March 14th, 2002 (12:00am) - FAIRFIELD, IOWA- March 14th, 2002 - A Cherry Hill, New Jersey man, who, in 1982, scored the highest score ever on the classic video game Asteroids, has finally been located after a fifteen-year search. He had died in Los Angeles in March, 1989 from injuries received during a fall while trying to save his pet cat from a cornice of his apartment building.
Scott Safran -- who would now be 35 years old -- scored a world record 41,336,440 points on Asteroids at the All-American Billiard Company in Newtown, Pennsylvania on November 13, 1982. At that time, his accomplishment was recognized as the world record by both Atari Games and Twin Galaxies. Safran’s score remains the longest standing world record to be held on a major video game title.
When both Atari and Twin Galaxies moved offices in the early 1980s, all correspondence with Safran was lost and he could never be located again. "Neither Atari nor Twin Galaxies could remember where Safran lived," says Walter Day, chief scorekeeper at the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard -- an organization that tracks scores for the worldwide video game and pinball industries. "Unfortunately," continues Day, "we presumed he was a local player living in the Newtown, Pennsylvania area and could not locate him. However, the 15-year-old Safran lived two hours away in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and was driven to Newtown, Pennsylvania by his parents so he could play Asteroids as part of a fundraiser."
Day tried to locate Safran in the early 1980s to award him a certificate of merit for his Asteroids accomplishment. Day, however, was unable to find Safran, despite numerous searches over the years. With the 1998 re-release of Asteroids by Activision, Safran’s score reentered the limelight, but, once again, the champion could not be found.
Day says: "When we realized Safran’s 20-year-old score may never be beat -- its like Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak of 56 games -- we started looking for him again, in order to honor him with a special award for this tremendous feat." However, Safran remained missing in spite of a lengthy nationwide search, which included attempts by the Scranton Tribune, an online division of ABC News, an Internet talk show, a myriad of postings on the Internet and a news release describing the search issued to 1,500 radio stations by the Wireless Flash News Service.
Three other Scott Safrans were found, however, but none were the missing champion. "One radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma," says Day, "got numerous phone calls saying they knew where Safran was, but the calls turned out to be a hoax." And, online searches by the Scranton Tribune found two Scott Safrans in New Jersey -- both who proved to be the wrong person. Even though the search for Safran was extensively reported on the Internet, it was not until January, 2002 that someone saw the news story and sent Twin Galaxies a tip that connected Safran to his hometown of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Until then, Day believed that Safran had lived in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area. "Wherever he lived, however, we were sure he had moved completely out of the area," says Day.
In spite of Internet attention directed at Scott Safran and his accomplishment, his parents, Mitch and Frann Safran of Cherry Hill, who died only two years ago, never knew their son had attained eternal fame. "His Asteroids record was a thing of the distant past that most of his surviving family members had completely forgotten about," says Marci Billow, Scott’s younger sister who witnessed in-person Scott’s record-breaking weekend in Newtown. "I still have a photograph of my mother handing Scott the official quarter that started the game," says Billow. Now living in Redmond, Washington and working for Microsoft, Billow says: "Scott had a huge heart with an insatiable passion for life. He played hard and made life a fun adventure for everyone around him." Ms. Billow also noted that by his college years, Scott had transferred his passion for Asteroids over to guitar playing and the Grateful Dead.
Scott Safran was born August 19, 1967 in Trenton, New Jersey. He was a 1985 graduate of Cherry Hill High School West. Moving to California after high school graduation, he studied business administration at Pierce Community College in Woodland Hills, California. In March, 1989, he fell from a rooftop while attempting to save his pet cat, Samson, named after the Grateful Dead song, Samson and Delilah. He was buried in Pennsauken, NJ and a Scott Safran Memorial Fund was established in care of the Jewish Community Center, 1301 Springdale Road, Cherry Hill.
"Scott’s surviving relatives are very pleased that he is receiving this posthumous honor," says Marci Billow. "We will probably take turns displaying the award certificate that Twin Galaxies is creating to honor his achievement."
"In the history of video game playing, Asteroids will stand at the top with Pac-Man and Space Invaders," explains John Saxon Wendell, a spokesperson for Twin Galaxies. "Due to its greatness, Asteroids was recently re-released by Activision -- mainly because it is the granddaddy of all competitive video games." From the moment it was introduced in 1979, Asteroids sparked major competitions and high-score attempts and established a generation of video game superstars. Asteroids was the original game that launched the "high-score" craze that Scott Safran became a part of. Players were able to keep games going on a single quarter -- quite often for days on end -- while racking up astronomical scores.
The Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard, based in Fairfield, Iowa, has been keeping score for the world of video game and pinball playing since 1982 and monitors the highest scores on all home and arcade video games, PC-based games and pinball. Its most well known product is the Twin Galaxies’ Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records -- which is a 984-page book containing 12,416 scores from players in 31 countries compiled. Twin Galaxies also conducts an Annul Video Game Festival at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. For more information, contact Walter Day at (641) 472-1949 or go to http://www.twingalaxies.com
