Dragster record being questioned

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pacman000
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby pacman000 » January 30th, 2018, 4:49 pm

goldenband wrote:
Sut wrote:Rogers is officially credited with a score of 65,000,000 points on Centipede for Atari 5200; the second-place score is 58,078."

See, now that I could attribute to sloppy record-keeping if his real high score was 65K, since it's easy to imagine how an extra three digits could get added by someone who doesn't know the game or is otherwise not paying attention.

If the Dragster record isn't a fabrication, then at this point I tend to think it was caused by some sort of hardware fault or other glitch. The whole thing feels a bit metaphysical to me: under what circumstances could the program code itself behave in an unpredictable manner? Under what circumstances could a hardware failure alter it and yield a lower time?
Can Centipede even store a score that high? From what I can tell, two bytes would be enough for 58k, but 65 million would require 3-4 bytes.

goldenband
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby goldenband » January 31st, 2018, 1:23 pm

pacman000 wrote:Can Centipede even store a score that high? From what I can tell, two bytes would be enough for 58k, but 65 million would require 3-4 bytes.

No idea, but it seems the whole thing is moot. :)

My only point was that it's easy for me to imagine someone mixing up 65k and 65m in a record-keeping glitch, vs. something like Rogers's score for Wabbit which has been proven impossible (there's a kill screen at a much lower score than he claimed to have gotten) and is obvious fabrication.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby VideoGameCritic » January 31st, 2018, 7:40 pm

Considering all the doctoring technology we have today, I'd give more credence to a 1982 polaroid!

Voor
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby Voor » January 31st, 2018, 8:03 pm


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scotland
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby scotland » January 31st, 2018, 8:15 pm

When that was posted, 5.57 was not tying the world record. Now it is.

I notice he is using a Genesis controller. You should have to do it with a joystick, as God intended

As Dave pointed out, how would we really know these days? The whole thing would have to be witnessed by trusted people, whoever they are.

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pacman000
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby pacman000 » January 31st, 2018, 8:33 pm

With patience, you could fake a whole bunch of stuff in the 80's too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE

Robotrek
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby Robotrek » February 1st, 2018, 1:48 am

I've been crying foul on this guy for decades. His records are all fraudulent. He was just banned from twin galaxies, and his records have been scrubbed from Guinness. The referee that confirmed Todd's records was Todd's friend. He got a score of 1,698 in Wabbit, apparently. A game which only has score increments of 5, and kills you after 1,300. He's a double fake on that record. I can't believe people ever took this joker seriously. Back in the 80's when I was growing up you could get away with this nonsense, not today!

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pacman000
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Re: Dragster record being questioned

Postby pacman000 » February 2nd, 2018, 10:54 pm

From AtariAge:

"Todd Rogers wasn't the only, nor even the first, person to get a 5.51 according to Activision:

In volume 1 of Activision's newsletter there were 2 people tied at 5.61: Chuck Hunter, Sr., and Chuck Hunter, Jr.

In volume 2 there were 3 people tied at 5.57: Todd Rogers, Greg Nichols, and Tony Armstrong.

In volume 3 those 3 were still tied at 5.57.

In volume 4 there were 4 people tied at 5.57 (it doesn't say who the 4th person was).

In volume 5 there were 2 people tied at 5.51: William Stewart and Kevin Kopaczewski.

In volume 6, there were 3 people tied at 5.51: William Stewart, Kevin Kopaczewski, and Todd Rogers.

In volume 7, the final issue, Dragster isn't mentioned at all."

Kevin Kopaczewski said:

"The only thing I remember was the joystick we had was super sensitive, and made the Dragster game interesting because of the times we could get below 6 seconds. We used to fight pver that joystick, never found another one that was that good. I have memory of someone getting a 5.43 time, and I thought it was listed in the Activision new letter. So I didn't think much of my time. I did receive a Dragster patch from activision."

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/274915 ... ved/page-6


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