Serious About Fun and Games : Competition: A 16-year-old Hoover High sophomore will represent Southern California in the national Nintendo competition next month.

By DAVID SMOLLAR

Nov. 2, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Don’t be fooled by Alan Hong’s intellectual demeanor and soft-spoken manner.

The slender, 16-year-old Hoover High School sophomore is a demon when it comes to hand-eye coordination and the ability to manipulate shapes and concepts instantaneously--in other words, the perfect Nintendo player.

Alan is one of 30 teen-agers around the nation who will compete in a televised tournament from Orlando, Fla., early next month for $10,000 cash, a 1991 car and $5,000 in merchandise from Nintendo, the world’s largest computer-game maker whose videocassettes are in one of every five American homes.

“It’s a challenge--but I’ve played at least 100 Nintendo games,” he said. “I get their magazine, I watch their TV shows--and I’ve been playing for five years, when the first game, Gyromite Duck Hunt, came out.”

Alan won the Southern California semifinals of the company’s world championship contest last month at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, besting hundreds of other electronic game wizards in several preliminaries and then placing first among seven finalists in a six-minute, 21-second timed video face-off with three of the genre’s most popular games: Super Mario Brothers, Rad Racer and Tetris.

So it is that Alan, the middle child in a family of eight that reached the United States after a harrowing escape from Vietnam in 1979, gets a free trip to Florida.

Not that Alan fits the stereotyped image of the youngster who gives up all other interests to single-mindedly manipulate images on the TV screen.

Alan holds down a demanding academic schedule of advanced English, advanced algebra, Spanish, world history and art. He says he plays Nintendo “about an hour a day,” except when preparing for a tournament or contest. “Homework comes first,” his father said, then the children can play.

Alan does plan to practice a bit more than the average during November, but added that he doesn’t even have the Rad Racer game at home.

“It’s boring,” Alan explained.

Alan considers his oldest brother Cang, a San Diego State University freshman majoring in computer science, his toughest competition. But the lure of Nintendo runs through the entire family.

Another older brother, Phuoc, a junior at Hoover, competed with Alan at the Southern California contest. A younger brother, Huy, and younger sister, Thanh, both finished in the top seven in the age 11-and-under category at the Southern California competition.

“Even my dad and mom (Tong and Hanh Hong) both play,” Alan said. Are they pretty good, as well? “Nah, not really,” he conceded.

His sister, Lien, an eighth-grader at Wilson Middle School, said the family generally “plays for fun.”

“It’s hard to believe what you can win doing this,” Lien said as she watched her brother practice Thursday. Whether in front of the video screen or doing his homework or consenting to an interview, Alan maintains his quiet concentration.

His parents expressed surprise at their son’s prowess but also pride at what he has accomplished with the games.

“There never was anything like (Nintendo) in Malaysia,” his father recalled of the precarious time the family had after escaping Vietnam in a boat. Twice--first in Singapore and then in Malaysia--they were put back to sea by authorities before finally beaching themselves in Borneo. A church family sponsored their emigration to Lancaster, Pa., where they lived for about a year before moving to San Diego’s warmer climate.

Alan says his math studies have helped him some in honing his skills with Tetris, the key game at the Nintendo contest for racking up hundreds of thousands, even millions, of points. Alan exceeded 1 million points during the contest on the Tetris game, which requires the quick manipulation of block shapes into solid patterns.

Alan has also learned some of the scientific background behind computers and the game’s softwares, explaining that a Nintendo rival, the Sega company, has a more graphically appealing game called Genesis because it uses a more powerful microprocessor.

Does this mean he’s headed to a future in science or math?

“I want go to into business,” Alan said.