I thought for this edition of this modest publication, I’d pay homage to a former world champion - the legendary Rodney Day.
Big Rod held the official world Pengo record for just shy of 30 years until his score of 1,110,370 was passed by fellow Australian Paul Hornitzky in 2012.
Back in October 2009, when he was still top dog, the program “Good Game SP”, on Australia's public television broadcaster, filmed a segment on the great man as one of its short profile stories on this country's greatest gamers. The link to the 2 minute 40 second piece is here - http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/stories/s2717947.htm
In case it ever gets taken down, I thought I'd also transcribe it. Just part of the service we like to offer here at PengoQuest. Over to you, Rodney …
G’day, I’m Rodney Day. I’m the world champion Pengo player.
I started playing arcade games in the very late 70’s. Space Invaders just hit the Australian market. It was the biggest thing to hit the market since skateboarding and roller blades. That was when I was hooked. And I started playing Pengo in 1982.
Pengo’s a strategy game. It’s no different to anything else. It’s based on a Pac-man design where you’ve got to work through a maze and kill these little sno-bees running around everywhere and do it within a limited amount of time. That’s obviously where you achieve the highest scores. And that’s the hardest part about it because they do catch up with you after a while.
I was hooked once I first saw it and eventually got to the point that I got drawn so much into it that I ended up playing it all day, and this particular day, it was very much an all-day-into-the-night event, because the maximum score was only about 10-15,000 points per frame so if you can imagine how many frames you’d have to turn to get 1.1 million points. At the end of the day, we had a world record score, which I wasn’t aware of back in 1983.
It was just purely by luck that I found that the score had achieved such a high ranking. My friend had contacted me one day. He said “Have you ever googled your name?” And I said “No, I hadn’t”. So, just with the challenge well I thought I’d google my name and this particular website came up and there was actually a plaque placed on the website for this search for this world champion that no one had known where he’d vanished to. And this person’s name was Rodney Day from Canberra. So I was actually blown away by that because - “Hey, I’m that person”.
After 26 years, 1983 was a long time ago for me and I recall I was 18, 19 years of age and to hold that world record for so long it is, I suppose, a testament to the achievement because the game is still played today and in the Guinness world record books, the third highest ranked score actually occurred recently - I think it was only 2008 - so to achieve it in 1983 and to have the score for so long is a testament to how hard it was to achieve it back then, and I think that that’s something that I’m very, very proud of because it’s something, well, who says they’ve got a world record and the longest world record?
While I’ve never met him, the words by themselves don’t reflect the obviously self-effacing and genuine nature of the guy, who seems a credit to our sport. Good job, Rod! I only wish they’d said where they’d filmed the story - it looks like a real video gaming arcade.
I’ve been googling around for something on the champ himself, Mr Hornitzky, but he doesn’t seem to have much of an on-line presence. However, I did notice he also holds world records in a couple of other video games. Obviously a very talented man, and no doubt among the first picked for any future Australian national arcade video gaming team. Given the singular focus of my gaming career, my ambitions in that regard should probably be confined just to securing a spot on the interchange bench.
In terms of my own play, the highlight of the period since my last post was probably also a world first - two one-million point games in one afternoon. They came unexpectedly after a run of demoralisingly low scores. The first was a steady, albeit welcome, 1,068,090. Fair enough, but with some time on my hands, I thought I’d press my luck and have another go. The second game was slightly better at 1,079,010. It’s good to be back in some form. Otherwise it had been a very quiet month or so - largely due to infrequent play.
The only statistic to update from last time is the total number of million+ games I've now accumulated. That’s up to 22, hopefully with plenty more to come.
