Manual from 1986 Video Game Masters Tournament

[gstrain]

I was going looking for some settings from this today and finally found a copy of it on my old laptop.  The original link I downloaded it from on the TG forums years ago no longer works, so I thought I'd upload it here since others might find it interesting.

I found some of the settings used and tricks listed an intriguing read.  I'm very curious to try out the Satan's Hollow trick where it says if you leave one enemy you can get everybody to stop shooting.  I'd never heard of that one before (although of course there is the infamous trick for doing this on Galaga).

-George

[TheSunshineFund]

Sweet.  I think that's the tourney where the EA WR was set and that doc was what made TG switch the settings to very easy.  Nice find George.  I assume the threshold score is the WR score to beat?

[gstrain]

Yeah, threshold scores for most of the games were the score from the previous year's tournaments.  For a few of the games which were "new" games for the 1986 tournament, it looks like the picked an arbitrary score (e.g. there's no way 500K on 1942 was really the high score).

My understanding of the "back story" on the tournament was that it was supposed to help prevent bogus scores that had popped up on the TG scoreboard and in the magazines by limiting score attempts to a smaller number of "trusted arcades" and very clearly spelling out the required settings and any special rules.

-George

[gstrain]

Wayne C from the old Video Paradise Game Center posted photos of the entire 1984 Video Game Masters Manual at http://www.videoparadise-sanjose.com/1984vgmt-rules.htm

It was interesting (and more than a little disturbing) that a bunch of the games in the 1984 manual he posted have handwritten modifications to the settings and rules where things were crossed out and other settings manually written in.  Makes you wonder if everybody really used the same settings.  This tournament was for submitting scores to the 1985 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

The 1986 Tournament was used to submit scores to the 1987 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.  There were also tournaments in 1983 and 1985.  Does anybody have a copy of either of those manuals that we could document here for the future?

CAGDC has the results from the Video Game Masters Tournaments at http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/wr/guinness/index.htm

-George