Arcade gaming legend Doris Self, the world’s oldest video game competitor/junkie/advocate, has passed on due to injuries suffered in an automobile accident in Plantation, Florida on October 3, 2006 .

Not familiar with who Ma’am Self is? Well, according to the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, Doris was the oldest person to actively pursue video game world records, competing against gamers one-quarter her age. In fact she still remained as Twin Galaxies’ record holder for oldest champion until 2003, when John Lawton of Weirs Beach, NH, age 72, broke the world record on the classic Depth Charge.

So before you get all snooty and go "pfft who cares," much the same way some people have brushed aside this other gaming senior's achievements, take note that Doris' records were relevant since the early 80s until 2003. Can you say the same about your Gamerscore?

She first gained fame in 1983 when she achieved a world record score of 1,112,300 points on the classic arcade game Q*Bert during Twin Galaxies' 1983 Video Game Masters Tournament, an event that was conducted for the Guinness Book of World Records.

In an interview at Boston.com News around early June last year, Doris said that during her time in the arcades back in the early 80’s, the gamers there welcomed her. She even says that it “got to the point where they'd trick kids to play against me."

Ah, the magic of the old arcade.

To Doris, gaming was therapy. Ann Ennis, Doris' sister, says that Doris would play Q*Bert five nights a week. The gaming would regularly happen around 1-3 a.m. as an alternative to taking pills for sleeping. Ann says that on the last night of Doris’ life, it was no different. Ann Ennis heard Doris playing for hours, practicing into the night. A gamer until the end.

We wish you well Doris, may you find peace in the big penny-arcade up in the sky.