Score Wars is off to the races at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Amateur Tournament is underway, legacy retro champions are breaking their own records, and pro Galaga players are waiting to throw down in a stiff head-to-head competition for their piece of a $10,000 prize and the bragging rights that go with claiming the king of the hill among the best. Generally speaking, the vibe of the Score Wars event from preliminary to tournaments has been overwhelmingly positive. Everybody is thrilled to play and commune among this wonderland of arcade nostalgia. With a great deal on the line when the Pro Tournament comes on Sunday, April 1, we caught up to some of the competitors to get their thoughts on the event itself, a little inside baseball on Galaga, and their feel about the future of the retro scene.

Everything has a start, and though Creative Director Adam “doseone” Drucker has gone to the limit to bring Score Wars together, even Adam admitted in an interview that the first illustrious domino in place to get the rest started was the participation of Phillip Day. Day is former record holder for Galaga Tournament Setting Points and was the first to join the Score Wars event among the Galaga scene. According to him, he saw it as a grand opportunity for him, the game, and the scene around it.

“When I put my record in back in 2009, I left Galaga behind,” Day admitted. “Leading up to the tournament, I started practicing, but I hadn’t played a full game since then. Even so, when they contacted me, I thought it was a fantastic idea. To me it was exactly what the community needed. It’s not really about records to me. It’s about being in this place where players and spectators can come together and get back into the community of the arcade environment again. Setting records at home competing against a few people or a leaderboard is one thing, but the idea of being in a social environment of fellow players and spectators who can engage and see this level of play and competition is great for the game and everyone involved.”

Andrew Laidlaw, current record holder for Galaga Tournament Settings, had similar sentiments.

“What Meow Wolf did here with Score Wars is amazing,” Laidlaw explained. “It pays so much respect to the game and they’ve gone above and beyond to restore so many cabinets to competitive condition, fly everyone in, and build this tournament on a scale that hasn’t been seen before. It’s impeccable.”

More than anything, Laidlaw seems to have found himself blown away by the sheer diversity of talent and play that he’s seen as competitors and hopefuls were playing both freeplay and qualifying rounds for the tournaments.

“There’s so much going on in playstyles,” Laidlaw explained. “I most certainly have a style I play and I’m sort of stuck in my ways, but I look at these other players doing things that I never would have thought to do. I wish I had time to study and borrow from some of the things they’re doing, but I have to stay true to my style and what I know works right now with the competition so close. Despite that, it’s some amazing stuff to see. You got players like Armando, who not many people know, but he came in and put up an amazing score on his first game on the first day.”

Laidlaw refers to Armando Gonazales, who is a relative unknown in the Galaga scene. Gonzales came from California where he honed his craft for Galaga in its fast-fire format in arcade bars. He’s never put in an official record, but on the first day preliminaries of Score Wars, Gonzales played a 6.9 million point game and put the entire pro scene on notice.

“People don’t know me because I haven’t really participated in leaderboards or websites,” Gonzales explained. “In LA, none of the arcade owners really cared about high scores, but in 2014, EightyTwo opened. They have this huge screen above the bar. People could see you playing and would sometimes come up to congratulate or buy drinks for players. I wasn’t really that good at first, and there wasn’t really anyone competing, but once I got up to 2 or 3 million, people started challenging me.”

Armando went back and forth with competitors over the course of two years, but it was in fast-shot Galaga, which is far different from standard Galaga settings. He claims that his fast-fire background led to some undue accolades that he wanted to overcome.

“There’s a lady named Imoto Harney who travels the country running a gaming blog,” Armando explained. “She saw my score in fast-fire and said it was record material, but the fact that it was fast-fire made me feel like a fraud. I wanted to grow my skill in the slow-fire style and show people I could play Galaga just as well ‘the right way’. It was embarrassing at first because I would lose in 5 to 10 minutes, but as I continued to play, I took it up to hours of play. All of my efforts have been unofficial, but I know I have the skill to be here. Slow-fire or fast-fire, official or unofficial, I know I’m a good player, and I’m here to prove it.”

Armando’s skills are amazing, but he’s not the only one shaking up the scene and laying down stellar games. New Zealand Galaga champion Andrew Barrow is on deck and for one of his preliminary qualifier runs, he was able to achieve 10.3 million points in a Marathon setting before he actually bowed out of the game of his own accord. Andrew has made a statement in the tourney, but more than anything, he’s just thrilled Score Wars and the Galaga Pro Tournament exists.

“It’s a dream come true to see this come to fruition,” Barrow explained. “What keeps me coming back to this scene has nothing to do with Galaga or any of the games. I’ve made a lot of great friends doing this and that's the experience that I enjoy whenever I come out to these events.”

When it came to his playstyle for the 10.3 million he put up, Barrow claimed that he shook off some rust from a previous game and began to adapt his style to play safer for his ongoing practice.

“I start in the corners and inch towards the middle,” Barrow described. “The ships always fire directly at you. If you start in the corners and make your way towards the middle little by little, you can sweep across the whole board and get a lot more shots in. If you start in the middle, you miss out on an entire side of the board when you’re sweeping. In that way, I was playing very safe while accumulating a lot of points. I’m going to try to keep that same style going into the tournament.”

While Andrew goes into the tournament confident and willing to lay his strategies on the line, other competitors are playing it a little closer to the chest. John McCallister has been around the retro gaming block for quite a while, having taken top records in games like Joust, Robotron 2084, and more, but he hangs a little further back in the Galaga leaderboards – Something he’s hoping to improve this weekend.

“I’ve played Galaga off and on through the decades,” McCallister explained. “I qualified for this event with about 880,000 points, but I put up a 3.1 million score while I’ve been here at this event. I didn’t think my 880k was going to get me in and when I first arrived, I thought I might have no shot. I haven’t mastered it the way some of these other players have, but I felt pretty good breaking into the millions. It’s going to be interesting.”

Despite doubts, McCallister knows that the difference between Marathon play and Tournament play is going to make a big difference on Sunday. Rumor around the Score Wars room was that McCallister is hiding a few tricks in his back pocket for the event. When asked about this, he had a good laugh.

“I’ve been spreading that rumor pretty good,” he answered.

Nonetheless, McCallister isn’t sneaking under the radar of some of his fellow competitors. Phillip Day claimed McCallister isn’t a player to be underestimated by any stretch of the imagination.

“John McCallister might be the game player of the century across a lot of his arcade efforts,” Day explained. “You’ve got Barrow that just put up a great score in Brisbane, Armando who can clearly play, but nobody’s seen him play on D-level Tournament settings, and Laidlaw, who still holds the world record in Tournament settings. All of these guys are good and are definitely here for a reason.”

Even so, there’s a lot to consider as the competitors go into the Pro Tournament. Tournament play is extremely different from Marathon play. In Marathon play, you play as long as you can and can earn ships, but in Tournament play on D-Level, you get only five ships. On top of that, the players aren’t necessarily playing against the game as much as they’re playing against each other directly. They don’t have to make a record. They just have to beat the player across from them.

“I came in as a rust bucket,” Day joked. “The muscle memory has come back to me, but the concentration is harder to keep. I don’t have any expectations, but if I could slip into the top 3, I would be very happy. I feel like I’m just going to play what I can play and keep in mind that it’s a head-to head tournament. If a couple other high level players bump each other off or slip up, maybe I can sneak into a win. It’s not about the best scores of all time coming into Sunday. It’s about the best scores on the day, in the moment.”

There’s also the technology to consider. Andrew Laidlaw shared that he practiced across many of the machines as much as he could. Despite the fact that the machines involved in the tournament have been carefully repaired to the best settings possible, there’s still subtle differences that can make all the difference when you’re concentrating on competition.

“No criticism against the technicians here,” Laidlaw clarified. “They’ve put tons of time and effort into making sure these machines are working, but I almost had a heart attack when I came in and saw that the cabinets have LCD monitors instead of CRT. It seems like such a slight thing, but there’s a difference in curvature, the depth and richness of color, and the height and width ratios are just slightly distorted and have a different frame rate. Moreover, people will tell you every one of these machines plays a little different. Some have more tension in the fire button and some have tighter joysticks.”

Laidlaw feels as though it’s the subtle differences that will make the Pro Tournament all the more chaotic and interesting.

“People won’t get to cherry pick their cabinet in the tournament, so anything can happen. This is Tournament style with 5 ships. It’s the style of game I set my record in, but I really do believe there’s so many factors that really make it anyone’s tournament.”

At the end of the day, every player has something to prove in the Galaga Pro Tournament. Whether they’re going for the money or the bragging rights, Score Wars has brought together a wealth of talent even beyond the selection of talent we were able to speak with. If those who shared with us are to be believed, it’s anyone’s game come Sunday. But no matter who wins, the contest is going to be a masterclass spectacle to watch.

You’ll be able to catch the Galaga World Championship Pro Tournament in its entirety on Sunday, April 1 at 10 AM PST. Need a place to catch it live? We’ve got you covered with the best place to catch all of the Score Wars action.