The print., January 21, 1981, Page 5, Image 5

rts & lives
Asteroids obsess
* R.W. Greene
If The Print
■ You may have seen them in
al variety of places, at
■Bage Ilan’s or Fred Meyer’s, or
7111, or the Minit Mart: groups
^■young andjniddle-aged men
| Wddled -around a large oblong
■Bx from whence «emerge syn-
Bs sized sounds of explosions,
^Ker gunfire, and something
^Kt could be the heartbeat of a
»hycardiac elephant.
■The oblong box is Asteroids,
^■d unless you’ve been walk-
Hn around the moon for the
St year, you know that it is the
fittest video game in the coun­
try. Developed by the Atari
Smpany of Sunnyvale, Calif.
^Beroids will earn the Atari
^■pple over $100 million in
1(81.
■The game sounds deceptive-
lyfsimple. The player controls a
slall, triangular-shaped
^Baceship” which fires at
various oncoming objects,
llese are asteroids, which,
when hit, split into smaller
^Beroids and keep coming.
The object of the game is to
destroy all the rocks before one
of them hits the spacecraft and
destroys it, while dodging flying
^Kcers which saunter erratical-
1J across the screen, firing at
tn spaicecraft. Destroying the
^Bng saucers garners you
more points.
The player uses four buttons
to manipulate his craft. There is
also a fifth button, called
“hyperspace,” which, through
some Einsteinian logic of its
own, makes the spacecraft
disappear and reappear on
some other part of the screen.
-Next week, Student
Acitivities will be holding a
Space Invaders/Asteroids
tournament. Students can sign
up in the Student Activities of­
fice.
Anybody who enters,
however, will have to contend
with Monte Harris. Monte is a
freshman at the College, a soft-
spoken man of 20, who does
not, on first glance, appear to
have hands of lightning.
But put him in front of an
Asteroid machine, and he is
dazzling to behold. In a game
where 50,000 is a fairly respec-
table score, Harris has, on oc­
casion, gotten the machine to
100,000 and turned it over 13
times. He has had more than
80 games over 100,000 points
in the College’s game room
alone. He. has gotten so good
that he prefers to spend his
time practicing various eclectic
shots at the flying saucers,
rather than just going after the
points.
Harris is not close-mouthed
about his technique. “Ninety
percent of the game is firing,”
he says. “If you can’t fire well,
all that thrusting and turning
won’t do you any good.” He
never uses “hyperspace,” he
says, because there’s too much
chance of getting blown up,
and he considers it something
of a cop-out anyway. He
prefers to manipulate his
spacecraft horizontally from left
toAright; most people stick to a
_
, .
, _
Photo by Amy DeVour
Local Asteroid fiend submits to addiction
vertical motion, according to
Harris.
As impressive as Harris’ stats
are, there are people who even
have him beat, he says. He
knows one person who built up
five million pointy, the
equivalent of turning the game
over 50 times.
To watch Harris work on the
machine is a numbing treat. He
is loose and casual, pointing
out subtitles of the game, and
carrying on conversation. It is
only when you watch his hands
that you grasp the amazing
dexterity he posesses.
The tournament starts next
week. Watch out.
ACUÌ tourney pockets interest
The ACUI toumment, cause
of all the hubbub around the
game room last week, has con­
cluded. The winners of the
eight areas of competition will
participate in the regional com­
petition in Tacoma at Pacific
Lutheran University Feb 5-7.
hbh
Kelly Sullivan, outdoor recrea­
tion director, declared himself
well-satisfied with the process
and result of the tournament.
Daryl Woods, Steve Mills, and
Dean Dodge will be headed
north. In men’s pool, Mitch
Keith was the winner, with
Arlene Boyko doing it for the
Winners are as follows: in women. The backgammon
bowling, the five-man team of champion was Lynn Purdue,
Don Hansen, Rich Ferguson, and in chess, Ken Basting
defeated Jim Rogers for the
crown.
The frisbee competition,
done on the soccer field, with
its main criteria being distance
and accuracy, was won by Bob
Ryan, but Ryan, had already
qualified to represent the Col­
lege at foosball, so his place will
be taken by Paul Lamar. Ryan
will team up with Bob Grey in
the foosball competition-the
two will also compete in­
dividually. The same situations
exist in ping-pong, where Bob
Theis and Monte Campbell
were the champions.
The participants all agreed
that the competition was tough
and interesting, said Sullivan,
NOW OPEN
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Featuring Happy Hour
\
4-6 pm, won-Fri
LVe’re only 1Z> mire north of
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f Wednesday. January 21, 1981
noting that 85 students started
out the tournament, 23 .of
them in men’s pool alone.
Quizzed about the amount of
work that must haveA been
necessary to pull the entire
tournament off in one week,
Sullivan cited the help he
received from David Boone
and Mark Sanford.
The participants will have
fairly stiff competition in
Tacoma, Sullivan added.
Besides all the regional com­
munity colleges (including
PCC, which has one of the best
ping-pong teams in the nation),
the 14 competitors will face
challengers from the U of O,
OSU, PSU, and the University
of Washington, among others.
Although the competitors
paid an entry fee, the cost of
their trip to Tacoma will be
borne by Student Activities and
the ASG.
Watch this page for final
results.
arts briefs
Debbie Baker, director of
student acitivities, has an­
nounced a multi-media, multi­
departmental program which
will take place in the Com­
munity Center Mall at noon on,
Feb. 18, at 8 p.m. on Feb. 20,
and again at noon on Feb .'26.
The program, the first of its
kind at the College, will feature
video programs, jazz dances,
swing choir and dramatic
presentations. It will not be a
talent contest, says Baker, but
rather a chance for different
departments in the humanities
to show their stuff. Interested
artists should contact individual
departments...The Back to
School Dance featuring Bently
came off not too badly, in spite
of a low turnout. This may
have been a result of insuffi­
cient publicity. The band had a
good, tight sound, but the low
turnout may have contributed
to their pronounced lack of en­
thusiasm. The next band, to
play Friday night, Feb. 13 may
play during the noon hour the •
same day, in order to incite
more interest...If you see
anything interesting going on in
humanities around the College
that we’re missing, please let us
know.
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