Pacman or Running?

You think your friend can make money off of Pacman tourneys? Get a clue.

I scored over 1,000,000 back in 1982. There are people who have been playing for 25 years straight.

Wow, that guy also holds the Donkey Kong record. Amazing stuff.

King of Kong (documentary)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Kong:_A_Fistful_of_Quarters

American wins race to video-game 'Holy Grail' '80s classic Pac-Man yields a perfect score

Associated Press

423 words

19 July 1999

The Globe and Mail

Metro

A14

English

"All material copyright Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. "

Cooper City, Fla. -- Baseball has produced 14 perfect games this century in the major leagues, with David Cone's gem in New York yesterday. Now, after 19 years, Pac-Man has its first.

Florida resident Billy Mitchell, 34, become the first recorded master of the video-arcade classic when he posted a score of 3,333,360 during the July 4 holiday weekend at a New Hampshire arcade.

"This was the race to the Holy Grail," said Mr. Mitchell, who runs two restaurants in southern Florida and markets a brand of hot sauce.

Mr. Mitchell fulfilled his quest to beat several rivals to the perfect game, including two Canadians, according to a press release issued by Walter Day, chief scorekeeper for the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Score Board, based in Fairfield, Iowa. In May, Rick Fothergill of Hamilton, Ont., fell just 90 points short of the perfect game.

No one ever had played a perfect Pac-Man game before, said Mr. Day, editor of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records. Ten billion Pac-Man games have been played worldwide, game experts estimated.

To attain Pac-Man perfection, one must navigate the yellow pie-shaped title character so it gobbles each and every dot, enemy blue ghost, energizer and fruit on the game's 256 levels.

Mr. Mitchell accomplished the feat during a two-day quest at Funspot Family Entertainment Center in Weirs Beach, N.H. That's the site of the Twin Galaxies International Classic Video Game and Pinball Tournament each May, where Mr. Fothergill set his record in May.

Starting anew each time he made a mistake, Mr. Mitchell finally found his groove in a game that lasted almost six hours.

"At about 1.9 million [points], I went off pattern," he said. "I said to myself, 'I'm losing it here. I didn't come this far to lose.' I started talking out loud to myself, talking my way through it. I was able to cheat death, so to speak. It was flawless the rest of the way."

Though hardly a household name, Mr. Mitchell is a high-roller among video-game and pinball players, whose numbers worldwide are estimated at 500 million.

At age 17, Mr. Mitchell set the world record in another video game, Donkey Kong, a title he still holds. Today, he holds the records for Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.

I played pac man for a couple weeks, got the pattern and cracked 100k. However, I've been running all through HS and college and only have 27:17 8k to show for it. I'd tell him to stop wiggling his joy stick and keep running.

malmo, have you seen that movie? I've heard it's absolutely hilarious.

His future is in PAC MAN. Tell him to hang the brooks up. And if PAC MAN doesn't pan out there is always chess.

Could he take on Phil Ivey?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bcYMP9kEPuM

Tell him to stick to running.

If you like docs I would highly recommend the king of kong.

If you have netflix you can watch it on demand. It is funny and thrilling, much better than a documentary on the donkey kong record sounds.

Fox wrote:

Here's a question I have. A good friend of mine is a pretty good runner. He has Pr's of 14:26 5k, 29:55 10k, and a 1:05:28 Half Marathon. He has dreams of running in the 2:15's or even faster for the marathon. He is also a sick nasty PacMan player. He just scored 223,890 points. What do you think is better, his running times or his pac-man score? I told him to give up running and start entering Pac-Man tournaments to make some good cash. There are plenty of 215 marathoners, but how many can go past 200,000 in pac-man?, not too many? So what do you all think?

Gonna have to agree with Malmo here. I've scored WAY more than 223,890 on Pac-Man, and I would get KILLED in a tournament. I will admit to having taken a shortcut as I bought a book with patterns back in the early 80s, but I found I had to modify those patterns slightly, AND the patterns stopped (at least in that book) once you got to the Key levels, so you had to do lots of ad libbing.

Just to clarify, that score is from freepacman.org so we're problably not playing the same version. Also to note, I beat the Atari version of pacman when I was about 10.

ah, all these pac-ing men on here. be still my aching feet. :)

Forget going 2:15.

This is where it's at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY-0yyVt55s

I'm not malmo (obviously), but just slapped it to the top of my netflix queue.

midwesta wrote:

malmo, have you seen that movie? I've heard it's absolutely hilarious.

I went right to Amazon and purchased it. Can't wait to see it.

The first time I ever played Pacman was at the 1981 World XC Championships in Madrid. I think it was Thom Hunt who found the machine at a local arcade. Every day after our runs we played "eat me" (as Hunt called it). It was a great way to get rid of our "potatoes" (pasetas). At the start of the race we joined our fists together in the middle of a college huddle, and chanted the Pacman intermission song!

I actually witnessed Malmo playing Pac Man in State College around 1983 (1985?) or so. It was very intimidating and I thought he might be a little strange, (Special)! This last story seems to confirm that ;)

I watched the movie last weekend. It'd gotten a really good review in our local paper when it came out, so my expectations were probably a little too high. Wasn't as good as I thought it'd be. And if you go to the movie's website and read the discussion board, you'll find the director fudged things a bit to make the film more compelling. But, still, a decent way to pass 90 minutes.

malmo wrote:

The first time I ever played Pacman was at the 1981 World XC Championships in Madrid. I think it was Thom Hunt who found the machine at a local arcade. Every day after our runs we played "eat me" (as Hunt called it). It was a great way to get rid of our "potatoes" (pasetas). At the start of the race we joined our fists together in the middle of a college huddle, and chanted the Pacman intermission song!

great story malmo

Fox wrote:

Here's a question I have. A good friend of mine is a pretty good runner. He has Pr's of 14:26 5k, 29:55 10k, and a 1:05:28 Half Marathon. He has dreams of running in the 2:15's or even faster for the marathon. He is also a sick nasty PacMan player. He just scored 223,890 points. What do you think is better, his running times or his pac-man score? I told him to give up running and start entering Pac-Man tournaments to make some good cash. There are plenty of 215 marathoners, but how many can go past 200,000 in pac-man?, not too many? So what do you all think?

Those sound like the PRs of old C. Fred Joslyn to me...