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Games Entertainment

Top Asteroids Scorer Gets Posthumous Award 110

Posted by Hemos from the from-beyond-the-grave dept.
JayBonci writes "Twin Galaxies is running a story on how after fifteen years, the search for the reigning Asteroids high score champion has ended. The late Scott Safran's family was presented with the award (he died several years ago from a falling injury). It's a pretty interesting article on how Scott's family never knew of his achievement until they were contacted. As it turns out, Twin Galaxies is compiling a book of high score champions of major and classic video games over the years."
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Top Asteroids Scorer Gets Posthumous Award More

Top Asteroids Scorer Gets Posthumous Award

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  • Must've cost him a ton of quarters to get to a score like that, only managed to hit about 1,000,000 myself. But I never really played it all that much either.

  • Highest Score (Score:3, Funny)

    by El Pollo Loco ( 562236 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @05:46AM (#3172551)
    Hmmmm...with the worlds highest score maybe they should have enlisted him to star in Armageddon.

    • Re:Highest Score (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      maybe they should have enlisted him to star in Armageddon.

      So who would you trust to deflect a threatening asteroid? BRUCE WILLIS - the world's foremost deep core oil driller, or SCOTT SAFRAN, asteroid blaster, but with experience only in 2D torus space geometry? Tough choice.
    • The time period was more correct for The Last Starfighter [imdb.com]...

      Greetings Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.

      I always wondered why they didn't come out with an actual Last Starfigher video game.

  • Really, putting such an obvious typo on the front page is just sloppy... this is supposed to be a geek site, show a little brain power please!


    The word you were searching for is "posthumous." From Latin 'posthumus'. No homos involved.


    The article isn't all that earthshaking, but it does bring up an interesting thought - this may well be a record that will never be broken. Asteroids is a classic game, and certainly people do still play it and will continue to, but not in the numbers that were playing it at the time. And that was a hell of a high score.


    Too bad the guy died...

  • Gravestones (Score:4, Funny)

    by 56ker ( 566853 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @05:59AM (#3172569) Homepage Journal
    Makes me think of the advertising computer games on gravestones thread. Here lies Scott Safran, who died saving his pet cat. Asteroid's Hall of Fame 1. Scott Safran 41,336,440 points Just another sig link [level80.co.uk]

  • You, too can play asteroids... for free! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by a3d0a3m ( 306585 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @06:03AM (#3172571) Homepage
    Check out the MAME project (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) get the program at the official site here [mame.net]. And get some (illegal) roms at a rom site, like this one here [www.mame.dk].

    adam
    • from www.mame.dk:

      the end
      The roms of [mame.dk] was removed 3
      days ago. [mame.dk] has received a notice
      from a copyright holder forcing us to shut
      down our service.

      We are sorry for keeping you in the dark
      for a few days, but we used the weekend
      to discuss how to handle this sad incident,
      trying to develop new ideas on how to
      provide our old service. The conclusion is
      unfortunatly: no rom downloads.

      [mame.dk] is a hobby project, and we do
      not want to put our personal economy in
      jeopardy on this, and we do NOT want to
      go into legal matters. The [mame.dk]
      project has grown rather large lately, and
      despite many and generous donations, we
      had to throw in the banners to pay for
      bandwidth costs at the last release. So
      maybe we just got too popular.

      We will continue to provide the database
      services at [mame.dk], as well as the
      supporting files (emulator mirror,
      screenshots, artwork, samples etc.), and
      we will consider adding new "features" to
      the system.

      Kind regards, the [mame.dk] team
      Bombjack, Mr.Do and DigDug
    • You might want to research that illegal ROMs issue a bit more -- mame.dk has disabled downloads for legal reasons.

  • Sad really. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by shlamo ( 541027 )
    He seemed a pretty decent guy. He died trying to save his cat and he played asteroids two hours away for a fund raiser. Shame some one like him still isn't around to bring some more joy to this sometimes sorrow filled world.

  • Secret of Mana (Score:2, Funny)

    by kninja ( 121603 )
    I got all the orbs for each weapon up to level nine. I probably won't get an award until I die either...

  • His dying thought... (Score:4, Funny)

    by heretic108 ( 454817 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @06:10AM (#3172580)
    While he was falling onto the rocks below, Scott Safran thought:

    "Oh shit, outta fuel, no time to turn and blast this huge fuckin asteroid hurtlin' towards me!"

  • The Point..... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Astral Jung ( 450195 )
    What is it?

    Ok, this is just a rant, but come on, an actual, printed book of the high scores of video games? Where they actually research and try to track down names of people who played a game years ago?

    Now, I've heard of some pretty inane shit being published in book form, but this is the only thing that I've seen that doesn't have any use for the content, unless the scores are entertaining in some way.

    No, wait, I take it back. I suppose if your name is in the book, you can show it to your friends, but if the book is as large as it's represented on the web site, that doesn't make you all that special, and if it's smaller, that's not exactly going to make copies fly off the shelves.

    I did see a book based on old arcade games, talking about what they were like, who produced them, but that was somewhat usable information, if only for nostalgia or wierd fact using conversation.

    Ok, that's my soapboxing for this month. Feel free to fire at will, mods.

    • Re:The Point..... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by painkillr ( 33398 )
      Yes, you're right. We should write a book about how special *you* are.

      If you don't like the idea of the book, don't buy it. But a lot of people who played pac-man, pitfall, asteroids, tempest, etc. will be able to appreciate the unfathomable accomplishments of something like that guy who had a perfect score in pac-man. A perfect fucking score! He ate all four ghosts every time he swallowed the power pill and he grabbed every piece of fruit. And he kept playing until the very last screen possible.

      Something like that deserves to be preserved in a published book.
      • I've got a question about that 'Pac-Man perfect score' thing...

        How is it *possible* to eat all four monsters every time on every board? On some of the boards, the monsters only turn blue for half a second. The *only* way to eat all four of them when they're blue is to have all four of them on top of each other and right in front of you when you eat the blinking dot. That happens so rarely that I have trouble believing some kid got it to happen four times on every higher-level board...

        Besides, there is no 'end' to Pac-Man; the right half of board 255 is garbled but it's still playable, and board 256 is fine again.

  • that stops us from dying. Video games rule too much.

  • That one Seinfeld episode... (Score:4, Funny)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @07:06AM (#3172650) Homepage
    All I could think of is George doing his best frogger impression trying to save his high score. That was classic.
  • I've often thought about things like this. I'd really like to know what the world record for Tetris on the Gameboy is (hey, it's a classic and almost everyone has played it).. the game doesn't end, does it?

    Other than that, I've been playing a lot of Freecell and Hearts lately. Some geeks on the net have been logging which Freecell games are hardest to complete, [earthlink.net] but it seems like only game '11982' is impossible.

    Anyone ever shot the moon four times in a row in Hearts? :-)

  • Where are the details (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joss ( 1346 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @07:42AM (#3172692) Homepage
    The score on original asteroids goes round the clock after a measly 99990 points, a fairly trivial target. So unless there is a hidden counter there, someone must have had to watch the whole thing and count how many times he did this. Also, how long did it take - does anyone have any details on this ?

    • Re:Where are the details (Score:4, Informative)

      by Loligo ( 12021 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @08:10AM (#3172716) Homepage
      Some time back in the very early 80's, a guy here in Austin by the name of Charles Brown (I Am Not Making That Up) had a locally publicized attempt to break the Asteroids "longest game" record, dunno if score was terribly relevant to him.

      As I recall, he would play for several hours at a time, then take a break without worry about dying.

      Asteroids kept awarding extra ships EVERY 10,000 points, with "no" upper limit (well, in theory, you know how these things work), so you could just walk away long enough to hit the restroom or eat a burger or just walk around for a few minutes without really worrying about it.

      Since it took a fair amount of time to get to each rollover at a million, it should have been no big deal for him to yell out "rollover" in time for someone to come over and verify each one...

      -l
      • Hey, moron, asteroids rolled at 99,990 points, not a million. Did you ever actually play?
        • >Hey, moron, asteroids rolled at 99,990 points,
          >not a million

          What kinda weird-ass counter rolls at 99,990? Wouldn't 100,000 make more sense?

          >Did you ever actually play?

          Well, I haven't played or even seen a real first-gen Asteroids machine in well over a decade, but yeah, they had one next to the Defender at the Safeway down the street when I was about 9 or 10...

          -l

  • I distinctly remember playing Asteroids on my Atari 2600 almost constantly an entire summer. I was in my early teens back then, and my mum would bug me to try (in vain, of course :-) to make me leave the house. In the end I got chestpains from being hunched over my console for to long. That made me leave the house once in a while, but MAN was I hooked! Then suddenly I got bored to death with it (after playing 9 hours straight on the same game) and have never played it since.


    The only other times I have had this game addiction were with Warlords (on my Amiga) and Civilization (on one of my first PC's), but that's another story.

  • Imagine this:

    Scott walks up to a babe in a bar.
    Scott: "Hey how you doin?"
    Babe: "I'm great thanks."
    Scott: "Did I mention that I'm the current reining champion for playing Asteroids?"
    Babe: "Oooooooo!"
    Scott and babe head back to Scott's place and the rest is history ;0)

  • Static Electric Spike or bad Solder or bad pin?!? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16, 2002 @08:11AM (#3172717)
    Many "incredibly too high" high scores that were able to be saved in high score area got there from game malfunctions.

    I myself one day had a Battlezone coinop go nutz and practivally mac out my score...

    I was good but not that good.

    The glitz did not kill the game in play. I did get to see a rare transitional musical interlude stage associated with getting the highest score I assume.

    Putting my initials on the ridiculous score was still a thrill.

    Besides I wonder if Asteroids goes to the score they cited in the article legitimately anyways.

    People used to exaggerate the number of keys they got in pac man past what the machine rom doled out.

    I wonder if he got the score via electronic malfunction?
    • My first job (spring '82) while attending LSU was at a game room across the street (Magic Union on Chimes). There was a guy that came in one morning and rolled his score over about 4 times. We called the one of the TV stations (hey, free publicity), they showed up, and just as they were setting up for the shot, the machine blanked out, and reset itself. Bummer.

      In other news, the only game I was any good at was Alpine Ski. There was only one guy who could beat me, and after he would leave, I'd body-check the machine, and the tilt-switch would reset the machine, along with the high score. Heh.

      • Er. Wouldn't the power switch be a little easier? Unless you were a young 'un and couldn't reach the top of the cabinet... (I'm assuming it wasn't at the bottom of the back panel, then it'd be even sillier)

        On a related note, are you sure there was a tilt switch? You were probably just jiggling a loose harness which caused the reset. I don't remember any video games that included any kind of "tilt" switch.

        Only mention a harness because the JAMMA connector is held by tension, not any locking mechanism, and even today it's possible for it to become disconnected during major moves. Since this supplies power to the board, that means a reboot is certainly possible by bnody checking a powered-on machine.

        Though if you check a modern machine, be expected to have a very angry operator on your hands. Destroying a hard drive costs them money.
  • At first I thought this article was about the amateur astronomer who found the most real asteroids with his backyard, home-built, telescope. That is an article I would like to read.
    • After the comet article, I thought the exact same thing.

      BTW, does anyone else think it's slightly odd that they *expected* his parents would know about the accomplishment?

  • Anyone know what his 3 character handle was? (Score:3, Funny)

    by in.johnnyd ( 534394 ) on Saturday March 16, 2002 @09:17AM (#3172802) Homepage
    just curious...that guy "AAA" was the king of my local pizza joint.
  • Almost makes me want to get back to the arcade and set some high scores on all the machines. Maybe in fifteen years or so I'll be honored too... hopefully not posthumously, though.

    And how long did it take him to score that many points in Asteroids?
    • Unfortunately most games now days don't really stand out as "classic" material. Hell most of my arcade accomplishments happened on games most people haven't heard of; such as 1943 and Shinobi - and that's when the arcade was still pretty popular. Sadly the arcade is continually in decline - and will probably just be the mark of an era (like malt shops in the 50s). I guess with the extremely good console games and good PC games, the ol arcade just doesn't catch the attention of modern youth. But no matter how good console systems get, they can never really top the feeling of defeating a total stranger standing next to you, and seeing the look on his face when you royally kick his ass at a game. Course I don't think I'll miss the episodes where I was the one getting pounded.
  • So I've seen some articles that insist the game is spelled "Asteriods", not "Asteroids". Which is it? Or are there two different games?
    • Speaking of different names, there were tons of clones, too.

      Ahh, the memories:

      Megaroids -- Would not run on my new Mac Plus from the Umich computer kickoff, while it would run on everyone else's. None of their diagnostic programs could find a problem.

      Hemiroids -- A joke name, the game consisted of 3-D prerendered Hemi-asteroids, or asteroids cut in half. Beyond the name, the game was one of the better implementations.

  • The comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" is currently running a story about two fromer arch-rival video game champs finally settling the score on who was the best way back when.

    One of the regular characters was vistited by "The Eliminator", a former 11-year old master, who supposedly was best but never competed against each other in "Space Invaders". This took place in the 80's and basically the characters are two middle-aged geeks going through a middle-age crisis. Crazy Harry is an avid Star Trek Fan and mailman. "The Eliminator" is a character who always wore a helmet simular to the helmet Luke work in the orginal "Star Wars" during his first blind light saber training.

    I wonder if the story line is related. Would have been an interesting tribute (sort of. No disrespect for the dead) except they are battling over who is the ultimate "Space Invaders" master. They are settling over a rematch on an old machine in a pizza parlor's basement that still works.

    An interesting side note: Funky keeps making a comment how the game is running much slower then he remembers. A tribute to the old game programmers who did so much with so little resources for hardware and processing power they had back then.
  • - The player's ship movement and control in Asteroids is more realistic than most of the other videogames: speed and position depend on the acceleration given by the ship's motor instead of the usual unrealistic up down left right controls. The only missing thing is gravitational attraction (which can be found on another vintage game, Gravitar).
    The movement of enemy ufos is not so realistic but they are aliens, they know things about instant acceleration in space that we don't ;) ).

    - The playability of the game is excellent, as the game gets harder my tongue sticks out (that means it keeps me concentrated, good sign for the game, bad sign for me, i'm getting addicted...)

    - Unlike many other games, you just don't shoot to everything that moves, you can play using different tactics (one can either split lots of asteroids so the enemy ufos have a tougher time or try to keep the battlefield tidy)

    - There are some drawbacks like the randomness when hitting hyperspace button, the ufo which won't shoot on one side of the screen to get you on the opposite one, like you can (hey this is a feature...).But they were addressed in "Asteroids deluxe": 1980 and running on a 1.5 mhz 8 bit processor, according to the MAME emulator. Gee.

    Personally my all-time favourite is Xevious, and i love the photorealism of recent games, but if I should vote for the best videogame ever i'd choose Asteroids.
  • I can't find details on how the score was kept. I played a lot of Asteroids around 1980 or so. Not having a lot of money, it was nice to be able to play for an hour on one quarter, but, the game rolls over every 100,000 points. So, how was a score of 41 million verified?

    I'm trying to remember, but it seems like every 100,000 points would take about 20 minutes. Instead of clearing the screen of all asteroids, you would leave one slow one. Then, you would get your ship to fly straight up and down (the screen wrapped) and shoot the little alien ships. These things are 1000 points apiece, and every 10,000 points, you get a new ship. They come out about every 20 seconds, so with shooting time, you could probably kill 2, maybe 3 a minute. If 3 a minute, it would take 33 minutes to get to 100,000 points. 5 hours to get to 1,000,000 points. 200 hours to get to 40,000,000 points.

    Maybe they come out a little faster than that. If you kill one as soon as it appears, you might be able to get one every 10 seconds. So it would only take 100 hours of playing.

    Anybody else who played it got a better idea of how long this took and how they verified the score? I don't want to throw the bullshit flag, but the fact is, the game didn't keep score over 99,990 and I can't believe anyone played for 100 hours straight. The extra ships pile up, and you can just let the game sit while you eat and go to the bathroom, but I have no clue how you would get this high of a score. I remember reading about some guy who was trying for the high score and passed out after 27 hours. I, myself, could never go more than 2 hours before getting tired. I don't know that I ever even got 1 million points.

    It was a good way to while away some time at the Majik Market, though. In a later life, I got good at Missile Command and was able to wrap that at 1 million points. Then all the fighting games started to take over and I got tired of it.

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