My Tapper high score

So this past weekend I went to the Funspot in Laconia, NH with my girlfriend, Liz, and two friends. Liz and I rented a cottage right on Weirs Beach, while our friends Candice and Jay stayed across the street at a nice motel. I've never tried to submit a high score with Twin Galaxies before, so I wasn't quite sure what to do. The number 5 and number 6 scores for Tapper marathon runs are quite low, so I knew I would be able to take the number 5 spot. On only one occasion I've scored more than 1 million points at home, but I was unsure if I could do it live at the Funspot. My Tapper machine is a cocktail table, and the controls are positioned below the glass tabletop so that I can rest the thumb on my right hand on the glass. This gives me a good amount of leverage to pull the tapper control really fast. On the upright version at the Funspot, there's nothing to rest your hand on - thus, less leverage. Combine this with the fact that the tapper control at the Funspot has lost a lot of spring and "snap-back" over the years, I had my doubts about my game.

On Saturday I played a pretty good game. I got up to 611,000 points, but I didn't have any referees from Twin Galaxies watching me and thus could not validate the score. I found Mark Alpiger from Classicarcadegaming.com, and I thought he was a TG ref, but it turns out I was mistaken. He was excited for me but couldn't serve in any official manner. After asking around and talking to a few different people I found out that there were TG refs at the Funspot, but they were there on their personal time. This meant that they would have to be kind enough to officiate my game in their spare time. After this I decided to lay off the Tapper for a bit and just have some fun bowling and playing pool.

On Sunday we returned to the Funspot in the early afternoon, played a bunch of different games, and then located myself a referee. I should note that we were in an antiques store before heading to the arcade, and the owners notified us that there was a tornado watch in effect for most of the area. The refs were very nice, and said that they would check in every once in a while. Primarily they just had to be around when the score rolled over to zero. On Tapper, like many other classic arcade games, the score doesn't go past 999,999. After this point, it "rolls over" to zero, and someone needs to be there to vouch for the player that this actually happened. So I located my self a stool and played a preliminary game. I lost a life early on, got frustrated, and started over. I managed to stay cool and calm though. My next game would be my high score game. I notified the ref, started the game, and tore through it.

It takes about two hours to reach 1 million points in Tapper. Various people stopped by from time to time, checking in on me and urging me on. In the middle of my bid for 1 million points, the tornado warning kicked into effect. Stormy weather outside caused a brown-out. The light in the marquee on the Tapper machine flickered off and on, the games to the left and right of me were resetting. All around I could here unhappy gamer whose machines had just crapped out on them because of the brief loss of electricity. However, the Tapper was not effected. Through some higher power or great force of nature, the Tapper played on. This happened FOUR TIMES throughout the course of my high score game. Four brown-outs, four interruptions to other gamers, and yet I played on. I also saw a chipmunk. Somewhere between one million and two million points, this little guy darted out from between the arcade machines behind me and disappeared between the Tapper and the Timber machines. A few minutes later he darted back.

When I was approaching two million points, it was about 4:30 or so. The group of refs left to get a beer. I was worried that nobody would be around for the rollover, but another ref named Will wandered by and stayed until the end. The closing ceremonies for the tournament were happening at 6:00. I could have played forever. Seriously. I could have kept going for as long as I wanted. I was SO in the zone. BUT - I had three other people with me, I was the one who drove to the Funspot, I had been in front of this arcade machine for four hours straight, the refs wanted to go to the closing ceremonies, and then obviously they wanted to go home, the next highest score was 5 million, which would have taken another fiver or six hours to beat. I could have kept going, but with all these things in mind I decided to call it a day shortly after 2 million points. Tapper goes through four different stages. You start in a Country and Western bar, then move to a bar at a sports arena, then head to the punk rock bar, and then finally you pour beers in outer space for crazy aliens. After you defeat the alien bar stage, the game loops back to the country and western bar except it's harder to play than the alien bar. I decided to wait for the game to loop back to the beginning, and then stopped playing at 2,043,100 points. I went in hoping for 1 million, scared that I probably wouldn't make it that far, and wound up crushing my high score by a million points. It felt amazing. I got off my bar stool, took a few snap shots with the machine, and went down to the pizza shop on the first floor for a celebratory bottle of Moxie.

Superior Market now even more Superior!

Late Thursday night I was coming home from a friend's house, and I walked past the Superior Market (see my previous post about this place!). The Nintendo games are getting a lot more window space these days, and the selection has grown quite a bit. He's even selling Wii games now, and has a complete Super Famicom (aka Japanese SNES) system for $75.

Today I got to go in and speak with Mike, the owner's son, who is the man behind all the video games. He's a really nice guy who's main interest is the older games as he said he doesn't have any modern systems at home for personal use; he just has the ones which he sells. We shared a few brief childhood stories of begging our parents to buy us NES games at places like Bradlee's and Caldor. When my dad got laid off from working at GTE in the early 90's, he got a part time job at a Caldor store. Kids in school used to give me shit because my dad worked at the department store, but he got an employee discount and would bring home some sweet, sweet Nintendo cartridges. Anyway, Mike told me that Superior Market is a hit with the neighborhood kids. He buys, sells, and trades with the teenagers in Inman Square, and a few even came in while I was there.

The $5 bargain shelf has grown quite a bit, and there is a new cabinet containing controllers and other accesories for various systems. I took a closer look around to discover a shelf with some Atari 2600, Colecovision, and Sega Genesis cartridges on it.

Dont forget, this place is still a convenience store! You can't leave without a cold can of Coca-Cola and a bag of Price E. Hunt ketchup flavored potato chips.

Superior Market
1190 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA 02139

Things change fast

It seems that the two arcade machines I wrote about in the Harvard Square Urban Outfitters store have been removed. My girlfriend and I were in the square having dinner with a friend one night, and she said that she had never noticed the Centipede and Ms Pac-Man / Galaga machines they had. We walked over after we finished eating, and after finding the games were missing an employee told us that the company they were renting from raised their prices. This meant that the machines weren't paying for themselves anymore, and they sent them back.

Pinballs Plus

One day my girlfriend and I were visiting an antique market just outside Davis Square in Somerville. After shopping for a bit we walked up the street to Kickass Cupcakes for some sweet baked goods. Along the way we noticed a sign in front of a house which read, "Pinballs Plus: Jukeboxes, Pinballs, Video Games." We took a business card from their front porch and investigated further by visiting their website. The site seemed a little outdated, so I wasn't sure if the items listed online were still available for sale. I didn't think much about it for a while but came back to the site months later when I started thinking about buying an arcade machine for my apartment. I called the phone number and first spoke with the proprietor's wife, Dot, who listed off all the items they had, confirming that the website was still current. Altered Beast, Pac-Man, N.A.R.C., Mr. Do, Tapper, Golden Tee Golf, and several other names came floating through the telephone line. Dot then handed the phone over to her husband Paul to discuss prices with me. I was most interested in the Tapper cocktail table which was listed for $600 on the website. I've seen it listed for a much higher price in other places, and when Paul told me I'd get a good bargain for picking it up in person and paying cash, I couldn't say no.

Paul Silva, the man behind Pinballs Plus, has been repairing jukeboxes, pinballs, arcade machines, and all kinds of vending machines for forty years. When I visited his garage-turned-workshop he was repairing a classic Defender arcade machine, and had just put the finishing touches on the most beautiful 1940's jukebox that I've ever seen. He says that it's harder to sell the oddball video games he has like Mikie and Triple Punch, while Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Defender are his bread and butter. His grandchildren certainly appreciate him having all the games around though. Silva's main interest is the pinball machines and jukeboxes which line the garage and basement of his quaint Somerville home. He also has an off-site storage space for the machines which won't fit in his house.

I was very happy to know that Paul had such good experience with working on these types of machines, so I know that I will call him first if I ever need a repair or a new addition to my home arcade.

Pinballs Plus
370 Highland Ave
Somerville, MA 02144
617-628-9753

Harvard Square

Today I walked up to Harvard Square to see if the used video game store in the Garage still existed. They had all kinds of Nintendo and Atari cartridges for sale a few years ago. I remember it being an awkward storefront that was just some glass cases on the landing of one of the stairwells. Sadly, this place is long gone.



What I did find was Tokyo Kid. As the name indicates, this store sells almost exclusively Japanese products. Manga, anime, and all of the brightly colored toys and t-shirts that go along with the genre cover the walls and shelves. They have plenty of Nintendo and Mario themed accesories like wallets, dolls, and action figures, but there was little in the way of actual games. A glass case in one of the aisles held about ten Sega Genesis cartridges, two imported Super Famicom games, a half-dozen Atari 2600 games, and one Magnavox Odyssey2 game. The Super Famicom games were priced between fifteen and twenty dollars, and the Genesis and Odyssey2 games were around five bucks. I couldn't see any prices on the Atari carts, but hopefully they are reasonable.



Across the hall from Tokyo Kid is Newbury Comics. They have a Zoltar machine on the left as you walk in the store. You may remember Zoltar as the fortune-telling machine which grants the kid's wish in Big, turning him into Tom Hanks. The coin mechanism appears to be jammed. It could be legitimately broken, or the employees may be sick of hearing the thing talk.

Across the street from the Garage is an Urban Outfitters store. Amongst all the hip, faux-thrift store clothing and ridiculous tchotchkes you'll find two arcade machines. One is an original Centipede cabinet with what looks like a new, clean track ball. The other is one of the 20th anniversary Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machines. Ms. Pac-Man plays fast with the speed-up chip, and the monitor is huge but out of focus. Something in the settings made the whole thing fuzzy. They're located in between floors on your way to the bargain basement. The going price is fifty cents a game.

Tokyo Kid and Newbury Comics:
The Garage Mall
36 JFK St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tokyo Kid phone: (617) 661-9277
Newbury phone: (617) 491-0337

Urban Outfitters
11 J.F.K Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 864-0070

Superior Market

Inman Square in Cambridge is home to the Superior Market, a small Portuguese convenience store on the corner of Cambridge and Tremont streets. I never paid much attention to this store because there's five or six others like it in the area, but one day I noticed that their window display was filling up with Nintendo games. The owner's son cleans and refurbishes NES, SNES, N64, Atari, and Playstation games and systems, selling them for fairly reasonable prices. Complete systems with two controllers and a game go for sixty dollars. He also sells the NES with just one controller and no game for forty-five dollars. All of the original Nintendo systems have had the 72 pin connector replaced and come with a thirty day guarantee. The prices of the games seem to reflect current eBay prices. Common NES and SNES games start at five dollars, and more rare or desirable items range from ten to twenty bucks. I don't know if his pricing system is perfect, but the Superior Market is certainly one of the only places in the area to buy this stuff. I'm not sure what the hours are at this place. One time I went down on a Monday afternoon and the doors were locked, so if you're coming from far away I would suggest calling first.

Superior Market
1190 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 661-1918

Lanes and Games

Lanes and Games is a bowling alley on the eastbound side of route 2 at the Cambridge/Arlington line. They have a fun arcade on the first floor with about a half dozen pinball machines including Elvira's "Scared Stiff" and the Family Guy. The room glows pink from some lovely neon signs. At the back of the room is an air hockey table which plays well, but it's sometimes hard to get the puck out of the drop slot. For classic games they have Ms. Pac-Man, Arkanoid, Asteroids, and two machines which have multiple games in them. The multi-game machine on the left side of the room includes some 30 or 40 games. Among them is Tapper, which is one of my favorites. The machine on the right side of the room has Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, and Let's Go Bowling. The Ms. Pac-Man machine has a speed-up chip in it, which makes the gameplay very fast. It's like you're starting on the third or fourth screen. The audio cut out for a few moments while my girlfriend was playing it, but the problem fixed itself shortly. The main knob on the Arkanoid machine seems a bit messed up but still functions fairly well. There's also a Terminator 2 machine, which is always fun for the rattling machine guns.



Along with plenty of bowling lanes, the first floor features a row of vending machines. They have the type of soda machine which was my favorite when I was a kid. The machine drops a cup down and fills it with chipped ice and soda like an automated bar-tender.



Lanes and Games
195 Concord Turnpike, Rte 2E
Cambridge, MA 02140
(617) 876-5533