Games – Page 11 – Robot Claw

Funspot (Part 2)

July 26, 2023

I had a novel idea: play some games at Funspot, do as well as I could, and then compare my scores to the world records. It turns out this was more difficult than I anticipated!

For starters, it’s often difficult to find any high scores for certain games. The obvious source would be Twin Galaxies, but that’s a site with a lot of baggage and it’s hard to judge the accuracy of many of their records. Even worse, it’s hard to even find records on their abysmal webpage!

Secondly, since most arcade games have dip-switches that allow the operator to adjust difficulty, it’s not always as easy as comparing a score to one recorded online since I may have played a different version of the game. I think this is likely for Funspot, which (obviously, and understandably) seems to set their games at the hardest mode.

Thirdly, certain games have ‘tricks’ that seem to disqualify high scores when used. The enforcement of this seems dubious to say the least: Pac-Man for instance has patterns that every master player uses, but the ‘t-block’ in Qix is apparently frowned upon if used in a high scoring run. Suffice to say I didn’t know any of these tricks, and used none!

I played dozens of different games at Funspot, but for fourteen of them I recorded my scores (some of which came from multiple attempts) to compare to the records. For three of these (Gaplus, Galaga ’88 and Marble Madness) I was unable to find reputable high score info, and for the remaining eleven here are my scores plotted as a percentage of the world records:

Overall, I’d say I did fairly well! Sure my 9,545 points in Missile Command wasn’t too close to the world record of almost 104,000,000 but I only played for a few minutes where the record took 72 hours! And my ten minute score of 128,552 on Star Wars wasn’t bad since the world record (300 million) took 54 hours. I’d say everything from Qix (a game which becomes incredibly difficult very quickly) upwards is impressive, and Track & Field is, if I may be so humble, a stupendous achievement!

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little rusty. I used to be able to effortlessly defeat Black Tiger on one credit, but this time my game (2.1% of the world record) only reached stage two. I only destroyed two Death Stars on Star Wars and I didn’t even use the legendary ‘triple flapper’ method on Track & Field! But I’m happy with my results after only a few attempts and will refer back to this post when next we visit to try and improve on each game 🙂

This post also gives me a new topic to ponder: compared to every other player in the world, I wonder which game I’m the best at?

Funspot (Part 1)

July 25, 2023

We went on a cruise of Lake Winnipesaukee today. The weather was lovely and the breeze as the boat glided along was a nice break from the heat. The shores of this large freshwater lake are full of enormous and very expensive home and all I think when I see them is “How long does it take to clean a home like that?” Of course those that can even afford a house ten times larger than ours can also afford staff to clean it!

Afterwards, and for the second time in two days we went and spent several hours at Funspot. This is – once again – the principle reason we’re here. Last time was during the pandemic and they seemed to have fewer machines but I’m very pleased to see things have turned around and there’s now more than ever!

A new inclusion are several super-rare games such as this ‘Mystic Marathon’ cabinet. Only five were ever made and Funspot has two of them! The other is playable and I can assure you the game is awful 🙂

I played lots of games both days – more on this tomorrow – and as always it was extremely nostalgic and a good even-more-retro follow up to my time spent at Hirose in Akihabara six weeks ago.

Of course they’ve still got a bunch of pinball machines, including several rare and unusual examples. Every time I visit I play Hercules and wonder how it ever got into production.

A new addition is the ‘pinball outpost’ which is a darkened alley with about a dozen tables. The low light lets the lights on the machines pop and makes it easy to marvel at the beautiful back glass art. Check out this table art too:

I played a few pinballs of course, but for me they’re a side-dish to the video games. Even the most thrilling pinball can’t hope to compete with a sit down Star Wars in the original cabinet 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll have more info on some of the games I played and how I did. Stay tuned!

Japan Pickups: Wizardry (Part 2)

June 27, 2023

I bought 38 books home with me from Japan, and the vast majority of these fell within two categories. Here we’ll look at the Wizardry books!

The above are guidebooks for the first Wizardry game. The left is for the NES release, and the right is more generic and covers the original version of the game, which the book itself reveals was released on the following systems:

Both of these guides are full of maps and tables and monster data, as well as detailed strategy on how to navigate the dungeons. They both seem like extremely useful guides to what is a famously difficult game.

I love also that the NES guidebook was obviously used by someone, as is evidenced by an attempt to complete some of the (partial) maps. This is also present in some of the other guidebooks shown here.

Here we have two different guides for the Famicom (since it was never released on the NES) version of the third Wizardry game. Why are there two? My assumption is simply that the license was granted to more than one publisher, especially since both of these contain official game art. The book on the right in particular is a beautiful tome, including not just screenshots of but also the official art of all the game monsters.

Here we have five guidebooks for the Game Boy ‘Gaiden’ games. As you can see I have three different books for the first game (Suffering Of The Queen) and one each for the second two. Once again these are impressive books (especially for their small sizes), chock-full of art and maps and tables and even featuring lots of color.

The above is a shot of how monster data is presented in the books for the first, third and first Game Boy games in the series. You can see how the books began to include official art, and then for the Game Boy versions the official art became the showcase!

I can still recall playing Wizardry VII when it came out, and I would have killed for a guidebook like the one shown above. It’s very thick (300+ pages) and seems loaded with game info but it also – based on adverts inside – seems to be one of four different guides for this enormous game! The book on right is the for the much-maligned Wizardry ‘adventure’ and is full-color and mostly screenshots. It’s a good way to get an idea of a game I’ll likely never play.

These two are a mystery. They are for the same game (seen in my previous post), and published by the same company within one month of each other. Both books seem more or less the same in terms of content (maps, guides, monster and item data etc.) but it’s presented differently in each (both are quite fancy and full of colored pages). It’s as if the same publisher published two unique guidebooks for the same game at the same time?!?

Here we have a Wizardry novel (based on the second game and published in 1990) and volume two of a Wizardry manga! There have been at least three manga series over the years, and I believe this one (from 1989) was the second.

The art is of-it’s-time, and based on an old review I found (and translated) online the story is derivative of other fantasy series that were popular in those days (like Lodoss War). I actually saw this entire series for sale (8 volumes) but it was pricey and (more importantly) very heavy so I didn’t buy it.

The last half-dozen or so pages of the manga contain this weird pseudo-magazine, which is itself referenced in a couple of the hint guides shown above. The Wizardry book rabbit hole seems to run deep!

If you were following my blog during the trip you may have seen a photo of the above. I hesitated at first due to its extreme cost, but on the last day I bought it since I didn’t want to regret. It’s a book from the official Wizardry ‘TRPG’ (think Dungeons & Dragons) which was released in Japan in the mid 1980s. From what I can tell this was a somewhat popular game, had quite a few books released, and has had two rereleases since.

The manual contains loads of material, including a few short adventures. It’s delightful to see it seems to be a literal translation of the game into a TRPG, with dungeon maps and monsters that resemble those from the games.

Speaking of the official Wizardry table-top game:

I saw these in January and regretted not buying them, so I was happy to see Mandarake still had the set! To my surprise it was still brand new and sealed. Of course I had to open it:

It’s five monsters ostensibly from the game series. They appear to be made from pewter, and are fairly detailed for their sizes:

I’ll never paint or even use them of course, but their fun treasures for my collection. You may have seen in my recent trip I saw another in this series, but the box for this set reveals that there were an incredible 24 sets of Wizardry miniatures?!?

It was fun finding and buying all the above during the recent trip. Yes some were pricey, but some weren’t as well. I’m positive I don’t even remotely have all the guidebooks for this series, but I probably have enough at this point. Now it’s time to dive into the GB versions and put some of these books to use 🙂