Billy Mitchell Puts Video Game Events on Hot Sauce Bottles to Commemorate Gaming History-- the Players are Next!!

What’s this??

A video game champion pictured on a hot sauce bottle?

You bet!

Billy Mitchell, the famous Pac-Man champ, wants to use his experience as a hot sauce manufacturer to create a whole new field of collectible memorabilia that focuses on video game players and momentous events in gaming history.

Mitchell believes that the time in history that we are currently living through will be remembered by future generations as the pioneering years of electronic gaming. Mitchell says: “Today’s video champs will be revered by tomorrow’s gamers as the pioneers of gaming, so we should honor them for their accomplishments. We are front row spectators,” adds Mitchell, “watching a major historical transformation unfold, as cyberspace blossoms and a marriage between culture and technology takes its first breath.”

“Its about time that someone created collectible items that offer respect to the great players and the great events of gaming,” says Walter Day, editor of Twin Galaxies’ Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records. “The interactive electronic gaming industry, now in its 25th year, has created enough stuff to fill the Titanic, including flyers, tokens, gaming systems, game cartridges, vintage coin-operated arcade cabinets, posters, t-shirts and more – but nothing that recognizes the players themselves. These bottles may start a trend that other manufacturers will follow.”

So, starting with Gary Whelan’s Galaxian world record, achieved in Great Britain in August, 2004, Mitchell wants to create a series of special, custom-made hot sauce labels that honor these great milestones, focusing, in particular, on the superstars of the video game world. “It seems that nobody is putting video game stars on baseball cards or on posters,” explains Mitchell, “so, my company, Rickey’s World Famous Sauce, will remedy the situation by issuing an extensive series of bottles that honor the players of every era, from the early 1980s up to the modern champions of the PC world.”

In time, hundreds of players will wind up on bottles, augmenting an earlier series of six bottles Mitchell has already produced that celebrate major gaming events, including three for classic gaming festivals and three for PC gatherings. “I see all gaming modalities as merging into one hobby,” explains Mitchell. “Technology may differ from one game genre to another, but its all electronic gaming.”

Here are the events already honored in Mitchell's inaugural series:

1. Funspot Classic Tournament, Weirs Beach, NH, June 5, 2004 (72 bottles)
2. Classic Gaming Expo 2004, San Jose, CA, August 22, 2004 (72 bottles)
3. iGames Expo, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, Sept. 18, 2004 (72 bottles)
4. NovaLogic Lan Attempt on JointOps, New York City, Sept. 18, 2004 (144 bottles)
5. Dreamhack Winter 2004 Record LAN, Elmia, Sweden, Nov. 25-28, 2004 (50 bottles)
6. South Florida Arcade & Pinball Expo, Davie, FL, December 4-5, 2004 (50 bottles)

If Mitchell has his way, Gary Whelan’s bottle, planned as seventh in the series, will, hopefully, be handed out in person by Mitchell in Gary’s hometown of Dukinfield, England, sometime in 2005.

Other bottles in the planning stage will mark anniversaries, like the 20th anniversary of the 1985 Coronation Day World Championship, which was held in January, 1985 in Los Angeles.

Each label is printed as a limited run, usually in lots of 50, with each bottle having its own number, printed individually in sequence starting with “1 of 50,” “2 of 50,” and so on.

“Nobody seems to be opening their bottles,” notes Mitchell. “Already they are viewed as collectibles and some bottle-owners have expressed the intention to sell their bottles on eBay. At least one gamer is trying to track down bottle #1 in each of the six different series to get all six #1’s for his collection.”

That might be hard to do since the bottles created for the Classic Gaming Expo picture Pac-Man and bottle #1 is being sent as a gift to the President’s office at NAMCO, the Tokyo-based company that created Pac-Man.

So far, the bottles have been given away free. Mitchell says: “This first series is a gift to the hobby. After sometime, we obviously would have to start selling some of the bottles, but, for now, it’s a free gift to inspire appreciation of the history of gaming.”

Making video game history is not new to Mitchell. Proclaimed the “Player of the Century” during the 1999 Tokyo Game Show, Mitchell achieved the first “perfect” score on Pac-Man in 1999 and held five concurrent video game world records in the 1985 Guinness Book of World Records.

Rickey’s Restaurant and Lounge was founded in 1955 in Hollywood, Florida. The Mitchell family has owned Rickey’s since 1974 and has produced Rickey’s World Famous Sauce since the early 1980s.

For more information, contact Walter Day at (641)472-1949 or by email at walter@twingalaxies.com