After consultation with our Judge Coordinator, Pat Laffaye, and Zwaxy, I've decided that Us Vs. Them will be thrown out of the tournament due to bad emulation. The bad emulation includes invisible enimies and invisible shots, which leads to several hits to your ship. I apologize for any inconvience for which this has caused.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), July 01, 1999

Answers

I'm crying FOUL!!! Since gb can't defeat me on this game, he's going to throw it out?? FOUL FOUL FOUL!!! There is no invisible enemies or shots, emulated from mame32 35rc2. NONE at all! This a travesty, he knows he can't beat me, and rather than compete, he wants to ditch it! FOUL!

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), July 01, 1999.

I have to agree with Parsley, while I certainly won't be able to defeat his score, I have seen absolutely nothing about what gb claims the emulation on the game does. I love the game, and I have never seen it happen to me on MAME. Also, from the MAME people themselves: The game, vsusthem, is in perfect emulation condition, but the obvious problem of there being no way to load in the optical disc into the rom set has left the background empty. The game, though, is perfectly playable, as no interaction with the background is necessary. Gameboy, come off your high horse and compete like a man.

-- Arron Wendl (wecfracd@gateway.com), July 01, 1999.

Arron, we don't get to get that fiesty, I admit I had my emotions talking in the last message I posted... But, gameboy, c'mon. Nothing in life is perfect, so there's no background, so what? Everything else works fine, making it valid as can be. I didn't mean for my score to scare you off on the first day, but that gives no right to removing it... As you can planly see on my recording, an enemy or enemy shot, hit me to make me lose my energy. Just check the damn recording... If you had checked my recording on win32 35rc2, you would see that to be the case. Reinstate the game, and let's compete fairly, gb... What happened to you not being involved in the tourney once you started playing, sounds like a conflict of interest to me... Other MARPers???

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), July 01, 1999.

Fair argument Chris - however - that can be easily countered with my 2nd place recording in regular play - this scored 81,500 - I could probably beat your 106,000 score after a few more tries. Especially look at the later stages of the third level, and all of the fifth, and my final, level. You'll see only your character. You'll also find that you're getting hit no matter what you do for some unknown reason. Invisible enimies, invisible ships. Now you know why I threw it out. :)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), July 01, 1999.

I must counter with two points, playing in HARD mode doesn't have any "invisible" items, I don't know about the lower two settings, you may be right there as I never play it below HARD. Perhaps the settings should be to HARD only. If, after it all, it gets thrown out, the people who voted for the game should be allowed to name it's replacement, as if it was out of the running from the beginning, their votes for other games would have been counted...

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), July 01, 1999.

Well... I still get imaginary hits even with the hard level - enimies disappear, and when they reappear... BOOM - my ship takes a hit... from no source at all. I have uploaded a recording to verify this - at 88,000 points.

To compromise this... Chris gave the idea that those who voted for Us Vs. Them get another chance to vote for another game. Sounds good to me. Anyone object? If not... they will have until the tiebreaker deadline, July 3rd, 2359 GMT, to make their vote.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), July 01, 1999.

Guys,

OK! OK! Being completely impartial I'm going to review all recordings of the Us vs. Them and make a final ruling tonight.

I'm open to additional comments / input from either side (for or against). If the game gets taken out, a decision will be made on how to replace it as well.

You can post pro/cons here or send directly to my ID.

-- Pat (laffaye@ibm.net), July 01, 1999.

Pat, I have checked gb's recording, and can't see the bug. But if you remove it, the only thing fair would be to let me and Arron to re-vote, keep it short, like 24hrs or something like that, to make the votes count. If there is a problem that keeps the game out, it should of been told ahead of time so me and Arron could have voted differently.

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), July 01, 1999.