Video game legend thrown out the record books after times found to be impossible

Rob Beschizza 9:46 am Mon Jan 29, 2018

Game over: Todd Rogers, longtime holder of countless videogame speed-run records, is being removed from the record tables after "the body of evidence" weighed strongly against the credibility of his claimed times.

Player Todd Rogers has been stripped of his world record for finishing the simple Atari 2600 racing game Dragster, after months of debate over his completion time. …Yet Rogers never provided recorded or other proof of his 5.51 time in Dragster, a sticking point in the years that followed. His personal website offered a simple explanation of how he achieved his unbeatable time, while maintaining that Activision's certification of his time — highlighted in one of the company's newsletters — was enough to cement his place on the gaming leaderboards.

Yet when Twin Galaxies introduced a new process for disputing scores in July 2017, Rogers' time in Dragster was one of the first to be challenged. In August 2017, several community members submitted Rogers' 5.51-second Dragster finish for review. A thread on the Twin Galaxies' forum about how Rodgers' Dragster time was technically impossible ran for nearly 300 pages and included almost 3,000 posts

The Dragster record imbroglio not only puts all of Rogers' times out of play, but implied that folks at Activision and Twin Galaxies responsible for verifying times were negligent or complicit. Rogers was also banned from the Twin Galaxies site.

Previously: Video game record-setter accused of cheating

Play Death Trash's gloriously meaty, pukey, nasty demo

Death Trash is a forthcoming indie game by Crafting Legends soon to enter early access, and a ~2 hour demo is out now for Windows, MacOS and Linux. It's an incredible post-apocalyptic grotesque, a perfectly-crafted missing link between the original Fallout games and modern action RPGs with almost no unnecessary moving parts. And it's absolutely… READ THE REST
Web-based Civilization games

Statebuilder is a Civ-like game designed from the ground-up to play on the web (which I just learned you can play Freeciv itself on, too). I fear my morning is in grave jeopardy of disappearing without trace. Hate playing games on the web? Unciv looks like the most current offline Civlike game (in terms of… READ THE REST
Quake is 25 years old

It's 25 years to the day that iD software released Quake, the classic first-person shooter featuring a fully 3D world (including characters!), mouselook (not enabled by default!), and an outstanding soundtrack by Trent Reznor. Until Quake, state-of-the-art first-person shooter games on PC generally used 2.5D graphics techniques to simulate height and depth while usually restricting… READ THE REST
Bullish is the daily newsletter that Wall Street is watching, and it's less than $30 now

Is there such a thing as too much information? In the world of stocks and investing, you might be surprised to find that sometimes, the answer is yes. Traders and the regular rank-and-file investors have so many indicators and other market signposts to monitor that it can turn into information overload, a sort of white… READ THE REST
This roll-up travel bag was called the "greatest suitcase of all time," and it's just $35

With a world full of travel options starting to reopen as we speak, is it still really worth it to tote around a big, bulky suitcase or carry-on bag for getting all of your important stuff from Point A to Point B? Especially if there's an option that might just serve you better? Of course,… READ THE REST
These Raspberry Pi and Arduino courses can pave the way to your robot-building future

You don't have to be Tony Stark to have a whole lot of fun conceiving and building electronic gadgets and doohickeys. Tony knew enough not to give the Vision active reproductive parts — and we're sure you'll show just as much restraint as you start cobbling together a whole bunch of nifty little coding and… READ THE REST