Interview with Desiree McCrorey

by Blaine Locklair
TG Staff

Desiree McCrorey, 52, of San Jose, CA is one of the only women to have ever held a world record score during the golden age of video gaming. Her scores on Mr. Do!, Pepper II, Qix and Zaxxon continue to make her a top ten player on each of these classic titles. Desiree was even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for her Mr. Do! score. Desiree has some wonderful memories of the golden age of video gaming and took the time to share them with Twin Galaxies.

TG: Hi Desiree, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with Twin Galaxies. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

DM: I’m a User Interface Designer, which means making software user friendly for whatever audience it’s designed for. The last eight, maybe nine years I’ve been designing web sites for various commercial endeavors. And right now, I’m actually at a start up called Healthline.com, but I’ve worked at big companies and small companies trying to make the software something that users can understand and use. For a hobby, I design jewelry.

TG: How did you come to first start playing arcade games?

DM: I wandered into an arcade, probably at the mall, and was curious to see what arcade games were like. And it being Silicon Valley, you’re exposed to a lot of the leading edge technologies. I watched somebody play Qix, and it was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I like unusual interfaces or displays, so I watched and watched and came back every once in a while, and slowly got involved in learning more about that whole environment, the arcade game environment. I gravitated more toward the games that weren’t so, I guess at the time, typical, which would have been things like Pong or Missile Command. But the Qix game was so unusual that it pulled me in, and I found myself going back more, and more, and more. I started to be a regular and met some regulars, and it kind of grew from there.

TG: What are some of your favorite games?

DM: Back then, the ones that I actually felt I could handle, and were interesting, were Lady Bug, Mr. Do!, and Zaxxon. I didn’t really care for Pac-Man but I liked Ms. Pac-Man, but I wasn’t really good at playing it. Oh, and Burgertime, which was a really bizarre game. I liked the ones that I think were probably more unusual and the ones that were easiest to access. Most of the attendants in the arcades were boys, and they were usually all hanging around the fighting games, so those were hard to see, let alone play. I went for the more accessible games and the games that were easier to control since some of the games were pretty complicated. So those kinds of games, like Qix and Lady Bug, were my favorites. Today, I don’t do the big arcade games any more, but I like the little games I can hold in my hand, like a Palm or a nice little time eater like Bejeweled and Sudoku and word games. They’re not quite as elaborate but I try to keep it simple.

TG: When did you start to feel like you could challenge for a world record score with Twin Galaxies?

DM: When I went to sign in my initial for my scores, I noticed that I could always beat the high scores that were on the machine. There was one guy in our little group who had an amazing gaming skill. He could learn how to play a game well faster than anybody I’d ever seen. I started to be able to beat him, and those were the clues that maybe I’m a little bit better than most of the guys that were playing, and took it from there.

TG: Tell me about your score on Pepper II. For instance, when did you earn the score and how long did it take you to do?

DM: I have to confess, I honestly don’t remember playing Pepper II, although there was a group of unusual games, and that may have been part of it. Burgertime, Lady Bug and Marvin’s Maze… there was a collection of odd little games that probably weren’t very popular. Pepper II may have fallen into that category. To get a really high score, I would have had to play the game a lot. I remember all the high scores on the other games, but I don’t remember that one.

TG: Do you plan to try to take back the world record score on Pepper II?

DM: No, I think it was meant to be. If somebody else wants to have their claim to fame, that’s fine.

TG: You were one of the only female gamers in the 1980s to be a Twin Galaxies world record holder. How did it feel to have accomplished something so unique?

DM: I think at the time it was fun. I don’t know if I noticed so much being the only female at that time, only because when I went in to the arcade I was usually one of only a few females. It was kind of like that world and I really didn’t think much about it. I guess being relatively independent and unusual, you’re always feeling like you’re kind of unique, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. At the actual competition, I don’t know that I noticed a lot of disparity between the sexes. It was only after looking at the Guinness Book, when they published all the names of all of the players, the ones who had won, that it really kind of hit home that I was one of the few females. I don’t think I really even thought about it until I saw that published in the book. And how does it feel? It was something that was fun then, but I guess I feel I’ve kind of moved on. If anybody wants to talk about it, that’s fine, but I don’t usually bring it up unless I am in just the right mood.

TG: That must have been something pretty special to find out you were in the Guinness Book of World Records.

DM: Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, especially because I didn’t have to do anything painful or gross to get it. Playing a game was a lot of fun, and to actually end up with a record because of it was kind of nice.

TG: Do you still play arcade games today? If so, what kind of games do you play?

DM: I don’t play arcade games anymore - I haven’t found that the games there appeal to me. They’ve gotten much more appealing, I’m sure, to the younger population. I like the more atmospheric or intellectual games. The latest games I got into were not arcade games, per se, but things like Myst and Riven. I really like those kinds of games because as you get older, you’re faced with enough pressures of time and deadlines. Escaping from that is really kind of nice now - playing something that’s not so critical is more appealing to me. I have gone into a couple of arcades. There’s a company out here called Dave & Buster’s that’s a combination arcade and restaurant, and I went in there late last year to check out the arcade theme and to see what the deal was. What I found interesting is there were a lot of different types of games, and there were more physical skill games, like basketball shoot and whack-a-mole and things like that. But they also had a section of what you would identify as classic games, the ones that I was familiar with in the day. All of the games were kind of busy being used, so it was nice to see that, because otherwise I would have felt kind of lost going into the arcade. So I check out a few games, played a little bit, just to see if the old spark was there, and it wasn’t, so I said, “OK, I’ve moved on.” Now I play at home if I want to play a game.

TG: What kind of things do you do when you’re not playing arcade games?

DM: I primarily work with a material called polymer clay, which is a modeling compound. I can use it to make a lot of different things, and right now, I’ve been, probably the last 10 years, focused on  jewelry making and mixing that particular material with other materials, like wood and metal and glass, and just coming up with all kinds of designs. I think at the core, I am a designer of things, whether it’s software or jewelry or whatever it is; I like to be creative in that aspect. That’s what takes up a lot of my free time and primarily how I socialize now instead of doing the arcade games. I still keep in touch with some of the arcade game buddies, it’s fun to talk about the… I guess to go through the “way back machine”.

TG: What’s next in store for you in the arcade world?

DM: I guess it would depend on how you define it. I did want, and I still want to get, a little cocktail table size arcade game of something, either Lady Bug or Mr. Do! or Ms. Pac-Man or something. I like the idea of having some time to set aside to play something simple and mindless and take my mind off my worries. As far as the arcade label would go, I think I’m way too old to be hanging out in the arcades – it’s just not my scene anymore. But I’m assuming that the age group that hangs out in arcades is 10, 20 years old, and I’m much, much older than that now so I would feel too out of place to actually go back into that gaming world. One of my other friends, who’s also has a world record, he did design some games, and every once in a while we get together and he talks about some of the game ideas he has that he’d like to make into an arcade game. But that’s probably as far as I’ve gotten into the arcade realm, talking about what kind of games might be appealing to different audiences - not just the standard teenage male, but what might be of interest to a teenage female, or what might be of interest to adults. That part actually really fascinates me now because I think they’re finding that little games like word games or number games actually help seniors keep a cognitive edge, so there are a lot of benefits to coming up with models that they will find engaging, and that to me is of real interest.

TG: Desiree, thanks so much for taking the time to catch up with Twin Galaxies, it was a real pleasure to chat with you.

DM: Thanks, Blaine.

Desiree’s Twin Galaxies scores can be seen at http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&p=3825 and you can see her excellent body of work at http://www.desiredcreations.com/.

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