Arcade Locations, Collection Tracking, News and more!

Some of the Pacific Northwest's best classic arcade gamers have converged on Envision Classics Arcade in Milwaukie, Oregon (near Portland) for a day of high score destruction. On the hit list are Donkey Kong (Ross Benziger), Dig Dug (Ken House), Robotron (Matt Hall), Pac-Man Turbo (Bill Carlton), Ms. Pac-Man Turbo (Dan Corcoran), and Track & Field (Elijah Hayter). Kill screens are expected on all but Robotron and Track & Field, which do not have them. Come join us via live web stream at http://www.twitch.tv/scoundrl where we will have a roaming camera to cover the highlights as they happen. The event is expected to last from noon to 5:00pm PT.

Ross did a 954k kill screen on DK last night on his first attempt for practice, and Bill just recently notched a new personal best on Pac Turbo of over 2.2 million, with over 1 million on his first man.

RESULTS: We put eight new high scores on Envision's high score board as two gamers achieved kill screens. Ross upped Donkey Kong from 217k to 669k. Ken upped Dig Dug from 999,990 to a 4.3M kill screen. Dan upped Ms. Pac-Man Turbo from 353k to 903k, just missing the kill screen by four boards. Bill upped the Pac-Man Turbo high score from the 300k range to 3.165M, getting his first ever kill screen on the game. Dick Moreland took Envision's top spot on Video Pinball with a 431k. Matt took the top spot on Pole Position with a 50k (and his total destruction of the 1943 high score was still in progress when I left), and yours truly took over the top spot on Jungle King with a 44k. And the 4-player Warlords cocktail was enjoyed tremendously by all. The archived six hour stream of the event can be viewed here. Can't wait to do this again soon!

Currently on the ACAM front page:

Dear Supporters,

ACAM has been approached by a private collector with an offer to purchase games from his collection. The games being offered are pieces we do not have in our collection: Space Dungeon, Mad Planets, Solar Fox, Disc of Tron and Black Widow. The agreed price is $3,650 of which we have already received $1,810 in donations leaving a balance of $1,840. We have until Sunday, January 15th to raise the remaining amount and would appreciate your help in obtaining these pieces for the museum. Donations can be made via the ChipIn widget.

Of the $1,840 they need they have raised $1,250 so far, leaving just $590 to raise by January 15, 2012. The ChipIn widget on their front page uses PayPal for payment processing. You do not have to have a PayPal account; you can use a credit card.

Let's help push 'em over the top. It'll be worth it just to see them get Space Dungeon alone. The other four are somewhat hard to come by these days, but a working Space Dungeon is practically Bigfoot.

UPDATE #1: Only $85 to go, thanks to the five anonymous contributors who chipped in a combined $505 today!

UPDATE #2: Well that didn't take long! Two more contributions in the last ten hours and the goal has been met. Major thanks to everyone who chipped in to preserve five more classic arcade games!

REMINDER!: Forgot to mention... The American Classic Arcade Museum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your donations to them are tax deductible. So if you plan on itemizing your 2011 return be sure to keep your donation receipt!

Congrats to Dave McCrary for kill screening Donkey Kong on his 3rd man just now, and finishing with a score of 1,015,000, his first 1M+ game and so far only the fourth proven to have happened on the Arcade platform.

Dave streamed his game live on twitch.tv and was also recording to submit to Twin Galaxies. Dave will take over the #4 spot on TG's Donkey Kong Arcade standings.

Overheard on Richie Knucklez' twitch.tv stream last night right after Dave's game: the entry requirement for next year's "Kong Off 2" event will be a verified 1 million point game, which as of now is a pretty exclusive club. Only Bill Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, current champ Hank Chien, and now Dave McCrary have proven million point games. The race is on to see how many top DK players can qualify before the as-yet-unannounced cut-off date.

First, the bad news. As 2011 comes to a close Richie Knucklez' Arcade Games in Flemington, New Jersey will be closing along with it as Richie seeks to spend more time with his family and to recharge his batteries for whatever comes next.

Now the good news. Richie is going out with a bang not only by hosting a final Saturday get together on New Year's Eve but also by hosting Mad George Leutz's fourth and final (let's hope) attempt to take down the 28-year-old marathon Q*bert record. And you'd have to be mad to try to do so; it is expected to take nearly 70 hours of play on a single credit to top the 33,273,520 score set by Rob Gerhardt on November 28, 1983.

George is reportedly sleeping at Richie's arcade as we write this, and it is expected he will awake and begin his three days of self-induced optical torture at midnight tonight, Eastern Time (GMT - 5:00). The plan is to surpass the record as the ball drops in Times Square on Saturday night to ring in 2012. The entire attempt will be streamed at http://www.twitch.tv/richieknucklez, so be sure to stop by and cheer George on to victory.

UPDATE #1: And he's off and running hopping! Official start time appears to be 12:18am ET on Thursday.

UPDATE #2: He topped 20 million at the 39-1/3 hour mark. He's on pace for 65.4 hours, which would put record achievement at 5:30pm ET tomorrow, but his pace will slow due to fatigue and breaks. George estimates 8:00pm ET on Saturday.

UPDATE #3: 26.2 million at the 56 hour mark. His scoring pace has slowed. The typical scoring pace for Q*bert is 500,000 per hour, so he "should" be at 28 million by now, but slower scoring is to be expected this late in the game. He's now on pace for just over 71 hours, which would put him at the record at the stroke of midnight ET.

UPDATE #4: At 9:48am ET at the 57.5 hour mark his extra lives dipped below 9 for the first time. Ten minutes later it was all over. Total elapsed time was 57 hrs 40 mins, and the final score was 26,721,915. Thanks, George, for a monumental effort!

Tim McVey has reclaimed the Nibbler World Record over Christmas weekend!

He played just shy of 40 hours and the final score was an amazing 1,041,767,060!

Congrats to Tim from all of us over at Aurcade!