I have a collection of old Nintendo Power's that I check out every now and then. In their high score section, I usually see if Tetris is one of the featured games. I have been tempted to seek out the high scoring players, just to generate more interest for the Midwest Gaming Classic tournament. Today, I was looking at the January 1992 issue, and saw Scott Anderson from Windsor, ON at the top of the list with a maxout. Nintendo Power didn't verify scores with a full video, but just a photograph. But in 1992, this would have been developed film - not something in a digital format. I'm not sure what kind of reaction this post will bring, but I hope it's received positively. I also think old gaming mags would be a good method for building up a bigger tetris community. I'm sure there are plenty of people that played awesome back in the day, but are not currently playing, or not seeking out Tetris websites. If we find them, and give them info about the tournaments, we'd probably grow to bigger proportions (and as a bonus, they might have even played with friends in the past that were their same skill level).
whoa. seriously, whoa. tried to facebook stalk scott andersons and find our guy- only found one possible match. waiting for a response to my adimttedly awkward PM. if this is true, color me impressed.
I did a little digging of my own and found this: http://www.twingalaxies.com/article/448/canadian-video-game-player-beats-american-to-set-new-world-record-on-ms-pac/ Look at the bottom of the list below the article.... "An abbreviated list follows of CANADIAN players who are listed in the current edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records." "Windsor Scott Anderson Tetris 999,999!" So, that is even TG verified then! Uh, oh, Harry!
For clarity, I think his name is Scott Anderson and he's from Windsor, Ontario. That's craziness. I wonder though - picture or video? Presumably TwinGalaxies would still have a copy somewhere. If not, maybe Anderson does.
Interestingly, my current GameBoy PB is about 1 line short of the record as printed then. Guess I can't stop playing that game after all...
another strange this is this: Grand Forks Jerrod Davidoff Tetris 671,928 Grand Forks (albeit the one in America) is my hometown!
One thing that gives me pause about this max-out is that it would be "Genie-able." Still, very intrigued.
I would assume that photograph evidence would need to show the console with the TV.... Especially considering that Nintendo despised the Game Genie, I would think they would look for something like that. Maybe not, though. Are there any Game Genie codes that would make scoring easier? In 1992, I can't imagine anyone would be able to make a code on their own. Also, the Twin Galaxies thing is very strange. If it was a verified score, where did it go? Did they not convert their old records when they went to digital records?
To my knowledge TG has had times when they have purged massive percentages of their older scores either because they were perceived to be not valid or some other reason. Its an important note as well that this only shows Canadian scores on Tetris (The TG article at least) and only up to 92. I wonder if there had been other TG American maxouts in like 92-97 or something. We could be missing out on a good number of folks.
Hmm. I have all issues of Nintendo Power through the end of 1994. (I guess I could never bring myself to get rid of them.) I could digitize all the Tetris scores from all those issues, and post it here somewhere. Perhaps we'll have a 64 bracket tourney for Portland 2014 once we cyber stalk all the old score submitters, awaken NES tetris nostalgia, and reignite the flame across the land. We'll party like it's 1989. Incidentally, the instructions listed in NP for submitting your score were just to get a good photograph the screen. The submission standard was pretty lax. There is no mention of including the system in the photo.
Winning Battletoads is definitely one of the more difficult accomplishments on the NES. Not as impressive as a Tetris maxout though. I'm currently working on compiling all Nintendo Power Tetris scores from the issues I have. The only maxout was the one Frank showed but there were a lot of really good scores.
Good stuff. I know we just recently had quite a thread on FB about what constitutes proof and what does not, but from my perspective, since things were DRAMATICALLY harder to fake in the 90's on pics, I would accept them all as real really. If the fact that this dude had a max in those days in a pic and submitted it to a mag, I would accept it, sort of at least. We are embarking into all many of grey areas haha
I think when we get fancier leaderboard functionality up and running, we can have a "proof level" column to filter on. Maybe photos or unverified reports can be a different color (e.g. black > grey on the "proof level" scale), or optionally hidden if the viewer only wants to compare scores with video.
Ohh, damn. Guess I didn't get the first max-out in Canada, after all Hopefully, I'll still be able to pull off the first ever video, eventually. I think we just opened Pandora's box.
