Veteran video gamer has held record Spy Hunter score for a quarter-century

Twenty-five years ago, Paul Dean sat down in a Spy Hunter cockpit arcade machine and set a World Record score that still stands today.

The veteran Riverside, CA gamer, just 20 years old at the time, racked up a score of 9,512,590 points on the Bally/Midway classic on June 28, 1985 in an Upland, CA video arcade.  The game, played at one of several nationwide events to determine the video game scores that went into the Guinness Book of World Records, took over 12 hours to complete and has since gone down as one of the most famed classic arcade gaming records of all time.

"I knew I was having a great game when I was well over 800,000 points on my first man," Dean recalled. "I never thought I’d go over two or three million because I’d never pushed myself that hard in the past, but because this is the Guinness Contest I was going to put my all into it and let the cards fall where they may."

According to Dean, he continued driving and blasting away at enemy spies with encouragement from fellow champion gamer Phil Britt.

"When I was at two million Phil would report to me that there was a player from Virginia close behind me," Paul continued.  "Then when I was at five million Phil Britt reported that there was a guy from Alaska who was also close to my score and Phil urged me to keep playing. These updates went on for hours, pushing me to stay focused and not to make any mistakes.

After all was said and done, Dean discovered the true motive to Britt's Spy Hunter updates.

"Much later after that event and once the results were published I found out Phil had been making up this data in order for me to keep going pushing my score higher and higher," Dean recalled.

 Intitally, Dean gained very little reward for his efforts upon finishing his game.

"A random stranger bought me a hot dog and a coke. That hot dog for some reason was the best tasting hot dog I’d eaten in a long time, as I was starving and had no idea I had been playing for 12 hours straight," Dean said.  "I received no interviews no congratulatory letter or any official congratulations of any kind which I thought to be a bit strange, but being in the 1986 Guinness Book was good enough for me."

Years later, Dean would learn that official scorekeeping website Twin Galaxies had removed the record score, recognizing a gamer with a score that had taken under an hour to accomplish as the champion.  Looking into it further, Dean realized he was not alone.

"I found that other scores besides my spy hunter score from the Published Guinness Masters Tournaments were being tampered with and deleted from the leaderboard at Twin Galaxies in which I felt there was a grave injustice to the history of competitive video gaming," Dean stated. "At this time I looked up articles from the past and recreated them on the internet and created an archival scoreboard of past era’s high scores so that these names and games would not be lost to history. I also contacted the players who’s scores were being deleted as no player that I know of was ever notified when these scores were pulled from TG."

Dean's Spy Hunter score would later be reinstated, along with many others.  The staff responsible for the snub are no longer part of Twin Galaxies, who now has a far more strict policy on score challenges.

"I'm glad things are working out and a more reasonable TG is in place today," said Dean.

In 2005, some 20 years after his Spy Hunter marathon, Dean would play another marathon to set another record score, this time on Frenzy, the sequel to classic-era smash Berzerk.  This past summer, Dean finally received an honor for his video game accomplishments and challenged when he was inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, IA.

"I was completely shocked that I would be honored in such a prestigious event. This is the highest honor you can have as a gamer and to be in the first Inaugural Class is just amazing," Dean stated. "I am just speechless on this as there are so many great players out there. I enjoy being a part of this community and hope I can support this community in years to come."

Dean's historical website on competitive video gaming, with much more info on his Spy Hunter and Frenzy records as well, can be found at http://spyhunter007.com/