Donkey Kong Arcade World Record Broken

Thanks to EvilAvatar for pointing to a TwinGalaxies report revealing the world record on the classic Donkey Kong has been smashed, with a score of 947,200 by Washington gamer Steve Wiebe. According to the post, "Steve's achievement took nearly 2 hours of game play, and although he had lost his third life relatively early in the game, he kept things going for a remarkable period of time, reminding gamers everywhere: 'Never give up, never say die', classic advice from another Donkey Kong master, legendary gamer Bill Mitchell." Detailed stats reveal there are 116 playable screens that you can complete before reaching the impossible-to-complete 'kill screen' on this classic title, and it appears the magical million mark may theoretically be attainable.

Comments

Million points?

[jvmatthe]

Well, unless he missed a ton of bonuses somewhere along the way, he'd have to jump an extra 528 barrels (at 100 pts per barrel) to reach a million points. At 5 seconds per barrel that's 2640 extra seconds of playing, or 44 minutes. Also, jumping barrels is probably a sure-fire way to lose that third man even earlier.

Which is worse? That he plays Donkey Kong obsessively to the point of making it onto the front page of Slashdot or that I spent the time estimating the time it would take for him to break a million points the next time he shoots for the record? Maybe I should do a risk-analysis while I'm pissing away time...

Video game memories

[AtariAmarok]

One of the more amusing game-related memories I recall is that of a Defender champ playing Defender in the college arcade for hours and hours.

The guy racked up hundreds of extra lives. Eventually, he got tired of it and walked away (leaving kids to scramble to take over his game).

This video game whiz, obviously not a jack of all trades, walked to the nearby Donkey Kong console. He put in a quarter. Within seconds, Mario was crunched by a barrel. In anger, he hauled back and swatted the control knob, knocking it flying (joystick attached) across the room. He then left the arcade.