Feature: Setting World Records at Brooklyn Barcade
"I am the current world record holder for time on the first five levels of ms pacman."
- TXT message from "LB Dan" April 10, 7:55pm.
It was a night for World Records at Barcade. Game Grump was headed there to watch people compete for five Guinness World Records, and maybe to try our hardcore hands a those records ourselves. I was running late, scarfing a burger and cursing Kinkos, when that fateful TXT arrived. From it, I got an inkling that we might have something more than just low-key coverage on our hands. Game Grump's own Daniel Dujnic was already in the running for a record.
Barcade.
The event was a little mysterious. Basics were known: 7pm. Judges from Guinness and Twin Galaxies. Five world records on the line: Highest Score on Out Run. Highest score on Ghosts n' Goblins. Highest score on Donkey Kong without a hammer. Fastest time to clear five boards in Tapper. And finally, the one brother Dan had taken a liking to: fastest time to clear five levels in Ms. Pac Man. But who, besides my brother, was competing? Were celebrity gamers slated to arrive? If we wanted to play, would we have to pre-register? What crazy official mechanism would be employed to ratify the achievements? And finally, why New York, Barcade, and why these five records?
Arriving in Williamsburg, I got lost coming out of the Lorimer St. subway, as usual. It was approaching 8:30, and Dan called wondering where the heck I was. Almost ninety minutes late and walking in the wrong direction, that's where. Grumbling, I told him that I was minutes away, and asked how his record was holding up. "It isn't," he said. "Somebody broke it ten minutes later." Alas. But would he be able to try again? "Oh, sure, he said. It's not too crowded." I asked if he could put my name on the list. There was a pause. "There isn't really a list. You just hold up a quarter, it's... just get here. You'll see."
Barcade is my favorite bar in the city. It has plenty of space, a high ceiling, and decent prices. There aren't too many places to sit down, but you don't come to sit. As the name suggests, the place is wall-to-wall arcade games. And not the annoying Mega-Touch or Big Fucking Buck Hunter games. The good stuff. The old stuff. Q-Bert, Rolling Thunder, Gauntlet, Contra, Centipede, Frogger, more. And, of course, the five on trial that evening. Did I mention they all cost only 25 cents? Awesome.
When I arrived, the place was alive, but not overwhelming - a good Brooklyn-level crowd, which is always (thankfully) a few steps down from Manhattan insanity. The Guinness team had a table set up in front with a green glossy poster of their first book: Guinness World Records, Gamer's Edition 2008, which had hit bookstores just one month earlier. Their mission this night was to start pulling new records for the 2009 edition. I found my brother in the back, by the Ms. Pac-Man, of course. It was soon clear that this whole 'world records' thing was a heck of a lot simpler than I'd made it out to be.
Judge Brett Gold times the Ms. Pac-Man trials.
First of all, there was no registration or waiting list. No celebrity participants. If you wanted to compete, the system worked like the arcades of old: You held up a quarter and said "I got next." The judge for each machine was there, and if you made eye contact, you were able to join the ad-hoc queue in his head. And the only technology used to measure the time trials was a simple stopwatch in the judge's capable hands.
I bought myself a pint and watched. Dan was on a mission to take back the Ms. Pac-Man record from J ("just 'J,'" he insistently clarified). J was a very serious competitor, claiming to have practiced on his own arcade unit before arriving - that's how hardcore he was. J's record reigned supreme at 2:06.87. I decided it was wortha shot, so I put aside my drink and camera and I took the challenge. I was able to cruise easily through the Yellow Lady's first five boards, but my time of 2:30 was minor league. With J still on top, I wandered off to see how the rest of the records were doing.
Unoccupied Out Run machine next to the Ms. Pac crowd.
It was a lonely night for Out Run. Nobody was playing. On the opposite wall, Ghosts n' Goblins was also alone. After snapping some pics of the DK and Tapper crowds, I looked back at Ghosts n' Goblins and decided to give this notoriously difficult game some attention. Producing a quarter, I looked about uncertainly. There was no official beside the machine... I can't just start, can I? As if to answer my question, Doug Parsons, the head coordinator for the evening, emerged from the shadows with a friendly smile.
For the less popular machines, he explained, there was a "just come grab one of us" policy. They were keeping an eye out for people who wanted to compete. So compete I did. Badly. Ghosts & Goblins was a gorgeous game in its day. Loads of spooky settings and cartoon-creepy monsters. The game is a long adventure, too, but the truth of the matter is, few people every get out of the graveyard on level one, and I'm no different. After being knocked around from armor to skivves to skeleton for the standard three lives, I hadn't even broken 10,000 points.
Pathetic. Doug consoled me and said, "The Out Run and Ghosts n' Goblins machines already have [previous high scores] that are higher than anything we've seen tonight." Of course, those scores (which were not witnessed by Guinness) couldn't go in the record book. And my score, which Doug had just witnessed - well, never mind about that. Despite these two unpopular contests, which appeared to be non-starters, Doug seemed happy with how the event was going. "We wanted to make records that can be done my normal people," he said. Specifically regarding the Donkey Kong contest, and it's unique "no hammer" proviso, he said that they'd eschewed a regular high-score competition "because that would take like four hours." Another reason, perhaps, was the documentary King of Kong, and its infamous telling of the quest for the highest score on that classic Nintendo machine. It seemed to me that, this night, Guinness was sidestepping any involvement in that weighty record - perhaps wisely.
But if King of Kong wasn't on the mind of Guinness, it was certainly on the mind of a lot of patrons. Nearly a dozen people gathered around the Donkey Kong machine, and the only Twin Galaxies staffer in attendance, Senior Referee Terence O'Neill, was watching every barrel-jumping try intently. I struck up a conversation with a man in the crowd. He said that he'd given it a shot, but didn't "have the crazy reflexes" Donkey Kong demanded. He went on, "actually, I don't think it controls very well. But I guess it's old. Before the real Mario games."
Another man overheard us and joined the conversation. "Actually, it's not really officially Mario. Officially speaking, when Donkey Kong was made, he was known only as Jumpman." Right he is. As a fellow geek, I knew exactly what they both were talking about. I asked why they were attracted to Donkey Kong tonight. Both agreed it had been the movie. The second man said, "Billy Mitchell seems like..., I mean I don't really know, but whatever score wins tonight, you know he'll have to challenge it, right?" But what about the no-hammer thing? "Yeah that's a little weird. Maybe not. But... [Donkey Kong] is his game. If he doesn't have all the records... I mean, right?"
The DK crowd.
The gravity of that storied competition between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe permiated the proceedings that night. The machine was a celebrity, and it carried a no-hammer record of 317,000 from a previous event. Wow. I couldn't touch that, and apparently neither could anyone else. "No one at Barcade [that night] beat this score," Mark Karges, another official, later told me. I decided to put aside any ideas of further competition. For the rest of the night, I would be only a dutiful observer, photographer, features journalist.
Tapper had a much smaller crowd, but there was no shortage of competitiors. According to Doug, "We wanted to appeal [to the locals]. We know Tapper has a big following here." When asked if the same records would be tested in other locations, he said, "It'll depend." The mission was to tailor the records to the location, at least to a degree. New York City was only the first stop. "We're based in New York," he said, "so this is the first one." It's not known how many cities the Guinness game tour will hit, but "definitely Funspot in New Hampsire." Funspot, of course, is a classic gaming mecca - a place where records are made and broken - and it was a prominent setting from King of Kong, to boot. After Funspot? Doug went on, "We'll be at PAX [Penny Arcade Expo], we'll be at E3... we're not sure what records will be [part of the competition] there. Portland has a nice arcade, too." All of these, he emphasised, were not final, but clearly a world record cannot be set by just one night of competition in New York.
Speaking of competition - I wandered back toward Ms. Pac-Man, and not a moment too soon. When I got there, my brother Dan was on the machine, and the crowd was craning over his shoulders and long-arming video cameras. From my brother I heard, "Oh no. Oh no. On no... Yes! Yes!" He jumped away from the machine, pumping his fist in the air triumphantly. I snapped some blurry photos as the crowd (all ten of them) went wild. The Guinness judge, Brett Gold, showed me the stopwatch: "2:05.80." At just over two minutes, Dan had finally reclaimed the five-level speed record. "My first two levels were, like, perfect!" Dan exclaimed. "Three." He held up so many fingers. "I ate three ghosts, whole time." He went on to explain a few scattershot strategies: You gotta find your path. Minimize backtracking. Don't eat any ghosts, because that's a second right there, and of course, don't die.
Can I has world record? Dan after 2:05.80!
Game Grump had arrived to simply cover the event, but as that TXT message had portended, now we had something more on our hands. Might we take home a record? Not if J had anything to say about it. He maintained a cool outward demeanor, but it was clear that this transgression would not stand. He demanded the very next game to reclaim the crown.
The competition was drawing to a close; the judges were only allowing a few more tries on the machines. Ten o'clock was drawing near, but J got two more chances to take back the record - a generous allowace. Dan was in for a tense couple of minutes, but it soon became clear that his record was secure, at least for this night. "A lotta dead air," muttered Dan, referring to some of J's panicked Ms. Pac backtrack. "I think I have this."
Ms. Pac-Man: Second, First, and Gold!
He did. At around ten o'clock, Guinness closed the book on all record attempts, and Dan was the Ms. Pac-Man champion. "He's Billy Mitchell!" cried J, pointing to my brother. "Billy Mitchell. I'm living out the Steve Wiebe role." My brother looked at him quizzically and ordered a fresh pint. "You've seen King of Kong right?" J asked.
"No, not yet." said Dan. "Billy Mitchell's the guy with the Pac-Man record, right?"
"Donkey Kong. Aw you gotta see the movie; you're totally him. You're the antichrist!"
"Okay...." My brother leaned in close to me with a sidelong query, "I've seen the trailer. Is that the long-haired guy?"
"Yeah, that's Billy Mitchell," I said, "The movie kinda made him look like an asshole."
My brother was concerned, but I assured Dan that he wasn't Billy Mitchell. He was just a guy who had strolled in after work and set a world record. J, for what it was worth, had been training for this event. He was doing his best to be a good sport, but the loss visibly stung. "I'm an athlete," J said. I asked him how long he'd "warmed up" for this contest on his home machine. "Like about 30 minutes." A half hour? He's no Steve Wiebe.
Away from all this drama was Tapper. It was the only other machine with a record that evening. A local named Mike Przybocki had claimed the first-five speed record. I caught up with him outside in the evening's cool quiet, smoking beneath Barcade's enormous game-themed tile mosaic. I asked him what it felt like to have the record.
"It's a dream come true," he said with a bit of jest. His final time was 1:20.43. "Only about 6 or 7 people played." I asked him if he'd met his nearest competition. He said that there had been a record, but whoever had set it, "I didn't even see him. I know I was up by 7 seconds, then down by 3 seconds, than I finally won by like half a second." (Mike Karges would later inform me that the runner-up was Paul, the owner of Barcade, with a time of 1:20.96.)
I asked him why he'd chosen Tapper. "Tapper's like... no one cares about Tapper. I don't think anyone travelled any great distance tonight to take home the gold." He took a puff on his cigarette. "I'm just strangely into that game."
Mike works his magic for an astonished Guinness judge Mark Karges.
Pictures, release forms, and interviews followed, but Dan kept a humble, self-effacing demeanor. "This record won't hold up." He seemed sure that someone at the next venue would beat it. "But," he added, when it does topple, "I would like a chance to take it back. Maybe at PAX." |fin|
External Link: Guinness World Records, Gamer's Edition 2008
External Link: Giant Realm video coverage
External Link: Penny Arcade Expo (PAX)
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Cheating!
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© Matthew Dujnic 2008
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PAX Review and D & D
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 Prescience?: A new comic this week. Actually, an old comic. Actually, the first 'Version Six' I ever did, ...
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by Daniel Dujnic, 10/22/2008 by MAtt Dujnic, 05/21/2008 by Daniel Dujnic, 04/08/2008 by MAtt Dujnic, 03/25/2008 |
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