Aazure.656 net.games utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:CAD:teklabs!tekmdp!azure!randals Fri Mar 26 23:56:52 1982 New World Record in "Defender" Set Today BEAVERTON, OREGON (NOP) -- In totally unplanned effort, 16-year old Ron Schwartz set a new official world's record for the Defender video game at 25,370,875 points in just over 34 hours of play, thus toppling the old world record of 24 million points. This new score has been submitted to and verified by Williams Electronics, Inc., makers of the arcade game, and will stand until somebody more masochistic comes along. Ron had no intention of setting out to break the record. He was just stopping by his local 7-11 store to "waste a quarter or two" and ended up staying for the day-and-a-half that it took. He was allowed 5 minutes per each hour of play for rest and food. He finally ended on attack wave "2180 something" when his contact lenses were destroying his eyes beyond his tolerance level. After 12 Coke Big-Gulps and numerous assorted high-priced munchies, he was exausted but happy. His previous high score was only 1.3 million. He found a number of bugs in the Defender software, including a wraparound problem at 256 ships in reserve. It seems the authors of the Defender program chose to put the number of spare ships in a byte variable, and at 257, it wraps around to only one ship! When asked if he was going to go out and play again soon, he said "not a chance". Evidently, he will "try to stay away [from the Defender Game] for a month or two, to prevent nightmares" about all the aliens coming at him. [I don't blame him!] [Submitted by Randal L. Schwartz, Ron's older brother] ["I taught him everything he knows. Now he knows more." -- rls] ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.