I am puzzled by the extreme nature of the action Twin Galaxies took. Throwing out the record I completely understand. But nothing in the article seems to give any indication there was actual cheating involved–from the article it seems most reasonable to think the recorded time was simply mistaken.
Why was the record holder completely banned from all of Twin Galaxies’ leaderboards as a result of this record being shown false?
I saw a youtube video recently, which I’m not going to hunt for to cite, but it showed that Rogers has a very dodgy history; inputting scores himself into the database, tapes mysteriously disappearing, and scores that are flat out impossible, (Dragster, another game where you’re flying a plane and you only lose speed by making vertical movements, yet taking all the obstacles away still you can’t reach the speed he quoted, several games where you only receive points in certain increments that would make his published scores impossible, and several scores too high, as you would reach a game ending “kill screen” before you could get high enough.
That doesn’t clarify it at all. It still seems reasonable to suppose the record was mistaken.
Like, what’s the positive evidence he actually cheated?
ETA: Note that Activision even said in 1982 the time was impossible, that it was .03 seconds faster than the computer-simulated maximum, and then he told them something something and this convinced them.
Which again makes it seem like a mistake rather than cheating.
Rogers also claimed a 15 million score in Donkey Kong, a 1,698 in Wabbit, and a 32.67 in Barnstorming - all of which are impossible. These are not the only ones, either. The Dragster claim is part of a pattern of fraud and corruption, and should be understood in that context.