Some numbers just stick out. Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games. UCLA Men's Basketball won 88 in a row. And for the classic gaming niche, Victor Ali's 80,364,995 points on a single quarter in Missile Command looms just as large.
Today however, seemingly out of nowhere, a challenger rose up and dethroned the 30-year-old record live on Twitch.tv. Victor Sandberg, aka Twitch user diskborsteMC, played for more than 56 hours and surpassed 81 million points around 2:20 p.m. PST. Sandberg mentioned a desire to reach 100 million in total, but he ended with 81,796,035 total points. It's an effort that's more than good enough to unseat the previous high score.
And, let's answer the natural question, how does Sandberg play for so many hours straight without breaks? Apparently, he's been building up extra cities and allowing them to get destroyed whenever he needs to step away from the machine for a moment. Sandberg said he could theoretically take up to a 30 minute break with such a strategy, but prefers to use only four or six minute breaks instead.
Sandberg's Twitch page is relatively new, but it's filled with test streams of Missile Command play and his previous attempts at the record. Before this most recent event, Sandberg's best was 56,675,180 total points. It's important to note Sandberg is utilizing marathon settings rather than tournament settings for Missile Command, as the two records are kept separately. (Tournament play does not allow players to earn bonus cities, so the scores there are much lower. The record in tournament settings has not eclipsed five million.)
Sandberg's performance will need verification from Twin Galaxies, the arcade turned international scoreboard for classic gaming (featured in the documentary Chasing Ghosts). The organization still maintains the official record keeping and also outlines the proper settings players must use to attempt a record-breaking run.
Atari released Missile Command in 1980 and players have continued to strive for the record ever since (check out this newspaper clipping of a 40-million-plus round in 1981). Record-seeking play is regarded highly enough that it's been the subject of multiple award-winning documentaries: King of Kong (about the battle for classic Donkey Kong supremacy) in 2007, and High Score about Missile Command bragging rights in 2006. If not familiar with Missile Command, check out some basic gameplay from Atari's arcade version below.
Update: The original article published while Sandberg was still alive in his quest for 100 million. Within 20 minutes of the initial brief, Sandberg finally slipped up and ended his run. (The second paragraph has been edited to reflect this.) We apologize—hopefully the Ars jinx doesn't live in infamy like Sports Illustrated covers.
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