Twin Galaxies was built on record-breaking achievements. Though Twin Galaxies Editorial is big on competition and community from all gaming arenas, we haven’t forgotten, nor can we avoid being smitten with the highest scores and the lowest times on the games of today and yesterday. And so we went back into the Twin Galaxies database for January of 2018 to pull together some of our favorite new records together.

Keep in mind there is a lot of database to go through. Even in January alone, Twin Galaxies’ Accepted Submission list (the submitted records that were judged accurate and true by all evidence presented) featured over 30 pages of new record submissions at 15 items per page! As our inaugural list, we chose to focus on Atari 2600 records for this particular spotlight. Each of these records caught our attention for one reason or another and each of their achievers is more than deserving of their place among the greats. These were some of the best Atari 2600 records of January 2018. All scores presented have easily accessible video proof to go along with them, were accepted by the community, and deemed “UNDISPUTED” by Twin Galaxies Adjudication.

Barnstorming (Cartridge) Game 1, Difficulty BB by Clay Karczewski

Atari games are almost always simple to learn due to their visual and mechanical limitations, but they can be extremely difficult to master. Take Barnstorming for instance. This game requires players to fly a plane over towers, dodging birds along the way, and swoop down through the roofs of barns in an attempt to get the fastest time possible. For an Atari game, there’s a lot of information going on and dodging everything methodically can be a lesson in patience along some snap reflexes. That’s what makes Clay “CWK” Karczewski’s run so spectacular. After about an hour and ten minutes of attempts, Karczewski manages a run that dodges all obstacles, connects with all barn roofs, and lands gracefully at a stellar 32.72 seconds, 2 hundredths of a second ahead of the previous record of 32.74 set by Greg Degeneffe! That was some ace flying to say the least, and it puts Karczewski squarely at the top of the Barnstorming boards in a performance that will be tough to beat.

Grand Prix (Emulator) Game 1, Difficulty B by Roger Edwin Blair III

Grand Prix is a heck of a racer and in Game 1, Difficulty B, players are running a chaotic gauntlet between other cars and oil slicks that make getting a grandiose time an incredible endeavor. Roger Edwin “Rogerpoco” Blair III threads the needle several times over in a particular Grand Prix run through the race and lands himself in a stellar 29.61 on his final time. Blair had actually gotten this time once before, but was unaware of just how hard it was to finish so quickly. In fact, it’s so hard that the only other person to share the 29.61 time on the Grand Prix leaderboards with him is Peter Nadalin back in 2016. Before that, the next closest time was set by Andrew Peter Mee at 29.68 back in 2005! Blair was good enough to replicate his score in a presentable way that makes it all the more impressive. The pinpoint accuracy in the final strides of his record make this one exhilarating to see in action.

Vanguard (Cartridge) Game 1, Difficulty B With A Pomeranian By William Rosa

This one is as quirky as it is impressive. Vanguard is a nifty little space shooter full of variety and difficulty in normal circumstances, but William “Snowflake” Rosa takes it one step further with an interesting challenge for himself and everyone out there. Rosa has a special Pomeranian dog who was a rescue by the name of Simba. To that end, Rosa challenged himself to keep Simba in his arms during an entire run of Vanguard and see how far he could get in the game before Simba became fed up with it. Simba and Rosa managed to hang in there for a pretty lengthy amount of time while Rosa put in 40,990 points, solidifying the first mark in this odd new challenge for a Pomeranian Vanguard leaderboard. It may not seem like many points, but consider that Rosa managed that score with an antsy dog in his arms and lap while he played around Simba for around 8 minutes. It might be one of the cutest feats of skill to ever make a video game record. It’s worth noting that Rosa has a record in more traditional Vanguard leaderboards as well at 1,042,570 as of September 2017. He knows his way around to the game to be sure. Good on Simba for being that patient for that long too.

Laser Blast (Emulator) Game 1, Difficulty B by Peter Nadalin

Marathon gaming for a record is always a grueling proposition. How long can you hold out? How long can you keep your reflexes firm and your eyes on the prize? Laser Blast is the type of game you can max out if you’ve got the patience to do so, but it won’t be easy. In your UFO, you’ve got to dodge the attacks of ground forces, lay down fire, and move forward between shooting and movement. It might not sound so hard at first, but the cap score is 1,000,000 points, which can take hours to get to. That’s where Peter “NADS” Nadalin’s score thrives and shines. He captures the 1,000,000 point perfect score mark in an over four hour session to make his mark on the Laser Blast scoreboard. All throughout the run, Nadalin keeps a steel composure even as the return fire from the enemy ships comes a hair’s width close to taking him out at several points. That air tight control gets him to the end in flying colors, and taking out any ship that guns him down by crashing his UFO into them along the way every time is a nice little touch.

Shark Attack (Cartridge) Game 1, Difficulty B by Glen Sampson

This one is for the glitch runners and programming lovers out there. Shark Attack on Difficulty B is a tough game. It’s deep sea Pac-Man with sharks flying across the screen instead of traveling through the maze where you have to collect pearls and bring them to a central chest to get points. At 100 points, the mechanics of the game are dizzyingly fast, but Glen “GSampson35” Sampson figured out a way to bug out the game and leap well past the normal confines to max out his Shark Attack score. It turns out that at a certain point if you use “tunnels” that take you from one side of the maze to the other, you can glitch out the sharks and remove all enemies from the game. Then with certain bugs involving the pearls, Sampson shows how to get values of over 90 points off of single pearls. With these tricks, he finds his way to the game’s max score of 999 before it rolls over back to 0 in a very short span of time. The next closest score (through regular gaming means) comes to 162 from Robert Mruczek, but Sampson most definitely put in the work around this very buggy game to find every angle that would push him to the limits on the Shark Attack leaderboards.

We’re just getting started. These are but a handful of the many achievers and players out there putting in the work at the top of the Twin Galaxies leaderboards, but we’ll continue to bring some of the best and most interesting scores together in one place. Keep achieving and you just might make our list too.