One of my favorite games has always been Atari's Centipede. During high school, I was the best in my area at this game, and even in college there were not many other players who could match my scores. I knew there were better players elsewhere, but none who lived near me in New Hampshire.
In 1999, while visiting Funspot in Weir's Beach, NH, I saw a banner about a classic video game tournament that had recently been held. It also mentioned that there would be a tournament the next year, so I took the opportunity to attend the 2nd tournament. The founder of Twin Galaxies, Walter Day, was there, and he happened to see me playing Millipede. I mentioned that I was actually better at Centipede, so he watched me play that as well. I scored my personal high at the tournament, and he encouraged me to go after the long-standing world record which was 5.5 million. Click here to see the result :-)
At the 2001 Funspot tournament, I concentrated on another of my old-time favorites, Tron. I did set a personal best, and ended up with the third highest score according to the Twin Galaxies record book. However, click here to see what transpired.
Finally, as I said, I have always had an interest in keeping track of my personal high scores. Here is my Personal Score Database with listings going back as far as 1982. I know there are scores missing, probably written on a scrap of paper that has been misplaced or lost. Also, especially with the early scores, I have no idea about what settings the machines were on at the time. For official records tracked by Twin Galaxies, there is much more attention to detail about this since most games have several difficulty levels that affect how the game is played. I don't claim to be able to reproduce many of the scores on many games (even if one could still find them in an arcade somewhere!), but I do claim that the scores were legitimately achieved by myself.