Tournament Nite 14

"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
- General George Patton Jr

So, it came to pass that we finally played a tourney game at Balkis ON A PROPER CAB. No half built control panel balanced on a stool, hunched over a monitor, complaints of bach ache, leg ache and poor diabetes control. No. None of this. For Balki has indeed finished his cab (well, he's not planning any modifications YET).

Woah ! the beast in all its glory. So, will Balki have home advantage ? Will Buks snatch the trophy back ? Read on.....

Burnin' Rubber - Balkis first choice. An enjoyable top down scrolling car race from the early 80's. I was quite good at it back in the day although i can never remember what stage I could get to. Anyways, to cut a long story short Balki just pipped Buks 2-1 although the game Buks won was a total slaughter.

Donkey Kong Jr - A very hard game for those who have never played it. A tactical choice by buks as he knew that Balki would probably not play it much pre-tournament. the only problem was Buks was a bit hit and miss - sometimes he'd get to the 2nd round of screens and othertimes he'd barely get off the first screen. A good series of games eventually awarding Buks the victory 2-1. That levels the scores at 3-3.

BurgerTime - Balki brining another classic to the table with the seminal cookery based platformer. One of the "classics" that neither of us ever saw in the arcades - must have been out there somewhere ! Anyhow, Balki was rubbish and Buks managed to walk away with a 2-1 victory. Buks now leading 5-4.

Zzyzzyxx - The final round. Buks once again tactically chose a game that Balki will have never played before. Unfortunately Buks hated the game and was pretty rubbish at it. Which meant
that Balki only had to concentrate and win 2-0 to take the trophy. But he didn't. Balki still won but by 2-1 which meant the final scores for the night were ...... 6-6. So its time for a tiebreak !!!!!

Now, tiebreak games are very rare at these tournaments and we had never really agreed on the method of choosing a game. But Balki suggested a game we had never played before that he'd read about on some retro site. It was being touted as the best "Space Invaders" sequel ever (or something. Anyway, without further ado......


Super Space Invaders '91 - One quick practice game - each of us taking a life and we decided to go for it. We decided to do 2 players alternating but when the game started we were both on screen. Cool. So it was a sort of co-operative game but the winner was the one with the most points. Luckily we had decided that the game was going to be "sudden death" or "golden goal" as we palyed for ages and would never have been able to play the best of 3 games. Anyway, Buks' luck held out and despite the fact that Balki had amassed more points, Balkis last life was taken from him just as the end-of-level-boss appeared. Buks had a fair few points to catch up but seeing as it was the boss level he used all his power weapons which seriously depleted the bosses health. A few shots later and the boss was in flames, Buks' score doubled and victory was his !!!!!!

Commiserations to Balki. Despite the home advantage and playing on his new cab things just didnt go his way.

Next tourney may be at Balkis again as Buks' cab is in bits as he is routing the edges and fitting t-molding.