger it's not really fair to knock games like Kangaroo and Donkey Kong because you're not good at them when surely many others are...

     Well everyone have fun and good luck at the tournament!!!

       Ty

[MDARULZ]

We had a TV station 'crew' come by just after starting, and paper coming tomorrow.  Contest is off to a good start.  With the exception of a couple of button issues(and Capcom Bowling ), everything seems to be working 100%.  Spirits are high and smiles wide.

Yeah, we got two tv crews to come in, and a lot of people in the arcade asking about what was going on.

As you said, Mark, a number of (small) button / joystick issues, plus a minor switch setting or two, had to be tinkered with, but by early evening, most problems were addressed.

Well, today's event is starting soon, so I'll sign off, and note scores later today.

[pauldean]

Who are the players who made it to this event? Any great scores?
PD

[Billhouse]

I hope all is going well other that the initial machine problems. I, like I'm sure plenty of others, wish I was attending, hope you get all of the attention and publicity you deserve. Just back from the bar celebrating my umpteenth B-Day. BTW Mark, unfortunately I did not get the cocktail CC I had hoped for, however, I was surprised with an empty cabinet, a slightly used PC, and a Tankstick. So I'm gaming along with the crowd at a distance. Waiting to see the scores along with the others. I cannot wait to be humbled at a future event. Congrats on the current CAGDC popularity, and here's to a future of more notoriety. (Raising warm can of sub-par brew, that's all I have left)!!

[MDARULZ]

Who are the players who made it to this event? Any great scores?

Sorry for the delay in getting this info up.  We had a full day of gaming yesterday (13 hours), and most of the below listed scores were made then.  Perhaps we were inspired by the continued media coverage; the local newspaper (The Pantagraph) had two people that stayed over an hour each, and had a great writeup, and photos.  Yours truly made the front page of the local section with my (now trademark) 'foot' game on Crystal Castles.

We managed to fix a number of button and joystick issues, so that issue was minimal after lunch yesterday.  However, I did manage to stupidly unplug Pat Laffayes' Frogger game after he had played for a half-hour, in trying to fix another game issue.  After ranting for many minutes, Pat took his 'fired-up' mentality, and channeled the energy to get the top score on both Rally-X, and Frogger.  And, because of that, all was forgiven... I think !

OK, here's the to-date results, and more info is to come.

Best results on the 14 contest titles:

Crystal Castles   829,516     Donald Hayes
Dig Dug           1,707,820   Donald Hayes
Discs of Tron     54,500      Donald Hayes
Donkey Kong 3     291,900     Donald Hayes
Frogger           192,690     Pat Laffaye
Galaga            1,840,870   Donald Hayes
Gorf              115,990     Donald Hayes
Kangaroo          53,800      Donald Hayes
Rally-X           93,860      Pat Laffaye
Rampart           41,180      Mark Boolman
RoadBlasters      316,610     Pat Laffaye
Star Wars         2,083,177   Mark Boolman
The Glob          108,391     Donald Hayes
Thunder Cross     351,900     Geoff Prekzop

Other scores of note:

Star Wars         1,867,957   Donald Hayes
The Glob          99,656      Geoff Prekzop

Standings:

100.00%  Donald Hayes
96.42%   Pat Laffaye
96.36%   Geoff Prekzop
96.18%   Mark Boolman
92.91%   Connor Boolman
92.63%   Douglas Loyd
91.78%   Jason Spindler
87.11%   Brent Nelson
81.41%   Angela Spindler


Note: edit on this post was done to correct alignment errors, expand abbreviations, and improve the readability of the results.

[Burgrtm]

Some fantastic scores guys!
Don, you kick ass on Dig Dug. I was expecting around 1.4 mill max for an hour on this title.
The only game I would have clocked on is DK3. "That ape is very cunning".  He'll "chumpatize you". LOL
I love those quotes from the movie KOK.
I may have had a chance on Kangaroo.
Never played Thundercross. I've have to try it.

Man I really wish I could have gone! 
Sucks to be me right now. LOL
I new Don would be the man to beat.

Cant wait to see the final results!
Have fun!

Bryan

[Welby]

Here's a link to the Pantagraph story:  http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/03/30/news/doc47eed0605fb9a791526364.txt 
MDA will get a copy of the TV coverage from me at some point, and probably put it up.  Just after the contest ended, we had 3 more show up, who got the wrong times from the PP fliers, which said Sunday was from 4-12pm vs 12-4pm.  John Barrett(sp?) and his friends came over from Indianpolis, IN.  Hopefully we can increase attendance in the future, but we weren't expecting large crowds for the first time in a new location.
PP did a fantastic job of making everyone feel welcome.  They even provided snacks/meals/pops for everyone in the contest each day(twice on Saturday!).  PP also gave gifts and ribbons for various catagories(they will ship them to those that left before getting theirs).  MDA should have the results up at some point(soon) and some great pics.

[spindaddy]

So what were the final results?

[Welby]

1 Donald
2 Geoff
3 Pat
4 me
5 Connor
6 not sure if it's Doug or Jason
7
8 Brent
9 Angela
Pretty sure that's right.  There was only 0.9% between 2nd-4th place.  Donald dominated

[Dr. Boom]

I'm pretty sure Jason got 6th. I blogged about the event on my gaming blog, which is mostly about vertical shooters (shmups or STG's) and some other console stuff, but you guys may want to check it out:
http://suicidebullets.blogspot.com/
I have to give kudos to Mark for putting on such a great event and it was truly an honor to play alongside Pat, Mark, Doug, Jason and Donald as well as Connor, Brent and Angela. I took a bunch of footage of the event, including some unbelieveable Centipede play from Donald Hayes, Pat's Rally-X run (~93K) and Mark Alpiner's new Glob WR, which he set on his first game in a few years.

[MDARULZ]

So what were the final results?

Sorry to delay posting this.  I got in early today (1 AM) after driving back home Sunday evening, and have been taking it easy today, after an exhausting (but super-fun) weekend.

Mark Boolman (as well as Geoff) has a great memory, and his list is dead-on (thanks for the link to the news story, and for taping one of the two tv news stories, Mark !).  Here's the final percentile results, with the number in parenthesis representing the number of titles that the player came in first on:

100.00%    Donald Hayes    (8)
 97.34%    Geoff Prekzop   (1)
 97.02%    Pat Laffaye     (2)
 96.46%    Mark Boolman    (2)
 93.10%    Connor Boolman
 92.18%    Jason Spindler  (1)
 92.00%    Douglas Loyd
 87.56%    Brent Nelson
 83.75%    Angela Spindler

Now, to the top scores for each of the 14 titles, with world records noted by WR:

Crystal Castles   829,516     Donald Hayes
Dig Dug           1,707,820   Donald Hayes     WR (1 hour time limit)
Discs of Tron     54,500      Donald Hayes
Donkey Kong 3     291,900     Donald Hayes
Frogger           192,690     Pat Laffaye         (1 hour time limit)
Galaga            1,840,870   Donald Hayes     WR (1 hour time limit)
Gorf              115,990     Donald Hayes
Kangaroo          53,800      Donald Hayes
Rally-X           93,860      Pat Laffaye
Rampart           41,180      Mark Boolman     WR
RoadBlasters      452,940     Jason Spindler   WR
Star Wars         2,083,177   Mark Boolman
The Glob          124,406     Donald Hayes
Thunder Cross     351,900     Geoff Prekzop    WR

Other scores of note:

Galaga            1,368,720   Pat Laffaye         (1 hour time limit)
Rampart           18,772      Connor Boolman
The Glob          99,656      Geoff Prekzop
Thunder Cross     343,500     Mark Boolman

I have to give kudos to Mark for putting on such a great event and it was truly an honor to play alongside Pat, Mark, Doug, Jason and Donald as well as Connor, Brent and Angela. I took a bunch of footage of the event, including some unbelieveable Centipede play from Donald Hayes, Pat's Rally-X run (~93K) and Mark Alpiner's new Glob WR, which he set on his first game in a few years.

Thanks for the kind words, Geoff, and it was great to see you in person for the first time.  It was also great to have Douglas Loyd drive up from the St. Louis area, and the owner's son, Brent Nelson, did great for a player of just 9 years in age !

Speaking of youthful gamers, my good friend Mark Boolman's son Connor (10 years old) did a fantastic job, coming in 5th out of the group of 9 players (all of which qualified, which is a first for the CAGDC Tournament !).

As you noted, there was incredible play going on the entire weekend.  That's one big reason to come out to my event.  As nice as Funspot is with world records going on, things are so spread out due to the amount of games (the latter being a positive, of course !), and players come and go so much, it's sometimes hard to happen across a record game.  At my event, you can't miss it !!

I saw some of Don's Centipede play.  He generously took an hour or so out of his Saturday evening schedule to let Angela Spindler see his prowess at the game, and she was mesmerized by his abilities.

Thanks for the note on my new The Glob wr, Geoff (I made 138,101, topping my previous score of 133,834).  It was my very first game on the arcade version in two years (since my previous wr, set at the 2006 CAGDC Tournament).  I think I'd only played on MAME about 5 or 6 times in that period, so getting such a good result out of the gate is very satisfying.  It will be a confidence-builder going into Joe LeVan's World Record Weekend event (which I just found out from Joe is set in stone for the 3rd weekend of this September), where I'll be going to break my record score yet again.

I'll wind down with this quick summary.  As I said in an earlier post, the 'mechanical' issues that were evident on day 1, and part of day 2, were almost completely addressed, or worked around, by the middle of Saturday afternoon, and the only other real issue during the tourney was with taking scores.  As usual, I wear many hats, and have many chores and tasks to do during a tourney (referee, plus tally, calculate, and print results; perform photo / video coverage; do media interviews; leave briefly to chat with staff about issues and schedules; and more).  That many times means that players have to wait for a bit to turn in a score, which I know is frustrating.  Thanks go to all of you for putting up with a number of times that you each had to wait for more than a minute or so.

A final note of thanks and gratitude must go to Mary Lou Nelson, owner of the Pro Putt Facility.  She was extremely generous to myself, and to all of the contest entrants.  She worked out a deal with a local restaurant that enabled me to have a free night's stay at a nice local hotel (Best Western), plus get enough of a deal on food that she had a terrific pizza spread (5 large pies) for the contestants, on Saturday.  Then, later Saturday night, she had party subs brought in.  And, she repeated the sub freebie for lunch on Sunday.  Finally, she went to the trouble of preparing some great gift bags for gamers Angela Spindler (best spirit / sport), and Donald Hayes (farthest traveller), plus ribbons for the youth (Connor and Brent), Angela, and the first thru fourth place finishers.  So... kudos to Ms. Nelson, and for those who would also like to extend a thanks, you can call her at Pro Putt (early to mid-afternoon is usually best) at 309-828-2000.

Well, thanks so much for everyone's interest and support, and we'll address the issues that came up this year for next year's event.  I'll have a 'hard' schedule (versus the loose one in place this year) for an assistant ref that will enable me to do photos and other errands outside the contest area each day, plus I'll make sure to have the games tested multiple times before the event, to avoid problem button, joystick, and monitor issues.  So, set aside some time off for mid-late March, 2009, and come out to the best tournament in the history of classic arcade gaming !!


Note: edits were done to fix three issues: highlighting; an incorrect day notation; and two '1 hour time limit' notation additions.