After Pac-man, Gyruss might be my favorite golden age arcade game. I picked one up last Summer for the bavacade, and I have not looked back. I recorded a couple of high scores wherein I finally broke 400K last August, but the bummer was that I wasn’t able to install the hi-score save kit until last month. With that finally set, I now know every time I play is a chance for bavacade fame. But with travel and work taking most of my time over the last month I hadn’t really locked-in for some serious play time until yesterday, and that’s when my Gyruss game went up a notch!
Gyruss hi-score 6-5-2022
631,850! I was kinda surprised myself, I knew I was having a good game, but when I was approaching 500,000 with seven ships left I had an idea I would not only break 500K for the first time, but maybe even chase 600K in the same sitting—and lo and behold it happened. This was one of those games where everything breaks in your favor and you can feel the perfect blend of dumb luck and brute force experience paying off, I want to thank my wife, my children, the academy, and all the hordes of bava faithful. This is the apex of my career!*
Gyruss hi-score 6-5-2022
Funny enough I had stopped playing Gyruss this month in order to focus on trying to get better at Robotron (trying to break my personal 200K ceiling), which is not going well. So, in order to re-invigorate my confidence, I somewhat reluctantly sat down at Gyruss and the rest is bavacade history….for now.
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*To put this in context the all-time hi-score is 1,304,100 set by Richard Marsh in 2004. So, no victory laps for me yet, but I am coming for you Richard, cause I can hold my breath for a long time!
Update: Well, my pipe dream dream didn’t last long after learning that the new world record is actually 70,736,950 set by Danish retro-gamer Kim “Kanonarm” Köbke in a 62 hour game. How ridiculous is that? They even made a film about it!
