Quoted from jar155:

Are you for real with this? Todd is a proven cheater and to be highly unethical. There's been smoke around his claims ever since he started submitting them. He knows he's a liar. We all know he's a liar. There is absolutely no reason to defend the guy. Stop letting him dupe you.

Quoted from tamoore:

It's clear the Todd guy was a huge fraud, though. Terrible cheater.

Quoted from tslayer71:

Yes he's a world class high score cheater..

Quoted from jar155:

All those "cheaters and frauds" still did a thing. Todd just said that he did a thing...that he didn't do. He's far worse.

Quoted from tamoore:

Lance Armstrong was stripped of his wins. He was only the best because he cheated. Bonds was good without cheating, but he became better because he cheated. There is a reason it's called cheating.

Quoted from tslayer71:

So if someone won a bunch of money from you playing poker and they cheated, that would be fine because they were good at cheating? Got it - that makes sense...

Quoted from tslayer71:

Hey Blake, say hi to your uncle Todd for us...

Quoted from tamoore:

He was a cheater. He should have done it without cheating. The patriots are cheaters too. They may have done it without getting caught most of the time. I don't know.

Quoted from tamoore:

You've lost me with this. I have no idea what it means.

Quoted from tslayer71:

Who said anything about talent. What if it was you and your buddies. By your logic you would admire your friend for cheating you and taking your money. Hey wanna play some poker?

Quoted from tamoore:

Blake, his clearly made up scores on games don't tell you anything at all? 15,000,000 on Donkey Kong? Games with scores divisible by 50, ending in a 90... It makes it seem like he didn't even know what a high score would look like. Like he never even played the games he was entering BS high scores into.
You can't trust anything he's done. It's all suspect.

Quoted from tamoore:

I believe he probably has great skills. It's irrelevant. If he cheated on one of his results, he's suspect on all of the rest. And he cheated on more than one.

Quoted from tslayer71:

Is Lance Armstrong a world class cyclist - yes. Is Todd a world class gamer - probably. Because of my value system as soon as i learned they had cheated, there accomplishment's are negated. You have a different value system, and that's where we disagree....

Quoted from tamoore:

The difference between Todd and Lance is, when Lance got caught and it was undeniable, he admitted it. He never apologized for all the people he destroyed along the way, but at least he admitted it. That would be a good first step for Todd.

Quoted from goatdan:

For anyone saying this is good on Twin Galaxies, I don't know exactly how much you've followed Twin Galaxies, but there are tons of early records that they have that are spotty at best, and they have for ages refused to look at. I mean, heck, that was sort of the point of King of Kong. I feel like Todd definitely got that point correct in his response, and TG has to deal with a certain group of players that they more or less let run the place because they felt it was in some way beneficial to them to have a small group run the whole thing.
Ultimately, we're talking about Dragster, a game that I can't imagine anyone saying is their favorite 2600 game. If it wasn't for the debate over the best possible time on it, absolutely no one would care about any record on this game.
The overlooked thing in that video was that it was Activision back who said this was legit. Twin Galaxies wasn't a thing with 2600 games back then, but they allowed his score because of the Activision newletter (which I attached below). To get listed in it, when you were done with your game, you took a photo of the run and sent it to Activision. Apparently, Activision found three people who had gotten that exact same time in photographic proof. I see basically no way the three could coordinate their pictures, or edit them, or much of anything to pull off the feat back then.
Now, again, why Twin Galaxies only recognized one of them, I don't know, but it feels weird to look back at a score 35 years later and say that it's fake. So for this one, either Twin Galaxies was wrong for allowing an "imported" score from a different scoring authority and should have recognized none of them, or should have recognized all of them.
My theory is that Todd was really really good at games, and got an amazing score on Dragster in some way legitimately. After that point, to keep up his status, he was pressured to keep getting high scores on lots of different games - which would make sense, Activision hired him as an ambassador back then because of his skill. He couldn't do it, so a significant number of the other games which he held world records on were not legitimate were "embellished" to be better and to live up to the expectations that had been placed on him. For someone who was 16 when this all started, to me that seems like something that could have easily happened.
Is it worth all of his scores being questioned? Oh yeah, absolutely. But I think that this opens up *every* score pre-2000ish for questioning, and significant scores since then too. If you have too many people who gamed the system for too long, how is any of your stuff legit?
...Oh, and let me just add this. I'm totally cool with his score being thrown out because of the cheating on other things, but then I feel like those other two who received 5.51's from Dragster should be recognized in some way for it.

Quoted from goatdan:

Oh, I agree completely, but having Twin Galaxies be the authority on a considerable amount of this is just tough for me. Walter, who I have interacted with and is very nice, is also extremely trusting and doesn't like to rock the boat - which is not exactly the person who you want in charge of determining the actual records. It was easy to do when he was running an arcade and keeping a local scoreboard, but it is not easy when you're trying to be everything to everyone for record keeping.
This I think more than anything leads to issues with a considerable portion of the records. If I ran Twin Galaxies, I would...
- Put *everything* into a "historical" record. Keep this on the page.
- Restart *all* record keeping with a strict manner in which to do it is created and enforced.
- Explain that the historical record was created before the new records, and were competed with under a different ruleset that may have misrepresented some scores.
But this is super difficult for them to do because so many of the record holders were refs and are still hugely influential there, since the people who actually care about this thing is extremely insular.
Ultimately, the organization is held back by it's history, but so few people beyond them care about score chasing the super old records, so you end up with it being an endless loop. *All* of the records are questionable.
...and by the way, Todd wasn't even the first to get a 5.51. See below, from the earlier Activisions publication...

Quoted from goatdan:

That's the thing though - it wasn't done by just Walter. He assembled a bunch of "refs" to help him, which was essentially people who enjoyed setting records and cared about this stuff. And that made sense, because Twin Galaxies had no income to speak of because of the records, so how can you pay people to go through and verify world records or whatever unless they are really interested in it?
But the problem is with a small and insular world, the refs started to know each other and would just trust each other. Walter would trust them. Sometimes, they would input their own stuff. When this is the sort of thing that matters to you the most, and you're competing with a bunch of other people who this matters to the most... it's like letting the fox run the hen house, especially because Walter just generally trusted that people were doing the right thing.
Walter is extremely nice, but in the case of something like this, being nice doesn't ensure that things are done fairly.

Quoted from jar155:

A picture of me is in his Ottumwa time capsule. Haha. Weird stuff.