Aurcade is proud to publish the first article in a new column here on the site: Player SpotlightRecently, Aurcade Official Graham Ogilvie spent an evening chatting with Steve Wagner. You may know Steve as the winner of the 2nd Annual Richie Knucklez invitational tournament held at Richie Knucklez Arcade Games in Flemington, NJ.
Steve, thank you for taking the time to speak with Aurcade. Tell us a little about yourself!Well, I am 33 years old and I work in IT. I live with my wife in central New Jersey and I enjoy sleeping, playing cards, playing guitar, hanging out with my friends, you know, just normal stuff, nothing too exciting.
How did you first get into gaming? Did you start out playing coin-op games?Yup, when I was a little kid around probably 7 or 8 years old I had an older brother and he would go to the arcade at the local mall quite a lot. With both my parents working at the time, he would have to let me tag along and back then they still had a lot of the golden age games in the arcade we were in. So I kind of learned how to play those with him, and we didn't have a lot of money to spend at the time so we both had to get pretty decent at it to make one or two dollars last a pretty long time, and so we started playing collaborative Wizard of Wor and some other two player games.
After that, the golden age games kind of disappeared from our arcade and kind of replaced them with the mid 80s games that were still pretty classic in their own right, stuff like Pac Land, Gladiator, Karnov, then Rastan and some of the other games that bridged to the fighting genre.
When the fighting genre hit we kind stopped playing I guess, and kind of went on and did other things, and then… I forget what year it was but I went to go see the King of Kong at an independent theater in Princeton…and I went with my wife and she could tell when I saw it I was just blown away that there was still interest in these games, and I didn't even know what MAME was. I still don't really use MAME that much, but at the time I didn't know people still played them and I saw the movie and knew I just had to go back to where I was when I was a kid playing these games and trying to get some records up and things like that, and join the hobby I guess, i remembered I was pretty decent so i didn't think it wouldn't be too tough to get back into it, so that movie kind of ignited me a bit and it motivated me like it did with a lot of people to go back and revisit the hobby and here we are now, just trying to go around and setting records and stuff.
So what was your first tournament and intro to competitive gaming, I bet you were very excited after seeing the King of Kong itching to get back into competition. What do you remember as being your first tournament or re-entry back into the arcade scene?My first re-entry was: I had gone with my wife down to the Bahamas where we were going to get married down there, and we were kind of checking out the resort we were going to get married at, and they had a multi-game machine in there that had a bunch of classic games on it, and it was the first time I had seen -- since I had started looking back into this kind of stuff again -- Berserk was on there and I remember that was my favorite game, and I started playing it there, and cracking a swing at it, then I got home and started doing some searches around where I could get my own machine that was dedicated, I looked up what the record was, kind of tried to get my own machine, and once I did I kind of went from there and I went up to Funspot, my wife got me a trip up there in november of 2007 or 2008, and I went up there, and it happened to be during a time when all the folks gathered there in november just kind of by sheer luck, and I met up with Dave Nelson there, and he took one of my scores down, and I told him that I had gotten this trip with my wife as a present, and the first thing he asked me was, "Do you go to Richie Knucklez arcade?" and I said "I don't know what are you talking about" .. "It's an arcade in New Jersey its pretty close to you." I said, "no kidding!"
So of course you know after I left there I looked around the internet and found Richie's site, and decided we were going to take a trip over there - check it out - and of course getting there is amazing that something is so close to me that was so awesome. Richie can remember this, the first thing I said when i walked in the door, he said "I'm Richie nice to meet ya, first time being here and stuff?". I said "yeah it is" , I looked up and saw his scoreboard, and I jokingly said to him "Man you're gonna need a new board". I kind of wanted to bust his chops early on in the friendship so it was kind of funny, and so from then on we became really good friends and stuff… first tournament I played in was probably in Mark's tournament, the CAGDC tournament in 2009 i guess it was, I think i got 13th, I was trying to finish in the top 10 my first tournament, and I just finished outside of it, I actually missed the last day of the tournament so I couldn't be too upset with where I finished.
At the Richie Knucklez Invitational, you were going up against many of today's top gamers. It must have been thrilling to receive the first Knuckie trophy. Tell us about that moment and the goals you set for the tournament. The goals I had was really honestly to just finish maybe in the top 5 I knew going in Richie had announced five of the ten games that were going to be in it and I felt OK on one or two, I think swimmer was one of the announced ones, and something else, depending on who showed up I figured what I could potentially get on a certain game, and then he announced the other five and announced alpine ski was in it, which I was comfortable with and a couple other games that I really didn't know at all - I never really played double dragon II before in my life. And some of the other games like Kangaroo are just like you know pulling teeth to play for me, I hate that game, so there were a couple games I didn't feel good about and a couple games I did, so, I didn't really know how I would do. I was just trying to make a good showing, and I didn't really think i was actually going to win.
So the first hour into it, when your chasing "The Donald" (Donald Hayes), and those guys who are coming in, and are among best in the world without question. Especially in a competitive environment. So I played was Alpine Ski and it was the best game I ever had, and one thing lead to another, and I remember getting nervous towards the end of the day (it was a one day tournament).
There was one part where Jason had a put up a score for every game except Kangaroo, and at the time that really worried me and so he sat down to play and I said "Are you any good at this?" and he said, "Yeah pretty good". Usually he'll say like "I'm ok", and usually [that] means like a top 5 score in the world you know, for these guys, that really really made me feel uncomfortable.
*laughs* But it ended up working out, and I ended up taking home the trophy. One other funny story was at the end of the tournament, Jason I think was playing Sinistar, and there was only about 10 minutes left in the tournament. I was still really on edge cause I didn't know if I was mathematically that far ahead depending on what he got, and eventually he got up from his game that ended, and he kind of came over and said congratulations. You know, "you did a great job" kind of thing, and I gave him a hug. It was kind of a funny moment, you can still see it on Richie's archives and video footage on his site, and I was just exhausted, it was a long day, and I really felt great to win, it was probably my biggest moment there, I was taking congratulations from the guy I had a lot of respect for.
It must have been great to be around your friends, you know, not only do you get to play and compete but you get to be around an excellent support group and be part of the arcade community. Yeah definitely, the biggest thing for me when I go to Richie's or to Funspot, it's really just hanging out with my friends that I have made through the hobby. That's really the biggest thing, it's not about getting the biggest scores or winning tournaments for me, its mostly about getting the chance to get everyone together every few months. Where we can kind of hang out and do what we love to do. Hang out and have some drinks, or whatever, and hang out and play some games, and what it comes down to is just friendships.
With the tourney over and another exciting round of Flashback Friday's coming up, will we be looking forward to seeing some local scores go down?Yeah, I mean you never know, with me I get asked that question sometimes, you know -- what are you working on -- it depends on honestly whatever Richie brings in the shop, he's so good at rotating the games coming in and out, that you never really get bored going there where you see the same games, you can go there and some day you can go there and randomly see three new games all of a sudden. And they wont even be, like Pac-Man or something, it'll be something pretty wild.
He brought a game in there the other day, Challenger, which I never played in my life. Me and a couple of the guys played it for three or four hours the entire night. You never know, I kind of take on the games I really enjoy, like Defender; I'd like to be good at. But if I don't like the game it's hard for me to go play games for scores that I don't like. So it depends. There are all of these new games I am discovering thanks to Richie that I never played before, and that makes it a lot of fun.
Which games do you feel are your favorites, and do you own any games of your own?Yeah, I have eight games at home. I have them downstairs in our rec room/basement area. I have Berserk and Cliffhanger, which I set records on on those machines. Elevator Action, Zoo Keeper and Alpine Ski. And then the other three are Tron, Galaga and Mystic Marathon which is a rare conversion game put out in '83. As far as games I enjoy, probably my five favorite games are Berzerk, Elevator Action, Cliffhanger, Zoo Keeper and Alpine Ski. Pretty heavy on the Taito, and two Sterns so those are probably my top 5 and I have records on two of them so we'll see what happens on the other three.
So having a love for Taito games, do you see yourself taking down any World Records any time soon? What does Steve have up his sleeve?Yeah, I mean you never know, I kind of have this plan to take the Elevator Action world record down. I know on Aurcade I have the highest score and with Twin Galaxies score now with settings back on default. Easy Settings one is there for the taking too, so I think I will be working on that and hopefully have some good news about that at some point in the near future.
Excellent, well, thank you Steve for or talking the time to talk to Aurcade about your gaming experience and your plans for the near future. Thank you very much I appreciate the time.