What's your greatest arcade performance?

I can think of two, both from back in the arcade days, so early 80's...

Got 550,000 or so on a Missile Command set to 20,000 for an extra city. I had gotten to the 800,000 level (where the 256 extra cities bug kicks in) a few times on default settings (10,000 for extra city). I think 550k on a 20k extra city game was a better played game. Once you reach high levels on a 10K city game, you really don't even need to defend your cities, if you shoot well, you can score 10K every round. On a 20k city game, you MUST defend cities at least 1 out of 2 rounds and more like 2 out of 3 rounds depending on how the score falls.

Got 49k+ on a Deluxe Space Invaders. I was a major Space Invaders addict when it came out. I played it all over and sought out any game room if I heard there was a hot player there. I have only seen one person ever, beside my game, get over 30k on Deluxe SI. The world record listed is absolutely bogus. I think it's 200k or so. It's higher than the regular SI record. No possible way. Deluxe SI is WAY harder than SI. If the SI world record (by Richie K) is about 125k I believe, there is no way someone did better on Deluxe. Richie could not use the technique he used on SI on Deluxe SI. I am not saying Richie isn't great on SI, he is. I give him full complete credit. But I challenge him to get even 20k on Deluxe.

A lot of the old records are highly suspect to say the least. That's needed cleaning up for a long long time now.
 
Since drunken Time Pilot made the list I'll mention my 90,000 ONE HANDED Track & Field. Whiskey in one hand and only touched the controls with the other. I think it's up on my YouTube channel.

Hyper Sports 576,480. Video no longer available in 9 countries due to music in the background. BOOOOO! I've heard of better scores but I shocked myself by getting this high since i think i suck at the game. My next best is 475,000ish. So this one is big for me.

Last one that i think is a really good one is my Return of the Jedi 2,193,000. Normal play will get you 1,350,000 even with the 100k bonus for finishing. So i sacrificed lives and point pressed over 800k and the game stops giving free men after 1million.

Jedi vid is also on my YT channel.

Hec
 
I once banged my wife after hours in the arcade when I worked there. I thought my performance was flawless and I won't listen to her telling me otherwise.
 
I'll change mine from rolling Eyes to destroying the world record just a few hours ago. Pulled 32.49 million in about 2 hours and 45 minutes. I hope to record something even remotely close to that at either CAX or Grinkers.
 
no real "high score" involved, but in terms of "performance" ...

buddy of mine and i would venture to an arcade in the mid/late-90s and play one of the many permutations of Street Fighter 2/Xmen/etc etc games.

Xmen VS SF
MvC
MvC2

etc etc ...

he'd choose one character and i'd choose the other.

we would then proceed to play against other challengers and demolish all of them (actual humans) ... all the while talking trash and randomly switching back and forth our chosen characters.

thinking back, we were probably dicks about it. but in our defense, they kept dropping in quarters and raging when they lost.

ahhhh .. the hubris of youth ...
 
Biggest moment as a kid would have been breaking 1 million on robotron. That was great. As an adult it would be breaking 10 million on robotron. Took many years bto do it, but finally did it about 2 years ago. Was a great feeling. Hope to break 10 million again sometime and perhaps 25 million one day.
 
I used to be able to beat Contra on one guy. When you win the game you get like 30 or something extra guys, but it's game over. :)

There was also a time when my brother and I dumped way too much money in Double Dragon ][ to beat it. It was tough but it had to be done.
 
I can think of two, both from back in the arcade days, so early 80's...

Got 550,000 or so on a Missile Command set to 20,000 for an extra city. I had gotten to the 800,000 level (where the 256 extra cities bug kicks in) a few times on default settings (10,000 for extra city). I think 550k on a 20k extra city game was a better played game. Once you reach high levels on a 10K city game, you really don't even need to defend your cities, if you shoot well, you can score 10K every round. On a 20k city game, you MUST defend cities at least 1 out of 2 rounds and more like 2 out of 3 rounds depending on how the score falls.

Got 49k+ on a Deluxe Space Invaders. I was a major Space Invaders addict when it came out. I played it all over and sought out any game room if I heard there was a hot player there. I have only seen one person ever, beside my game, get over 30k on Deluxe SI. The world record listed is absolutely bogus. I think it's 200k or so. It's higher than the regular SI record. No possible way. Deluxe SI is WAY harder than SI. If the SI world record (by Richie K) is about 125k I believe, there is no way someone did better on Deluxe. Richie could not use the technique he used on SI on Deluxe SI. I am not saying Richie isn't great on SI, he is. I give him full complete credit. But I challenge him to get even 20k on Deluxe.

I'm usually around 14-17k on my Deluxe. Yeah, you are right, Deluxe is definitely more of a challenge (especially with the Midway version, as the splitter invaders appear on the 2nd level, instead of the 4th). It seems like your shots get blocked a lot more often in Deluxe...I've posted about this before, but Deluxe definitely has a "grinding" feel due to all of the blocked shots.

Just out of curiosity, how do you do with last-invader-shot bonus points? I can usually get the 1000-point invader on Levels 1 and 2. I then can usually shoot down a 500-point invader on Levels 3-5 (I try not to risk a life to do it, as that's not a worthwhile tradeoff...so if I have to pass on that, so be it). So that's an extra 3500 points right there, by the end of Level 5. Unfortunately it's Level 7, 8, and 9 that tend to be my undoing...those splitters in the bottom row in Level 8 are a real bitch. I don't use any Wall-Of-Death or Eric Ferrer UFO strategies...those feel cheap to me.

I have yet to get past Level 9 on Deluxe, so just wondering...do the invaders back up on Level 10 or 11? The game obviously gets a little bit easier for a while once you reach that point. Kinda like Time Pilot...once you get past 2001, the 1910-1940-1970 levels feel easier than the just-completed 1982 and 2001 levels that came before them.
 
I'm usually around 14-17k on my Deluxe. Yeah, you are right, Deluxe is definitely more of a challenge (especially with the Midway version, as the splitter invaders appear on the 2nd level, instead of the 4th). It seems like your shots get blocked a lot more often in Deluxe...I've posted about this before, but Deluxe definitely has a "grinding" feel due to all of the blocked shots.

Just out of curiosity, how do you do with last-invader-shot bonus points? I can usually get the 1000-point invader on Levels 1 and 2. I then can usually shoot down a 500-point invader on Levels 3-5 (I try not to risk a life to do it, as that's not a worthwhile tradeoff...so if I have to pass on that, so be it). So that's an extra 3500 points right there, by the end of Level 5. Unfortunately it's Level 7, 8, and 9 that tend to be my undoing...those splitters in the bottom row in Level 8 are a real bitch. I don't use any Wall-Of-Death or Eric Ferrer UFO strategies...those feel cheap to me.

I have yet to get past Level 9 on Deluxe, so just wondering...do the invaders back up on Level 10 or 11? The game obviously gets a little bit easier for a while once you reach that point. Kinda like Time Pilot...once you get past 2001, the 1910-1940-1970 levels feel easier than the just-completed 1982 and 2001 levels that came before them.

After you complete level 9, the pattern resets & repeats except skips level 1, so a repeat of levels 2-9 continually, which is the same way SI does it after you complete level 9. On SI though, whatever level you play after the initial 9 levels is exactly the same as on the first 9. It's not quite the case on Deluxe. They are generally the same, but the biggest difference is the amount of splitting invaders. In Deluxe on the first 9 levels, just going by memory and guessing here, but I'd say the total amount of splitting invaders is what, 10% per wave? After level 9, it immediately jumps to 50% and more are splitters. You're just firing forever to complete a level - talk about grinding! So while completing level 9 gives you slight breather in that it resets them back to higher, the many more splitting invaders keeps it real tough.

As to the 500 & 1000 point bonuses, did you know there is a 700 point bonus too? Check out the flyer, it shows you where it is. And actually when you look at the position of the 700 point guy, it's probably harder to get than the 1000 point guy. It's my opinion that it's not worth going for the 1000 (or 500 or 700) bonus. Even on the first level, you can get more bonus points shooting the 300 point mystery ships to more than make up for the 1000 point bonus. The counters for the 300 point mystery ship is the same as on SI, the only difference is the second mystery ship to appear on a screen is the blinking one, which is always 200. But after that one, using the same count, you can get 300's. It's REALLY important to shoot the mystery ships on Deluxe, as otherwise it drops more invaders which just totally screw up progress on the level.

When I got the 49K game, I reset them 3 times and was well into the 4th set of levels.
 
Hmm...

I think 13 hours on one quarter in a Gauntlet 1 machine (intermediate release 4 or 7), and level 522 on Valkyrie, back in 1990. Had over 100,000 health with 1st digit truncated. Had to kill myself over 15-30 minutes of damage since the arcade was closing. But all Gauntlet revisions before revision 9 gave unlimited food drops, so anyone who was good enough could play forever, if you lived long enough past level 8, to get extra shot, fight and magic power (if you're not the wizard).

On a more civilized note: I think I was the only person around to beat the arcade games "Magician Lord" (Neo-Geo), "Sengoku", Gain Ground (Sega), and The Simpsons (playing Bart), on one credit without continues.
 
After you complete level 9, the pattern resets & repeats except skips level 1, so a repeat of levels 2-9 continually, which is the same way SI does it after you complete level 9. On SI though, whatever level you play after the initial 9 levels is exactly the same as on the first 9. It's not quite the case on Deluxe. They are generally the same, but the biggest difference is the amount of splitting invaders. In Deluxe on the first 9 levels, just going by memory and guessing here, but I'd say the total amount of splitting invaders is what, 10% per wave? After level 9, it immediately jumps to 50% and more are splitters. You're just firing forever to complete a level - talk about grinding! So while completing level 9 gives you slight breather in that it resets them back to higher, the many more splitting invaders keeps it real tough.

As to the 500 & 1000 point bonuses, did you know there is a 700 point bonus too? Check out the flyer, it shows you where it is. And actually when you look at the position of the 700 point guy, it's probably harder to get than the 1000 point guy. It's my opinion that it's not worth going for the 1000 (or 500 or 700) bonus. Even on the first level, you can get more bonus points shooting the 300 point mystery ships to more than make up for the 1000 point bonus. The counters for the 300 point mystery ship is the same as on SI, the only difference is the second mystery ship to appear on a screen is the blinking one, which is always 200. But after that one, using the same count, you can get 300's. It's REALLY important to shoot the mystery ships on Deluxe, as otherwise it drops more invaders which just totally screw up progress on the level.

When I got the 49K game, I reset them 3 times and was well into the 4th set of levels.

I think that other invader (in the middle of the rack) is worth 800 and not 700. I've never gotten that one...the 1000 and 500 point invaders are much easier to get.

Yeah, I don't do the UFO shot-counting trick...I can and have done it before, but that takes the fun out of it for me...feels like artificially inflating the score. But I agree, the invader dropping can absolutely kill a level...and you've probably noticed that there's some AI to it...I've had a UFO drop a single invader right at the end of a rack, to make the remaining invaders drop quickly. I've cursed out a UFO that's done that more than once.

Going to have to zone in and make it to these later levels...those uber-splitter levels sound like a real bitch.
 
I think that other invader (in the middle of the rack) is worth 800 and not 700.
But I agree, the invader dropping can absolutely kill a level...and you've probably noticed that there's some AI to it...I've had a UFO drop a single invader right at the end of a rack, to make the remaining invaders drop quickly.

You are right, it is 800:
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=1033&image=2

The mystery ship dropping the invaders is absolutely brutal! Just like you said, will drop one at the end to make them move down that much quicker.
 
I was horrible playing arcades as a kid. But in the mid to late 90s in my college years I went to the NY car show. They had Cruis'n USA. I put alot of money at the local comic shop. I figured out how to get other cars by pressing the start button. This guy was talking smack with his girlfriend about how good he was. I jumped in and used the school bus. He had the ferrari and was saying no way he can be beat by a school bus. My friends were confused as to what was going on. Who picks a school bus? I smoked him as I knew the track. He tried to ram me a couple of times. He was dazed after that game. His girlfriend was ripping on him and my friends were shocked on what they saw. I felt like a god that day.
 
Played Bubbles for 10.5 hours back in the day. Arcade owner had it set for 20k per free man instead of 25k.

Have the world record on Change Lanes.

Was on Starcade in 1984. :)
 
I was horrible playing arcades as a kid. But in the mid to late 90s in my college years I went to the NY car show. They had Cruis'n USA. I put alot of money at the local comic shop. I figured out how to get other cars by pressing the start button. This guy was talking smack with his girlfriend about how good he was. I jumped in and used the school bus. He had the ferrari and was saying no way he can be beat by a school bus. My friends were confused as to what was going on. Who picks a school bus? I smoked him as I knew the track. He tried to ram me a couple of times. He was dazed after that game. His girlfriend was ripping on him and my friends were shocked on what they saw. I felt like a god that day.

I shared this with my wife ( a school bus driver ) and we had a good laugh ! Would've been funny to be there and see the guys reaction . Good story !
 
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