Q-Bert Champ Seeks Perfect Score

(CBS)  Most video game champions end up retiring long before they get their first real job.

However, The Early Show contributor Laurie Hibberd recently met a woman whose passion and skill for video games seems to only be improving with age. And, she's nearly 80.

For the "Young at Heart" series, Hibberd went to the classic video game championships in Laconia, N. H., where gaming wizards from across the country gathered to bump, flip, and shoot their way into the record books. Among them was 79 year-old Doris Self of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Her game of choice is Q-Bert.

She tells Hibberd, "Some of the younger kids memorize patterns and all, but I just sort of go with the flow."

Her technique may not be very complicated, but Self is no amateur. She's already listed among Q-Bert's top players in the official Video Game And Pinball Book Of World Records. Ranked No.1 in 1983, Self slipped to second just two years later. Now, after more than two decades, she's mounting a comeback.

The competitive spirit Self reveals in Q-Bert is more often seen during her card games. Self notes, "The girls who I bridge with think I'm nuts going down to the arcade to go play games with kids. 'What's the matter with you?'"

Long before Self was winning money at cards or spending it in the arcade, she was a pioneer in the airline industry, one of the original flight attendants for Eastern Airlines.

She says, "The plane I used to fly on is hanging from the ceiling" at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page »