To celebrate Phil Day’s historic World Record, and the uploading of our exclusive article “Fighter Captured – The Phil Day story“… we imported one of Justin Whitlock’s fantastic baby Galaga cabs, and asked Phil to sign it.

(Tip: Click on the photo below to ZOOM IN)

YOU could win this one-of-a-kind SIGNED baby Galaga

How AWESOME would that look on top of your monitor?

Here’s how to enter….

1. If you don’t already have a Twitter account, grab one here. It’s free, it takes 5 minutes, and if you don’t like Twitter, well at least you could win a hot prize.
2. Using Twitter, Follow @justonemoregame. (Just click on the link & press “follow”)
3. Tweet the following message “RT & follow @justonemoregame & you could win a baby Galaga cabinet – signed by the world champ! http://tinyurl.com/babygalaga”. (without the quotes)

It’s that easy!

Phil Day and the signed baby Galaga cab

There are just 3 rules…

1. One entry/tweet per person only.
2. The draw will take place on the evening of Friday November 27th.
3. Entries will be printed out, thrown into an empty baby bath, and the first one drawn WINS.

Closeup: control panel & bezel (screen surround)

Good luck!
And thanks for supporting the world’s only Retro+Indie+Coinop blog, JustOneMoreGame.

PS: We’d love to get your feedback on our biggest story yet – our exclusive article “Fighter Captured – The Phil Day story“.

In part 2, we followed Phil’s climb up the score table for Galaga: Tournament in 2009. By late August, he’d claimed the world number 1, but was gutted, when the score was rejected. Eventually, he began training again, and now, as we start the thrilling conclusion…. his confidence had returned…

Friday October 2 was the last day of the school term. Phil was feeling pretty relaxed, so he decided to set up his new camera for a Friday night recording session. As always, he began by filming the inside of his cabinet, to show the dip switches were set to the correct ‘tournament’ settings. He waited for the machine to boot up, then put the camera on the tripod. He grabbed his next ‘lucky 20c coin’– marked ‘number IV’ and put it in the slot.

He hadn’t progressed far before two friends dropped in, asking if he’d like to drive to Canberra to catch a movie. He told them he’d be “up for it” – so they went home to get ready. As Phil approached the 1 million point mark, he asked his wife to call the friends, telling them that he was on a ‘good game’. Soon, at 1.1 million, he lost two of his five lives. He lost another spaceship at 1.7 million. Two lives remaining. “You reach a point of playfulness that is relaxing and no longer a struggle with the game.” he explains. “Then again, maybe I only get a good score when I’m in that mental state.” Phil’s friends returned, hoping the game was over. But the sound of digital warfare were still coming down the hallway. Phil had just entered another ‘challenging stage’. He felt bad for his friends, and promised that if he broke the World Record, he’d ‘shout’ them the night at the movies. It wasn’t long before the outcome was decided.

Phil Day & his lucky 20c number IV

For the 2nd time in six weeks, Phil passed Andrew Laidlaw’s high score of 2.7 million points. But this time, he knew his camera footage would support him. The record was his – the question was how far he could go. He had a feeling he might be able to surpass his earlier record – with 3.5 million… or even four? Phil kept playing. But the game ended sooner than he hoped. At 3.2m, Phil lost his last ‘double’ ship. Then he quickly lost his last life – at 3,275,720 points. “It was a bee that took me out in the end, he was on his swoop approach. But more importantly it was one of those darting squadrons of three that finished my last double ships, after that… I had little chance of doing much.” But that didn’t matter. Victory was his! A few days later, he sent his DVD via express post to Canada…

And so the wait began again. Phil tracked his parcel as it made its way to Kelly R Flewin. Two weeks later – he got the email. On November 1st 2009, Twin Galaxies listed a new World Record for Galaga – tournament settings. Phil updated his Facebook status, and received a flood of comments. One was from Walter Day of Twin Galaxies.. “My Cousin, Phil Day, is definitely becoming the most famous video game player in Australia. I’m so proud of him.” He also received a nice message of congratulations from another teacher who plays videogames. Steve Wiebe. You might have heard of him.

And what about Andrew Laidlaw, the man he’d just defeated? “I’m sure it will be just a matter of time before he breaks my record.” Phil predicts. “We’ve spoken quite a bit recently. I sent him a copy of my 3.2 million game.” If you’ve seen King of Kong, you’ll know some players are very guarded with their gameplay secrets. But no such secrecy exists between the top two Galaga champs. In fact, they seem to enjoy sharing information. “From the conversations we’ve had, I think he approaches Galaga differently to me. He starts the stages going hard left, whereas I start in a little right of the middle, which is varied slightly over the three levels between each challenging stage.”

It’s funny. Out of all the ‘golden age’ arcade games that might produce an Aussie champion – Galaga was the most likely candidate by far. It’s the only game of its era that could still be found in Aussie arcades 15 years after its debut. Unlike the USA or UK, we didn’t get so many Ms Pacman or Centipede cabinets. But Galaga games used to be everywhere. And even in 2009, with few arcades remaining, the game lives on in ‘48 in 1′ machines in pubs and cafes around the country.

Commemorative "Number 1" badges given out via Facebook

With the game brought to even more people’s attention, I wonder how many more people will start to take on those moths and cicadas, ride the tractor beam, and go for 100% in the challenging stage? Maybe you’re one of them. So I asked Phil for a few tips. Firstly for beginners: “Be prepared to get a lot of low scores.” Phil warns. And what about more experienced players? “Don’t be tempted by bonus points on the stage. Instead stay focused on clearing the stage, this is where the points are.”

Yet one mystery remained. Why Galaga? Why not Space Invaders, or one of Galaga’s “cousins” like Galaxian, Gaplus, or Galaga 88? “Galaga…. seemed to suit me.” explains the new world record holder. “Space Invaders is a great game, but I prefer the pace of Galaga. The sound of Galaxian would have been a problem. I’m convinced Ingeborg wouldn’t have put up with that high pitch squeal the enemies make! [As for] Gaplus and Galaga 88 and later variants…. didn’t offer better game play. They offered a lot more power ups, and worst of all, big bosses.” I asked Phil why he didn’t like more modern videogame bosses. “I think they often ruin a game. The Galaga bosses are quite manageable; you hit them once – they change colour, you hit them again – and they’re dead! Simple!”

Galaxian - Gaplus - Galaga '88

So, is it time to move onto another game? Or is there more Galaga gaming to be done? “I’d like to try and pit a score up in the top ten of Galaga Marathon scores, that’s probably what I’ll try and do next.” Phil replied. And what about his current record? Is he happy to leave it alone? “I’m tempted to go again on Galaga Tournament, but not just yet.” In the meantime, Phil has another package to send to Canada. This time, there’s won’t be a DVD inside. Just a coin, with the number “IV” written on it. The luckiest coin of all. “I’m going to mount it and send it Mr Flewin, the referee at Twin Galaxies who has watched my games from the start.”

Phil’s observed before that Galaga seems to have popped up in his life in seven year intervals. It was released when he was 7. He played it in the arcades at 14, and at Uni, age 21. He rediscovered it in Braidwood at age 28, bought his own machine at age 35, and captured the world record the same year. So Mr Day, what do you think might happen when you’re 42? “I haven’t thought of it. Don’t know, something tells me I probably won’t be playing Galaga when I’m 42. But then again, when I was 21… I didn’t imagine that by the time I was 28 I’d be living in Braidwood, blind in one eye, and playing Gallag with pupil of mine.”

So – the boy who was too young to play Space Invaders is now the man who beat the Galaga world record. Twice. The only thing left to do, is to ask the most controversial question of all. How does Braidwood’s most famous gamer pronounce his favourite game? Is it G’LAH-guh or Galla-guh? (Please say the first one, please say the first one….) Phil answered without hesitation…. “It’s G’LAH-guh. Viva G’LAH-guh!”

———————————————————–
To celebrate Phil’s world record achievement, JOMG has a very special prize to give away.
—> To enter, visit our Baby Galaga Giveaway page. <—
———————————————————–

In part 1, we traced Phil Day’s history with Galaga… through childhood, adolescence, his university years… Until a chance conversation led him to start competing for the world record. In part 2, he makes his claim for the number 1 spot, but things don’t go always to plan…

Once Phil had achieved world number 3 in Galaga, the word spread at Braidwood Central School. Some students thought playing such an ancient game was a bit dorky, but more & more started to think it was “pretty cool”. They’d leave messages on his Facebook page. Michael left this one: “Make me a Galaga shirt/badge, I don’t care what, just make it and I’ll wear it.” At this time, he’d taken Phil’s lead, and started some competitive retrogaming of his own. He was playing The Pit on MAME and soon managed world-class scores. The Pit is a pretty obscure title. It came out in 1981 – just like Galaga – and it’s the predecessor to games like Dig Dug, Mr Do and Boulder Dash. Phil calls it “The most difficult video game ever.”

The Pit - a very rare & difficult arcade game

Meanwhile, he kept playing Galaga, and by May 9th 2009, he triumphed again, beating Richard W Marsh’s score (1.8m vs. 1.58m pts). Phil posted his CD to Mr Flewin, in order to claim 2nd place. And his thoughts turned to retirement. “I was ready to give up – simply because I didn’t think I’d reach Laidlaw’s 2.7 million.” Phil recalls. But his friends were excited about his 2nd place achievement. They pressed Phil to keep going. Another piece of encouragement came via email – from a surprising source. Andrew Laidlaw himself. “He was really encouraging; he told me it was just a matter of time before I’d break his score.” Obviously this competition was going to be very different, from that portrayed in King of Kong. But being on friendly terms with the current record holder doesn’t make the challenge any easier.

Twin Galaxies Certifificate for 2nd place

Playing the game at Twin Galaxies’ tournament standard requires both physical and mental ability. For Day, he found that the 1 million point barrier loomed large as he played the game. “I played a lot of games that fell short of 1 million. My heart would race when I got near it.” Phil sought advice from another friend, a former long marathon runner. “He explained that his fitness carried him half way, his desire carried him the next quarter. By the last quarter he was ready to pass out, but it was the crowd that kept him going. He said he kind of finished the marathon ‘for’ them.”

Phi’s friends, family & students rose to the challenge. One friend suggested he set up a ‘Galaga Phil’ Facebook fan page. This he did, and he soon had an idea of how to grow his army of supporters & harness their enthusiasm. For the past few months, Michael had kept suggesting he make badges or t-shirts. So Phil designed some commemorative ‘2nd place’ badges and had fifty made. “I’d post them out for free, provided they asked for it on Facebook.” He explains. “This way their friends, who also might like one, would see.”

Phil's 2nd place commemorative badge design

Slowly, the badges & Facebook fans started to multiply. More and more students would meet the world number 2 in the playground, and ask “How’s Galaga going, Mr Day?” All the while, he kept up his regime of weeknight practice/weekend competition. Now that Phil had conquered his fear of the million point barrier, his new challenge was to score a million points using his first life. So he kept practicing. June, July, August… weeks and months went by. Early in August, Phil received his official ‘World Number 2’ notification, and it helped spur him on. A week later, Michael gave him further encouragement for his 35th birthday. “I thought I’d get Phil something unique..” he explains “and since he was getting closer and closer to the world record score, I exchanged $4 for a roll of twenty 20c coins. I wrote on them ‘for Galaga world record attempts ONLY’ and gave them to him as a gimmicky present.” From that point, each time Day used a coin for a ’serious’ attempt, he’d write a number on the back. He referred to them as his ‘lucky coins’.

The evening of Friday August 28 began uneventfully. Phil went out to dinner with some friends. At the completion of the meal, he did something he hadn’t done for 4 months. He had a short black coffee. Not surprisingly, when he drove home, he felt pretty awake! So, he started a game of Galaga at 10.30pm. He didn’t manage a million points on his first life – he lost it at 750k – but he battled on. Unlike some other arcade games of the era, Galaga doesn’t keep speeding up as you progress from stages 1-256. Phil explains the difficulty curve… “It seems to plateau at around Stage 13 or so. From there on it’s much the same. The truth is anyone can clear a stage on Galaga, but it is the endlessly clearing of each stage without losing your last life that is difficult. Everything is stacked in the computers advantage in Galaga – you will lose, it’s just a matter of time.” Soon, Day hit 2.2 million points. As he told Canberra’s ABC radio at the time, this was when he thought to himself – “I’m gonna break this.” At 2.7 million, he lost two more ships. But most importantly, he’d passed the old record of 2,729,350 points. Phil quickly glanced up at the camera, pointed at the screen, and kept going.

An original Galaga PCB - required under TG rules

Soon, Phil reached level 256. Now, in games like Donkey Kong & Pacman, this would result in a ‘kill screen’ where the game would end. But on Galaga’s tournament settings, it simply rolls over to level 1, and continues. Going from level 256 to 1, means a drastic slowing down of gameplay; this took Phil by surprise. But he battled on, until level 12, when a blue bee circled underneath him… and crashed into his final ship. But after two hours and five minutes, his score was over 700k ahead of Andrew Laidlaw’s. He had the unofficial world record score. But sadly, no-one was there to share the moment. His wife, Ingeborg wasn’t within earshot. She was at the other end of the house, doing some gaming of her own: playing Scrabble on Facebook. Phil told her of his score and she asked.. “So, are you going to send it in?” Ingeborg also said she thought he could do better – and maybe get four million! Phil then jumped onto Facebook to update his status: “Phil Day just scored 3,448,630 points on Galaga Tournament.” Then it was time to sleep.

Now that Phil had achieved his target, did it mean his wife could finally get a game herself? “Ingeborg has never played Galaga, so she doesn’t know how exhausting the game can be, but she does know that a score of 3 million gives her two hours of time to herself.” So besides Facebook Scrabble, what does Mrs Day do, while he was busy ‘defending the universe’? “Ingeborg loves cricket, so if that’s on… she’ll be glued to the tele.” Phil divulged. “Also she reads a lot. So much… she’s literally turned the front of our house into a book shop.”

Commemorative T-shirt transfer - modelled by Ingeborg

Details of Phil’s unofficial record hit the net two days later, and the media loved the story. He appeared on many websites, including Kotaku, the Sydney Morning Herald & Bigpond’s Bennie & Ritchie Show. He was even challenged to an onair Galaga duel on (Australian national youth station) Triple J. I asked Phil what the strangest experience was, during this period. “A German student came to the house wanting to play the Galaga machine. I let him play, then asked him to translate an article about my score on a German website. He was happy to do it. According to him, the article said ‘To reach a score of 3.44 million you would need supernatural powers’.”

As usual, Phil sent his DVD to Kelly R. Flewin for the official adjudication. Sure, his number 2 record had taken months to be authenticated, but a World Record claim gets ‘priority’ treatment. One week passed. Two weeks. Then – a bombshell.. Mr Flewin emailed to say there was a problem with his claim. Day’s video camera was set to ‘long play’ – so the footage was too grainy to be accepted. His record was likely to be rejected. Sure, he’d used the same camera, settings & Galaga board as his successful number 2 record, but the referee simply hadn’t noticed the long play problem earlier. Phil was bewildered, to say the least. He really didn’t know what to do. “It took quite a bit to get over the loss, especially since the media thought I was sure to get the World Record – *I* thought I was sure to get the World Record. In retrospect.. I’m glad I kept saying to people that it was yet to be verified.”

For the first time in 2009, Phil’s Galaga sat unplayed.

It remained that way for a week or two. Friends, family & students kept asking when the world record was going to be official. So Phil told them what happened. And most people had a three word answer for him. “Do it again.” Each day at school, he saw a visual reminder of his support base. “Many of the students wore those badges, which was a reminder to play for that world record.” Day recalls. “Often they’d ask how Galaga was going, while others, who I didn’t teach or even know, would ask on Facebook. If it wasn’t for that ‘crowd’ support, I’m pretty sure I would have given up.”

With renewed enthusiasm, Phil played his first complete game since the bombshell. 1.8 million. Not big on his usual scale, but a reasonable effort. He bought a new video camera which would satisfy Twin Galaxies requirements. And he started to play more regularly. One morning, Day noticed something during a practice game. A little gameplay fact that he’d never noticed in thirty years of Galaga gaming. There was a particular insect on the left, that usually caused him problems. If he could take it out early, his chances on that level improved. Three decades on, and Australia’s best Galaga player was still learning. He kept practicing. “I would aim to get a million points without losing a man. Once this became a regular occurrence I felt I was ready.”

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—>CLICK HERE TO READ Part 3<—
- Phil attempts the world record – again.
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Back in August, you may have heard about an Aussie getting the unofficial World Record for Galaga. His name is Phil Day, and there’s much, much more to the story. But first, we have to go right back to the very beginning…

Goulburn is a city around two hours Southwest of Sydney. It’s home to Australia’s, and the world’s… largest cement sheep. (No, I’m not joking) And now it’s got another link to a world record. It’s the city where Phil Day first encountered videogames at age five. Phil had gone to the local squash courts with his older brother Anthony & some friends. There they discovered… Space Invaders.

These were the days when pinball was king, and videogames had only been around a few years. But Space Invaders was far more detailed than anything they’d seen before. Even so, five year old master Day was happy to watch the older boys, as they took turns obliterating the black & white aliens.

Frogger - Moon Cresta - Scramble

As a new decade began, videogames became colourful, and much more popular. More arcades began to appear, such as the one that opened in 1981, in the Bradfordville Shopping Centre near Phil’s home. There he discovered games like Moon Cresta (which he found really hard), Frogger (he didn’t like it), and Scramble (a game he rarely got to play, as the older boys hogged the machine). But Phil did get a chance to play another game; Galaga. He enjoyed it’s faster movement compared to that of Space Invaders. And even though the enemies had no official names, master Day made up some. “I called the blue and yellow aliens ‘bees’, the red ones ‘moths’ and the Galaga bosses ‘cicadas’”.

The shopping centre’s arcade soon closed its doors, so the Day boys had to find a new location to play the “Spacies”. A local bowling alley became the new haunt. Some of Phil’s favourite games there included Dig Dug, Moon Patrol & Dragon’s Lair. Ahh yes, Dragon’s Lair. Phil loved drawing – so Don Bluth’s interactive cartoon was quite a revelation. Another part of the attraction might have been the free games! Phil was given free credits on Dragon’s Lair by other players, so he could show them how to progress further. An added benefit was that more money could be spared for Galaga! And while it may not have competed with the visuals of Dragon Lair, it certainly kept Phil occupied in the early 80’s.

Dig Dug - Dragon's Lair - Moon Patrol

In those days, elder brothers could be relied upon for arcade adventures. Parents.. were less supportive. Phil’s father didn’t like videogames at all. He was a cobbler, who managed the shoe shop in the main street of town. His lack of gaming enthusiasm may have stemmed from the business next door – an arcade called Con’s. He told his son – “If I ever see you in there – I’ll kill you!” Mrs Day didn’t mind her son playing videogames, though she considered them a waste of money. Little did she know whose money was at risk! “I used to slide a butter knife into my mum’s moneybox which she kept by the phone.” Phil admits. “I would jiggle a coin onto the knife and gently slide it out. But I never took too much; otherwise it’d be a bit obvious.”

By the mid 80’s, scrolling platformers became popular in arcades, and some of Phil’s favourites included Ghosts ’n’ Goblins, Rygar and Green Beret. The other genre to explode at this time was racing games, but Mr Day had no time for them… “I never liked racing games, particularly those ones where you’re sitting in a car or on a bike that jolts and moves around.” Arcade titles were increasing in complexity, yet Phil could still find a Galaga game when he felt the need for some old school space insecticide. Of course, he had other interests in his teenage years.. with a blossoming interest in art, and a healthy participation in cricket.

Ghosts n Goblins - Green Beret - Rygar

After high school, Phil’s interest in art led to studies at the Canberra School of Art, at the Australian National University. It was during this time that he met his wife, Ingeborg. Outside of his classes, Phil enjoyed the other attractions a city of Canberra’s size has to offer. He started playing squash. He visited Canberra’s arcades, including Happy Days which still had a resident Galaga machine. And Namco’s classic game also featured at Heaven nightclub, where Phil’s friend Bruce was a DJ. The two students would play Galaga in between DJ sets.. and Bruce came up with a special rule. Whenever a Michael Jackson song came on, they both had to abandon the game, and head to the dancefloor. Well, at least it got Phil off the machine…

In 1997, our moonwalking gamer had completed his studies, and co-founded a private press, to print limited-run art books. At this time, Phil went blind in his left eye. Losing his depth of field meant that he could no longer play cricket or squash. “This maybe one of the reasons I turned my attention to Galaga…” Phil suggests. “This is where video games are a great equaliser. Doesn’t matter what age you are, or gender, or in my case, if you are blind in one eye, you can still be a serious contender.”

Galaga - Title & gameplay screens

Five years later, Day moved to Braidwood, and became the Art & Design teacher at a local school. And in 2007, his favourite game appeared in his life again. Braidwood’s Royal Cafe had a Gallag (Galaga clone) machine, and Phil introduced the game to one of his art students, Michael Ison. Michael had no experience of old-school games. He scored around 30,000 points. You can imagine his face as his teacher scored 750,000! Phil and Michael wondered what the Galaga world record for the game might be… Googling led to the Twin Galaxies scoreboard, where Richard W Marsh had the number 1 spot, with 1.5 million points. That seemed like a pretty difficult challenge. But Day continued playing the game regularly. It was a good way to unwind after a school day.

When people talk about a videogame world record, you might assume there’s one per game. But Twin Galaxies has two records for Galaga. One is the ‘marathon’ record, where the game is adjusted to give you 3 initial lives. More ships can be earnt at 20k points, 70k and every 70k after that. The marathon record is rather aptly named – it would take you at least 10 hours to beat the current champ! The other Galaga record is named ‘tournament’. The player starts with 5 lives, but no more can be earnt. So game times are much easier on the bladder – at around one to two hours. Tournament is the variation that Richard W Marsh played.

Onscreen "tournament" settings for Galaga

In 2007, Phil’s interest in art & classic gaming collided in a most unexpected way. He attended an art exhibition, and got talking to an older woman. She told him about a film she’d just seen; a documentary, about 2 Americans competing for a videogame world record. Yes – it was King of Kong. Soon, Phil saw the movie with a mate, and even before the credits had finished, he’d decided to buy a Galaga machine, and go for the record. It was time to get serious. But when Day revisited the Twin Galaxies scoreboard, he got a rude surprise. “I checked the high score and discovered Marsh’s score had been surpassed by Andrew Laidlaw, and surpassed by quite a bit.” (2,729,350 pts vs 1,557,50 pts)

Phil was undeterred. But he knew very little about buying an arcade cabinet. The one thing he did know – from King of Kong – was the necessity of using an original game board to compete on Twin Galaxies. This led to much frustration. Each time he tracked down a ‘Galaga’ machine, it actually had an ineligible 48-in-1 “bootleg” board. Eventually, Day found a man selling a Hankin upright cabinet in Melbourne, with an original Galaga PCB. The deal was done, and soon it arrived safely at Phil’s home. He began his ‘training’. Unfortunately, he had to end it – within a few weeks! The machine had begun to overheat and malfunction. He contacted a local arcade supplier, A Blast from the Past Amusements, and they kindly offered a free repair. Soon, he was back on track.

Phil Day & his Hankin upright cabinet with original Galaga

At the outset, Day was reasonably confident of reaching 3rd position. A score of 750k (which he’d achieved at The Royal Café) would be more than enough. His new retrogaming friend, Michael Ison was more than an arts student. He was also a target shooter, who had a useful tip for a would-be endurance champion “Go off the coffee – it’ll help you concentrate.” Another friend, who played for (Australian rugby union team) the Wallabies agreed. So that’s what Phil did. Coffee was out. Soon, he developed a routine.. one hour ‘Galaga practice’ each weeknight, then two or three games back to back on the weekend. Phil set up a camera tripod to film his weekend games, just in case.

From mid March, he’d regularly update his Facebook status… 577k… 734k… 770k… 845k… 899k.. Then on April 11, he made an unofficial claim on 3rd place, with a score of 1.06m. Phil sent his DVD of game footage to Twin Galaxies senior referee, Kelly R Flewin. Mr Flewin is one of a number of judges who verify the tapes/DVDs sent in by players from around the world. It’s only once this process is complete, that a score is validated. Soon, Phil got the news from Twin Galaxies – he was the official “World number 3” for Galaga tournament.

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—>CLICK HERE TO READ PART 2<—
Phil gets the world record – or does he?
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Wow, I haven’t been this disappointed about an arcade game since… I dunno… Thundercross 2?

Sega Racing Classic is the new driving game coming from Sega, and as the flyer suggested, it’s an update of the famous Daytona USA. Yes, the 1995 title that still keeps it’s value; still keeps on earning at locations around the world.

SRC had the potential to be the most amazing/successful arcade update since Outrun 2. All Sega needed to do was…

1. Keep the Daytona name
2. Keep the Daytona song
3. Upgrade the graphics using the Sega Rally 3 engine

And according to the location test (& gameplay videos) at 1UP.com, Sega have managed a Failsational™ 0/3.

Point 1. THE LICENSE. They’ve failed to retain “Daytona” license, so they had to change the name. So far, I’ve found nothing on why they lost the license. After famously signing up with Ferrari for Outrun 2 (& its updates) I find this pretty strange. Having a generic name like “Sega Racing Classic” is a pity, and it wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker, except for point 2.

Point 2. THE SONG. “DaytonnAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH… let’s fly away….” Oh no you don’t – you don’t have the license, so you can’t say that word.
Bugger. Sure it had more cheese than a Dominos Cheeserama Cheesybites pizza with Extra Cheese, but it just needs to be there. The song NEEDS to be there!

Point 3. THE GRAPHICS. According to Wikipedia, the game uses Sega’s new “Ringwide” hardware. Judging by the graphics, it’s not the Sega Rally 3 engine. (More like Thomas the Tank engine…)

1995 - Daytona USA

2009 - Sega Racing Classic

Yes, my grab of Daytona USA has a fair bit of ugly Youtube compression – but you know what the game looks like, and the “update” below it.. is so close to the original, I fail to see any point in its existance. OK, so it’s widescreen instead of a 4:3 display. But no-one’s refusing to play Daytona USA due to its old school aspect ratio.

Can you imagine your local pub/bar/arcade owner saying “Oooh, I should get SRC, to replace my Daytona USA! Sure, the lack of the original branding makes it look like a cheap clone, but I have all this useless money just clogging up my bank account”

Yes, I’m basing my opinion on footage of a location test. But the kind of tweaks/improvements that follow testing will never scale the mountain of hope that players/operators had for a new Daytona.

#fail Sega, #fail.

*Thanks to Arcade Heroes for the headsup.
*Volvo photo by Flickr user TJ&Kim

2009 seems to be the year of “2D classic gaming sprites turned into 3D”.

A few months ago, we brought to your attention some great golden-era arcade-themed artwork (resin castings) by Melissa Jones.

Sevens Heaven also produces some similar 2D-to-3D transformation artwork, except their medium is raytraced posters on canvas.

A selection of Seventh Heaven posters

Sure the usual arcade suspects are there (DK, Pacman, Galaga) but they’ve also gone a little bit more obscure (Amidar, Ladybug) and even branched into C64 titles (Impossible Mission, Monty on the Run)

Sevens Heaven is a Dutch company, and currently only ships their canvases to the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Pity.

Credit: I can’t find the link now, but I’m pretty sure I saw this a while ago on Arcade Heroes.

You may remember JOMG’s exclusive interview with the creators of the upcoming PC version of Armalyte.

This remake of the classic Commodore 64 shmup has been sanctioned by the original rights holders AND it’ll come out in a proper CDROM box.

We must be edging closer to a release date now, with publisher Psytronik releasing a big batch of screenshots. Here’s a few of them…

If you haven’t tried it already, there’s a single-level demo available on the Psytronik downloads page.

Oh, and there’s plenty more great new Armalyte screenshots on the Psytronik site.

I’ve been enjoying a great week off in Melbourne, showing off “player 3″ to the relatives, enjoying the coffee, but sadly not having much time for gaming.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back home next week, so your irregular JOMGy goodness will continue!

Now, as promised, here’s some closeup shots of my baby Galaga cabinet, unwrapped last week, and built by modelmaker Justin Whitlock.

Closeup: control panel & bezel (screen surround)

Looks great, doesn’t it? The joystick and raised firebuttons are quite superb. Some of Justin’s other cabs are even more ambitious, such as his Terminator 2 gun game with miniature guns and a perspex “monitor window”.

Closeup: Kick plate & side artwork

The attention to detail is awesome, and Justin’s just added even more cabinets to his lineup. If you can’t be tempted by at least a few of his classic cab models, then you need to hand in your retrogaming license immediately.

Top view & comparing size to a keyboard

Finally, here’s a picture of me playing my Galaga cab. Well, a guy can dream, can’t he? (If only I lived in the USA, where real “Galaga cabs” seem to be in every second bar or Craigslist ad…)

Just needed my 'Duke Nukem shrinkray' to play it...

Hope you enjoy this very rough, debut video..
…on the JustOneMoreGameTV Youtube channel!

Here’s a nice looking box, just arrived from America.
It doesn’t weigh much, and yet… I’ve really been looking forward to its arrival.

Things to ponder…

• Why’s the package so light?
• Are there bugs in the box?
• Will the contents capture my attention?

These are just a few of the mysteries I’ll be solving on the weekend.