Man 'beats' Bejeweled 2 after 2,200 hours playing
Man spent more than 2,200 hours playing Bejeweled 2--the equivalent of a year's work--before beating it. The feat was believed to be unreachable.
When it comes to gaming, there's dedication, and there's dedication. Mike Leyde has the latter.
The 56-year-old from California spent 2,205 hours--"the equivalent of playing for eight hours a day, five days a week, for an entire year" -- over the past three years playing his favorite game, Bejeweled 2. In that time, he accumulated the game's highest allowable score, 4,872,229 gems, to "beat" it.
Leyde's feat is especially surprising because Bewjeweled 2's creator believed no one would ever invest the time to beat the game.
"We had to give the game some sort of maximum-displayable score, and figured that was high enough; no one would ever get that many points," Bejeweled co-creator Brian Fiete said in a statement. "When Mike collected that next gem match, the additional 2,200 points would have put his score above the maximum 'calculable' score, and much like some of the original arcade games, it caused his score to 'flip around' to a negative number. Well, the game's code wasn't designed to display a negative number, so it just showed a blank where the score should be."
Leyde said in a statement that he spent about one to two hours each day playing Bejeweled 2, but he doesn't consider himself much of a gamer. He said he enjoys Tetris, but hard-core games don't appeal to him. That said, he has a will to win whatever he decides to invest his time in.
"If you're going to invest time in something," Leyde said, "you might as well be as good at it as you possibly can, and I really enjoy the thrill of victory."