This is a newsletter for Twin Galaxies MAME high scores, game settings and rules.

 
It's been an unusually active month for new high scores, so in this installment I'd like to update everyone on some new records, and also mention a few gaming feats which happened earlier this year but haven't been mentioned as yet.

First of all Tim Balderramos of Rapid City South Dakota was the first person to ever get a perfect score on pacman. Under the MAME rules, players must use 3 men, with one additional man at 10,000 points. This means that a perfect pacman score is 3,333,180 points. Tim is only the 4th player in history to score a perfect game.

Also Donald Hayes of New Hampshire has improved his own record on Super Zaxxon by scoring 304,650 points. Don is one of the most versatile players, capable of getting world record or near world record scores on many titles. At the 7 game championship at Funspot, it's been Don Hayes and Dwayne Richard battling it out for first place in both years of the contest.

Jonathan Dorkwin of Brooklyn New York has emerged as a MAME player, scoring an impressive 1,619,000 points on the game Pandora's Palace. This game is largely unknown, and we don't really know what limits there are to it's scoring. If Jon keeps this up, we'll have to make a new harder category ;-) Jon is also a regular at the Classic Video Game World Championships held at Funspot in New Hampshire.

Robert Griffin has again been very busy setting new high scores. This time he's scored 474,250 on the game Joust. This effort moves Robert into 2nd place on the all-time list. He has also surpassed all known records on Depth Charge, by scoring 4,200 points. This is the new MAME record, but I also note that it's slightly higer than Phil Blanchard's arcade score of 4,120.

New comer Rick Carter of Gaithersburg Maryland has set many scores on the MARP site. His latest effort sets a new high score on the game Pac N Pal, with a score of 244,240 points. Rick is also a world class expert at the game Q*bert, as shown when he scored 1,464,695 points back in July.

Last, but certainly not least, Leslaw Skrzypek of Riverside California is the first MAME player to break the half a million barrier on Robotron by scoring 509,350 points and getting to wave 17. As with all early Williams games, I have carefully watched that the TG settings were adhered to, and as the settings are adjusted in the INP file this can be easily verified.

Congratulations to all players... I'm sure there are still some records I have missed, so there will no doubt be plenty more INPs to check in the next edition.
posted by Mark Longridge at 9:08 PM

 
For the past few weeks player Robert Griffin from Kirkland Washington has been racking up some impressive scores. Robert was one of the old school players who got his name in the Guinness Book of Records. Recently he set a new high score on the game Express Raider, a kind of fighting game where the player fights his opponents on a train. His latest score was 545,200 points. Robert has also achieved the new MAME record on the game Depth Charge, by scoring 4,020 points. This score is now nearing it's upper limit.

Gregory Erway has once again improved his Timber score, now the record stands at 339,640. He got to screen 18, which seems particularly difficult. Timber is a rather unique game where you as the player control a lumberjack cutting down trees.

Robert Mruczek has logged a new record on Galaxian Part 4, scoring 74,120 points. Mr. Mruczek is an extremely dedicated gamer, and also the chief referee at Twin Galaxies.
posted by Mark Longridge at 9:15 AM

 
Recently there has been more activity on the arcade game Timber, which didn't see a lot of play in the early 80's. Robert Mruczek has managed to increase the top score to 289,945 points. Gregory Erway is close behind with 197,035. In other news, Robert Griffin has set the inaugural score for Galaga 3, with 247,400 points.

Gregory Erway has also got the ball rolling for the arcade game Pepper II, by scoring 457,450 points.

Donald Hayes has recently scored 240,650 on Super Zaxxon, a very difficult title. Back in July Don also set the MAME record for Zaxxon by scoring 1,554,250 points.

posted by Mark Longridge at 8:53 PM

 
In MAME news Mike Morrow of Denton Texas has set inaugural scores for Galaxian Part 4 and Space Zap. His scores were 61,860 and 177,750 respectively. Although higher Space Zap scores were set in the past, they can not be compared to the newer scores, now that the emulation is more accurate.

Robert Mruczek has set the inaugural score for the arcade game Timber, using default game settings and scoring 181,070 points, and also Depth Charge, for which game settings can not be adjusted. His score on Depth Charge was 3,510.

posted by Mark Longridge at 3:54 PM

 
As of today, all scores for Space Zap will be archived. All archived scores can be seen here: ARCHIVE

The reason for this is because earlier versions of MAME gave the player 4 men to start,
instead of 3, and was also somewhat slower. Since the newer versions of MAME
emulate Space Zap more accurately, the new rule will be that mame version 59
or newer must be used for high score submissions.

posted by Mark Longridge at 1:15 PM

 
I'd like to announce that a new Ms Pacman world champion has been crowned for MAME.
David Dunn of Pembroke Ontario has scored 485,740 points, the highest proven score
ever for Ms Pacman set on MAME.

David also recently set the Bagman world record, scoring 4,444,440 points and
proving that the old scores of Mark Robichek and others were legitimate, and
that 3,333,330 isn't the limit.

Also in older news that was not widely circulated, Anders Svensson of
Norrköping, Sweden won the the TG MAME Decathlon for the 2nd year
in a row.

In Classic arcade news, new research has shown that Stan Szczepanski's
Marble Madness score set in the 1985 Twin Galaxies Video Game Masters
Tournament is possible after all. Stan's score was doubted by almost
everyone familar with Marble Madness (including myself), and even the top players
stated that it seemed too high by about 10,000 points. As it turns out the
earliest version of Marble Madness awards 15 seconds more extended time
than all other versions of the game. Higher scores than Stan's 187,880 have
been achieved recently on MAME. It should also be stated that the game
settings for tournament purposes are set to Normal difficulty.
posted by Mark Longridge at 4:44 AM

 
Hi folks, I'm pleased to announce the TG MAME Newsletter.

The purpose of this newsletter is to update people on rules and game settings for the arcade emulator MAME. Twin Galaxies is an organization which tracks high scores for video games. Beginning in 1997, TG started to track scores for MAME. You can see the general rules for this here: RULES

Also there are specific game settings here: TGTS

The main list of World Rankings for MAME high scores are here: SCORES

If there are any questions regarding games or settings feel free to email me at:

zero1@look.ca

posted by Mark Longridge at 12:33 PM