Tag Archives: donkey-kong

It’s a bad week for old-timey game record holders — the long-standing world record in the game Asteroids was destroyed on Monday night. Back in 1982, Scott Safran scored 41,336,440 points in Asteroids , and his record stood until Monday night when Seattle locksmith John McAllister scored 41,338,740 points on the arcade version of the game. It was a squeaker, but enough to the record to change hands. Unlike a three hour Donkey Kong kill-screen game, Asteroids records are all about endurance; it took McAllister 58 bleary-eyed hours to beat the high score, and he did it all without the aid of feathered hair or acid wash jeans. According to McAllister, “The toughest part was this morning at three o’clock, six o’clock and nine o’ clock. Three o’clock I got through pretty well; at 6 o’clock, it was a struggled, and at 9 o’clock I felt like my eyes closed a few times.” The machine McAllister was using was a vintage 1979 Asteroids machine, and it’s amazing enough that it still works. Oh, and because it’s important, McAllister signed his towering high score with the intials