#and Todd Rogers and Billy Mitchell even knew each other because they were part of this niche community

[genderfluid-chameleon]

Spill the tea on Todd Rogers!! I don't know who that is but I'm here for drama!

I’ll try my best!

Todd Rogers is famous in the early speedrunning community, holding hundreds of records over his years. He even had a Guinness record for the longest held speedrunning record: 5.51 seconds in an Atari game called Dragster. (Achieved in 1982)

Dragster has you do a short drag race after a countdown and will have the time clearly marked on-screen. This made it a perfect early speed game, because you didn’t have to try and time yourself or even play any round for more than a few seconds. You could practice for two hours and have 700 attempts under your belt.

Another thing worth noting is the way the game calculates time, the hundredths of a second were in 0.03 increments, so 5.51 would become 5.54 would become 5.57. Just keep it in your mind that these are basically the three important numbers, and they’re all right next to each other as far as the game is concerned.

HOWEVER.

David Crane, the creator of Dragster, thought the fastest possible time was 5.54 because of the math behind the game. Rogers has claimed this himself, and David Crane no longer remembers the exact calculations and result anyway, so this is all Rogers’s word that that was what the calculation said AND that Crane even did such a calculation.

What does back up Rogers’s claim of his record is that two others sent in Polaroid proof of their own 5.51s to a magazine called Activisions, and were published the issue before Todd Rogers was added to tie with them. His story has changed over the years, especially confusing since he has claimed to be the only one with the 5.51 record, later changing it to be “his score was matched” when called out.

The most likely possibility however is that these other receivers of the 5.51 record were misread (most likely scores of 5.57) because of the poor quality of Polaroids, and since Todd saw this record in the magazine… he may have felt he had to match that perfect time.

Todd Rogers also claimed at one point to have his Dragster record published in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records, which is easily, verifiably, false.

In 2017 someone looked into the code of Dragster and found out it was Literally Impossible to get a time faster than 5.57. So Twin Galaxies, the website in charge of video game records, at least back in the day, revoked all of his records, and Guinness also rescinded their award.

He apparently even tried to sue Guinness and Twin Galaxies for defamation, and failed miserably.

What’s so fascinating to me about Todd Rogers and other cheaters like him is that he’s a very capable gamer. He has competed in live events for high scores or speedruns, and while he hasn’t matched his (nonexistent) 5.51, he definitely is amazing at the game. People who cheat for speedrunning records are almost always really good at the game, and have great game knowledge, and (in other games where it’s not literally impossible) might eventually make the times they claim. But they want to be there first, and so they cheat or lie to appear even better than they are. I believe this is a Karl Jobst quote; “cheaters don’t cheat to get times, they cheat to get those times Faster.”

Thanks a ton to Karl Jobst for being the guy who actually compiled most of this information so that I could fixate on it like a rat. Here’s the main video where he talks about Todd in more depth.

And finally, shoutout to my favorite comment: