Crazy Flipper Fingers It's the eighth anniversary of my entry into the hallowed halls of the Twin Galaxies Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records. If you've seen The King of Kong, you are familiar with the Twin Galaxies organization - recognized by Guinness as the official purveyor of video game records.
On April 30th of 2000, TG hosted a "Video Game and Pinball Championship" tourney for the state of Michigan. The battlefield for this epic contest was the Ypsilanti Putt-Putt Golf & Games. To suggest I am extremely familiar with the Ypsilanti Putt-Putt arcade would be a profound understatement.
The game was Star Wars Episode I Pinball, and despite a previous personal best of 94 million, I triumphantly racked up (a record) 161,749,150 points. Some details were recorded in the Station Archives:
"For those in the know, I attained the level of Jedi Knight on the first ball (and picked up over 100 million). A couple extra balls later I was a Jedi Master with 140 million. Ball two managed another 20 million and ball three (also known as the Two-Second Ball - approximately how long it was in play) drained poste haste. Two letters away from being a Jedi Spirit. Ugh."
According to the Internet Pinball Machine Database, the Ep I pin was the last machine to be produced under the revered William-Balley label.
Headline Shirts
CNN.com is now selling news headline t-shirts. The application for choosing the shirt + headline is currently in beta. Wasn't entirely sure who the audience would be for such a ridiculous product, until finding the website URL contained the headline information - which means any goofball can generate custom "I just saw it on CNN.com" shirts. Which is fun.
I'd buy one, but am experiencing what Douglas Coupland would describe as "Optional Paralysis".
Update: The "bug" has been fixed. Back to regular CNN headline shirts, I reckon. Thanks, Jay.
It'll immediately make you want to try it. I'd for certain use this photograph. Still have all Star Wars toys involved, natch. Get my brother to stand in the background... Considering the evil shenanigans Kevin Castle (white shirt, right) was into back in the day, I assume he's too incarcerated for an updated photo appearance.
Not strictly a recreation, I am nonetheless a big fan of this handlebar mustache then-and-now:
Concept courtesy the profoundly talented Ze Frank.
"This hand made Triforce cutting board is perfect for gamers that like to cook...or cooks that like video-games...or really anyone that likes things that look nice and are made of wood. The board is made of walnut and hard-maple, put together with FDA approved, water-proof glue (Titebond III), and treated with a mixture of mineral oil and beeswax."
"That aside, how does Outside actually rate? The physics system is note-perfect (often at the expense of playability), the graphics are beyond comparison, the rendering of objects is absolutely beautiful at any distance, and the player's ability to interact with objects is really limited only by other players' tolerance. The real fundamental problem with the game is that there is nothing to do.
In terms of game play the game sets few, if any, goals: the major one is merely "survive". What goals a player sets, are often astonishingly tedious to actually achieve, and power-ups and gear upgrades, let alone extra weapons, are few and far between. Some players choose accumulation of money, one of the many point systems in the game, as a goal, but distribution of this is often randomized and it can be hard to tell what activities will lead to gaining points in advance, and what the risks will be."
It's the eighth anniversary of my entry into the hallowed halls of the Twin Galaxies Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records. If you've seen The King of Kong, you are familiar with the Twin Galaxies organization - recognized by Guinness as the official purveyor of video game records.
