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.