Had 2 arcade parties this weekend!

[paigeoliver]

I had two different parties this weekend (took lots of pics, will post once I get them developed).

Saturday night I had a party for all my friends (many of whom did not show up, dumbheads!).

I think I had 13 people show up saturday out of the 30 I invited, which was a decent number, but less than the 20-25 I expected.

NINJA EDIT OF PERSONAL STUFF I NO LONGER WANTED OUT THERE.

The new Gorf cocktail Mame was the most popular that night. As far as I saw only the girls played it. The Maze Mame cabinet was also quite popular (in Tetris mode) with the girls. The guys mostly stuck to pinball, Do! Run Run and Time Pilot. The Popeye, Kangaroo, Space Firebird, and Solitaire saw little to no play that night.

Then Sunday afternoon I had a smaller party (my friend Bret brought over his junior hish school sunday school class). 7 kids, and I have NEVER seen people play games like these kids did. Every single one of them played games the entire TIME. The only time they weren't playing is when they were waiting for one of the spots on the Gorf cocktail (which once again proved most popular).

The kids played EVERYTHING. The minute they got there one of them ran up and started playing my Victory pin, which prompty crapped out seconds into her game (I spent hours messing with this, only to think of actually checking the fuses, and it was a fuse).


In order of popularity.

Gorf cocktail (mostly playing Frogger).

Out Run

Time Pilot

"Galaga" Mame (mostly playing Pac-Man).

Maze mame (mostly playing Marvel Vs. Capcom).

Kangaroo (once again, exclusively played by girls, I actually cannot remember ever seeing a boy play this game besides my friend Dave).

Do! Run Run

Space Firebird (was playing a different game everytime I looked at it).

Solitaire (started out as Star Wars, got some play that way, later switched to Off the Wall, finally switched to Irritating Maze, which no one played at all).

Popeye, Got a few plays from Bret and I, the kids didn't play it much, learning curve a bit too steep I think.

We had different prizes for high scores, unfortunately by prize time the same two girls (twins) and their brother won ALL the prizes, so I changed the rules and let them each pick the best ones, and then gave out the rest of the prizes to the runners up. Gave out a Pong console, a couple of PC games, a "Meltec's Big Mouth" marquee (which surprisingly they all fought over), a stuffed "Chuck E Cheese" figure, and a couple of other similar items.

Overall the experience with the kids reinforced my previous ideas that girls tend to actually be better classic gamers than boys are. The boys tended to jump around from game to game, or concentrate on Marvel Vs. Capcom, while the girls would stay at the same game until they got good at it. In particular the twins did especially well, and between them had the high scores on every game but one (Pac-Man).

One thing of note, 3 of the 7 kids had never played Pac-Man before, and 2 of them (the twins) had never even heard of it. Everyone had heard of Frogger though (probably because of the recent console remixes).

NONE of them were familiar with the concept of entering intials for high scores. I think that shows that todays kids have not really been exposed to classic games at all.

[SNAAAKE]

You should have hired some hookers

 

[APFelon]

I insist players put their names in the high score list on my MAME machine. I insist to the point of annoying them, I'm sure. (my cousin STILL has the high score in Track and Field. Hah. Someday I will have quick hands...)

APf

[paigeoliver]

I insist players put their names in the high score list on my MAME machine. I insist to the point of annoying them, I'm sure. (my cousin STILL has the high score in Track and Field. Hah. Someday I will have quick hands...)

APf

I am pretty sure I have already scrolled off all the initals from the previous owner of my Gorf Mame in all the games, and I have only had it a few weeks (looks like he barely played the thing).

Most of my friends can't even get on the high score tables on the more popular titles on my Mame cabinets, and all my dedicated machines lose the scores upon power off (except my pin, which my friend/neighbor has the high score on). As far as I know I still have the high scores on all those, except a couple of my friends are getting REALLY close to matching my Do! Run Run high score.

Super Strike and STUN Runner scores are an object of fierce competion over at my buddies house. But recently some guy came over one time and bowled a 300 in Super Strike, which of course cannot be beat, so he will have the high score eternally.

[SirPeale]

I made one mistake, I told everyone 7 o clock, (including Megan), but I didn't think about the fact that Megan is the only friend I have who is known to be an "on time" person. About 6:45 I thought of that and called up my nearest friend (location wise), and asked him to get his butt over here NOW, so Megan doesn't show up

So, let me get this straight.  This girl, that you like, you would have had some quality 'alone time' with her before the party fully kicked off.  So you called someone else to be there with you?

[Sephroth57]

I made one mistake, I told everyone 7 o clock, (including Megan), but I didn't think about the fact that Megan is the only friend I have who is known to be an "on time" person. About 6:45 I thought of that and called up my nearest friend (location wise), and asked him to get his butt over here NOW, so Megan doesn't show up

So, let me get this straight.  This girl, that you like, you would have had some quality 'alone time' with her before the party fully kicked off.  So you called someone else to be there with you?

yeah that does sound weird doesnt it?  sounds like he has some kind of awkward thing going on with her. so paige is this chick hot?  

[APFelon]

My guess is that he didn't want to weird her out-- IE saying there was a party, and she is there all alone. She would conclude that she had been tricked into believing that there was a party but it had been a ploy into getting her over to his house. (Pfft. Listen to me-- talking for Paige. It's just that I have been in a similar situation and that's how it played out. Sorry for jumping to conclusions).

My pin (Getaway II) has lost it's high scores three times now for various reasons. But that's okay-- sometimes it goes into "perma-multiball" where it'll keep kicking out lost balls for about two minutes for no apparent reason. The scores get insanely high but the nieces/nephews/other rugrats I have over that play it love it so I have never bothered to look in to WHY it freaks out like that.

I really like the high score feature on MAME. I just bought a dedicated Gyruss machine that hasn't been modded to save high scores, and when I power off, my "great" scores are lost. I don't have that problem with MAME, so I kind of use it as "documentation" of who has played it. I make everyone who plays on the cab play Robotron for that reason... Huge high score list and I can feel superior to my friends and relatives. Ha ha.

APf

[JamesS]

Apfelon, I thought I might try out Robotron too.

Well, I was hoping that the player 2 joy would act like the second joy in that game and was disappointed when it did not.

Do you have to have a special setup, or do you go into the robotron config and configure the 2nd joy to be well the 2nd joy?

Joust would be good for this as well, since it has a huge hi-score list and can only have 5 of any initial pattern.

[APFelon]

On games like Crazy Climber, Robotron, Smash TV, etc, you have to set the joystick up again in the MAME config in order for it to work with a J-Pac or Opti-Pac (per my experience). Just config the thing manually and you'll be in like flint.

(Did not intend to hijack this thread... sorry).

APf

[paigeoliver]

My guess is that he didn't want to weird her out-- IE saying there was a party, and she is there all alone. She would conclude that she had been tricked into believing that there was a party but it had been a ploy into getting her over to his house. (Pfft. Listen to me-- talking for Paige. It's just that I have been in a similar situation and that's how it played out. Sorry for jumping to conclusions).

You are absolutely correct there.

[paigeoliver]

Guys playin Time Pilot! Bret on the left is a real champ. Kid on the right played A LOT and thought for sure he had the high score contest won, only to be beat at the last minute.

[paigeoliver]

c

[paigeoliver]

Putting in initials! Do! Run Run has the best way of putting in initials.

[paigeoliver]

Hippity hop, kangaroo.

[paigeoliver]

fd

[paigeoliver]

I think they were playing Frogger.

[paigeoliver]

Everything busy at once.

[paigeoliver]

ss

[paigeoliver]

Playin the Space Firebird, and giving the evil eye.

[paigeoliver]

aa

[paigeoliver]

More pictures to come, I just forgot to resize the pics from saturday night.

[crashwg]

So which one's Megan?

[paigeoliver]

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=6;action=display;threadid=16461

[Goz]

PO,

 Thanks for clarifying on the Megan age thing, was starting to wonder if you were changing nick to PedaphileOliver.

-Goz

[Spaced Invader]

PO,

 Thanks for clarifying on the Megan age thing, was starting to wonder if you were changing nick to PedaphileOliver.

-Goz

Ditto...I was starting to worry about ya, Paige.