Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/24/video-game-record-setter-accus.html
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My son is a video game record-setter.
I am proud of him for other reasons.
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What annoyed me about that episode is that Frogger machines don’t keep high scores after reboots. So Kramer’s very action of moving the machine would destroy his entry (assuming that that the machine never lost power over the years and lost it long ago).
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I recommend reading the linked article, as well as Omnigamer’s discussion of his methodology at the top of the comment section - it really does seem that he’s both frighteningly knowledgeable of the entire Atari architecture and genuinely attempting to disprove his “cheating” hypothesis without any luck.
Also, it’s worth noting that the “record-setting” guy in question has some ridiculously impossible scores that are nowhere near what anyone else has ever gotten (score in the millions in Centipede, where the next-highest all-time actually-verified score is like 50k). Dude’s a liar.
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That was a key plot point of the episode. George hired an electrician to rig the machine to a battery so he could relocate the machine without rebooting it. Then the battery started running low so George had to race against time to move it across the street and plug it in to the nearest available outlet, giving us this classic scene:
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What is the world coming to?
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I am shocked comma et cetera, et cetera…
Is this what they mean by “ethics in video-game journalism?”
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This seems unsurprising to anyone who has seen “King of Kong.”
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So. . . this is what gives his life meaning?
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It’s good that we’re talking about this important issue - lock him up!!!
Look, I’m sorry, but I really have to ask the question: is this worth caring about?
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To me, the crazy part isn’t that he lied (anybody who watched King of Kong knows that basically everybody lied about their video game achievements), but it’s crazy that:
- He continues to stick to the lie about something that does not matter, at all.
- People are apparently defending him.
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Ah, you mean the holes…
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People draw identity, motivation, knowledge from culture…everything, really.
So, to be a celebrity of one’s sub-culture can be a very big deal. When the guy was young, I imagine this made making money, relationships and even just liking himself much, much easier.
I can see why he’d cling to it.
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At this point, the records have stood for a very long time. There’s nothing to be gained by going back and performing modern day forensics just to quibble over chronological mathematics.
Sometimes the myth is better than the reality and should be allowed to stand. Heaven knows, the history books we have are all certainly the better for this.
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Ha, that aged astonishingly poorly–as a joke, since it’s dead-on otherwise. I watch a few different Super Mario [Maker] experts on YouTube and Twitch. The date’s a little off, but it’s close!
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Pick a thing you care about. Find out someone cheated at it - pro football, cooking reality show challenge, competitive ice sculpting, whatever - and then have someone tell you “IDGAF”.
There’s literally no topic on Earth that every single human being will care about. This is fine. But then don’t proudly jump in and be like “Hey look at me I personally don’t care about this topic!”, because that’s weird.
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