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General Discussions => Inner Glimpse => Topic started by: leith on November 08, 2005, 02:06:11 am
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Another classic example of Man vs Machine.
Marathon Video Gaming Makes Comeback as Portland Man Plays Asteroids for 27 hours
Asteroids world record almost broken, machine malfunctioned!
Posted by Sean Foster on 3/29/2004 7:21:54 AM
It?s been nearly 20 years since a video gamer has played an arcade game for more than a day on a single quarter. In fact, not since Twin Galaxies conducted the 1st Annual Iron Man Contest for the Guinness Book back in July,1985, has a video gamer stepped to the plate intent on breaking a long-standing video game marathon world record.
But, with the Asteroids world record in his sights, Bill Carlton, of Portland, Oregon, lasted 27 hours before his trusty Asteroids machine malfunctioned, ending his run for glory at the Ground Kontrol Arcade ? a Portland video game center specializing in classic arcade games from the early 80s.
With 60 classic games to choose from at Ground Kontrol Arcade, Carlton chose Asteroids for his ordeal, with other gamers also signing up for future marathons on other game titles -- a sign that players are ready once again to tackle big ticket records; ones that take days of playing to eclipse, demanding tremendous stamina as much as playing skill.
"Carlton?s 12.7 million points put him in 5th place in the all-time Asteroids rankings, Still, he would have had to play for more than 2 more days to match the 41 million-point record established by Scott Safran back in November, 1982.""
Walter Day, editor of Twin Galaxies? Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, the industry?s record book.
A comprehensive report on the significance of Carlton?s feat has been prepared by Robert Mruczek, Twin Galaxies? Chief referee and can be found at http://www.twingalaxies.com
"Long-range, high scoring marathons like Carlton?s were the meat and potatoes of the video gaming world back in the early 80s," says Day, who personally organized many such marathons for Twin Galaxies back in the classic age of gaming. "You were deemed a star if you could take a game for days on a single quarter. It brought tremendous prestige and everybody tried to master their favorite game and marathon it."
During the heyday of the marathon age, Twin Galaxies found itself monitoring as many as a dozen marathons every weekend ? with the biggest crop being held the weekend of April 2-4, 1982, when Twin Galaxies organized the 1982 Defender National Championship, which saw Defender marathons going on simultaneously in 23 different cities around North America. "It was a weekend affair," remembers Day. "The kids took off Friday from school and started in the morning, playing straight through until Monday."
Though Rick Smith of Mission Viejo, California won the National Championship that weekend with 33,013,200 million points, he held the title for barely 1 month before Marvin Norton of Thatcher, AZ snatched Smith?s crown away with a 49 million-point marathon.
The most unique marathon conducted during the golden age of gaming, was the 1st Annual Twin Galaxies Iron Man Contest, which offered eight competitors a chance at winning $10,000 in cash if they could keep their game going on one quarter for 100 hours. James Vollandt of California, playing on Joust, lasted the longest with 67-1/2 hours.
To read more about Bill Carlton?s Asteroids marathon, go to http://www.twingalaxies.com
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im a big fan of the original pacman. the one where he eats like different fruits and veggies. I\'m **** sick on that game. the farthest I ever got was like stage 25 which is almost 2x around. anyone play this game before, oir know where I can get one? GUess I will just check ebay.
Puh-leaze. You are nothing. Here\'s a real pacman player for you. A few years ago, Dave, Mike and I were at Funspot before a Breakfast show and found this guy OWNING a game called Zookeeper. He was going for the world record on that, too. There were video cameras watching and a crowd of 8 people cheering him on. It was surreal.
World Champion - Billy Mitchell
It took almost twenty years, but on July 3, 1999 for the first time ever, a perfect score of 3,333,360 was achieved on Pac-Man by Billy Mitchell at the Funspot Family Fun Center, Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. To achieve this, Billy had to eat every single bonus prize and every possible blue ghost in all 256 levels of the game - a feat which took him over six hours to complete. Not only that but he didn\'t lose a single life. It was the first ever perfect game of Pac-Man.
On completing the game, Billy announced "I never have to play that darn game again". He had been playing for seventeen years. In a recent interview with videogames.com, Billy spoke about how he did it.
I understand the behavior of the ghosts and am able to manipulate the ghosts into any corner of the board I choose. This allows me to clear the screen with no patterns. This was a more difficult method for the initial 18 screens. I chose to do it this way because I wanted to demonstrate the depths of my abilities. I wanted to raise the bar higher - to a level that no one else could match.
Imagine a world in which Billy Mitchell never encountered Pac-Man. Put to good use his sharp mind, excellent hand-eye coordination, incredibly long attention span and his prodigious talent for problem-solving probably would have led the world into a utopian technological society by now. The human genome would have been mapped by the mid eighties. World poverty would have been eliminated entirely. The air and the earth would be clean. We\'d be living in an age of unprecedented peace. Serbs and Kosovars would be frolicking hand in hand cracking jokes about their ethnic differences. Billy Mitchell would have a girlfriend. Instead, Billy Mitchell played Pac-Man and grew a moustache.
(https://thebreakfast.info/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fspyhunter007.com%2FImages%2Fbilly_mitchell_pacman_champion.jpg&hash=30e0fa25e6fd51f0ee60912a6b35a6f81aa6e1d0)
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im a big fan of the original pacman. the one where he eats like different fruits and veggies. I\'m **** sick on that game. the farthest I ever got was like stage 25 which is almost 2x around. anyone play this game before, oir know where I can get one? GUess I will just check ebay.
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i\'ve definitely had my jaw left on the floor quite a few times by watching kids absolutely OWN DDR.. it\'s really fun to watch people who are good at it..
I was gonna say the same thing about Zookeeper.
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i\'ve definitely had my jaw left on the floor quite a few times by watching kids absolutely OWN DDR.. it\'s really fun to watch people who are good at it..
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Dance Dance Revolution (http://klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=7489)
you actually use this game/machine leith???
Oh yeah man. It is soo much fun. I mean the music gets to be a bit much but I like to dance and play vids. Perfect Combo.
I try to only play @ D&B because it really sucks to lose to a 13 year old girl. LOL
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Dance Dance Revolution (http://klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=7489)
you actually use this game/machine leith???
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Odd how these threads come in such a timely fashion. I was cruzing through the old mall I spent many of my childhood days at and ran into my old arcade last weekend. Of course it\'s been barred shut for years now, but it still had that same familiar smell of burnt circuit boards and video nerds. I just stood for a moment and reflected on how much of my Christmas money was blown in Ninja Turtles and the Bear Claw.
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i might have to have a go at a little DDDR (Drunken Dance Dance Revolution) some night..
i\'m just imagining the possibilities if i\'d had a couple DDR pads at my NYE party last year.. see the (in)famous pics in the gallery, and add DDR pads.. GOOD LORD!
Oh god with the crew you had there. DDR pads would have just been too much! " wahtta mean I got step on the pads?"
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Dance Dance Revolution (http://klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=7489)
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ddr????
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i might have to have a go at a little DDDR (Drunken Dance Dance Revolution) some night..
i\'m just imagining the possibilities if i\'d had a couple DDR pads at my NYE party last year.. see the (in)famous pics in the gallery, and add DDR pads.. GOOD LORD!
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picturing leith on DDR with or without drinks = :lol:rotfl:lol:
DDR is something i\'ve always wanted to try, but i\'m WAY too self-conscious to get on one of those things..
Hey Dave they call Alcohol "Liquid Courage" for a reason!
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picturing leith on DDR with or without drinks = :lol:rotfl:lol:
DDR is something i\'ve always wanted to try, but i\'m WAY too self-conscious to get on one of those things..
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The have this place called Dave & Busters in Rockland. I am pretty sure it is a chain kind of place
They serve alcohol and food and it is a huge arcade and they have a shooting gallery thing kind of cool. Tons of pool tables.
I went there a couple of times for company meetings at the last place I worked at. Nothing like drinking a pint and playing some pinball etc
D&B= Way fun time. The 2 I go to need to change out the games more than once a year though! Try DDR after a few drinks. That is a riot!
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My friend had a blast at Disneyworld playing old games in the arcade they have there. Apparently they have a huge room set up with tons of old machines and they only cost a quarter.
When I was growing up the arcade in our town was where the high school kids hung out ala Dazed and Confused. The place got shut down numerous times because of **** getting sold out the back door. The roller skating rink and the pizza places had some good machines but not as many in one place. Donkey Kong and Centipede were all I really needed to kill an afternoon everything else was gravy.
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The have this place called Dave & Busters in Rockland. I am pretty sure it is a chain kind of place
They serve alcohol and food and it is a huge arcade and they have a shooting gallery thing kind of cool. Tons of pool tables.
I went there a couple of times for company meetings at the last place I worked at. Nothing like drinking a pint and playing some pinball etc
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One of these days I\'m gonna buckle down and make my own (http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm)
check mine out.
though it looks like i never posted \'final\' pics.. i\'ll have to get to that..
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One of these days I\'m gonna buckle down and make my own (http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm)
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I heard their is some place in NH? that has hundreds of old arcade and pinball games for a quarter still....
Funspot (http://www.funspotnh.com/)
peep it. it\'s the ****. as a kid, my family used to vacation in Laconia every year, and i\'d always be at Funspot. my best moment was in 1994, racking up 36 wins in a row against people in the original Mortal Kombat. i\'ll never forget what one kid said to me during the streak: "dude, you\'re like a god to me!" :lol:
when the breakfast played plymouth state in \'03, i saw it as the perfect excuse to make a trip to funspot. so me, mike, wolfman, and i believe a couple others, made a nice day out of first stopping in Amherst to eat at The Hangar, then heading to Funspot to play some games for a few hours, then off to the b\'fast show... what a day!
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now, games are like a buck to play....out of control!!
I heard their is some place in NH? that has hundreds of old arcade and pinball games for a quarter still....
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i know too well about this post.... The arcade went the way of the milkman when they started to want 50 cents to play games... Now they have sick games and I still play but on my pc... Halo is still a favorite of mine !
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Ahh The Arcade. The place where a 9-12 yr. old could revel in the newest videogame technology and climb the social geek ladder.
Does anyone remember getting tokens for good grades?
Does anyone remember when the first Mario Bros. or Defender II came in? How freakin\' cool Dragon\'s Lair was?
How Space Ace was such a dud?
Wow the memories.