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It took almost twenty years, but on July 3, 1999 for the first time ever, a perfect score of 3,333,360 was achieved on Pac-Man by Billy Mitchell at the Funspot Family Fun Center, Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. To achieve this, Billy had to eat every single bonus prize and every possible blue ghost in all 256 levels of the game - a feat which took him over six hours to complete. Not only that but he didn't lose a single life. It was the first ever perfect game of Pac-Man.

On completing the game, Billy announced "I never have to play that darn game again". He had been playing for seventeen years. In a recent interview with videogames.com, Billy spoke about how he did it.



I understand the behavior of the ghosts and am able to manipulate the ghosts into any corner of the board I choose. This allows me to clear the screen with no patterns. This was a more difficult method for the initial 18 screens. I chose to do it this way because I wanted to demonstrate the depths of my abilities. I wanted to raise the bar higher - to a level that no one else could match.



Imagine a world in which Billy Mitchell never encountered Pac-Man. Put to good use his sharp mind, excellent hand-eye coordination, incredibly long attention span and his prodigious talent for problem-solving probably would have led the world into a utopian technological society by now. The human genome would have been mapped by the mid eighties. World poverty would have been eliminated entirely. The air and the earth would be clean. We'd be living in an age of unprecedented peace. Serbs and Kosovars would be frolicking hand in hand cracking jokes about their ethnic differences. Billy Mitchell would have a girlfriend. Instead, Billy Mitchell played Pac-Man and grew a moustache.

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edit: as someonethinking i actually wrote it o.O

[ September 15, 2004, 04:56 PM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by IanO (Member # 186) on :
 
Was he the guy on VH1's "Obsessed" last night? Big tubby guy "proclaiming the glories of Pac-Man" with a bullhorn in the parking lot?
 

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Posted by Pepek (Member # 3773) on :
 
What? Whatever!- That is so not the highest score he could get... is it? I mean.. if his character dies, doesn't the map refresh? if you lose all your lives is there a continue? there isn't a way to stack points?

mer.. there's something wrong wit this game..

-Jack Montague
 

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Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
 
Don't dis Funspot, foo', it rules for any retrogaming geek. They have one of the best arrays of classic arcade games anywhere.

The world video game championships are help there too, I believe.



-Bok
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I want to know how he did. Some of the later levels had one-blink times on the power pellets. Which means it's technically possible to eat all 4 if you line them up on top of each other, and get them to cross the pellet right as you eat it.

Mistime it and you die, though. He'd have had to do this something more than 800 times, unless the power pellets last longer later in the game.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Getting all 4 ghosts 4 times per screen 256 times is (200+400+800+1600)*4*256 = 3,072,000, which leaves 261,260 points for bonus objects and dots.

Does every level after the key level have the same bonus value (5,000)? If so, then the total in the article isn't correct.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
In general, I salute anyone who climbs a personal mountain, but I have to admit that I kind of agree with the last paragraph.
 

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Posted by Pepek (Member # 3773) on :
 
Go D-Agony! - I don't like this Billy person.. tear him to shreds!

-Jack Montague
 

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Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
 
DIeS LauGhIng!!!!!!!!
 

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Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
 
A bit of my vast respect and admiration for Dag is forever gone.
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
zgator, that made me laugh out loud. Thanks.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Just 'cause I'm good at math?
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
No, because you bothered...lol...

Kwea
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

 

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Posted by Zan (Member # 4888) on :
 
The only thing better than making a pretty girl laugh is making a one-yr old laugh. I can do that one too.

Sorry it was at your expense, Dag. Well, actually I'm not Mr. Know-too-much-about-PacMan-geek.
 

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