Scott Safran

Scott Safran (February 3, 1967 – March 27, 1989) was an American video gamer noted for setting the world record score on the arcade game Asteroids which stood for 27 years.

Background

Safran was born to Frann and Mitch Safran in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. As a teenager, he became interested in baseball, guitars, the Grateful Dead, and eventually arcade games. He was determined to break a world record on an arcade game, finally settling on Asteroids. He practiced throughout 1981 and 1982, eventually being able to carry a single game for nearly twenty hours at his local 7-Eleven convenience store.

Death

Safran graduated from Cherry Hill High School West in 1985 and moved into an apartment in Los Angeles, California. On March 27, 1989, Safran died after falling six stories from his apartment balcony while trying to retrieve his cat, Samson.^[1]

Unaware of Safran's death, Walter Day, an arcade referee who headed Twin Galaxies, the official arcade scoreboard of the world, operating in Fairfield, Iowa, attempted to track down Safran in 1998 following the re-release of Asteroids. Day could not locate Safran, and asked newspapers and radios to ask people to help find him. Day personally offered a thousand dollars to whoever could locate Safran. Eventually, in April 2002, Day made contact with Safran's family and learned of Scott's death. In May 2002, a posthumous award ceremony was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to honor him.

References

Further reading

• Gersh Kuntzman (22 April 2002). "The Disappearing Asteroids Ace". Newsweek. Retrieved 22 July 2011. 
• Chris Gray (28 April 2002). "After 20 years, master gamester finally honored". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 22 July 2011.