Blatant Posed Shot

Jessicade in all her glory.

Speaker Covers

I'd decided ages ago that the speakers below the marquee didn't look the part. I wanted to cover them with some "in-theme" speaker grilles but never got round to doing them. Fast-forward to this weekend when I poped into the local Halfords (car accessory shop) and spotted some 10cm Kenwood car speakers for £19.99. I took the grilles and mounting "things" off and spray painted some primer (about 4 coates). Then I sprayed the grilles yellow (about 3 coats). The mounting "things" were painted with a bright red enamel modelling paint (didn't have any red aerosol). The finished product actually looks pretty good. Not bad for 20 quid.

New lightguns in place

Okay, so I finally took some pictures of the lightguns and the LED strips that the guns use to work out positioning.

First up is the right hand LED strip. I cut holes in the bezel and jammed the strips in . Unfortunately the first set of strips stopped working after dropping out and being man-handled into the holes.




Next up is the left hand LED. Not much else to say really.



And the left hand PL1 gun in its "holster". Just two pieces of thick dowel to hold the gun by the trigger and the handle. Seems to work fines - its not dropped off yet.




The guns work beautifully. I had loads of hassle with the PS2 Guncon2 guns. The driver seemed to work but there were huge issues with accuracy. I think this was down to using the VGA/SCART cable. Anyway, these guns use a camera and the two LED strips to work out the guns position on the screen. I've tested a single gun with House of The Dead3 and Art is Dead on the PC as well as loads of MAME lightgun games.

Tournament Nite 9

Tourney 9 took place in Huddersfield on Balki's control panel. Despite having the home advantage Balki didn't manage to retain the trophy and Buks returned to Leeds once again victorious.

First up was Cosmic Cop. About a weeks worth of practice on this one - but having discussed tactics etc it looked like Balki would take this one 2-0. Balki played first and amassed a pretty good score - way more that my personal best. But as is often the case under tourney conditions - I managed to beat my best score and just pipped Balki's first attempt by around 1,000 points. Same happened on the second game which meant I took the lead - 2-0.

Next up was Zaxxon. This was an odd choice in that its one of the "flagship" retro games but I never played it in the arcades because it was way too hard. Having it on MAME means you can practice forever without spending lots of 10p's. I had practiced this game a lot over the past week and had actually become pretty good at it. Whereas I previously couldn't get past the outer space wave, I can now get past the end of level robot on most attempts (pretty good for me anyway !). I was first up and got to about 1/2 through the second level. Pretty average score for me. As Balki started his game, he jokingly said "Watch me crash into the wall". And then did. Much laughter ensued. Balki posted a very low score. Next game I somehow managed to emulate what Balki had done. I barely made it past the outer space level. Not good. Balki had a chance to pull a point back. But to cut a long story short, he didn't. Another 2-0 to me. So 4-0 at the halfway point.

Next up was Frogger. Not a favourite of mine. This is basically because I played it to death on the ZX Spectrum in the 80's. Although in practice I did okay, theres something about the game that just doesn't click with me. Balki was first up and beat his previous high score which meant I was going to have to pull one out of the bag if I wanted to beat it. I didn't but I did score a respectable score. Next game saw Balki beat his score again which meant I was going to have to do the impossible. I was right - it was impossible. I score the lowest Frogger score I have ever had. So Balki brought the score back to 4-2.

Lastly was Monster Farm Jump. This is a Japanese (I think) game from the 90's which I've never seen before. I "discovered" it while browsing the MAWS website. Excellent game with loads of level and difficulty selection. First up was me, and I managed to score possibly my best ever - I got to level 9 before losing all my lives. Balki was next and also got to level 9 but he'd been too quick on the bonus level and didn't amass enough combo's so his score was way less than mine. Which meant the score was 5-2 and technically impossible for Balki to win. We played one more game but I didn't do well (due to laughing and waving the trophy about). Balki beat me on the last game so 5-3 was the final score.

So victory to me !

Next tourney we have decided to choose 2-player games so I suspect that they'll be mostly soccer and fighting games.

	PL1 Balki			PL2 Buks
Cosmic Cop	0	0		1	1
Zaxxon	0	0		1	1
Frogger	1	1		0	0
Monster Farm Jump	1	0		0	1