Remember Asteroids, that terribly annoying and highly addictive arcade game released by Atari back in 1979?
The game where you have to fly your spaceship around space firing at asteroids and flying saucers?
The game were everything is out to get you, the game you cannot pause and the game which like space itself, never ever actually ends?
Well the record high score for Asteroids that has existed for almost 28 years has finally been beaten.
Back in 1982 when just about everyone was playing Asteroids, young Scott Safran, a 15 year old from the US set the world record of 41,336,440 points whilst playing a marathon session of the game.
Ever since Safran set the high score no one has been able to beat it. The nearest attempt came twenty two years later when Bill Carlton almost did, but after playing for 27 hours his computer crashed and left him in fifth place.
Twin Galaxies had searched for years to find the original world record holder of the score for Asteroids in order to give him a certificate of merit but recently learned that Safran died back in 1989 whilst trying to rescue his pet cat from a roof. The certificate of Merit was posthumously given to Safran’s sister.
Only now in 2010 has Safran’s record finally been beaten, this time by 41 year old John McAllister in Portland. He now holds the world record with 41,338, 740 points and Bill Carlton was there in person to cheer him on.
McCallister’s successful attempt to beat Safran’s record was also watched by geeks and gaming nerds from all over the world as he live streamed the whole thing from his friend’s basement.
He had to go without sleep for 3 days to do it and took breaks only to run to the toilet and to do that he had to make sure he had enough life left to survive whilst he was gone. That guy was really determined.
All McAllister’s waiting on now before he can officially claim the title is for Twin Galaxies, the body that keeps a record of video game scores for the record books, to check his game records and verify it.
“The Asteroids high score record is considered a holy grail” said McAllister. “It’s a title that a lot of people would want, and I wanted it.”
