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After 27 Years, a New High Score For Asteroids
blair1q writes "In a marathon 3-1/2 day session, John McAllister, of Portland, Oregon, has broken the 27-year-old high score for Asteroids, set in 1982 by Scott Safran. The attempt was broadcast via webcam."
I have a whole new appreciation for the awesome, interesting things I do with my life.
Thanks.
For those too lazy to read the article, he scored 41,338,740, with the previous high score being 41,336,440
It took approximately 58 hours, not over 72.
LESS THAN TWO AND A HALF.
When you repeat old news, it might help to GET IT RIGHT.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Once you master the basics, Asteroids is simply a game of endurance: Can you keep from falling asleep?
Anyone remember those dance marathons from the 1950s where people would dance for days to beat the world record?
Okay, neither do I. But I *did* see it in an episode of Happy Days. So that still makes me old.
i bet this guy is powered by hot pockets and mountain dew.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Perhaps he has a son to avenge him.
Hmm. Or given his geek credentials, more likely not.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Just had the idea: Wouldn't it be a sort of cool project to build a robot that plays Astroids? I mean the actual arcade version? Shouldn't be that difficult. Such a device could beat the world record, no? ... In fact, it could probably play endlessly.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
In the game the score wraps around to zero again so the "score" in this case is calculated by taking note of the number of times the score wraps.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
oops.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
...when is he expected to be visited by Centauri?
Ezekiel 23:20
First, props to the quality of old time hardware. Do you think you could still play games on contemporary machines, almots 3 decades in the future?
And second, bathroom break almost costing him the title? There's a REASON these machines were found near the bathrooms in the bars where they have been propped up back in the days! Not to mention that there are other ways to make sure you don't waste a life just because your waste ... well, throws an interrupt. Fffft, amateur! :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
After all who but the Buy More crew has the best nerds ;)
("Chuck" reference :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
For those too young or too old to remember, there is an almost authentic Flash version of the game available over at Atari. http://www.atari.com/arcade/arcade.php?game=asteroids
I bet he has to fight the chicks off with a shitty stick.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Will there be a directors' cut? A special edition boxed set including "the making of..."?
[insert obligatory dig at George Lucas here]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
An Oregon man named Bill Carlton settled in for a marathon session in 2004, which ended in failure when his machine broke down after 27 hours of play. He had scored more than 15 million points, placing him 15th in the record books.
Oh dear lord - and I thought it was bad when my mouse packed in half way through a CS match!
The strategy behind the game is to clear the playfield of all bar a handful of small asteroids, and then wait for the flying saucers to appear. If you're moving fairly quickly up or down the screen you can avoid the saucers with practice. As the game awards 1000 for the small saucers and a bonus life every 10,000 points it's a somewhat easy task to rack up many extra lives. Once the last asteroid was eliminated, the game would restart, increasing the number of large asteroids at the start up to a limit of around 12.
Early versions of the game were even easier as broken game logic resulted in an area of the screen that rendered the player immune to attacks. There wasn't even any means for making the game harder by setting the game's dip-switches - these only controlled the initial number of lives and other sundry settings such as language and coin count. Suffice to say experienced players could easily play the games for hours at a time.
Atari later released Asteroids Deluxe which was somewhat harder. This included a second type of saucer that split into components which homed in on the player, as well as amendments to other parts of the game logic.
So who would you rather have defending us when an asteroid with our name comes around, him or Bruce Willis?
I think he's probably got better eye-hand coordination and his stamina... did he get bathroom breaks?
* deliberately misspelled like the movie which I haven't seen yet, is it any good?
Unfortunately for him, the never before tried personal hyperspace button on his wristwatch actually worked, though he hadn't counted on the potential issues of a having an x, y, and z axis to worry about in a gravity well.
Doh!
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I don't think staying up 84 hours to do something is *particularly* rare
Do you smoke crack or something? I don't think I've ever been awake for 48 hours straight, let alone 84.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
THERE... ARE... FOUR... DAYS!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Once you master the basics, Asteroids is simply a game of endurance: Can you keep from falling asleep? And if you can, will the arcade cabinet you're playing on stay glitch-free and powered up for three days straight?
So it's incredibly easy to master the basics, and all you need to then do is keep from falling asleep and hope your lucky enough that the machine doesn't crash.
So you are saying this isn't a very impressive feat huh? It's definitely not a very interesting one.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Spheres of Chaos is the Asteroids clone I grew up with. There's now a freeware release for Windows and Linux.
This is no usual Asteriods family member, SoC is the difficult nephew. The one with all the good albums who stayed out late and got that girl into trouble back in school. Those particle effects? You can recognise the family traits as being present and correct, but somewhere in the past you can see some Minter has entered the bloodline.
For those unable to afford even the smallest portion of crack, Spheres of Chaos will dilate the pupil of your third eye and give you change from a fiver.
The real killer on Asteroids is the 8 bit life counter, meaning every couple of hours you'd suddenly find yourself with no spare ships. The rules we played forbade suicide to keep the ship count down, otherwise we could just have kept the lives at around 200 and stopped worrying.
On casual days, we'd rack up 240 lives or so, hand the game over to any passing stranger then take 50min off for lunch. The same game was always still going when we came back!
It really is a trivially easy game, so easy we had to invent rules to make it more challenging!
if he beat the record set for the Tron arcade game...
Cousin Dale: "Ya' got Asteroids?"
Rusty: "Naw, but my Dad does."
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
Sometimes a record stands the test of time because none can approach it, other times it stands because nobody feels like bothering to try.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
There is a documentary called "High Score" it is about a guy named "Bill" who tried to get the high score on Missile Command and attempted Asteroids.
It's pretty interesting.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/135697/high-score
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
The posters above me are ball-gargling faggots.
That said, Asteroids is the shit.
Asteroids all over me, don't know where to run,
I'm somewhere between the moon and the sun
I'm in the three ships and there's more on the way
I'll be faced again, I can really play!
Hyperspace, Push on the button and I'm back in the race,
Hyperspace, Shootin' my rockets all over the place,
I'm invisible now, but I'll be back again,
Kickin' the thrust, 'cause I just gotta win, I just gotta win,
There's a ship on the rise and he's shootin' at me,
I rotate my ship on the count of three
I fire and shoot and blow him out of the sky
Push on the buttons and wave bye-bye
Hyperspace, Push on the button and I'm back in the race,
Hyperspace, Shootin' my rockets all over the place,
I'm invisible now, but I'll be back again,
Gonna kick in the thrust, 'cause I just gotta win, I just gotta win,
Hyperspace, Push on the button and I'm back in the race,
Hyperspace, Shootin' my rockets all over the place,
I'm invisible now, but I'll be back again,
Kickin' the thrust, 'cause I just gotta win, I just gotta win,
Hyperspace, Push on the button and I'm back in the race,
Hyperspace, Shootin' my rockets all over the place,
I'm invisible now, but I'll be back again,
Gonna kick in the thrust, 'cause I just gotta win, I just gotta win,
Asteroids all over me, don't know where to run,
I'm somewhere between the moon and the sun
I'm in the three ships and there's more on the way
I'm a space cadet, I really know how to play!
Hyperspace, Push on the button and I'm back in the race,
Hyperspace, Shootin' my rockets all over the place,
I'm invisible now, but I'll be back again,
Gonna kick in the thrust, I just gotta win, I just gotta win,
Hyperspace, Push on the button, push on the button
Hyperspace, Shootin', shootin' all over the place,
I'm invisible now, but I'll be back again,
Gonna kick in the thrust, I just gotta win!
Hyperspace, Shootin', shootin', shootin', shootin'
Hyperspace! I don't know where to run
Hyperspace! Gonna kick in the thrust, I just gotta win!
Hyperspace!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
My initial reaction: Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to use a team of people, each trading off joystick duty while the other(s) take a break?
My later reaction: yeah, like that's really gonna help him get laid!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Setting the high score for desert bus.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You can get the high score in asteroids and win cash on Android, in Vacuum: http://blog.door-6.com/
That's why the record stood for so long.
You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan armada.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
About 6 years ago we had an Asteroids machine at my brother's arcade/amusement trading/repair business. The board was knackered and rather than take the time to rebuild it we sold it to someone who would, and the day before he was due to collect it I was moving it from out back towards the front of the workshop when i somehow slipped or tripped, dropped the barrow and essentially caught the entire thing on the back of my head. I then found myself in a somewhat Atlas-like pose but with the Asteroids cab atop myself instead of the Earth, although if you've ever handled one you'd find they weigh about the same as a planet. We always put the machines first, usually simple things like placing your hand between them and sharp parts of buildings you are manouvering them through so that you'll crush your hand rather than scratch the machine... This time I elected to crush my entire body to save the ancient beast, pulled about twelve muscles in the process of breaking its fall and returning it to vertical, I knew my body would heal but the machine would not.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.