Based on the ACAM collection, and coupled with my own personal gaming preferences and thoughts on variety of skillset/controller type, etc, coupled with practicality (some titles are not conducive for score tracking in an event situation), here are my personal selections for a tourney at ACAM. Will never happen, but here goes...and if some of these choices are not conducive to an event (i.e. scores disappear, etc) well then I forgot those caveats for those titles so the reserve choices could make up for their exclusion)

For starters, fifteen (15) titles, and up to five (5) in reserve. If a title conks out before Friday's event day comes to an end and cannot be repaired, a reserve title is added to the event. If a title gives out on the weekend, it is removed from the event and no reserve title replaces it.

That stated, here are my fifteen (15) titles and five (5) reserve titles based on the ACAM collection as I know it, and excluding the titles that are owned by ACAM yet are in the shop such as "Narc".

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MAIN EVENT
Astro Blaster
Canyon Bomber
Cheyenne
Death Race
Lock n Chase
Moon War
Pengo
Pole Position (orig)
Pooyan
Rampage
Smash TV (1 player only, 1 credit, max difficulty, start with 3 lives)
Space Harrier
Space Zap
Stocker
Warlords


RESERVE TITLES
Buggy Challenge
Carnival
Circus Charlie
Rally-X
Space Duel (everyone MUST play single ship non-connected)


SPECIAL MINI-EVENT TITLE
Gorf (5 minutes ONLY...we had a lot of fun with this format a few November's back)
-> This would require a dedicated referee for the event which would be one day only from open to close, and I'd volunteer to function as the referee for that event

Good points on the "What If" factor...but then again, if someone kill-screened a game on "Day One" and no one else could play, it is not fair to basically give someone a 100% and no one else has a chance on that title to put up any score.

The removal aspect is shaky territory. Seems like there are a few possible ways to handle each with one or more plus/minus issues associated. The clear cut way to avoid, of course, is to have multiple of each title present, but that is unrealistic. So I am curious, I suppose, what everyone's thoughts are on the "What if" scenario of when a game breaks down mid-event and whether that view will differ depending on which day of the event it breaks.

The "Gorf" idea was based on a few of us doing this for a good 4-5 hours one day. Maybe having 2-3 such "mini-events" during a tourney with a 6 hour window per event, then...that way 120 attempts can be made (or more if people die before the 5 minutes expires). Just a thought.

Did not look back at recent inclusions when I came up with the roster, to be honest...I took a "start fresh" approach.

As for which titles might have continue issues that cannot be turned off, etc...I am unsure which would, to be honest, but these were just my initial choices. A few that I was definitely aware of like "Joust 2", "Lost Tomb" and "Xybots" I left out.

I also intentionally left out marathonable titles or those where too many participants would be on the game for an hour or more. Did not seem practical to include those.

Robert Wrote: I suppose a better sub-topic would be the following... 1st - what is everyone's idea in terms of titles that give out and cannot be quickly repaired mid-competition ? 2nd - does an ideal roster of tournament titles necessarily have to reflect a broad depth of skillsets, controller types, etc (i.e. do you have to have a shooting game, a driving game to make for a challenging mix) Robert

1. If it breaks before the midway point, I say replace it and toss the scores. I would be appalled if someone tried to sabotage a game by getting it out of the tourney through injury and I'm sure many people would see it and report them.

2. Yes, IMO.

Robert Wrote: I suppose a better sub-topic would be the following... 1st - what is everyone's idea in terms of titles that give out and cannot be quickly repaired mid-competition ? 2nd - does an ideal roster of tournament titles necessarily have to reflect a broad depth of skillsets, controller types, etc (i.e. do you have to have a shooting game, a driving game to make for a challenging mix) Robert

1) All scores scrapped for that game, obviously. I don't mind adding a game at any point because it's the player's discretion as to how much time they devote to a particular title.

2) Absolutely. Ideally there should be at least one driver, at least one vertical shooter, at least one horizontal shooter, at least one joystick only game, and at least one with some form of unusual controls (IE crazy climber)

Robert's list would get my $60.

I might have entered this year if Juno First had been replaced with Track & Field, but alas it was not to be.

Overall, I'm sick of listing games which will never be used in the tourney. However, I will say that there should be 14 games (not 15) with the different subgenres getting 2 games each.

For instance...

2 Space Shooters (ie THE END)
2 Maze Games (ie LADYBUG)
2 Gun Games (ie CHEYENNE)
2 Steering Wheel Games (ie DEATH RACE)
2 Side Scrollers (ie GHOST N GOBLINS)
2 Strategy Games (ie QIX)
2 Vector Games (ie LUNAR LANDER)

And there are other subgenres.

A better balance would be nice. When I saw so many space shooters this year it guaranteed my exclusion.

Dragon Spirit is a title that likely will never make it into the annual event due to the unlimited buy-in potential plus the score retention feature.

Unless a dedicated referee was assigned to the game, which is quite expensive for a 40+ hour event, a title of this nature just can't make it. This is the reason, I found out, that "Joust 2" was removed mid-event.

Rob, it's easier said than done to expect a "watchful eye" during all moments on a game.

Attention wanders for the best of us not already engaged in playing a game. And it has happened already on more than one occasion where the referee chooses the wrong game and/or score mid-event and the player clicks the OK button afterwards. Such mistakes are often caught within minutes depending on how out of whack the score is in line with normal scores on that title, such as the 8K+ score logged this event on "Night Driver", another forum discussion during the competition.

These are not professionals watching the goings-on of the event. These are simply paid volunteers. They do the best that they can. It would be unrealistic and unfair to expect them to provide undivided attention for such a lengthy span of time.

Without sounding adversarial, if we, as gamers, wanted/expected professional referees (and PLEASE do not say TG staff in response), then do not balk at a commensurate and substantial increase in the registration fee.

Now, there is a very reasonable solution to this, and I am willing to bet that few would accept the role. For such titles, an attending gamer can volunteer (unpaid) to monitor one or two such titles in 4-hour intervals. Wouldn't need more than 10 gamers throughout the event for every 2 titles to watch during the 40-hour event. Think that 10 people can commit to this during a paid event ? I'm willing to bet no, and I've already done so for score entry purposes years back spending 3/4 of one event entering scores pre-Aurcade. Trust me, it's not enjoyable though it serves a great cause.

I guess it comes down to reasonability. How reasonable is it to expect one or more paid albeit non-professional volunteers to diligently, accurately and consistently monitor special needs titles across a 40-hour event ?

Think about it...one single missed altercation, likely a second inserted coin when the ref's attention was re-deployed to another title...in that one moment a player gains an advantage if they are not caught, and in some titles that second coin in the hands of the right player could easily mean the creation of a huge gap between their score and those of their opponents.

And all of the above only covers concerns where titles have the possibility of additional credits entered and possibly related score retention concerns. But what about titles where the score disappears after a scant 3-5 seconds...or maybe not even that many on titles where unless the score is the new to score on the machine it is not recognized/stored ? Games like "Final Lap" come immediately to mind.

In cases like this, getting the referee's attention immediately is absolutely essential, and such is not always possible or realistic to expect, thus explaining the exclusion of another array of titles from the events.

Practical working solutions to these concerns I think are best brought to the attention of those who run the event...I'm just curious what fellow gamers think of such concerns.

Possibly a good solution to continues on Joust 2 would be for FS to put in 50 credits
and disable the coin mechs. After getting the attention of a score keeper give them
1 token and then record how many credits are on the machine. After the game is
complete check to see that only 1 credit has been subtracted and then record the
score. It might still be too much to do just to have a game in the tourney but it would
open up a lot of games that otherwise weren't previously available.

I see the projector option as being very iffy and unreliable. Even at baseball games there are hundreds of fans not paying attention at key moments, so this leaves too much to chance. If even one extra coin inserted sneaks its way into the competition results then the results are forever tainted.

The extra coin suggestion...that puts an additional responsibility on the shoulder of the referees and would be something for the ACAM event organizers to evaluate the practicality of.

I wonder once more whether anyone would willingly volunteer to give up four solid hours (unpaid) during the event to help out...but then again, if a participating gamer is part of the referee team even if only for a brief stint, this could easily be seen as having the potential to be a conflict of interest by some (maybe even by many) so scratch my own suggestion off the table.

lakeman421 Wrote: I think having a person scoring just one game to make sure no one cheats would take a lot of effort. This year with Night Driver you need someone close by if the score was about the roll-over.

It didn't hurt that I was one of the folks that witnessed your rollover. :)
Even if it meant that I got bumped to 4th place on that game... lol

I also witnessed Mike Stuir's Tapper rollover of one million points. The thing with his rollover is once he rolled it over, I had to watch that game like a hawk to make sure he played through and finished his game and didn't restart the game at any time. I also had a camera handy and took several pictures along the way just in case a circuit breaker tripped or somebody tripped over a Q*bert power cord or something like that. ;) He and I had a good laugh on a couple of occasions along the way. :)