User:Billyjoecain/sandbox

First Annual Texas Video Game Championships

In 1982, the Southland Corporation launched an historic video game championship across the state of Texas. Almost every 7-11 had a small arcade within it, so they took advantage of those assets and challenged their customers to set a high score on the machines in their stores. The competition was based around Pac Man, Tempest, and Defender, some of the most popular and complicated games at the time. The grand prize for each game was a new arcade game cabinet of the machine itself.

Each store collected high scores by having an employee verify the score and write it down. If a store did not have one of the three games, they would take scores for another game.

The highest scorers per game were sent to area competitions where the games were played in three 10 minute rounds. This was the method from here on out. Those scores were added together to determine who was the winner. The winner progressed to Regional competition, where the process was repeated.

At the Regional level, there were far less players, and the winners on each machine continued onto the State level.

The State Tournament was in Dallas on one entire floor of a hotel. The Southland Corporation brought in all of their arcade games from a 30-50 mile radius and filled the hall with hundreds of arcade games. They were all set to free play. Guests and the public were actually outnumbered by the machines. They even had Dallas Cowboys at the show taking pictures and signing autographs. [It was the biggest arcade game collection I have ever seen to this date. bjc]

The challengers competed on a stage in front of media, friends, and family. Each game winner was crowned, and then those winners were asked to compete on three never before seen games for the title of Texas Video Game Champion.

The three games were then played, with the same methodology, and the overall winner was crowned.

The competition was co-sponsored by Dr. Pepper.

The Defender winner, Billy Cain, received a Defender windbreaker, a Defender baseball cap, a Dr. Pepper beach towel, and was supposed to win a new Defender arcade machine, but they were no longer producing them. The representative from the Southland corporation offered to provide a used one from their stores, but Cain informed them that there was a sequel to Defender currently being produced, Stargate, and they provided him a brand new Stargate shipped to his house in the original shipping container.