Ohio Man Sets Two Gaming Records with Epic 85-Hour Arcade Marathon

An Ohio man set two new world gaming records last week thanks to a marathon session with a 33-year-old video game. John Salter of Oakland, Ohio, played the 1980 arcade game Armor Attack for 85 hours and 16 minutes on a single credit. While the total time played with one quarter was a record itself, his three-and-a-half day session also allowed him to rack up an all-time high score of 2,211,990.

Mr. Salter’s totals may sound insane, but he only beat the former record-holder, George Leutz, by a relatively narrow margin, with previous records of 84 hours, 48 minutes of single credit play time and a high score of 2,009,000. Mr. Salter started his record-setting campaign on Wednesday morning, April 9, with a single quarter. He didn’t stop playing until late Saturday night.

As reported by video game media personality Patrick Scott Patterson, Mr. Salter didn’t play continuously during the 85-hour session:

John survived for that length of time by taking short power naps every 8 to 12 hours at the cost of several hundred extra lives he gained along the way. Also, to answer the question everyone always asks about these marathon arcade runs: If he needed to use the bathroom he would do so.

Mr. Salter had previously attempted a record-setting Armor Attack marathon in November 2013, but his session was cut short halfway to his goal when a button on his arcade console stopped working.

Armor Attack is a vector-based arcade game, first released in 1980, in which the player controls a jeep and must defeat enemy tanks and helicopters across a maze-like cityscape.