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Asteroids High Score World record broken

Shaggy 3

While we don’t report about every single world record that is broken on here, occasionally there are ones which are broken which are just too impressive to pass by. I heard about this on the KLOV forums and then saw that they had a live stream of the event on Aurcade.com. John McAllister broke the record last night at 10:18PM with 41,338,740 points – he had to start on Friday morning to achieve this which meant playing the game for three days straight, no pause button allowed (or possible). Congrats to John for smashing the previous record, which had been held by Scott Safran who set his record 28 years ago in 1982, which also required three days of playing to set. I doubt anyone will be able to topple John’s score anytime soon but that probably won’t stop others from trying. In the meantime, congrats to John for the achievement!

The event was viewable on Aurcade.com. Two other world record attempts occured at the same time but it looks like only John made it. The achievement is also bringing out some nice coverage across the internet, as you can see here. (Image above via Wired.com)

One question I would like to ask is how possible do you think it is for a modern arcade to hold this sort of appeal of competing for a high score on it almost 30 years down the road? Obviously that is quite difficult to achieve once again – Asteroids has the classic popularity going for it and you don’t see them making many games anymore that just go on for eternity (or until the game breaks). It almost makes me wish that current arcades would at least offer an option to just loop over to the beginning so one could at least attempt it – I understand why games have endings, so that incredible players like this can’t hog a machine on one credit for eternity but if it were an option that the operator could set, it makes it possible for better high score competitions. What do you guys think?

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3 comments
igo

Yeah, I think being able to do a second play-through with an increased difficulty would increase replay value on shooters.

Are there any recent games could possibly played non-stop for hours on end? I can’t think of any.

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Shaggy

I don’t know of any either. One game that seems like it should fit that bill is Sea Wolf: The Next Missions but they mention that having seven levels, no mention if it just repeats after that so I doubt it. Tank^3 would be another good candidate for that since it’s otherwise pretty short.

I suppose that racing games which give you a free race for 1st place work in that way, as you can keep going as long as you are really good.

Pinball games still work that way of course, but I certainly would like to see more arcades try it out again.

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RJAY63

An Asteriod competition in my local arcades (UK) would face 2 problems:

1) Indifference (most customers aren’t interested in high scores for modern games, let alone classics);

2) Continous overnight play (staff working time, licensing for opening hours etc).

I think such an events is better off at a dedicated Retro arcade or games convention where the staff/organisers are knowledgeable.

While I would be delighted to see such replay options, I’m not convinced operators would. (I remember staff at various arcades looking annoyed when my Crazy Taxi games lasted over 1 hour on a single credit). Games companies would need to prove these features would fill a coin box.

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