Story is a guy attempts to set a marathon play record at Q*Bert for at least 100 hours.  Over 50 hours in, thunderstorm hits, and causes the machine to glitch out:

http://www.examiner.com/article/100-hour-q-bert-world-record-attempt-cut-short-by-glitch

wow that really sucks. But its a really stupid record to achieve in the first place.

What qualifies as a smart record to go for, when it comes to videogames?  I saw at E3, Borderlands has the record for the most unique guns in a game.  Not sure how that is a smarter record.

I don't think I'd attempt any video game related record. Seems like a waste of time. Hell, I don't even try for all the achievements. Just play the game.

I could not agree more. I don't give a crap about achievements and trophies. However with points based games, like classic Arcade games, I do try to beat my best score. I really enjoyed the movie "King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters" and ever since I've been playing the original arcade Donkey Kong just for fun. Just like golf it's very difficult to master and increasing your best score is like shaving swings off your golf game. But that's the point of those games. Achievements on the other hand are just tacted on and don't matter to me. While playing a story based game I don't  want to be interupted by some dumb achievement notification, I just want to enjoy what the game was designed to be.

What I really don't understand are some gamer's obsession with their gamerscore. As far as I'm conscerned the only thing a high gamerscore tells me is you play too many games and should read a book or go oustide more.

As Katniss would say "In our world, I rank music (Achievements/Trophies) somewhere between hair ribbons and rainbows in terms of usefulness."

I personally am not for achievements either.  However, I am a fan of people competing in games, and making videogames into competitive sports, to see who is best of the best.  I would rather it not be married to one game though.

Being the best at a video game is like being best at eating. It may take training, compeition may be fierce, and there may even be some money in it. But, at the end of the day it's as much of a sport as a hotdog eating contest. And about as entertaining to watch too.

was he allowed to pause and sleep? damn - i don't think i could stay awake for 100 straight hours let along play Q-bert for that long.

Way it works is likely little to no sleep. Breaks do happen.  Way it happens is you build up a large pool of extra lives, and burn some of them off to step away. Because there is no pause on an arcade machine, you end up losing lives if you want to step away.

Reason for this being of practical interest is to study how players play, gives insight into human performance and physiology.

Brutal... At least it didn't happen at hour 100.