The WR holder on fast bullets Berzerk is in prison... pretty sure he doesn't have the machine!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berzerk_(video_game)#High_score_competition
RANDOM PLAY, that is... It's the only way.
I don't acknowledge the pattern play scores.
How do we know who played a certain way in the 1980's? We've definitely established the outright falsity of a multitude of golden era players as it is already.
Now we are assuming not only that a word of mouth score is accurate but also exactly what method was used to achieve it.
Was the machine rebooted for a non random seed prior? Because that's patterned. Did they go up or down at any point because they had previous knowledge off a reboot? That's a pattern....etc.
It's definitely more fun to play with a machine out in thr wild non rebooted, but to look at scores from over 30 years ago with no video evidence and group them into already ambiguous rules is nonsensical and self serving for Joel. He is fortunate he got that done when he had influence over a one man system.
Ironically Joel also plays patterned seeing as how he skips bad rooms off a reboot. Just a lot more rooms to memorize.
If you play outrun, you realize off a reboot you get the same seed for car patterns. Should split those scores out...