At the end of the day yesterday, I had been bumped down to third place - which was really no surprise - by Pat. He had an unbelieveable game of Rally-X to set a high score of ~93,000, most of which I got on tape. I spent a good deal of the rest of the night working on CC, but I couldn't complete a game. In fact, I wouldn't get one during the tourney, but as it turns out, that wouldn't matter...
After looking over the overall high score list and what games I really needed better scores at, it became obvious that I needed to work my Discs of Tron score and stay away from Rally-X, Dig Dug, Galaga and Donkey Kong 3, which had amazing high scores and which would be really, really hard to topple. I decided to work on Discs of Tron, a game which I had a little expereince in, but nothing fantastic. I was in fourth or fifth place and I felt that I could do a bit better.
I set at it with vigor and I drove up my high from ~16,000 to ~21,000, then to ~31,000 and finally, I topped out at ~36,000, which was good enough for second place behind Donald Hayes. Pat Laffaye was working on a Galaga marathon score and didn't have a chance to come back and try and topple that score, so I ended up with second place on Discs overall.
My Crystal Castles score would remain the only one close to Donald's finished game score and also a personal record score for me at 644,360, so I would take second place home in that as well.
I also couldn't best my high score at the Glob, so I stayed second to Hayes' score again, although, I was really psyched to pass 90k, so it felt good anyway.
I also turned in ok scores on Star Wars (3rd), Galaga (3rd) and Roadblasters (5th, but close).
My Thunder Cross score maxed out at ~351,000 and even though Mark Boolman inched closer and closer as the day wore on, but couldn't best my score. He did have to leave early to take a couple of the guys to the airport, so with a bit more time, he may have been able to knock me off the top of that one, but it ended up sticking. It was kind of fitting that the only game I got a high score on was a shmup.
So, after the final scores were tallied, I ended the tournament in...second place! Frankly, I was stunned, but the grouping couldn't have been closer with less than one percentage point seperating places second, third and fourth. Beating Pat and Mark felt like quite an accomplishment and taking home some cash was pretty cool as well, especially for my first tournament.
As we said our good byes, Pat and Donald (both playing in the picture above) asked if I was thinking of heading out for the Funspot tournament in June and I just might go. There were a lot of great moments during this one, which I'll compile in a final post about the tournament, but right now, I am exhausted after over 24 hours of gaming during one weekend. I have attract music from a half a dozen games running through my head, patterns for CC repeating themselves over and over in my mind and a smile on my face after competing with the big boys and comming out way better than I ever thought I could.
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