ecn-ec:finn@pur-ee.UUCP (08/04/83)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- (But get out of that bar, you arn't going to see professional level play out anyone over 16). You've got to be joking!! The best (vid-game) players in the world are college students. See who holds those high scores. That usually means over 16. If you want to find the highest scores in any city in the U.S., go to the closest large University (or nearby). (not always, but *usually*) ...finding all the answers by watching someone else ranks up there with buying a pacman book and memorizing the screen patterns, but this can be discussed further in net.philosphy. I'll agree whole-heartedly with this, often having people copy me. The trick is to do things to the hard way, so that it takes them forever to copy you. For instance: for Missile Command players, try aiming and shooting each shot separately, instead of using a general screen of shots. Easy? Hardly. Even if someone else can match your score, the flashier you can play, the more obvious it is who is better. I'm not trying to advocate bragging or showing off, but lets face it; the point of being good at vid-games is to show it, and if a game levels off at a certain point, then the best players stand out at first, but later get lost in the shuffle of others slowly catching up. Unless they find new ways to play. Coupling this with the fact that it seems to take the local vid-jocks only a week to beat the game (even the over the hill types are beating it after only 3-4 weeks) it seems that the market will burn out very quickly, with everyone either too discouraged from initial deaths to try or able to win on the first Dirk and too bored to bother. I still haven't played it yet, but I just came from the campus arcade, where there didn't seem to be any problem keeping the machine occupied, with at least 10 people standing around watching. Even at $.50 a shot, it will last a while. It did seem to be a bit jerky, popping from scene to scene, but it looked pretty neat anyway. The Arch-Druid of Quarters... (nickels and dimes are worthless!) vid-game aliases: The Champ, The Red Phantom, RED, TRP David Hesselberth, Purdue University Computer Center {harpo, decvax, ucbvax} !pur-ee!finn (or) !pur-ee:pucc-h:adr