Video game champ gets recognition By CHRISTINA K. COSDON Clearwater Times Staff Writer PALM HARBOR –December 31, 1982 -  Two months ago Ned Troide became the top Defender video game player with a score of 72,999,975.  He racked up the points with just one quarter, and it took him 62 ½ hours to do it. For this feat, the Palm Harbor youth was pictured this month in Life  magazine’s “The Year in Pictures” issue. HE POSED for the pictures with 15 other video game wizards at 7 a.m. Nov. 9 in the middle of a street in Ottumwa, Iowa, site of the official video game International Scoreboard.  “The police blocked off the street for an hour, and they put all the games out in the street,” Troide recalled Thursday. Life reporter Drew Greenland, who covered the event, called it “a weekend of the meeting of the champs.” Is Troide excited about the national publicity?  He says “yes,” but he’s cool about it.  “It means a lot to me,” he said about his score. HIS SISTER Janel, 12, on the other hand, bubbles with enthusiasm.  “It’s great!” she exclaimed.  And his father Ed says he is delighted.  “I didn’t know how difficult the game was until I tried it myself,” he said, adding he now has new respect for his son’s abilities. So how did the 18-year-old computer engineering student wind up in Ottumwa posing for Life? Entrepreneur Walter Day, 33, who put Ottumwa on the map when he began keeping track of the nation’s top video game scorers, invited Troide there for a weekend of – what else? – video games.  He also invited the nation’s other top video scorers. Day opened up Ottumwa’s Twin Galaxies Arcade a year ago and displays the names and tallies of the top players on a giant scoreboard. When the video wizards arrived, Day put them up in a Holiday Inn and paid the tab, said Troide, who drove to Iowa with his father. Three weeks after he set the Defender title, Troide said, he set another: 65,999,975 on Stargate (an advanced Defender game).  It took him 61 hours.  He has also set other records, he said, and he’s playing for more. Source:St. Petersburg (FL) Times – January 1, 1982