
For nearly three decades Rob Gerhardt’s Q*Bert score of 33,273,520 million points has been an untoppable, seemingly insurmountable goal. Records for other classic arcade games have been toppled and re-toppled numerous times since the early 80s, but Q*Bert’s score has held firm.
The longevity of Rob Gerhardt’s high score has more to do with endurance than anything else — getting 33 million points in Q*Bert takes around 70-hours. That’s nearly three full 24-hour days of playing nothing but Q*Bert, a game most people quit playing out of frustration after about 10-minutes.
Well, believe it or not a man of strong constitution and bladder finally stepped up and destroyed Rob Gerhardt’s record. Yesterday George Leutz racked up a massive high score of 37,163,080 points, a record that took 84-hours and 50-minutes to achieve. I assume the record attempt finally ended when George Leutz’s fingers fell off and/or the Q*Bert cabinet spontaneously burst into dust.
via Examiner




I bet he gets so much tail because of this.
Honestly, I would’ve gotten to 33,273,521 and called it a night (or three nights, or whatever).
There are more than two levels of QBert? Huh. Color me surprised.
I think this is the first game I ever played on a computer
I think this was the first game to make me throw a controller, except we called em joysticks back then. ::leans back in rocking chair, eats a Werther’s Original::
It’s actually not really the endurance that is the issue. It’s the fact that gaming setups as old as Q-bert and some of the other games people try to set records on aren’t stable anymore and tend to reset in the middle of record attempts. It takes just as much luck as it does skill and perseverance to beat some of the records before the game breaks or resets.