My Gaming Story

My Gaming Story
"Rat"

(I do have other interests and hobbies, honest, but this story is confined to my gaming history)

Age = 45
Born Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 1968 (Moved to Launceston)

My gaming story will be familiar to many gamers born in the late 60's which was the perfect time to be born allowing for us to be teenagers in the early 80's arcade games golden era.

The one experience I remember as possibly being my first game was playing a pinball machine while on holidays interstate in 1976. I won two credits on my first game, I think one must have been a special that I fluked and one was for matching numbers, but I walked away thinking I was pretty good at pinball. Thanks goes out to my late mother who patiently waited for me to play all three games, and went on to always support my enjoyment of gaming.

We were not a wealthy family with my mother raising me, her only child as a single mother, but I always had the luxury of at least one gaming console at home. The first was one with six built in games that were selectable with a switch, others included hand helds such as Game & Watch ( Manhole) and a Vic-20 with tape drive that I worked out how to access the game program I think was written in basic and change the number of lives I had in Radar Rat Race, thus started my interest in PCs.

In the 80's arcade games where everywhere, take away shops, pubs and dedicated games arcades, and I would ride my BMX to play them. My enjoyment and enthusiasm for playing soon led to me being an above average player and I thrived on the attention that would bring at arcades when people sometimes crowded around to watch my game play. I was not a world class player, just a local legend, but in the days before the internet sometimes I was the best player people had seen.

Then as happened for everyone the games slowly disappeared and gaming changed to being the occasional sited game, but mostly Playstation 1 at home. That all changed again in 1997 when I bought my first Windows PC and 56k modem. Soon after I found a Space Invaders emulator program online, it only played Space Invaders but to my eye and ear it was arcade perfect and I was very excited. I remember showing this to my friend Ben (DKong) who now plays mame with me on occasion and who later inspired me to start collecting arcade games and pinballs.
Later upon finding mame and all the roms I thought my life was complete, I played (and still do) with a Namco PSX Arcade Joystick and am still overjoyed at having access to play all the classics.

It wasn't till about three years ago that I decided I would enjoy my own dedicated arcade cabs enough to justify the cost. Ben introduced me to the Aussie Arcade forum (AA), at first I was disinterested, but the more I looked the more I saw people with the same interests as me, but taking it further and getting even more enjoyment from it. The forum and the help available there gave me the confidence that I might be able to maintain my own machines. My first purchase was a The Simpsons Pinball Party, jumped in the deep end and paid 5.5k to a person I had never met for a machine I had only seen pictures of, all on the trust of forum reputation. All worked out well and I was started.

Then I bought a new 3 sided cocktail, this has been the least used of my games, I find the xxxx-in-1 board limited and frustrating, I put in a new HDD to run mame on it but it's still too limiting and I'm too fussy. One day I might bring it up to a spec that I enjoy.


Next purchase was an original dedicated upright Asteroids cab. I love the vector graphics and the random gameplay of Asteroids, you can't emulate that and that justified my purchase.

Then I saw a co-op thread started on the forum to organise the purchase of a container load of arcade games from the US to be shipped to Australia. Being part of that was a great experience and a fantastic show of the trust and patience that can be found in the community. I bought a dedicated upright Defender cab and a cocktail Space Duel. Through the help of many AA forum members and some at KLOV also I have been able to maintain these games, do board repairs, replace parts and do some restorations. I now find that maintenance and restoration can be as rewarding and addictive as playing, but I still prefer to spend more time playing.


Also through AA I have been introduced to another great aspect of the hobby, the MEETS. Where we can all get together and socialise and share our hobby, play games in an arcade atmosphere just as we did BITD, but now in some ways it's even better. So far I have been able to attend some cool local games rooms and the awesome Mega Meet in Brisbane, also Pincade Meet in New Zealand and I plan on attending many more.
The Pincade meet organised by Yee is a truly incredible experience, held over three days and with multiple venues many with collections rivalling any arcade from BITD. I am grateful to have met some wonderful arcade enthusiasts, real characters, and play more awesome games than I ever imagined I would.

This has inspired me to hold my own meets on a smaller scale here, with the support of locals some of who bought along their games last year and plan on doing it all again this year.
We all had a blast at the last meet and I can only imagine this year will be just as good :) bring it on.
I feel proud that I am able to open our home up to these meets and give something back to the community that has given me so much.

After that meet I purchased Ben's Pin-bot pinball machine that he had bought up for the meet and it stayed at my place. My next purchase will probably be another pinball.

I don't have any TG verified scores (I did once send a mame recording but never heard back) I have a few old scores on MARP (as Rat) but nothing outstanding, I don't think any of my scores would be world records but IMHO some are fair achievements.

Just some of my favourites are the following.....

Bomb Jack.......default settings.....at my peak BITD I could play this ongoing, until my concentration lapsed. Often scoring 2-3 million and clocking the rounds, I think my highest ever was around 6mill, I remember wanting to see if it clocked at 10mill but never getting there.

Super Galaxian - where all the top row became flag ships after the first 4 rounds, I could play at my local arcade up to about round 50 with scoring well over 300k from memory. Galaxian is emulated well in mame, but Super Galaxian IMO the speed is wrong which is a shame.

Mr Do - on default settings I was able to marathon this usually playing for about an hour or so before giving up and leaving credits won for diamonds to other players waiting.

There are many many other games I enjoyed playing BITD and still do now on mame, but for the last year Defender has been consuming most of my gaming time. I always enjoyed Defender, but found it wasn't good value for my 20c BITD as I didn't last long, I think my high was around 100k.
I knew it would take some mastering and the fact that it plays so much better with the original control panel layout is what led me to purchase a cab.

I have been practising Defender for a year now playing about 4hrs per week on average, my goal is to be able to reach 1mill on factory settings, red roms. Thanks to the help and encouragement of the people at the Williams Defender Players Unite FaceBook page I think that I will soon achieve that goal. If/when I do I will class that as my greatest ever gaming achievement :D
My current high is 386,375 but I have recently felt another improvement in my game play and I expect to beat that score very soon.

So there is my gaming story in summary, big thanks to everyone who has come along with me for the ride and continues to share and support my gaming experience, I could have named you all but it would have taken me days :)

Cheers,
Rat

(Rat has been my nickname since grade 4, and continues, there is really no interesting back story, just a kid thing everyone wanted a nickname and mine stuck. Luckily it has three letters so came in handy.)