1982 Tron Tournament Press Kit and Other Tourney Photos

After my recent post on the 1982 TRON Tournament, someone  (who goes by the name Joe Zydeco) was kind enough to send me a scan of the press kit that Bally created for the tournament. I thought I'd share it with you in case anyone else had use for it. Thanks to the original sender.

But before we get to that, I wanted to post a few interesting photos I've come across recently.

I recently had a chance to look at about 30 issues of a fairly obscure (or at least hard-to-come-by) arcade operators newsletter called Games People Pay (later renamed Games People).

Some of the issues had photos from two of the early major video game tournaments I posed about earlier: the $10,000 California State Championships of late 1981.

There were two of them, held within three months of one another. Both were billed as state championships and both had a $10,000 prize fund.

The first was run by Silco-West and held in 350 of their locations (including 300 7-11s) over several weeks with the finals held on August 29. It was won by John Conley. Here are two photos from the tournament and a picture of the entry poster that was posted in each participating location:

The second tournament was run by Recreation Station (an Anaheim distribution and service company) and sponsored by Stop N Go with the finals .on December 18 and 19, 1981. Here are some photos of the winner: Jeff Davis (by the way, if you didn't know, Matthew Labyourteaux was a dedicated gamer and was ubiquitous at California video game tourneys back in the day). 

Back to the Tron tourney. The press kit had info sheets on each of the 16 finalists. I'm not going to post scans of the whole sheet, since it contained birthdates, but here are the photos:

Richard Ross:

Sterling Ouchi:

Scott Katkin:

Al Cooper:

Allan Watts: 

James E. Hatley:

Matthew John Collins:

Matt Gordon:

Mike Simmons:

Rick Storer:

Robert Withers-Morgan:

Scott McDonald:

Scott W. Starkey:

Steve Baker:

Tim Collum:

Walt Marchand:

And here is the cover of the press kit and some of the included press releases:

Finally, here are a few other interesting photos I've come across:

Here's one of Dave Nutting in 1973 (he's the one in the middle):

Here's one of director Steven Spielberg with a PSE Maneater game:

And here's one of Wilt Chamberlain looking at a Westlake Systems Grand Slam cocktail Pong game, which he was considering buying for his home.