 Lori Baker of Cambridge, MA, Becomes Gameboy Tetris DX Champion
By Blaine Locklair, Twin Galaxies Staff Writer
Lori Baker, 31, of Cambridge, MA came to Funspot on June 2, 2007 to show her skills at Tetris DX for the Nintendo Gameboy. The end result was that she shattered the previous world record and the gaming world was introduced to the newest Twin Galaxies world champion. Lori’s amazing 841 line score was witnessed by Walter Day, President of Twin Galaxies, and Kelly Flewin, Twin Galaxies Senior Referee. The most amazing thing of all is that Lori had just decided to come to Funspot three days prior to her world record performance! Lori also captured the attention of the Boston Globe, which was there to witness the crowning of the newest Twin Galaxies champion.
After joining the ranks of Twin Galaxies elite players, Lori and I sat down in the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot and reflected on her accomplishment.
TG: Hi Lori, and congratulations on your new world record. Please tell us about yourself.
LB: Well, I am 31 years old, and I would not consider myself a “gamer”, although I do like playing games. I am a Nutrition Educator, and I live in Cambridge, MA with my husband and my dog. I’m interested in cooking, reading, that sort of thing. Gaming, such as playing Tetris, is a very minor hobby.
TG: How did you take an interest in playing video games?
LB: You know, as a child, I can remember getting the first Atari system when I was nine or 10 years old. I can remember playing it in the basement – I’ve always played games in the basement. We played tennis, Pac-Man, that sort of thing, and I remember loving it as a kid. Me and my sister would play and enjoyed it, and it was probably the fad at the time. Later on, I have a brother that is seven years younger, and he got a Nintendo system. I bet I played it as much as he did, even though he was more in that age range of playing video games. I always liked to play late at night - games like Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Paperboy. The real simple ones were the ones I always preferred, not the ones where you had to push the button a million times - I never was good at those.
TG: Those games have stood the test of time for 25, almost 30 years. Just like these photos on the wall show, these games just have a timeless appeal to them that will probably always be there as long as there are video games to play.
LB: I would hope that that would be the case. Recently we got a Nintendo (NES) at home because my husband has developed an interest, and we’ve had people over to play and they’ve all had the same reaction, which was “Wow! This is awesome! I forgot how cool this was!” They’re giddy like kids when they’re playing, and you can’t help but be, and it’s all the classic games. It’s not like we’re playing, and I have no interest in playing, the modern games – none whatsoever.
TG: When did you first get a Gameboy and start playing Tetris?
LB: I started playing Tetris on the Nintendo as a child, probably as a 12 or 13 year old, and I loved it. I think I was in college when I got the Gameboy, and that’s 10 years ago, if not more. I asked for it for Christmas, just on a whim. I don’t remember why, I’m sure a friend had it or something, and I thought, “It sure is nice to play Tetris again.” I got one for Christmas, and it’s one of those things I’ll pick up now and again and play obsessively, and then put it down and say, “I need a life again.” I probably started about 10 years ago, and I’ve been playing off and on with that same Gameboy.
TG: How did you first hear about Twin Galaxies?
LB: Through my husband. He’s a writer for the Boston Globe, and he did a story on some boys who were competing for the speed record for Super Mario Bros.
TG: I read that, it was a good story.
LB: He likes that sort of story. I was very interested in the story, and when he was talking about it, I was remembering how much fun it was playing Super Mario Bros. I wanted to watch the guy play, and I’m glad I got to watch him play it today.
My husband was the one that mentioned Twin Galaxies and the record, and he was the one who said, “You know, you’re really good at Tetris”, and I didn’t believe him. I knew I was good, just from watching other friends playing. They would ask to play my Gameboy, and I would always say, “When you get in trouble, just hand it to me.” Usually the first 100 – 150 lines are a little boring to me; when they start coming down faster is actually when I enjoying playing, so that worked out well. Someone else will start the game and then I’ll finish it. I knew I was good, but I didn’t know I was that good until he mentioned Twin Galaxies and the record.
TG: When did you get the idea to try to compete for the world record?
LB: After he said that the world record - and he was mistaken on what the world record was, he thought it was 300 and some lines - he told me that, and it was kind of like, “You can beat that.” I said, “Yeah, but would I do it? Would I go through the trouble to do it?” He said, “It’s easy, you can video tape yourself. We would need a Super Nintendo and an adaptor.” I just left that in his hands, because to me, I wasn’t going to pursue it. If it happens to fall in my lap, which it almost did, I’ll go for it. Then we found out about this gaming tournament this weekend, and he said, “Let’s go out there.” Actually, I think it was Wednesday when he said “Let’s go out there.” I kind of panicked a little. I said to myself, “Do I need to practice?” and I was scared coming out here and going for a record. Because even though I knew I easily could get, at the time I thought it was 340 lines, I knew I could get that, but I didn’t know if I could get it easily in that situation.
TG: Have you ever been to Funspot before?
LB: I’ve never been to Funspot before today.
TG: When you first got here, what was your impression?
LB: It was so cool - it was like going back in time! Some of these games I’ve never seen before, and the ones that I have, it was awesome just to see them again. Where I played video games in an arcade, they had probably, and I was from a small town, they had probably 10 games at the most, so some of these I’ve never seen before. But I haven’t been able to see it all yet because when I got here, I was trying to figure out where I needed to be and what I needed to do. But it’s a really cool place.
TG: Tell me about your world record performance on Tetris today. Tell me about the number of lines you cleared, your score, the experience itself.
LB: It’s funny, because usually I play the Gameboy, and it was a much different experience playing it where the cartridge was hooked up to a television. Having a bigger screen that was more brightly lit and stayed one color actually made it easier. When I first sat down, I thought maybe I would need a practice run. Once I started through, it was flowing pretty easy. It was almost one of those experiences where I had a good feeling and about halfway through, or at least at some point early in the game, I could hear people talking in the background, and I heard someone talking to Kelly about the record. I heard him say, “Oh, for that version of the game, it’s not 300 lines.” I heard that but I didn’t want to focus on it too much because I’ve had time playing where I’m… well, you focus for a little and all of a sudden, you make one mistake and everything goes downhill. So I said to myself, “OK, don’t focus on anything else – just play the game.” So I knew I was wrong about the record and started to wonder what it was. When I got near the point that I thought the record might be, I started to wonder how far away I was, and I asked my husband, “OK, what’s the real record?” He said, “Don’t worry about it”, but I said, “No, no, no, tell me what it is, because I want to know.” He told me what it was, and the only part I had in my mind was the 500 and something, so when I was playing and getting near that, I was still feeling good. I said to myself, “I think I’m gonna do it” as I was getting to 400 and some lines, and I knew it was going to go past 500 lines. At that point, I think I got to 600 lines before I asked him, “Do I have it?” and he said, “Yes”, and I felt like I could relax for the first time. I wasn’t nervous or tense, but it was one of those things where a little pressure was on and I was glad where it worked out where I didn’t have to play for it more than once – the first time I tried it worked out. From that point on, things went smooth. It’s one of those things where, and I don’t know how often you play Tetris, but things were staying toward the bottom, which is always good. I don’t know at what point – and I’m pretty bad about looking to the right to look at the scores since I usually just watch where the pieces are falling – I started getting up toward the middle and thought, “Oh no, this is going to come to an end.” At that point, I had almost 700 lines, so I knew it was still a good run and I wasn’t going to get down about it. I was able to come back down and extend it a little longer than I hoped. Then it was simple little mistakes that messed me up. It’s one of those games that when you play it, you think, “I could play this for a good long while when things are going well”, and I had that feeling up until the very end, where I thought, “Oh no, this is ending.” It was fun!
TG: So you played it on one of the Gameboy adaptors for the Super Nintendo that connected to the television?
LB: Yeah, that’s how it worked. The cartridge was placed in an adaptor cartridge and then hooked up to a television. There were people standing around watching me play, and it made it almost a bit more surreal to play. It’s such a private thing usually, playing a Gameboy – I usually pick it up and play it when something boring is on TV or in a car – just random times that I have to myself. It was weird having that experience of having other people watching, especially other people that like to play games, and it made it more interesting.
TG: One of the things that interesting to me about coming to a place like Funspot is seeing things like what happened today with your score, where people start to congregate, including me, watching someone absolutely take control of a game like you did.
LB: It’s fun to watch.
TG: It is, and it reminds me so much of the 80s gaming scene where people would come to local arcades to see players become super players. Back then, they would actually put TV screens on top of games because so many people piled around the games that you couldn’t see them anymore because the crowd would get so big. They would put the TV on top so that you could see the game. I started to see that today where a crowd would come in, and they were watching you play.
LB: I’m sure it was a bit unusual, because it was played at a table, and they were probably asking, “What’s going on here?” because everything else is arcade games.
TG: I see that the Boston Globe is here.
LB: It’s all very funny to be a part of media attention When I started to think there was a possibility I would get the world record, even up until the point I got it, I still thought, “There’s no way this is a world record.” Even when Kelly was having the conversation about what the record was, I thought, “It’s gonna be astronomical, it’s gonna be something that I’ve never gotten – there’s no way I was gonna be a world record player.” When I thought about the process of recording my score, I thought to myself that I never seemed to be bizarrely good at something. Not to say that I’m not good at things, because I am, but there’s nothing that I consider myself exceptionally good at. I’m pretty average at everything that I do, such as sports, games, playing Jeopardy; I’m pretty much average, or maybe above average, at them. Once you become really good at something, it a real boost. You wouldn’t think it would affect you that much, but now I have something that I’m really good at.
TG: And now, in the same way that you looked at these scores and thought they were astronomical, people will look at your score and will see it as the astronomical score they have to beat.
LB: That’s the part about it that I don’t like - I don’t want anyone else to beat it! Now that I have it, I just want it to stay where it is.
TG: I suspect it will be a pretty long time before that will happen – that’s an incredible score.
Ralph Baer, the Father of Home Video Games, walks past us while we’re talking and we take a break from the interview to talk about his accomplishments and his important role in the history of video games.
TG: Now that you’ve got the world record on the lines, do you think you’ll go for the world record for the score?
LB: You know, I definitely will keep that in mind. When I’m playing on my own, and see that I’m beating my personal bests, which was all I’d ever wanted to do with it, I’ve had as much as 935,000 points. You’re just shy of 1,000,000 at that point, and I’d like to get a million, so I’ve thought of that before, probably for the last six months. I’ve thought before, “Oh, I’d love to get 1,000,000”, so at least now I’ll have a little extra motivation. I asked Kelly about how you could have a higher score but lower lines, and he said that if you get a Tetris, a four line, that’s how people were getting those scores. I don’t know that I would ever play like that. For me, there’s something satisfying about getting a line every time, and I don’t know if I could change my frame of mind to say, “Oh, let me go for a higher score”, but I would like to do both – to actually get a lot of lines and go over a million.
TG: Are there any other games you think you could challenge for a world record on?
LB: I don’t think so. I mean, I’m more interested now to see what the world records are on games that I like to play, but there’s not a lot that I like to play. I like Paperboy, I like Super Mario Bros., and after seeing people who are good at that, there’s no way I would ever be that good at it.
TG: What do you think might be next for you in the gaming world?
LB: I don’t know, but certainly if anybody breaks my record, I’ll probably try to break theirs. It’s funny, probably a year ago I was on a little Tetris kick, playing not on the marathon mode but on the Ultra or 40 lines, I don’t remember which, and my husband’s brother was playing. My name didn’t come up because he had put in his name, and he had gotten one of the high scores, and I was like, “This just won’t do!” I had to go and beat his record, and I think that I would do that. Certainly if someone beat my record, I would try to win it back – I want my record to stay.
TG: Lori, congratulations on your new world record on Tetris. I’m sure that your accomplishment will stand for a long time to come.
LB: Thanks for your time, this was fun.
To see Lori’s world record Tetris score, go to http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&p=44371.
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