Classic video gaming accomplishments and records have been all across the mainstream media for the past few years.
From the battle for the top spot in Donkey Kong to new champs on games like Frogger or Pac-Man, films such as The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, and the upcoming Doctor Kong have helped the champions of the 1980s classics gain much mainstream attention in the modern day media.
Champions from the 1990s, however, are not yet the media darlings that many of the classic 1980s gamers have been. Outside of the 1990 Nintendo World Championships and a few later Nintendo contests, very little history from the last decade of last century has been passed along to historians of the gaming industry today.
One such example is the story of the 1991 Capcom Disney Playtour and its winner, Portland, OR’s Robin Mihara.
A finalist in the far more famous 1990 NWC, Mihara entered this similar contest in 1991 and won it all. The event, which featured Nintendo Entertainment System games DuckTales, Rescue Rangers and Tale Spin, is currently a little known-of event in gaming history.
”I first heard about the Disney Capcom Playtour in the newspaper,” Mihara recalls. “It was a small ad, stating the days, time and games involved. Like the NWC, when I first read about it, I had only played one of the games (Duck Tales), but that wasn't going to stop me.”
One of the games in this multi-city contest event had yet to be played by anyone who competed.
“One unique part of this contest was Talespin. It had not been released in stores yet so there was a wild card aspect,” Mihara said. “Unfortunately, the game had a fixed speed, so the good players only needed to know where the bonus rounds were. The version of Talespin I played in Portland and Tacoma was a different version than what came out later. In the bonus round the kid (I forget his name) was on a pogo stick and not a flying saucer. I actually liked the original better. I'm looking to buy the original prototype if anyone has it!”
While Mihara’s trip to the finals earned him a trip to Disneyland and his big win earned him a stereo system, the then-new Super Nintendo Entertainment System and games and a 27” television, history has not recalled the event with the same fanfare as the victory had earned at the time, according to Robin.
“It's depressing and funny at the same time,” Mihara added. “I just went in to a garage of a man who has literally every video game made before the Nintendo 64. He lives, breathes and sleeps retro gaming and even he hadn't heard of it.”
Mihara believes that more could be done to help preserve 1990’s competitive gaming history.
“A website would be a good first step I think. Some kind of all-encompassing site that had scans, dates, names and articles,” Mihara said. “It wouldn't be too tough to manage I think. I know a guy who has all the competition carts in his collection. Also if the IVGHOF [International Video Game Hall of Fame] ever had a physical museum of some sort, I know lots of my old friends would contribute memorabilia to it. We do feel like as amazing as our feats were, a little more publicity would have been fitting.”
As has been stated by gaming champions such as Billy Mitchell and others in the press, Mihara believes there is more prestige when gamers compete and win it all in live competition as opposed to recording and mailing in scores to organizations such as Twin Galaxies.
“I have no way of telling though how good [a gamer] is at a game when he first opens it, or if he can play under high pressure with an announcer screaming, a camera in his face, and one chance for everything,” Mihara said. “That experience is so intense, and exciting and sometimes heartbreaking.”
“I don't mean to take away from the world record holders of today. I just think it is a very different type of greatness. I think a lot of us old champions look at the scores and wonder how many times it took to hit that mark.”
Mihara held one such event, the Classic Tetris World Championship, in Los Angeles last year. The event was filmed live and will be the basis for the tentatively titled documentary film Ecstasy of Order, which is currently in post production.
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