The current record for Asteroids is 41,336,440. It was set back in 1982, making it the longest-held record in video gaming.
[Fifteen-year-old Scott] Safran, who had been practicing nonstop at the game for the previous two years, agreed to play a marathon session of Atari's popular outer-space shooting game as part of a charity event in Pennsylvania. His mother drove him to the event and lent him a quarter, which he dropped into the machine Nov. 13.
Why has the record held so long? Because Safran's game took three continuous days to play with minimal breaks. Now, a new unofficial record has been set by John McAllister; he played 58 straight hours and beat Safran's record by just over 2,000 points. Oh and those minimal breaks I mentioned:
When he needed a bathroom break, he stepped away from the machine and shed a few lives until his return. It got a little scary towards the end, because he started to run alarmingly short on extra lives as a result of his final bathroom break. He recovered well shortly thereafter, but not without giving all of us onlookers quite the scare first.
For reference, the contest in Hands on a Hard Body lasted 77 hours.
