44 hours of gaming = only 6th place all time

A few weeks ago, Kelly Tharpe attempted to set the record for Q*bert, an arcade game popular back in the 80's. The game involved jumping Q*bert from block to block, changing the color of the block that you land on. Your goal is to change all blocks to a specified color before being touched by any of several enemies, who would kill you if touched. You score points when you change colors of pieces, complete levels, finish a level, or grab certain things that appear on the screen.

Although the rules for the game are simple, breaking the world record is difficult. The previous world record for the game was 33,273,520 points as set in 1983. Considering that you get 5,000 points for level completion (at the highest levels), and only hundreds of points for the other things that happen, this requires playing over 3,000 "rounds" on a single quarter and would take approximately 72 hours.

Kelly's attempt failed after 44 hours, in which he achieved the sixth highest score in Q*bert history with over 19.9 million points. According to the report at Twin Galaxies, he could no longer see the screen by the time he finished.