Twin Galaxies and official competitive gaming

[Yoko/葉子]

As some of you know, I am a TG gamer so I thought I'd share stuff that's going on, good or bad with the official scoreboard for video games, maybe some history if one wishes.

 

It all started in the early 80s when Walter Day started an arcade called well... Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa Iowa. He would travel from arcade to arcade to see the best scores, as news of these scores came around, the competitive aspect started from there.

 

Billy Mitchell (who now has made his own hot sauce that I have tried) was the very first person to reach 1,000,000 points and the kill screen in 1982 when playing Donkey Kong, even before there was an NES or Famicom.

 

Walter has retired and is now focusing on music, but still is part of events occasionally, in fact, last year he decided to make video game trading cards in the same manner as one would have Baseball cards of the pros. http://videogametradingcards.com/

 

Among folks who now have cards are:

Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari

Issiah "Triforce"Johnson who some know as the first person to get the Wii U and also does charity for the poor and starving

Ralph Baer, who made "Tennis for Two" in the 50s, a prototype of Pong in a way, thus the very first video game.

 

Today, they are having an event at the Pinballz Arcade in Austin, Texas.

 

As a common rule, glitches are not usually allowed in runs, if you have a certain amount of lives for a Points run, once you lose your 5th life, that will be it or we would all have 9,999,990 points in Sonic games on the Genesis/Megadrive. If you love Tetris, there are plenty of puzzle games to compete in.

 

Of course, last I checked (before the ownership got moved), one could give requests for new ways to run, for example: I was able to set up a sword-only challenge for all three NES Ninja Gaiden games.

 

So, shall we all get our game on with competition?

[Tori Himemiya]

Try joining the pokemon competitive scene like on Smogon or something.

It will drive you nuts.

"OH CHARIZARD IS FOR NOOBS CAUSE STEALTH ROCK!" "ALWAYS HAVE A SPINNER, HAZARD PLACER, AND GHOST TYPE" "WEATHER WARZ!" Etc.

I don't think I'll ever get into any competitive scene anytime soon though. Too much work and I don't have the time for it anymore.

[Yoko/葉子]

It's not like 4 player matches against each other, more like non-glitched speedruns and points runs, some co-op.

[bmn]

I think anyone attempting to do "official" accreditation of video game superplays is in a tough spot these days, Twin Galaxies more than most. The rules when it comes to "as the developer intended it" are so grey, and the number of games and categories so high, that it's impossible for one organisation to effectively oversee it.

 

If you look to, for example, Guinness' world records in general, they mandate only a relatively small number of records, and need good reason to add to them. This is a good thing, in my opinion. It is, however, something you can't do with video games.

 

About 8-9 years ago, there was a move, particularly in speedrunning, away from Twin Galaxies (which specialised in old arcade games and score attacks) and to more informal communities. Undoubtedly two of the big reasons for this were the strict, and sometimes illogical, rulesets TG would produce - for example, banning all weapons other than the handguns in Tomb Raider 1 in about 2005 or so - and their, understandable, bans on any and all use of glitches. One of the most popular communities at the time was Speed Demos Archive, which did much as TG did, while being more open, allowing glitches (in their own categories if necessary), and archiving videos of all the runs they posted.

 

Over the last 5 years or so, however, overarching communities like SDA itself have become more and more obsolete in the way they do things. With video capture now cheap and easy, and everyone and their dog streaming on sites like own3d.tv and twitch.tv, superplays are often being beaten almost as soon as they're made. An organisation or site can't afford to take weeks to "approve" or "publish" a run, because someone else might improve that run long before the approval is made.

 

Similarly, many games have active and mature communities that, through their own experience and expertise, define their categories and rules appropriately, and won't allow sites like TG/SDA/Cyberscore to dictate otherwise. Communities and individuals will ignore groups that they disagree with - for example Andrew Garkidis, TG record holder for speedrunning Super Mario Bros., who disregarded TG in around 2009 over their decision that wall jumping was a glitch. This means, of course, that the site can't be assured of having the best results, and - especially in the the case of TG, who have leaderboards for every category of theirs under the sun - will have huge holes in their records.

 

So, now, the record keeping for the cutting edge of speedrunning is mostly in small communities, and the bigger communities instead promote them rather than accredit them. On the one hand, the experts know the game better, there's much greater peer review, and you're much more likely to see the best runs, but on the other hand you're more likely to see faked or outright stolen runs (case in point, Sega's Sonic Generations speedrun competition). This is countered by the hard core of gamers that stream their attempts for hours and hours, making it pretty clear they're not cheating. Overall, I think it's a good move.

 

...and then Guinness decided to belatedly join the bandwagon by setting up their own video game record database. While still using TG's records as well. And sometimes taking times from other sources to put in their GWR Gamers' Edition books, as "unofficial" records. Like I say, superplay accreditation is a mess.

 

 

So, uh... yes! I like speedrunning

 

My game really is Metal Gear Solid 2. The community isn't that big for it, and most of the activity is focused on Big Boss - beating the game with perfect stats. The categories I prefer involve collecting all of the dog tags. When I began, there was only one person that'd done it in the past (and they'd stopped doing it), so it was up to me to build what the community calls the "metagame" (entirely the wrong context, but who cares! ) for it. In the last year or so, I've managed to gather a group of 4 or 5 people that do dog tag categories, but it'd be nice to have a proper community and real competition. Still, the strategies and routes are far removed from how they used to be, and for that I'm pretty happy.

[Yoko/葉子]

So, uh... yes! I like speedrunning

 

My game really is Metal Gear Solid 2. The community isn't that big for it, and most of the activity is focused on Big Boss - beating the game with perfect stats. The categories I prefer involve collecting all of the dog tags. When I began, there was only one person that'd done it in the past (and they'd stopped doing it), so it was up to me to build what the community calls the "metagame" (entirely the wrong context, but who cares! ) for it. In the last year or so, I've managed to gather a group of 4 or 5 people that do dog tag categories, but it'd be nice to have a proper community and real competition. Still, the strategies and routes are far removed from how they used to be, and for that I'm pretty happy.

They make me submit my run in full and start recording a few seconds before the machine starts up to ensure no cheat devices were used. Even if glitch-less speedrunning is not super popular, gives me something to do.