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Looking Forward, Funspot 2007
Nick - writer - posted on Friday, 06/01/07 1:18:38 EDT
By the time you read this, I will be at Weirs Beach New Hampshire for the 9th Annual FunSpot International Classic Game Tournament. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while now. I’m kinda surprised that people are STILL getting together to play games that are over twenty years old.
When I put up the videos of our trip to FunSpot in January, I got a response back to the video of me playing Space Harrier. A guy named Nick Hutt was asking me about the machine. It turns out that Nick is the current world record holder of Space Harrier, owns a machine in his home and he’ll be flying all the way from the UK to break his record on the very same machine I played.
I’m also looking forward to meeting Todd Rodgers who has a ton of gaming world records. My personal favorite is his record in “Dragster” on the 2600. When he submitted his score to Activision, they thought it was a joke and didn’t believe him because of how fast his time was. Even the head programmer of the game thought it was impossible. They even made a computer program to run a “Perfect Run” of the game and it still couldn’t match Todd’s score. Todd ended up going to the CES as their guest and he showed them how he got the score.
I’m also looking forward to meeting Ralph Baer again. For those of you, who might not know him, check this out: Ralph’s Wikipedia Page. Not only did Ralph create the first home video game system, the Odyssey, he also created one of my favorite toys as a kid, Simon. I went around in the basement and found the box and I want to see if he’ll autograph it for me like how I got his book autographed at the last vgXpo that we attended in Philly.
Now, I’m wondering if there’s going to be any bad blood this year at the tournament. Today I was checking out some of my favorite gaming web blogs and when I made it to Kotaku, I came across this, article about King of Kong.
Click here for the King of Kong trailer
Well, it turns out that one of the people in the movie, Billy Mitchell, is none too happy with the way he’s portrayed in the movie. I found this link to an MTV article, Click here for the interview with Billy.
They say how they’re going to show off the two videos of Donkey Kong and they want to figure out who really is the King of Donkey Kong. I’m just like the guy on the video; I can rarely ever get past the third elevator stage. I think I beat two full rounds of Donkey Kong and that’s about as good as I’m going to ever get.
So I’m really looking forward to meeting some of these guys who want to go for these records and finding out what makes them tick. I’m also looking forward to the drive-in movie theater that is right across the street from FunSpot. Here on Long Island, the last drive-in closed in 1996. I was lucky enough to go to the theater in its last year and I think I saw the perfect movie, Independence Day. You can’t go wrong with aliens hell bent on blowing up the earth! I don’t care if they’re playing Mortal Kombat Annihilation, I want to see another movie at a drive-in with a big tub of popcorn and a bladder busting soda!
I’ll be back next week with what happened at the tournament and a full review of the rest of Weirs Beach and I’ll have a ton of pictures and videos to share, so be sure to check it out!