It has normally been the custom in this forum not to use direct quotes from other forum posts. This time I'm going to break that. Although this is in direct response, it belongs in a seperate thread because I'm completely changing the context.

I'm also signing this at the front, David M. Waters - Aquatarkus, instead of at the end so the people reading the automated email version will know who is speaking.

In other words, this is an answer to more than just "Thoughts on the End of the Tournament".

The following block was written by Gameboy9: >>>> What I was going to do for the end of the tournament - I was thinking about emailing Mark Longridge and/or Walter Day the results of the tournament, indicating the top three or five scores, and the DIP settings that we used, and whether or not those were TG or default - to my knowledge. They can do whatever they please with these results... but seeing that we are playing some games by the TG settings, they should count for the TG book, no? >>>>

In 1998, my answer was an unrestricted "Yes!".

There were several scores that I sent in to MARP, one of the most glaring examples a 3 life Reactor score, because I wanted to get the attention of the players drawn to the TG settings. Part of the reason was to get the people playing the emulated versions to shift from using defaults (or whatever the easy settings were) to trying the hard versions just because I prefer playing most games on hardest. The other reason was to get some deserving players recognition from about the only source used to treating arcade games in general as a serious subject.

I find my opinion shifting for several reasons, but three seem to be the most important.

1. There seem to be very few people in the "TG circle" that take any home games, especially emulated, the least bit seriously.

2. The proof requirements in ancient times isn't strong enough to convince an outsider.

3. A large portion of settings have been lost. For the games with no settings on the twingalaxies.com webpage, "unknown" is a lot closer to the truth than "defaults".

At this point in time, my answer is "no". I may just be overreacting to certain things, like the ongoing posturing of Chris Ayra. But ... I'm damn close to saying they're irrelevant and that we need something else to use as a standard even if I have to create one myself.

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), September 03, 1999

Answers

Hmmm... believe it or not... I look over the Twin Galaxies' Message Boards to see what they have to see... and frankly... I have to go with Aqua here. I personally don't know wheater or not Ben actually did hit the pause button or not - but from the talk at that message board, I'm going with him actually not hitting it.

My point? Perhaps we need to change the tournament rules and say maybe that the MAME defaults are the main standard for tournament games... problem is... they'll never become official world records... look at it another way: unless you're only talking about far as the MARP is concerned...

Even so... we have about 215 people participating in one way or another in the MARP - that's quite a lot of players, and new people are joining EVERY WEEK! What's my point? Welp... this makes the MARP one of the most accurate high scoreboards - in other words, if you're #1 in a game, chances are that you have the best score in the world. Granted, it would be in the MAME category, not in the actual arcade category. This may sound harsh... but maybe we should get players to declare that the MARP will be the source for MAME high scores, not Twin Galaxies.

As for the tournament, maybe when all the tournament games are voted in for the next round(which we begin in less than a month!), we can vote as to what the settings will be, or I'll come up with something, or those who are experienced can have says on what they'll be - or we can continue trying to find TG settings. If we do though... I want yall to remember that half of the tournament games are TG - the rest are default or our own rules. As it stands, I have no idea on how I'll attack it... yet... please comment on this if you wish :)

Thanks for reading my rants - catch yall later :)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 03, 1999.

David, I understand completely.

I would say give TG another chance. Twin Galaxies has been monitoring scores the longest, and the TG rules do make a lot of sense. I would be more that happy look over the results of the MARP tournament, and defining the rules for the many games which have no difficulty settings as yet.

If you look at the history of MAME, you'll see that people from all over the world have been credited with high scores.

To be fair, not everyone is 100% happy with the way I do things for the TG site. I'm currently reviewing all the submissions and slowing augmenting the MAME TG rules to include more games. I'd like to thank some of the best and most avid players in the world for their contributions: (in no particular order)

John Rhodes, Brian Johnstone, Stig Remnes, Ben Jos, Rick Fothergill, Steve Krogman, Ron Corcoran, David Waters, John Den Hartog, Quentin Kelly, Don Grose, Perry Rodgers, Mark Alpiger, Phil Lamat (great carnival score Phil, you got me beat!), German Castagnasso (the best Frogger player in the World!), Chris Moore, Dean Ryan, Rodney Butler, Neil Chapman, Greg Gibson, Matt Hall, Pat Laffaye, Tim Balderramos, Mark Lyons, James Wilson, Tommi Tiihonen and many many others.

My promise to all the players is to verify all the scores to the best of my ability. I'm sorry I'm so slow. I'm going to verify a ton of INPs hopefully tonight. My fondest wish is that all of the best players will co-operate in finding out the true best scores. I can't do it my myself, I need the help of Walter Day, Ron Corcoran, Chris Moore, and naturally all the other players.

No discrimination, just all the best players with the best scores.

If anyone has any concerns about the MAME TG scores, feel free to call be at (905)-576-2023. That's a Canadian phone number, or email me at cubeman@iname.com

Thanks in advance, sincerely, Mark Longridge

-- Mark Longridge (cubeman@iname.com), September 03, 1999.