This past weekend I got the opportunity to hang out and play classic games with Joust God (John Rhodes) at the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas!!! It was great!!! We talked alot and he got to watch me play a little Defender as we talked and laughed about all kinds of things. We also both sat next to legendary Billy Mitchell and watched him get to stage 32 on Burger Time! the screen that's vertually impossible to pass (except for Billy) He had something like 65 peppers and a score of almost 5Mpts. At certain times on certain boards, John would speed up the game to shorten the time while Billy would group the condiments before dropping the pile on each bun for hugh points. At the show, there was a booth set up by a company called Hanaho which is a company that builds arcade cabinets for over 15 years. They also make the famous HotRod Joystick used for the PC. Well anyway, the had 2 cabinets they build for the pc/home format one stand up ver. and one ver. you could play from sitting down. They had installed MAME 35 final with Arcade at home front end!!!! so there was about 1,300 games to play through a true arcade cabinet with true arcade controls (the control panel was actually a Hotrod joystick!) I showed off on Galaga, Dig Dug, and Tetris, as Billy did a number on Pacman, Donkey Kong, and Burger Time! Just ask Joust God! He was between us helping Billy group on BurgerTime! :)

Wish I could of met some of the other great players in here, but unfortunately I only got to meet John and hopfully will get to meet many others at the 2nd annual Fun Spot Classics Tournement in Weirs Beach New Hampshire.

Regards, Steve Krogman

PS We also got the opportunity to watch Dwayne Richards of Calgary Albert Canada beat the 17 year old Tutankahm record of 244K by getting 249K and winning $1000 for beating the world record.

-- stephen krogman (skrogman@concentric.net), August 18, 1999

Answers

Like Steve said, it would be great to meet some of you other superstars in the flesh! There's nothing like watching these great players live and in color. They were just as awesome as advertised. I was wondering what the heck I was doing in the same room as them! ;)

As mentioned (and I know this doesn't exactly have much to do with MARP), Billy Mitchell was putting on an incredible display with PacMan, DK and Burgertime. Now here's the interesting slant that crossed my mind after having witnessed these guys playing. Billy was playing Burgertime in one of those Arcade 2000 cabinets. The Burgertime game was actually being played through MAME DOS 35 via Arcade@Home front end. However, the arcade cabinet and controls were for all intents and purposes not that different than the "real thing". Does this kind of blur the line between MAME TG records and arcade TG records? Playing Burgertime in this fashion is awfully close to being the same as playing it in a conversion cabinet of some sort. Hmmmm.

Anyway, it would be an honor to meet some of ya next time around!

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), August 18, 1999.