Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Asteroids Player Smashes 27-Year Old High Score Record


Once you have achieved such greatness, what meaning can one find in life?
On Saturday, John McAllister sat down at a friend’s house near Portland, Oregon to play a game of Asteroids. By Monday, he was still playing.

At 10:18 p.m. Pacific, he scored 41,338,740 points, a new all-time high score. In doing so, he beat a record that has stood for over 27 years.

The official Asteroids high score of 41,336,440 is the longest-standing record in gaming history, having been set on November 14, 1982 by 15-year-old Scott Safran. He stayed awake for three days to accomplish this feat.[...]

Every few hours, once he had racked up enough extra lives, McAllister got up from his barstool, paced the room, ate a sandwich, then sits back down to play. A last-minute bathroom break Monday evening almost cost McAllister the title: He got down to only two ships remaining before rallying back.

2 comments:

Johnny Cat said...

Asteroids was far and away My Game back in the 80s. Fond memories of dominating the scoreboards, hours of racking up points just shooting the saucers, and that Jaws-like music still seem fresh. I also remember being epically disappointed by the Atari 2600 version.

John said...

I played it on my older brother's 2600. But my favorite game was Combat because there was one level on which I could consistently beat him.