I played in a Killer Queen tournament!
· Life
Over the weekend, I played in a tournament for the arcade game Killer Queen in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve been playing it with a group of friends in Milwaukee for almost a year, and this is the second Killer Queen tournament I’ve been in outside of Milwaukee.
Killer Queen is a platforming strategy game for up to 10 players, played on two giant arcade cabinets in blue and gold – one for each team. A team wins if they are the first to do one of three things:
- Kill the enemy Queen three times (“Military Victory”).
- Fill their hive with berries (“Economic Victory”).
- Ride the snail to their net (“Snail Victory”).
(My favorite way to win is Economic. 😉)
The tournament was being held in the I/O Arcade Bar in Madison, Wisconsin. I’d heard good things about it, and it did not disappoint. There were plenty of interesting arcade games over there I’d never seen or played before. There was even an area for board games, and a Nintendo 64! It’s definitely a place I’d visit often if I lived in Madison.
Closer to the back of the arcade, there was a dedicated area for Killer Queen, with a TV screen above the cabinets so that non-players could see the action. Our usual hangout in Milwaukee doesn’t have that, and it’s a nice touch.
I was lucky enough to get drafted by my carpool partner Christos, who is a very skilled Killer Queen player. My dad Rob, who also came along, was drafted by Dan, the captain of another team. It was interesting for us both to be playing in the tournament, but on different teams. But even though we were technically opponents, we were both rooting for each other.
Both of our teams won most of our games, and we did extremely well in the tournament. So well, in fact, that we ended up facing each other in the Winners’ Finals.
And although Team Dan took Game 1 with a skillful Economic Victory (with Rob singlehandedly gathering half of the berries), Team Christos won the next three games to bump Team Dan into the Losers’ Bracket.
Team Dan ended up in 3rd place overall. Team Christos, on the other hand, ended up in 1st place, after a hard-fought reverse sweep in the Grand Finals!
I wasn’t expecting to win any physical prize (or even win, period), but my team did receive a few neat trinkets, as well as two $1 bills. (That’s enough to play Killer Queen twice!) Christos took one, and I took the second one and gave it to my dad.
What's in the box? Plastic emeralds!
What's in the pineapple thingy? More emeralds, and two whole dollars!
We ended up spending those dollars at Culver’s on the way home.
(We also saw two cranes walking by as we ordered. One of us was super interested in the crane…and who could blame them?)
This was an enjoyable experience, and I’d absolutely love to do it again sometime. Perhaps I should go to their next mixer next month…
HiveMind
The tournament was streamed live on Twitch, and a series of statistics for each match was displayed using an open-source stat tracker called HiveMind. Apparently, if a cabinet has HiveMind set up on it, detailed information about each game is tracked and recorded. You can even sign in as a player to track personal stats and achievements.
One thing I might want to do in the future is figure out how this works, so that I can create an app for the Tidbyt that works with it.
Perhaps I could even use this to check whether a local Killer Queen arcade cabinet is active! (The ones in Milwaukee aren’t connected with HiveMind yet, but I could use this to check the ones that are.)