The long awaited round 3 has begun, and it is Galaga! At least for one round I'm just going to play favorites and pick a game I personally like, and this is it. This round will be testing skills of pattern recognition and manual dexterity.

This will be a standard high score competition, with only one catch. It's a one-chance competition! Practice all you want, but only one game counts. You must schedule a time with me, and I will watch you play one game of Galaga. Your score in that game will be your score with no re-dos of any kind. This will require most participants to use a streaming service like twitch.tv/XSplit or use a webcam with a Google+ Hangout, Skype, etc. Anyone with an Internet connection should be able to do this, which is everybody. You may also play your game for me in person at Anime Boston, Connecticon, PAX AUS, or plain old New York City. The deadline for streaming will be July 9th, before I leave for Connecticon and PAX AUS. The round will actually end when I return from Australia probably around August 1st.

Now, there are many many versions of Galaga out there for many platforms. That should make it accessible to almost everybody. However, because there are so many versions of Galaga, there is going to be confusion about which ones are valid. They are not all the same. We will be using the NES version of Galaga as the baseline. If you want to play the original arcade version, perhaps through MAME, you need to make sure it is configured properly. The player should start with three lives at the default difficulty of rank B (medium). And the player should not be able to have more than two shots on the screen at the same time. Any other version of Galaga for another platform that is configured the same way will also be valid per my judgement. Also, be careful not to accidentally play Galaxian, GaPlus, Galaga '88, Galaga Legions (DX), etc. Regular old Galaga is the game we are playing.

Start practicing and be sure to send an email to grandprix@frontrowcrew.com to schedule an appointment for your one chance. Good luck.