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02-26-2019 at 02:34 PM
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TG oddities: Roy Shildt, and the second TG book of records

Howdy, everyone! I recently conducted a phone interview with Robert Mruczek, which will be posted to YouTube soon. While I had him on the line, I had to ask him about something I discovered trawling through the old TG printed record books a few months ago. Interestingly, this oddity caught Mruczek completely by surprise.

Roy Shildt, a.k.a. "Mr. Awesome", is best known for his Missile Command score from 1985. It was in the first edition of the TG book of records from 1998 (the "blue book", as I call it). This score has been the subject of much argument between Shildt, Mruczek, and Walter Day, which is a story for another time.

But Roy also had scores for four other games in the first TG book: 8,899,200 on Cheyenne, 87,400 on Karate Champ, 47,044 on Mad Crasher, and 703,410 on Return of the Jedi. Each of these were achieved at "Coronation Day", a TG-sponsored tournament at an arcade in Los Angeles in January 1985. Here are all of Roy's scores (at least all I was able to find) in that first TG book:

Note that "Westwood" would appear to be Roy Shildt's home city in northern California. The book makes it clear that each of these scores that were achieved on that date were done at Coronation Day in Los Angeles:

Here's where things get interesting. Those four scores are still in the second edition of the TG book of records in 2007, but only one is still attributed to Roy Shildt. The other three - same score, same date, same location - are now attributed to a "Burton Milward". The same is true for a newer Missile Command score achieved in 2006.

Roy Shildt's name was restored for those four scores in the third edition of the TG book of records in 2009, and his contested 1985 Missile Command score was restored as well. However, in each of the cases where his name or score was restored, his name is misspelled, just as it is misspelled on today's TG leaderboard.

So who exactly is this "Burton Milward"? Given the circumstances, I was kind of expecting it to be a fake name, but he is in fact a real person. He is/was an attorney and historian, and (stop me if this sounds familiar) a practitioner of transcendental meditation at the Maharishi dome in Fairfield, Iowa.

https://www.kentucky.com/living/article169775367.html

https://portals.mum.edu/customized/uploads/TheReview/04-05/11-10-04.html

When I asked Mruczek about this, he was completely unaware. This 2007 book was released after he resigned from TG, and aside from his years of score adjudication, he had no direct hand it its production.

So what exactly is the meaning of all this? My guess - and this is just a guess, and I am open to other suggestions - is that Mr. Milward was offering legal assistance to Walter Day regarding Roy Shildt's various legal threats pertaining to his contested Missile Command score. Thus, the name replacement would have been a jab at Roy, perhaps one only he would have noticed when he went to look up his scores in the new book. The message to Roy would have been "Don't like it? You can talk to our lawyer."

I'm not gonna lie, though. While I found this interesting and a bit shocking, what I found even more peculiar was that there was no reference to this anywhere on the searchable Internet. I assumed a quick search would bring up at least some old CAG forum with people just as curious as I was. Not even common misspellings provided any results. Was I seriously the first person to bring this up after all this time?

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  1. Snowflake's Avatar

    thats a new one on me. Interesting. Gotta be careful with the speculation though, one of walter's greatest attributes and worst attribute, his blessing and curse both, is that he does all he can to avoid confrontation. He just doesnt seem the type to puropsely sneak in an "f u" to anyone. even on the few cases he was provoked so hard as to say something, he can be found soon after apologizing. This doesnt seem to fit walter's pattern. An interesting for sure

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  2. The Evener's Avatar

    That's more great research! - thanks for sharing this with the community. I'd add that Walter was surrounded by a loyal group - gamers for sure, perhaps some former refs - some of whom have had run-ins with Roy over the years. You'd have to try and figure out who was part of the 2007 editing team, and see if other connections leap out.

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  3. SincerelyFranny's Avatar

    Just a note: Could that Westwood be referring to the commercial neighborhood in Los Angeles?

    Westwood, Los Angeles?


    Aside from that. The rest is very interesting. :)

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    Updated 02-26-2019 at 06:05 PM by SincerelyFranny
  4. Marco1019's Avatar

    Quote Originally Posted by SincerelyFranny

    Just a note: Could that Westwood be referring to the commercial neighborhood in Los Angeles?

    Westwood, Los Angeles?


    Aside from that. The rest is very interesting. :)


    I thought the same thing, but it turns out there is a Westwood, CA way up north:


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood%2C_California

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  5. ersatz_cats's Avatar

    Quote Originally Posted by SincerelyFranny

    Just a note: Could that Westwood be referring to the commercial neighborhood in Los Angeles?

    Westwood, Los Angeles?


    Aside from that. The rest is very interesting. :)

    Possibly. We can say for certain that it's a reference to his home area (and not the location of the event), given that everyone else in the first book from that event is listed from all over the country. But whether Roy meant Westwood the city or Westwood a neighborhood/district of L.A., I couldn't say.

  6. SincerelyFranny's Avatar

    Quote Originally Posted by Marco1019



    I thought the same thing, but it turns out there is a Westwood, CA way up north:


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood%2C_California


    I googled that myself! :)

    Perhaps that is why it was changed - For clarification.

    I can only speculate.

  7. RTM's Avatar

    I recall personally deleting ALL of Roy's scores from the TG database immediately prior to my departure on 12/19/06 on the grounds that he had been lying about his two MC scores for years and after discussion with the then-Board of Referees and based on the statute applicable from Walter's own 1st TG Book of Records. Unfortunately Walter disagreed with that decision, I refused to reinstate them and that was one of the three reasons I quit TG immediately thereafter.

    No idea how this "Milward" got into that 2nd BoR...I was gone from TG at that point so exactly how Roy's scores were re-entered into the TG database I will never know as I was no longer privy or accessible to such info...same for the continuation of proofreading effort on the 2nd TG BoR. Hopefully someone from the proofreading team, especially the one in charge of it after I left, can shed some light on this..

    Hopefully they can also explain how I am listed in that book with a score on an arcade title called "Strikers 1945 Part III" as set at Funspot, when (A) I never played the game before and (B) Funspot never even HAD the game in its library.

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