drawing a crowd to watch you

nuckinfuts68

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were any of you good enough at any 1 game that you drew a crowd just to watch ya play??

only game i was truly any good at to do this was pacman. i knew most of the patterns. even broke 1,000,000 in points 2 times.

now.....i've forgot all the patterns and can't break 100,000 on slow pac.....speedy pac is a bit better at around 300,000....lol
 
I wasn't very good (to most people's standards) on any games. I did consistently get 170,000+ on Time Pilot and could get to the last level on Crystal Castles, but no one ever watched me.

I do, however, remember my best friend getting a comment as we walked into our local arcade one time. A group of kids were watching one of their buddies playing 720 when we walked by to get quarters. One of them said, "There's the 720 kid!". We thought it was great. He was awesome at 720 and I guess a lot of people knew it!
 
I'd never tried DDR in a mall setting and I wanted to just for the heck of it. No one was around so I went up to it and started out. Not 2 minutes in and a dozen people are circled around me trying to see if I have any moves. Of course I didn't, so I left for someone else to finish the game.
 
Not really a crowd but on Fridays I play at the Richie Knucklez arcade and on a couple of titles occasionally I'll get the sense a few folks are around the machine while I'm playing. Galaga, Elevator Action, DK Jr, Bosconian, Journey and Zoo Keeper are probably the most watched. I don't mind it, I very much enjoy the social aspect of playing in an arcade setting.
 
I would occasionally have crowds gather around me while playing pinball machines on location when I was a teenager. Usually, after the second time in one game that the replay knocker cracks I would start getting a ton of attention.


When I was tired of playing I would tell the youngest kid watching me that he could have my free games.
 
I had a huge crowd gather round me when I was playing Star Wars, but then when the siezure stopped everybody pretty much went back to their business.
 
I used to get a crowd back when MK1 and 2 came out. A buddy and I would go at it all the time against each other and the matches would last forever because were both so good. Eventually we started to enter the weekly tournaments at local arcade and the crowds were way bigger for us at that point. Fast forward to 2008 and at that time I was really into the game In the groove, a dancing game similar to DDR. I guess people were drawn to watching me due to my age being that you usually see teens playing and not many full grown adults. Eventually I began participating in those tournaments as well but eventually it and the game grew old for me.
 
My company had a team building event at Dave & Buster's, and towards the end of the night when most of our group left, we drew a pretty good crowd on this:

jumpin_jackpot.jpg.jpg


We hadn't seen anyone on the machine the whole night and we decided to give it a try. There were 4 of us hitting the jackpot *every single time* we played. For the price, it was the best return in the place, too. We emptied the ticket dispenser twice, high-fiving and making a scene the whole time. A pretty big crowd grew around us and everyone wanted to play, but no one could win. It was almost like we were hustling them. It eventually got to the point were we couldn't get any more turns.
 
Mortal Kombat II.. I am doing a little bragging here but I was good at it. After people got tired of dropping quarters in and loosing to me they would stand around and watch me take on the computer. I got to the point where I could run completely through the single player mode on one credit and roll the machine. I would even open Jade up with all low kicks and whip her ass too. It was pretty awesome to have folks watching me work my way up the tree.. Unfortunetly I have lost most of those skills. I used to know all the fatalities and such without even thinking. I have the machine now and I can still roll through single player but it takes a few more credits. I don't really have anyone to play against so I'd hate to see how my skills are against a good player now.. Oh well, I guess that's why those are called the glory days.
 
I played a LOT of Star Wars Trilogy when it was new. Enough to consistently play through on 1 credit. Most of the game is an on-rails shooter with no randomness, so it's basically just memorization and no-miss chains for max multipliers. I played an almost perfect game one crowded weekend night... hit almost every target with one shot. Put in my name and turned to see a crowd had been watching. One guy patted my shoulder and said 'you're a fuckin jedi, man'.

I still visit that arcade a couple times a year and my name is still at the top of the high score table.
 
BITD, I'd have crowds on a few games, but the one I remember most was Centipede. This is back when you were small enough that you'd have to find the step stool to bring over to a game so you could reach the controls. I was pretty good at Centipede, but I used to swap my hands on the trackball and button as well when I got tired.

Nothing like when the game is over having to hop off a stool and wind your way back out of a crowd.
 
were any of you good enough at any 1 game that you drew a crowd just to watch ya play?

There were many better players at Missile Command, but I was decent enough at it that sometimes I would get people watching.

I was really good at both Space Invaders and Deluxe Space Invaders and I often got people watching me play that. I could do all the tricks, make the rainbow on 'Deluxe, hit the mystery ship for 300 every time on 'Deluxe and the death slide on Space Invaders and pretty much every other trick on either game. And of course resetting them back up to the top too (which is significantly harder on 'Deluxe). Several times I had people pay for my games to see the tricks again.
 
Back when I was around 10-12 years old, I would hang out at my Grandparent's Bar and play whatever game the Vendor would bring in. Ones I can remember were Mr. Do, Pengo, Tron, Dig Dug. I could play whatever game he brought in for a long ass time on one quarter which would get the attention of all the Farmers in the Bar. Next thing I knew, they were buying me glasses of pop left and right because I was their Entertainment. Now I go back and try to play them and can't even come close to the levels I did when I was a Kid. Plus thats the only place where I've even played Mr. Do and bagged me a free game from getting the Diamond. Almost brings a tear to my eye, those were such good times.


Mike
 
I was a vidiot back in the day... :)... the best memory I have of people watching me play was on Dragon's Lair... our Aladdin's Castle had an extra monitor on top of it and I used to play it behind my back watching everybody watch the upper screen. It was pretty cool. People just didn't understand that the game was purely timing based so you didn't need to see what was going on on the screen.

Other games I remember getting crowds around were DKjr, Tron, and Wizard of Wor(used to have an older guy as a playing partner and we'd just destroy this game).

Soooo glad my parents divorced back then and my father used to take me twice a week to the arcade(which had a bar right next to it btw). :D Ahhh the memories!
 
BITD I was unbeatable on Karate Champ, used to sit on the game all day and whup on any comer's, the game was in the post exchange on Ft. Lee VA.
I'm not nearly as good on the newer fighting games but Karate Champ was the grandaddy of them all imo. :)
 
Crowd

My best friend worked at Fun Factory in the Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, KS. In the early-mid 80's I would go there to play games for free. I got so good at Robotron I could turn it over. Crowds would gather because the game was put in a high traffic area and they had a satellite monitor above it.

I also got nearly as good at Food Fight. The bowling ball redemption game where you have to roll it on rails over a hump and have it stay in I was automatic.

My friends boss said that he loved having me there because I made the bowling ball redemption game look easy and lots of kids would dump tons of tokens in them trying to win.

I later got a job working at the AMC theater in that same mall. Life was great - video games and movies all day.

Man, I LOVED that time of my life.

I almost forgot...we had a Gauntlet game in my dorm in college. I would put a quarter in that and play it as long as I wanted and leave it with a ton of men and pots for whomever was there. I would have at least 5-6 people watching regularly and one cute girl would comment "you are still playing the same game?" until I finally said "I was hoping you would give me a reason no to." Unfortunately, she didn't.
 
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I almost forgot...we had a Gauntlet game in my dorm in college. I would put a quarter in that and play it as long as I wanted and leave it with a ton of men and pots for whomever was there.

Gauntlet didn't have Extra Lives. Had a Health Counter. Sounds like someone implanted false memories. :p


Mike
 
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