I'd love to elaborate. I had about a 109k start and actually lost my first life at around 160k points due to a stupid mistake while grouping. My thought was that I would do just a tiny bit of grouping in the beginning to make my pace for the rest of the game easier. While attempting to rejump a 2 barrel combo at the typical grouping area I stupidly waited for a barrel to come right down on my head, have no idea what made me do that hahah...
From there on I relaxed on grouping and only took opportunities I felt were really safe. The game started getting interesting when it was clear that I was going pretty far with my two extra men. I lost my second life somewhere around 650k range, I don't remember the exact score. Again, it was on a barrel screen. A fireball got above me while waiting to grab the bottom hammer and after the hammer I had both the fireball and an avalanche of barrels to deal with. I got so nervous and just completely choked. I died trying to jump a barrel in the same direction as it was rolling and accidentally jumping over the ledge of the girder. My third death was a similar screw up on the barrel screen somewhere around 850k, again I don't remember the exact scores of my deaths. I am actually pretty proud that none of my deaths were outside of the barrel stages. I still have things to learn about the barrel screens to make myself more proficient but I definitely think my gameplay is heading in the right direction.
In level 19, seeing that I could play it safely and still reach a million, I decided to run through the boards because I really did not want all that work to be for nothing and I had no lives left. I just wanted to see a million, now I can push further without that haunting me.
Me playing it safely in the end CERTAINLY didn't stop the game from being incredibly nasty in level 21. I had some devine luck there as you can see in the following videos I just uploaded on youtube of the ending of the game. Also check out the description I wrote along with the video if you're interested
1,008,800 point kill screen on Donkey Kong - Clip 11,008,800 point kill screen on Donkey Kong - Clip 2
