And as you all probably already know...

Congratulations go out to Ben Jos!! Truly outstanding tourney for him, dominating in several games and snagging a couple more 1st's right at the wire.

2nd place goes to Donut with impressive wins at ccastles and everyone's favorite pbobble!! He led these 2 from day one and never looked back!

Really moving up the T2 ladder was Blost who managed to capture 3rd. Only 1 top 3 but steady enough to make a run at Donut.

Thanks for the players who stuck though this one even with the minor gliches. Special thanks to the 6 judges who really helped me on this one. Gameboy, Donut, Ben Jos, Laurent, Brian, and Cicca. Couldn't have done it without ya!

-- Pat (laffaye@ibm.net), January 03, 2000

Answers

I will probably write a longer post soon, as some people have come to expect from me. :-)

Thank you very much too, Pat, for being judge on this tournament.

Only one thing about the results... I know I did pretty well this tournament, but 234 points when there were 10 games and 21 points could be earnt on each??? I guess Zwaxy needs to have a look at this. It has to do with players having been deleted.

Which brings me to the last thing I'd like to mention in this short post: Since all players who did not finish all 10 games have been removed from the tournament, that means that their scores have disappeared too now. There is at least one score that I do not want to be forgotten: As big a lead I had over the number 2 in Pooyan in the end, Brian McLean had an even bigger lead over me. When I found out that he was not going to finish the tournament, I did not stop playing Pooyan, but still tried to beat his great score. I did not even really come close. Just trying to make sure that Brian's 576,050 on Pooyan is not forgotten...

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), January 03, 2000.

There's one problem though. Yes, BenJos won, but the scores are INCORRECT - they're giving out 1st placers 27 points instead of 21 - the correct results can be found in the archives - using Ben Jos's program.

I think the places are still the same - so be it I guess.

Uh... let's talk about world records and the like. The source shall be Mark Longridge's MAME high score site - which if I'm not mistaken is the official high score list for MAME.

Crystal Castles - Donut's mark of a whopping 714,777 points beats the MAME TG record by a little more than 100,000 points. Well done! JoustGod's mark is in there for third... about 20,000 points short of... oh... JoustGod... sorry :) BenJos's third place mark is good for fourth in the world.

Kung Fu Master - Olivier Millardet's incredible score of 475,890 is good for first place!

Lode Runner - Looks like Ben Jos already claimed his territory for first in the world with 999,999. KFT also gets first place with 999,999. Although Lagavulin used the incorrect version - he also gets first place with 999,999.

Lunar Rescue - Cicca! Welcome to first place on the MAME board, beating... JSW :) by only 110 points. Ben Jos has third place now in that category.

Puzzle Bobble - No marks set there... so Donut gets the world record, Blost gets second, and Ben Jos gets third.

Pooyan - Oh... Ben Jos already claimed his territory for first place... don't have to go there then :)

Rastan - Nothing there, so Ben Jos is the first world record holder, BBH is second, and Dave Kaupp is third.

Scramble - Uh... Ben Jos, you need to update your record - 300K or so... I think you demolished the competition on that game! Cicca and BBH's marks get third and fourth on the board respecttivly(help me on that Ben Jos).

Super Sprint - Cicca's mark is good for second place, Donut is good for third, and Iur Dhurin is good for fourth.

Not only did Ben Jos demolish the competition in Scramble, he demolished the competition in the tournament overall too... but Pat already said that... so I'll leave that alone.

I'll also mention that out of the ten games we played, nine of the first place recordings were good for world records! Congratulations to those responsible for such success!

Now it's time to plot for the third tournament... maybe I'll do better than 17th next time...

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), January 03, 2000.

Gameboy:

Yes, the positions are correct. Because of the fact that some players were removed from the tournament, first place positions on the games don't all give 21 points. But since 2nd place on a game gets one less than 1st place, and 3rd place one less than 2nd, and so on, the positions in the overall leaderboard are still correct.

A few remarks regarding some scores and games on Mark Longridge's TG MAME site:

Yes, this is the official place and only the scores that are there will be considered for publication in the next TG World Records book.

Pooyan: The only reason I am still number one on Mark's site on this game is because he has not updated it yet. I told Mark about Brian's score on Pooyan and asked Brian to give Mark permission to put that score up there, so Brian's 576,050 will be number one there. Still a TG MAME world record set during T2, though.

Rastan: Since this game has a real ending, that means that the only way to get nice scores (let's say 800k or more) is to make sure you get more points during the game. Scores of over 1 million are very possible (without using the multi-million-point bug!) and I actually did one in which I did not even finish the game. The main problem with this game is that it is very hard to draw a line between "milking" and "leeching". Theoretically, someone could play one Rastan game for days on end (regardless of the fact that the game stops giving extra lives past 800k) and get a huge score, but that would most probably be considered point leeching. Since it is so hard to draw the line in this game, and since it is relatively easy to finish it, that means that a lot of players can finish it and so it really tends to become a point leeching race. So I really hope that Rastan will not be included on Mark's site, unless there is some time limit rule connected to it. (For instance: All recordings should be less than 1 hour long.)

Scramble: I was duelling with myself here, really. But first let me explain that there are several versions of Scramble and that their MAME names were changed in between versions 0.34 and 0.35. What we played in T2 was the "official" version as recognised by the TG MAME site. This official version can most easily be recognised by the "Copyright Stern" notice when the game starts. The ROM set for this version was called "scramble" in 0.34, but got renamed to "scrambls" in 0.35. So what is now known as "scramble", is not the Stern version, but the (much easier) Konami version. This also means that anyone who wishes to upload their T2 Scramble score to regular MARP, should upload it to "scrambls", not to "scramble".

As for the official Scramble (so: Stern) records: Like I said, I was duelling with myself here. At some point, I had a 178k score on it during T2, but I felt I could do better. Since I also wanted a good score on Mark's TG MAME site, I then used Mark's cheat-proof MAME35TG3 version to record a 199k score. But since I could not use that recording for the tournament, I set out to improving my T2 score using mame34. I then scored 200k. Then Mark told me that he was going to accept Guenther Beer's TG submission of 219k (a submission for which only a screenshot, not a recording was available). So I had to try again. I managed a 234k using MAME35TG3 again, so that made me number one on Mark's site. Since I, once more, could not use that recording for T2, I set out to improve my T2 score. That finally resulted in my 300k. I was aiming for a score around that 234k, so I guess I overdid it a little. :-) I still feel I can do better on this game, so I am going to try again soon using MAME35TG3. In case anyone else plays it using MAME35TG3, make sure (as I explained above) to play "scrambls", not "scramble".

Yes, Cicca's Scramble score will be third on TG MAME, but since there is a 148k score by Frode Gjerde on regular MARP, and since he indicated that he used TG settings, that score will eventually show up on Mark's TG MAME site as well, so BBH's score would be 5th then.

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), January 03, 2000.

Just one note on my Lode Runner game. I had already gotten 999,999 in the past in my recording that has been on MARP for several months. I challenged myself on Lode Runner for the tournament to make it to 999,999 on only one man and succeeded!

-- Kenneth Thomas (kenthomas@aol.com), January 04, 2000.