Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
A year ago, in Minneapolis, Derek Tower took home $15,000 for winning the world championship of Big Buck Hunter, the popular arcade game. This month, in Chicago, he has a chance to be the first repeat titleholder, having beaten out 4,500 other players to earn a spot in the 64-person tournament. But now, he’s the No. 1 target in every other player’s sights. “Everyone wants to knock you off your throne,” he says.
Tower has been playing Big Buck Hunter since 2009, when he discovered the game at Syberg’s in Maryland Heights, where he continues to work as a server. In preparation for last year’s world championship, he spent countless hours playing the game at various local restaurants and bars, standing with a plastic gun pressed to his shoulder, shooting bucks as they darted across the screen. In a single round, called a “trek,” he might pump and fire 200 shots. Last year, all that practice paid off.
After he won the tournament, his boss framed and hung his picture, taken during the awards presentation, next to the restaurant’s Big Buck Hunter machine—an elated smile, a lucky lion hat, and a four-post trophy with a gold-painted moonshine jug on top. Since winning the title, Tower has played the game with Nitro Circus, a self-described “action sports collective,” and in March he was flown with a couple of other Big Buck Hunter winners to an arcade convention in Las Vegas where publisher Play Mechanix was promoting a new game, In Case of Zombies.
As he prepared for this year’s world championship, the gunslinger had to modify his practice regimen. An expanded qualifying period forced Tower to pace himself, lest he spend too much money trying to post high scores. Tower isn’t worried, though. He’s sticking with the steady and conservative strategy that led him to last year’s victory. Instead of trying to take down faraway bucks (longer shots are worth more points) or those running too close to female game (called “cows”; it’s against the rules to shoot them), he is focused on taking the easy shots.
Tower says he enjoyed at least some of his $15,000 prize, but there’s no telling how much he’s sunk back into the game for a chance to win it again. The dream was never about the money anyway. “You can make the money,” he said. Only a champion can win it.
