Great pod - and really enjoyed the interview with Jon. Great questions from Vic and great answers.
To be world-class as a kid of 14(!) on a limited budget with no home practice is mind-blowing. To be so young and be able to look beyond the game into logic behind each ghost (with no internet to check)... it's savant-like. Combine that with top co-ordination + concentration skills and you end up with someone special.
It can't be taught to someone that young surely, so I am going to say it's genetics and use that as my excuse for being distinctly average.
It's also an interesting choice to go for a single round of Track and Field as a possible next record. The ability to push buttons quickly is surely a different skill completely, so if he were to break the world record on that, it would be even more incredible. It's like Usain Bolt going for a snooker 147?
When it comes to pressing buttons quickly, there's one guy that stands out to me... I don't know if you guys are aware of Takahashi Meijin. He was an executive for Hudson Soft - and had the nickname '16-shot'. Here's a video of him past his prime hitting 13 shots per second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4lmAFB7d4
... but as his nickname suggests, he was hitting 16 per second. This helped him become a shoot 'em up legend, but to my knowledge he never played track and field Smile.
I've got a 'shooting watch' keyring like the one in the video, and I recommend Jon pick one up so he can train his digits to vibrate like that. Infact - anyone that thinks it's ok to use auto-fire should pick one up and train their fingers... because it's not ok, it's cheating!
Having said that, I always have the run buttons on T&F mapped to joystick left+right as it's how I played it in my local arcade as a kid. It just feels more natural waggling a stick, but I guess that's cheating too.
Finally - I notice you've introduced Sarj pings for world records.... How about a retrospective one for my world record equalling score of 9,999,990 in the name of the 10p Volfied challenge? Go on Vic, it's something I'll be able to tell the grandkids.
