Slashdot Mirror
Top Asteroids Scorer Gets Posthumous Award
JayBonci writes "Twin Galaxies is running a story on how after fifteen years, the search for the reigning Asteroids high score champion has ended. The late Scott Safran's family was presented with the award (he died several years ago from a falling injury). It's a pretty interesting article on how Scott's family never knew of his achievement until they were contacted. As it turns out, Twin Galaxies is compiling a book of high score champions of major and classic video games over the years."
Hmmmm...with the worlds highest score maybe they should have enlisted him to star in Armageddon.
Makes me think of the advertising computer games on gravestones thread. Here lies Scott Safran, who died saving his pet cat. Asteroid's Hall of Fame 1. Scott Safran 41,336,440 points Just another sig link
Video Game cheats, hints a
Check out the MAME project (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) get the program at the official site here. And get some (illegal) roms at a rom site, like this one here.
adam
He seemed a pretty decent guy. He died trying to save his cat and he played asteroids two hours away for a fund raiser. Shame some one like him still isn't around to bring some more joy to this sometimes sorrow filled world.
I got all the orbs for each weapon up to level nine. I probably won't get an award until I die either...
While he was falling onto the rocks below, Scott Safran thought:
"Oh shit, outta fuel, no time to turn and blast this huge fuckin asteroid hurtlin' towards me!"
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
The word you were searching for is "posthumous." From Latin 'posthumus'. No homos involved.
:)
And I think the word we're all searching for is "posthemos"
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Yes, you're right. We should write a book about how special *you* are.
If you don't like the idea of the book, don't buy it. But a lot of people who played pac-man, pitfall, asteroids, tempest, etc. will be able to appreciate the unfathomable accomplishments of something like that guy who had a perfect score in pac-man. A perfect fucking score! He ate all four ghosts every time he swallowed the power pill and he grabbed every piece of fruit. And he kept playing until the very last screen possible.
Something like that deserves to be preserved in a published book.
All I could think of is George doing his best frogger impression trying to save his high score. That was classic.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
I've often thought about things like this. I'd really like to know what the world record for Tetris on the Gameboy is (hey, it's a classic and almost everyone has played it).. the game doesn't end, does it?
:-)
Other than that, I've been playing a lot of Freecell and Hearts lately. Some geeks on the net have been logging which Freecell games are hardest to complete, but it seems like only game '11982' is impossible.
Anyone ever shot the moon four times in a row in Hearts?
mogorific carpentry experiments
The score on original asteroids goes round the clock after a measly 99990 points, a fairly trivial target. So unless there is a hidden counter there, someone must have had to watch the whole thing and count how many times he did this. Also, how long did it take - does anyone have any details on this ?
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Imagine this:
;0)
Scott walks up to a babe in a bar.
Scott: "Hey how you doin?"
Babe: "I'm great thanks."
Scott: "Did I mention that I'm the current reining champion for playing Asteroids?"
Babe: "Oooooooo!"
Scott and babe head back to Scott's place and the rest is history
Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?
Many "incredibly too high" high scores that were able to be saved in high score area got there from game malfunctions.
I myself one day had a Battlezone coinop go nutz and practivally mac out my score...
I was good but not that good.
The glitz did not kill the game in play. I did get to see a rare transitional musical interlude stage associated with getting the highest score I assume.
Putting my initials on the ridiculous score was still a thrill.
Besides I wonder if Asteroids goes to the score they cited in the article legitimately anyways.
People used to exaggerate the number of keys they got in pac man past what the machine rom doled out.
I wonder if he got the score via electronic malfunction?
just curious...that guy "AAA" was the king of my local pizza joint.
Almost makes me want to get back to the arcade and set some high scores on all the machines. Maybe in fifteen years or so I'll be honored too... hopefully not posthumously, though.
And how long did it take him to score that many points in Asteroids?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I'm trying to remember, but it seems like every 100,000 points would take about 20 minutes. Instead of clearing the screen of all asteroids, you would leave one slow one. Then, you would get your ship to fly straight up and down (the screen wrapped) and shoot the little alien ships. These things are 1000 points apiece, and every 10,000 points, you get a new ship. They come out about every 20 seconds, so with shooting time, you could probably kill 2, maybe 3 a minute. If 3 a minute, it would take 33 minutes to get to 100,000 points. 5 hours to get to 1,000,000 points. 200 hours to get to 40,000,000 points.
Maybe they come out a little faster than that. If you kill one as soon as it appears, you might be able to get one every 10 seconds. So it would only take 100 hours of playing.
Anybody else who played it got a better idea of how long this took and how they verified the score? I don't want to throw the bullshit flag, but the fact is, the game didn't keep score over 99,990 and I can't believe anyone played for 100 hours straight. The extra ships pile up, and you can just let the game sit while you eat and go to the bathroom, but I have no clue how you would get this high of a score. I remember reading about some guy who was trying for the high score and passed out after 27 hours. I, myself, could never go more than 2 hours before getting tired. I don't know that I ever even got 1 million points.
It was a good way to while away some time at the Majik Market, though. In a later life, I got good at Missile Command and was able to wrap that at 1 million points. Then all the fighting games started to take over and I got tired of it.
Don't forget Maelstrom, which believe it or not is still around and available for Linux.
I read the internet for the articles.