Has the predominant video-game record-keeper been completely discredited for any game outside the streaming era?

Hat-tip to my anonymous friend.

A game-historian, my friend was piqued by a Kotaku article, stating the disqualification and final banning from the preeminent video-game records site Twin Galaxies of the most famous Atari- and Activision-era record-holder (so much so that the Guinness Book of World Records recognized him).

Todd Rogers has been banned from Twin Galaxies for several claimed records -- and, as a result, over 1700 world records nullified.  Back in his day (we're talking 1982 here), it was pretty clear that a picture would be sufficient to indicate a record run.

Two claimed records began the unraveling of the string -- what has been found out since may well unravel Twin Galaxies for an entire era!

First to go was his record in a game called Barnstormer.  Rogers claimed a time of just over 32 seconds.

There's a problem:  That time is completely impossible.  With methods much closer to today's, video-game players have proven, beyond doubt, that time could not be achieved in any degree of play.  We're not even talking computerized "Tool-Assisted Speedruns". We're talking that, in the game where you have to go up and down to avoid obstacles and fly through barns, that you could not even get this time if you took everything out of the game and flew the plane in a straight line start to finish.

They know.  They hacked the game to actually do just that!

The other was the most famous first world record in history:  A drag-race game for the Atari 2600 called Dragster.  Simple concept:  Simulated quarter-mile race, fastest in-game time.

Rogers not only claimed a Polaroid of a time of 5.51 seconds, but he also claims in a YouTube video on the record that Activision asked him to come to Las Vegas for the next year's CES, where he claims to have duplicated the feat.

Bullshit.

It has been established that the best time you could get on that game is 5.57. Again, this is through the use of computerized tools and other such assists.

So what went on here?

Last week, YouTuber Apollo Legend put this damning video on the site.  He has verification of his claims, and what he has said should put not only every record of that era, but every person involved in those records, in serious question as to not only the records themselves, but what else might be involved.


As my friend has pointed out to me, and you can verify in the classic video-game-record documentary "King of Kong", that the Twin Galaxies of the day was a tightly-run clique to circle-jerk the records, and anyone outside this clique would probably not be allowed, or made to feel unwelcome enough they might as well not have been.

Well, in this clique is referee Ron Corcoran, who is believed to have been the sole verifier of all of Rogers' records.

He's serving 30 years in an Arizona prison for raping his daughter.

As I well know from the Sandusky situation:  AT BEST, this kind of a situation would probably reach "worst-kept secret" levels.

But it does make me wonder, especially with the bald-faced liar that Rogers is, what other secrets might lie in the Twin Galaxies clique.

And this includes more famous players like Billy Mitchell, another of the very few world-famous record-holders, one of the people in "King of Kong", and the first to actually play Pac-Man to the point where the maximum score possible was achieved before the number of levels involved would force the game to crash. 

This includes Walter Day, who founded Twin Galaxies.

And now one has to wonder if every record of this era (including more than a few of the famous Donkey Kong records, outside of those done on arcade machines in the presence of witnesses) are completely invalid -- or, worse, what other threads might come unraveled as time goes on here.

Thanks.  More gamers making video gaming look bad...