I was thinking maybe it would be cool to have a little contest in each ezine or something. No prizes or anything like that necessarily, but more or less for fun / bragging rights. In the back of each ezine a little thing could say "how many points can you get in XXXX" or some sort of task, and then people submit photos by a deadline so the winner can be announced in the upcoming ezine when a new contest is posted. The winner could even get a special icon next to their name like a trophy for the month following their victory lol.

I think that would be a cool idea.

Kind of like the Power Player section in the old issues of NP.

That sounds pretty cool to me as well! Maybe it could get me to dust off some of the
old games I don't much play anymore.

I love it. great idea sir. a little tiny trophy icon would be awesome. and everytime you win you get another one. would be totally awesome.

I didnt necessarily mean an actual trophy as the icon, but an icon as a type of trophy. Unless it was much different, the 'chalice of honor' for 50-99 feedback is already a trophy, so their would be confusion possibly?

maybe a little cartridge icon or something. but trophy would be the thing to get. maybe it could go underneath your status or something.

cool idea!

Heres a cart icon i made quick -->

I kind of like the idea of calling it Power Player, but yeah, awesome idea!

This is a stupendous idea! Well done!

MLN

^ agreed. Count me in

YES! now i can finally be a POWER PLAYER!!!...sort of

Good call, I totally like the idea.

Well, here is my proposal:

In order to keep this exciting and not something better suited to a thread in the forum, a designated referee will need to be willing to accept submissions either in PM or via email. Personally, I would lean towards making a dummy gmail account just for contest submissions.

An assortment of NES games will be chosen at the beginning of the month, and challengers will have until the article submission deadline to get their scores in.

The next run of games for the contest will be posted in each issue, so that eZine readers (who might not keep up with the forums) will have the chance to be in on the action.


How does this sound? Any suggestions?

For whoever heeds the call:

I have registered "[email protected]" for the referee to use as the contest email address.
I wouldn't mind running this, but if somebody else is really interested in being the referee, I'll hand over the keys to the email account.

Yea arch, that was my basic idea. I had the idea of making a dummy email account too just for contest subissions, but I was just thinking each contest could also have a thread to go with it, so people could post pics of their scores to let the competition know whats up! Of course I'd keep my scores secret until the end, but thats just me. Glad to hear everyone likes this idea!
What do you think a good game would be for the first competition? (Its more of a competition then a contest I guess)
What first came to mind to me was mega man 1, because that game actually keeps score, but its pointless, so this would give the points a purpose.
"How many points can you get on XXX-man's stage?" idk
I'd love to hear other ideas on games.

Joseph - if you want to cover it, let me know and I'll PM you the credentials for the email account. I think the name is pretty catchy, but if you want to create one that you like better that's OK.

Now that I think about it, you're right the contest would need a thread each month, with the final submissions directed to the email account being the ultimate authority.

I'd be up for a MM1 challenge, but you might want to play it and think about how you would get a high score first. It might be really easy to spam your score in that game by respawning enemies or something.

Might be ideal to open with something with a ton of notoriety, like Donkey Kong.

I would definitely be interested in something like this. The only thing is we would need some time before each contest to know what the game is in case some people (myself included) don't currently own it.

Another thing - are emulators allowed? And how can save state abuse be prevented?

^ there's no real prize, just an icon and your name in the zine.

Anyone that would cheat for those stakes...

Woot!!! Lets get this ball rolling

Well we have MAME replays in uh, MAME. I'm not sure if there's anything similar in NES emulators.

I think it goes without saying that no form of emulator or action replay device would be allowed in this friendly competition. Game will be played on a console with a real cartridge and controller. I agree with Dan, if people feel the need to hustle a forum icon and name drop in the eZine, that is rather pathetic.

I don't see why emulators would be disallowed. Why require a person have a collection of physical games in order to participate when there's a perfectly good substitute.

Like you said, it's a friendly competition. Simply requesting that people follow the rules should be enough.

Real console can still easily be used to cheat anyways, use GameGenie or CopyNES to get better scores.