A Brisbane man has fuckin’ earned the Guinness World Record for the ‘Point Blank‘ arcade game during a marathon one-hour sesh at Netherworld back in May.
Tyson Hargreaves‘ place as #1 in the world was confirmed by retro game world record authority Twin Galaxies last week, and immortalised at his place of work, Netherworld, earlier this week by artist Shani Finch.
Photo: Facebook.
Hargreaves’ high score is a whoppin’ 201,851 points.
For a successful run, Hargreaves played the classic point-and-shoot game at the Beginner level for about 30 to 45 minutes over the course of an hour, with breaks to make sure the stream and set-up for the adjudicators was dead-on.
Twin Galaxies have got some really specific submission and gameplay rules that need to be followed to the letter, like uploading unbroken footage to safeguard against editing tricks; proving that the game hasn’t been modified by showing untampered Namco-branded chips and parts; and paying for each attempt with $$ or a token.
And Hargreaves trained for his big day; boy, did he train. Having first become an avid fan of arcade games like ‘Point Blank‘ in his early teens, he got his first high score on the Netherworld machine on the day it was installed.
To prepare for his World Record attempt, Hargreaves says:
“I trained on that baby five out of seven days, sometimes more, every single week, for four months. Working at an arcade has its kicks. I had tasted victory and I wanted more. I was climbing a mountain some people hadn’t even discovered and for a while I had some solid competition – basic training saw me improve beyond most other players but I was overtaken three times that I can recount.”
Still he always managed to come back kickin’, returning to the machine to surpass other punters’ records, until one day his boss noticed that Hargreaves’ latest high score was well ahead of the last recorded World Record for the game.
On the day of the attempt Hargeaves reckons “I actually kissed the gun and token beforehand.”
His World Record is actually less than his highest score ever, 204,332, something he attributes to “adrenaline and frustration“. Still, Hargreaves says:
“It felt amazing to finally nail a run that went exactly as planned, to have five months of training pay off and be recognised was phenomenal. The reception since has been incredibly supportive and I hope it will inspire some other people to try and beat some records.”
The two months between the winning run and its acknowledgment comes down to Hargreaves going without internet for that time as he was moving house. But once he finally got his ISP issues sorted, he uploaded the video to Twin Galaxies: “Thanks to the great community of Netherworld and arcades in general, this submission only took a week to be approved.”
Hargreaves says he’s got his eye on ‘Time Crisis 2‘ next.
Photo: Home Leisure Direct.
