[Arcade] Missile Command Marathon World Record Attempt

[d3scride]

diskborsteMC (http://www.twitch.tv/diskborstemc)

Viktor is currently at over 31m

[D.B. Cooper]

Game over at 56,675,180 due to fatigue.

Missle Command is a game with a few strange glitches and most experts believe that the top TG scores are all bogus. This was a great effort in trying to chase down what is most likely a fake score. I hope he gives this another go sometime.

[chris.point]

Can someone explain the 810k bug to me? I think the game has spontaneous resets (as, I believe, evidenced in the High Score documentary). Sorry my memory's a bit fuzzy.

Edit: I watched some of this marathon and it was incredible. Victor put up an amazing score and I truly wish him the best in tackling this legendary record.

[Slime Slayer]

(as, I believe, evidenced in the High Score documentary).
Link?

[D.B. Cooper]

Watch TV. Watch Movies. | Online | Free | Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/#!watch/135697)

I've actually not watched this but I've met Bill and he's one cool guy. Very friendly and outgoing.

I didn't realize this was on Hulu until I just googled it. Now I've got something to do while I drink beer tonight.

[Slime Slayer]

Watch TV. Watch Movies. | Online | Free | Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/#%21watch/135697)

I've actually not watched this but I've met Bill and he's one cool guy. Very friendly and outgoing.

I didn't realize this was on Hulu until I just googled it. Now I've got something to do while I drink beer tonight.
Can you provide me with the name of the documentary, all I get from that link is a big in your face splash page that says "Americans are selfish" (or maybe it said "Hulu is available to residents of the United States only"... can't remember.)

[ARedLetterDay]

@SteveCass,

The name of the documentary is High Score.

[D.B. Cooper]

Just finished watching. Very cool but it doesn't explain the glitch at all.

[bearhawk72]

"The game features an interesting bug: once a score of 810,000 is reached, a large number of cities are awarded (150 cities plus the continuing accrual of bonus cities) and it is possible to carry on playing for several hours. At some later stage the speed of missiles increases greatly for a few screens. On the 255th and 256th yellow screens, known as the 0x stages, the scoring increases by 256 times the base value. For good players these two 0x stages could earn over a million points. This enabled them to reach a score of approximately 2,800,000 (although only 6 digit scores were shown, so it would display 800,000) and at this point the accelerated rate would suddenly cease and the game would restart at its original (slow) speed and return to the first stage, but with the score and any saved cities retained. In this way it was possible to play this game for hours on end."

According to wikipedia

[D.B. Cooper]

I got this straight from Bill Carlton. At the ending of the filming of High Score they still didn't know that his problem was a glitch and not a hardware problem. It wasn't until 2009 that with the help of John McAllister, they figured out exactly what was going on. The bottom line is anytime you have between 253 and 259 cities, the game resets. This in itself would be pretty easy to handle but there are a couple of other things at work here. When you get to 810,000 points, the game awards you 176 extra cities and when you get to board number 256, all the points are multiplied by 256. These factors make it almost impossible to keep track of how many cities you have. John created a computer program to help but even with that, they have still failed. Bill tells me his best score before they figured out it was a glitch was 45M and that he has had over 20 different machines reset on him. Victor's strategy was to kill off all but 6 of his cities when getting to 810,000 so that he knew exactly how many cities he had in the bank when he got the free 176 and he skipped playing level 256 all together. This of course added a huge amount of time to get his score and caused him to have his game end due to fatigue instead of a game reset. This is a tuff nut to crack. Play agressive and you put yourself at risk of a reset. Play conservatve and it will take you nearly three full days.