HIGH SCORE!| VIDEO GAME DOCUMENTARY (2006)

missile command is a very simple game missiles and objects come from the top of the screen downward aiming towards your three missile bases and your six cities if they hit the missile base of the city its destroyed you can launch missiles from your bases to stop this from happening if you hit a missile coming in its destroyed and if you miss it it gets through every set number of points you get extra cities the game continues until you have no cities left [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] Brown control is a retro arcade it's a recreation of the arcades as they existed in the early 80s what some people call the golden era of arcades our first encounter with Bill was not with him but it was with his high scores because every day at the end of the day s trades would have a score of nine nine nine nine zero now this is the highest score you can get on asteroids and asteroids also clears its high score every day so that meant someone was coming in every single day and playing it very carefully so that they would get the maximum possible score without rolling it over because if you get one more point it goes back to zero this is a very unique individual yeah I'm guessing it was a 1980 1981 there was a guy that worked at the bowling alley who was a video game God to all of us that were 12 and 13 you know at that age and but one day while I was going through my rant about how great he was he stopped me and said hey he said look do you want to be good at these he said when you eventually get good at one thing when you see how you got good at it how you had a passion for it and how you you know were driven to to be good at it it'll be easier to be good at other things later but you got to find something it took me a while still to grasp what he had said although I haven't forgotten even though I did not become wickedly good at playing video games back then in the early 80s at the age of 12 and 13 and 14 I went on to become good at other things and for me it was 15 years later when I went back and found these out-of-date games they were almost ready to be called classic arcade gaming when I first broke a million or broke two million or started accomplishing goals that I wanted to I wanted to set when I was 13 bill is one of the dedicated players of today he's not only dedicated and play particular titles he's dedicated in being one of the trendsetters as far as classic arcade game world record holders he knows what he's up against as far as some of the world records from yesteryear and yet he is dogged ly determined to go after a few of them on some key titles his pursuit of asteroids to take down Scott saffron's now 24-year old record was nothing short of spectacular the asteroids attempt of 2003 like November of 2003 is what put me on the map in the world of classic gaming a Portland man is on a quest to destroy as many asteroids as he possibly can William C is going for the world record on the classic video game asteroids it's going to take the 36 year-old technician more than 80 hours of playing the game non-stop to break the record William says he's prepared he just hopes the machine is I'd say around about the 23 hour mark - about the 25 hour mark I was tired now you know my shoulder hurts regardless my forums hurt my fingers hurt regardless my back hurts but I'm tired and it seemed natural because it's you know the end of a day of playing a game I've been up more than a day but it's a day of playing the game he was looking kind of grim to be honest and you know just kind of like he was determined I knew he wanted to do it but it was kind of uncharted territory just three hours later - 27 hour mark I was feeling great I was feeling up for the challenge and I was attacking the Machine I was even commenting on how good I felt and this is all you know 18 minutes before the screen went blank the game zapped it fried something on the power board smoked although coming through the speaker's was the noise we'd never heard before some wild humming whoo it's kind of a heartbreaker no it was really a heartbreaker he was stunned at that one nobody to this day knows what happened all I could think about was how I failed bill honestly I really felt bad about it because I knew he'd worked hard for it the average player doesn't play a game for more than two and a half minutes or so this game lasts for a thousand times that so anything can happen in bills case the worst of the worse happened the game turned itself off the Sunday or going in flipping through it you go god that guy looks familiar huh and I saw the picture hanging up in the lunchroom and that's that guy and he hung his picture up that's anyway I asked me is that you that set that record yeah Terri's what most of us would call a genius I expect someday to see a Mensa you know card come falling out of his wallet somewhere at some point but he's he's you know I'm the talent but he's the brains behind keeping all the electronics going there's a missile command in 1980 it took 25 years but there's one in this garage for celebration Oh congratulations mm-hmm thank you my man appreciate your assistance first board is pretty basic after this they'll start picking up speed put the X far enough under where they're heading and that's it jamón first time you see me play this right yeah yeah yeah it's all the ways way it is is that world record but they can caliber right there or what you could just go for it now six cities gone so far yeah this is a reset it just reset that's a problem what caused that that's a problem a connection to one of those rom chips it's probably flaky few of these were loose these over time they walk out of their sockets when they heat up and cool down to get loose enough go into a reset condition then reset the game not what bill would want to see after about 10 or 15 hours [Music] we're 168 for 180 ripped off twice don't they know who's playing this game there's 1 million I just need a game with 80 of those what's 6 cities to name the world record is 80 million points I'm guessing that will take me between 54 to 56 hours to match providing my luck holds out the game holds out my endurance holes out and I get lucky the power doesn't go out there's no wicked electrical storm and the game doesn't reset just score it's got to do with time Yeah right my highest ever because I fell asleep is 29.7 just under the 30 million mark that leaves me at number 10 so far all-time at least of the ones that have ever been logged and mine is the only one on video hey let's put up some initials here 3,500,000 I'm being the world record on this unit right here the 1980 atari classic arcade game Missile Command had its world record of 80 million points set by Victor Ollie nearly 25 years ago it is his only World Record achievement yet it is outstanding and it's not been broken in 25 years by another gamer it is one of the longest unbroken marathon world records in Twin Galaxies history victorelli has since retired from the world of competitive gaming [Music] Newberg's a small populated town a little over 20,000 people three schools lots of churches there are churches everywhere there's a pool hall a couple blocks down and basically us as far as things to do for teenagers places for them to get away there's one skate park in town pretty much just a small quiet town bill came in and let us know that on his next vacation he was planning on breaking the world record for Missile Command and was interested in doing it here and wanted to know if we could purchased a machine if he tracked one down I've seen him play I have no doubt in my mind that he'll be able to keep going until he breaks the record it's all about as long as the Machine holds out long as it doesn't go kaput you should be just fine you can have fuses within the game bro now capacitors exploding you can have the controller becoming undone screws be coming on loose oil jamming up the optical sensors phosphor burn you can have the the CMOS basically refresh itself during the game a power surge resets the game it's a sad but true aspect of video gaming you have no control over what happens during a marathon at work my daytime job I repair lighting boards lighting equipment I do a little bit of customer service a little bit of support not too much of that I'm really digging being a repair technician there is the pride you get from fixing a broken whatever doesn't matter what it is I have plenty to look forward to at work I I don't sit there worrying about my next world-record attempt I enjoy the benefit of the day going by quickly if I keep my ass moving so I keep my ass moving [Music] with this first practice I started late after working all day I wanted to start and play a long-term game after I was already exhausted and beat up we took the game in on a Friday night and set it up I let the people that were around you know take their turn on and have some fun with it because eventually at some point during the night I was gonna be starting up a game and playing and playing and playing they wouldn't get a chance to play it so finally I got around to playing and it went to about 2.1 them and then at resent it took a small break you know of course this is an hour and 35 hour and 40 minutes later sat right back down played another game to about 1.8 million something like that it reset after this smoke break I'm gonna start it up again play again until they can't handle it no more then reset it start it up again and play it until it can't handle it no more some people are hanging out in the back playing the land games it's 220 in the morning and I'm playing EverQuest and it's a pretty boring game actually you do basically the same thing over and over and over again there's not a whole lot to do here in Newberg so you got either video games alcohol or drugs and I got out of that so it's video games it is hoping my endurance will grow over the next couple of weekends doing this let it beat me up the first week a little bit more used to it the second week beat toughest nails by the third week [Music] let's have a look it's reset three times I'm on the fourth game once it got as high as 4.2 million other time was like 2.3 million even with a messed up board it's all about endurance training right now [Music] [Music] I used to play this game 20-some years ago as a teenager at the pizza parlor and I had a paper route and I was put every penny I had into this game they had this they had asteroids Donkey Kong [Music] space invaders you know the good ones from the past it's weird to be in a situation where you're looking at something that was high-tech when you were growing up it's like oh wow a computer game and now it's you know a Stone Age compared to what they have now my son plays playstation 2 and and he can kick my butt of any of the games this is the only video game I can beat him at he won't even try it's obvious this guy's been playing and he's already the second-best player in town you want to do doubles I'll go for sure thing oh I love that competition pressures on [Music] live kind of morbid to think that there might be a hundred or 200 or 500,000 people that just died because you fail to take out a smart bomb but the computer reanimates them I would hate to let George Bush play this game I mean getting to this level is no big deal for you but usually I'm down to one or two cities I think I've got all six of my I have to spray and pray at this level and you can still pick them off this is where the men are getting separated from the boys right here [Music] oh well 2:05 605 that's a high score there's new personalized new personal high score on a stand-up machine I've done 239 on my computer at home but it's not the same thing Wow good feeling I have to take a break now my hands are tired well man it was great plane again somebody who knows how to play seriously thank you for having this here and you gotta have signs or anything you know most of the time it doesn't work out I've never gotten a number one so really the thing is after it happens let the officiator x' decide watching the videotape and then it's a big extravaganza hey it happened because if you say anything upfront it never works out you're just sitting there with the egg on your face you know I learned that the hard way I'm in the presence of greatness it's good to meet ya it's good to me I think we're gonna extort esmd and then we come back and play some more you know unlike a lot of players I'm really not that addictive I guess it's denial setting in but I'm not really as hardcore as a lot of other people well I'm scrolling down the m's here we go missile command I think I'm gonna call yes sir I was curious about a Missile Command PCB I have finally located a dealership that that's got many boards that they're offering and by the end of this week they will send me another board that they guarantee will hold up all I need is for it to hold up for two and a half three days one time the one time I want it to that's all I need and then I don't care if it resets once a day I'm fine with that okay two weeks from right now if things are going the way I want them to be I will still be sitting at a Missile Command playing and it will be it will be about thirty four hours into the game so in two weeks from right now I'll be 20 hours shy of my goal and you know with a refurbished board from some professionals that are guaranteeing it to me I feel a lot more confident about it as a team videogames was a big part of my life I mean it was a school homework soccer and video games Missile Command it was great was planes going across missiles coming down cities you know and everybody played that was just intriguing at that time I had a friend of mine and said hey why don't you know you're pretty good at this when we try to do a record and we said what kind of record you know let's just try to see how far we can get with this talk to the manager and gave us permission to play they roped it all off and red rope and put the game around the middle of the place and we said okay we'll attempt it if you ask me well Victor hum how long do you really last I don't know I think it was 60 something hours that's probably about it it's probably a blur I know I went home and I was asleep there was no outset of saying hey I'm going to go for the world's record and it was pretty much a lark now let's save it let's do it let's see how long we can do it for you know if we get closer you're close there was expectations I got lucky maybe once you know every five or six years I'd say we were talk about video games so they I have a world record and most people say oh yeah sure you do I've never thought about growl that must Bureau you know that's that's a big record I mean I didn't think it was around now it's just plus it's just a plus you know and whoever it is and and they get 83 million 85 million you know and they want to stay up we've got many nights good luck too [Music] [Music] [Music] all right tape is started we're gonna go at 110 on the clock thirty seconds [Music] four three two I'm sorry there we go and we are 40 minutes into it I'm at nine hundred and thirty thousand but we're not yet at 1 million we're looking for 80 million looking for a hundred million about this 80 million thing that was weak I realize it's gonna be grueling but if I make history it'll be worth it nobody ever nobody ever made history by being a big puss [Music] [Music] [Music] we are at 4.7 million I'm going through a part of my strategy right here where I'm losing cities expecting my technician Terry and my girlfriend Alison to be showing up here shortly so I can bore them with this game my girlfriend and I were talking last night how many women would not enjoy their boyfriends doing this on Easter weekend they're good Friday weekend or whatever that is fortunately I have a very loving understanding woman starving almost at 5 million he looks very good very good it looks like he can hold up for about two and a half days well see we've been talking about it for months and I was thinking about that going home tonight how finally it was here that he was finally going for it so it was exciting that we're getting through this and starting it and we'll see how he finishes up but I had to work all day while he was busy playing so I was very distracted at work basically my mind was on him and I was all excited and bragging to my co-workers about what he was doing and everyone thought that was very exciting so crazy but exciting my prediction is he'll make it to Sunday morning I really think he will I really think he will do it but that I'm being partial Oh shots in every base six cities and I don't brag about that much cuz it doesn't happen much 6 million right there okay so in a four hours 44 minutes we're at 7.2 million almost 7.3 here and just another border to still looking at over two days if everything goes fine otherwise we're looking at another 10 minutes if things don't go find me and I went to almost 600,000 and it reset it couldn't handle it sorry but you can see it pauses when it gets there and it's like what the hell what the what what and then boom just reset [Music] couldn't handle it eight million six hundred thousand in a way it might be a blessing because I did not get enough sleep last night I didn't I couldn't sleep I even took nikon it kept me up I'm not surprised I am not in shock it's what happens every time a marathoner will have a certain resolve about going for the marathon record that no other game will have it's not about can you do it it's about I will do it do-or-die I will do it I will do it regardless of the circumstances I will do it unless I am prevented from completing it trying to keep it dry I love it that's you know that's you bill is yeah right baby what's that addicted to Missile Command there's a new number two for one credit game II get my slippers back on put some food away take care of my nasty breath it was over so fast this time I barely got to break a sweat barely started to go through any of the fruit let's have a look at this huh I got tape one still in the VCR I got tape to written on didn't even need it three four five six seven eight nine all right so what eight hours on each one eighty eight sixty four plus a seventy two seventy two hours worth of recording I had all ready to go I needed just the first tape goofy there's a number of advantages to it not working out one of them is I get to come home and eat a quality meal and I can stop eating like a bird and worrying about not wanting to poop for two days in the back of some nasty game room at some point I'm gonna have to suffer for two days at some point we're gonna get a working board and then I'm gonna have to perform gamers come in terms of different levels of seriousness the serious gamer is the one that's going to not give up on their desire to finish a role-playing game or to beat a world's record these are the ones that will under no circumstances stop trying but we brought the machine back in I pulled the board out and actually I didn't find something required pulling the chips out cleaning the pins real well putting them back in and that was it just some bad connections we put some scores on there and I come out and check it every morning before going to work and check it every night when I come home and I have a backup power supply on there so I can tell if it's reset or anything during the day and no problem so ready to try it again hold down to the two galaxies and see what happens I'm ready to go it's all up to Bill I got two lists here one of them one is my ninja list my ninja list is all the things that I want to make sure I have ready for tomorrow boombox CDs change of clothes fruit peanut bread and jelly sandwiches my special chair both my cameras both my VCRs film tapes cords pillow oj sweatpants slippers pain reliever in cash that's my ninja list for tomorrow got to have all that then I went through and rode out where the standings are right now that's where I am presently and the 10th position it's gonna be hard enough just getting back to where I were you know passing my old score much less you know getting to this 51 million point we're practically at 52 million here on both days and if I get there I don't want to just beat it by a million I want to I want to be I want to beat it by millions I want to blow it away I won't 890 million I'm gonna get 95 million make it to where nobody has the desire to try and beat it 20 years from now yeah I'm a whole lot more confident in the game this time than I was last time I'm more nervous about doing something wrong then I am about playing the game this score can be broken but doing something wrong ahead of time it's very easy to do you know fall down get a car accident on there eat something bad whatever get a case of their runs tonight hurt my finger whatever gouge on an eyeball this is my third and I want it to be the last that way I can move on to another game perhaps take on asteroids I'm not sure yet we got hopefully 12 hours to go and I'm there doing it okay I got a 1980 quarter here this is it just three two one player one button needs to be fixed all right we're going for one o'clock player one button needs to be fixed let me get my technician on this let me go get the cheese of this thing hey where's that quarter I want it back the player one button broke Oh Oh weird [Music] yeah sorry everybody we wait till one one o'clock one o'clock we go [Music] I'm kicking this game's ass kicking it 20 seconds here we go 25 year old quarter Oh going into a 25 year old game 25 cents that's 25 years old going into 25 year old game so that means gonna play for 25 days right yeah that's fine there we go straight up one o'clock [Music] well it's too early to be yawning we're at five hours twenty-seven million minutes five hours 27 minutes we're at eight point seven million I'm starting on Saturday I'm ending it on Memorial Day what I'm curious about is how many other people in town are spending their Memorial Day weekend breaking a world record on the classic arcade video game a handful a couple hundred my holidays and vacations are always either you know one way you could look at it say ruined by these attempts either Missile Command or asteroids Missile Command Astro going back and forth what else you gonna what else you gonna do besides go see the same relatives that you see or the same ocean that you see or go hang out Mount Hood which I always see you know I don't run the risk of breaking the world record on Missile Command everyday so it's worth it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thirty million all right I got 30 million whoopty do whoopty friggin do i let's have a look come on it's 8 o'clock which means it's been 19 hours I'm doing math right now is rough it's been 19 hours just past the 30 million mark feeling a little bit loopy I'm happy though because if I don't make it past any of the other past players and their positions then all of this was done just to bump up my own record still in 10th place anticlimactic but it's the risk we're on you know loopy I'm curious how I'm gonna be feeling tomorrow at this time I hope just as good as I feel right now 31 31 million I was at 800,000 amen alright well we got it on video if I beat the world record I picture it two different ways one will be I just barely get there and then right after I beat the score I turn around face the crowd you know everybody at the little game room we all celebrate and cheer and everything and I'm probably not gonna have the energy to make my way back to the game because you know it's all psychological or I'm gonna have such a rush from finally getting there but after four or five minutes of cheering and relaxing and everything as long as I'm feeling good perhaps I'll go back to the game continue playing it and then if the board hasn't reset on me I'm gonna stay playing it you know every other time man I've been light-hearted about this thing ending and though well here we go why would it let me get all the way to 32 million before screwing up why why not at 12 million why not at 8 million why at 32 million does it do it at this moment right now I can't say whether or not I'll ever go for this again on this game I'm just too good for the machine what a huge compliment I shouldn't be upset hey baby why don't you give me a call because there's no missile command going on I love you bye this is stupid my dear 4:55 Oh 15 get up bill get off come on man start again yes silly effort I told you this was silly stuff to do this is kooky it's kooky hey man I'm turning this off a good thing I brought my ninja list huh [Music] [Music] I could blame the machine I could blame myself I could say I'm sorry but really nothing you could do or say I was going for the record he didn't get it maybe that just shows you how hard it really is people set these records and you might think yeah set a record on some silly game you know what's why would you want to do that he knows he could have done it and he'll if he doesn't try again he'll never get that out of his mind and as as we get older the opportunity will get smaller and smaller until finally it's gone and then he won't be able to try and then then all you have is the regret of not trying again to reach that goal then what you do you live with a regret I don't want to see him live with that I know what that's like I think it's important too maybe not right now this is a bit of a there's a time from warning time to reflect for a while he needs to try it again volumes of information can be crammed through your brain in a tenth of a second sometimes when it held up for a half a second longer than it should have I knew but I was hoping that it wasn't but I knew and sure enough I had to wait an entire another half a second which took a while to go by and my worst fears had come true yeah I'd have I'd had more than a half a second to be terrorized by it just for it to be true sucked sucked worse this time than any other time I was convinced this game was a hundred percent and everything was on the up and up and that we were doing it and we were making a history on that day Memorial Day Newberg Oregon not to be oh it was torturous it's to a point now where I almost expected except this time I really fooled myself into believing that that wasn't going to happen and I was very fooled I was I was sure and I was wrong that's pretty much when I made my decision that next year I'm gonna go ahead and do this and kick its ass huh I am going to be the one to dog out that score it seems pretty impossible even the number-two score is very far up the ladder and yeah if I make it that far and I got a unit that's holding up this there's nothing keeping me from finishing that missile command I'm okay with you know asteroids about average but rollerskating that's my true passion [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Loch SNES Monster

Views: 6,949

Keywords: missle command, high score, video games, retro gaming, loch snes monster, doc, documentary, video game documentary, atari, billy mitchell, donkey kong, arcades, nes, gamers, game chasers

Id: 7ZK4avjCuos

Length: 50min 42sec (3042 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2019