Originally posted by: Firebrandx
I seem to recall Walter Day had sold the rights to TG a couple years back. I used to work for TG some years ago, but hated it. My brother I and were constantly having to fight with what I call "the old guard" comprised of record holders from the early 80's. First, they resisted every one of our innovative new ideas like speed-gaming records for consoles, and then later we discovered a lot of the records from the '80s were bogus because video proof was not required back then. The worst was "Mr. Activision" (aka Todd Rogers), where I and several others were able to prepare a case and conclusively prove Todd had been completely fabricating world records for various Atari games. To name a few:
Barnstorming (2600): Todd's record, which stood for many years, was proven to be impossible once we broke down the game code and stripped the stage of any obstacles. With the stage completely blank, flying a straight line to the finish was slower than Todd's record. When we presented this evidence, we were attacked by fans and supporters of Todd, and eventually an excuse was cooked up that I lovingly refer to as "the coffee stain excuse". Yes, after being attacked and told we were clueless about how good Todd was, one of the referees covered for him and claimed the 'document' detailing his record had a coffee stain on the part where the record time was listed. Instead of throwing the record out and forcing Todd to do a legit one on video tape, they just simply adjusted the record to be MAYBE possible by adding a half-second to the time.
Sky Jinx (2600): Todd's record time for this game also proved to be bogus, and I showed how it was physically impossible when a modified version of the stage that required only 10 banks instead of 16 showed the plane always came in slower than Todd's record.
Donkey Kong (2600): Todd's record was entered as 15 million. I immediately suspected it was bogus, since the best results from professionals at the game were well under 1 million. I protested the record and Todd claimed there were full video tapes documenting the marathon session. One of the refs (the same one that came up with the coffee stain excuse) claimed indeed there was a set of tapes. I asked one of the lead referees to investigate and verify these supposed tapes of the records. After several months, the lead ref concluded the tapes never existed and removed Todd's record from the database.
Who knows how many records were fudged back before more strict requirements got put in place. After a while of constantly banging heads with the often corrupt "old guard", my brother and I both had enough and quit TG entirely. Eventually the one lead referee we could trust at the time also quit, and that was a major loss for the site.
This is why I don't like TG and have never submitted a score. Plus,I don't really care if I'm recognized as the record holder for a certain game or not. I know I'm good at a particular game or games,and that's all that matters to me. Anyway,even if I did want the recognition,what would I get for my efforts? My name on a website? Whoopdie do. That's a pretty crappy tradeoff for pulling an all nighter (or several) shotting red bulls,etc.trying to get your name on a website. For some games anyway.... I am encouraged to see that Richie Knuckles and Jon eXidy are part owners now. Those guys really do give a crap and I'm sure they will help change things for the better.
