Happy Anniversary, Mr Hornitsky!

For a blog like this, today is a day worth celebrating.

It was exactly one year ago - on 10 July 2012 - that the great Paul Hornitzky, like me a resident of Sydney, Australia, managed to eclipse one of the longest standing records in video game history. That was the iconic million-plus effort achieved on a Pengo machine in a Canberra bowling alley, and then formally recorded, by big Rodney Day way back in 1983. (Of course, as someone who is somewhat less than svelte myself at the moment, I mean ‘big’ in the nicest and most respectful-ist possible way here, Rod.)

Much less is known (by me, at least) of the circumstances of Paul’s new record 12 months ago, but I’m sure it’s a moment, or more likely 3+ hours, that’s seared into his memory.

My job now - nay, my quest - is simply to make sure that Paul’s mark of 1,217,650 doesn’t live to see its second anniversary atop the Twin Galaxies scoreboard, let alone its twenty-ninth.

To that end, and while I hadn’t planned on playing again for a period while I finalised some work matters, I couldn’t help but drop by the museum for a quick game last Saturday morning before heading into work. I didn’t appreciate how quick the game was likely to be when I lost my first Pengo in Act 5 and the second later in the first set. I also didn’t bother keeping track of the set scores as I was going along. As it happened, my third and then the last Pengos performed extraordinarily well and took me to a final score of 736,430 - my fifth best. As before, the machine clocked at 655,350, while I lost my final Pengo in Act 12 of the fifth set.

The quest continues.