The "3rd generation" of DK players

[hchien]

Vincent once referred to the newest generation of DK players as the "3rd generation."   Basically the 3 generations he was referring to are:

1st generation - Those who were playing DK when it came out in '81/pre-KoK.  Examples: Steve, Billy, Tim

2nd generation - Those who started playing after watching the KoK (around 2007-2009).  Examples: Dean, Vincent, myself

3rd generation - I don't really have a clear definition for the 3rd generation which is part of the reason I'm posting.  There does seem to be a pretty clear delineation in the post-KoK era between 2nd and 3rd.  Examples: Mike Groesbeck, Steve Wiltshire

(Is Jeff W. 2nd or 3rd gen?  He improved so fast I don't know.)

The story for the 2nd generation is all the same: "I saw KoK in 200x, thought it was pretty cool and started playing" and by now most of the people in the community are familiar with our stories.

I'm curious to hear from the 3rd generation, as some of us don't know your stories.  You guys are the rising stars and the future record holders.  When did you start playing?  What got you interested?  Was it from seeing KoK late, hearing about the 2nd generation (things like the Kong Off, etc.), or something else?

[Simpsons99]

I'm Gen 1 Group .

[LMDAVE]

I was at the arcades back in the day when it came and played DK then and liked it a lot, but I still would classify myself 2nd Gen since I started again in 2007 more seriously. I mean, how can I say 1st gen if I took 20 years off from arcades from 1987 to 2007? But, if the criteria is "started playing" then Yeah, 1st gen.

[KIG666]

I started to play Donkey Kong for a highscore challange on a uk site on first September 2012 so I'm for sure a 3rd generation DK player.

Since I was never interested in DK BITD I was curious how far I can get in only two weeks. Finished 2nd in the contest with a bit over 428K and really loved it afterwards so basically this highscore challenge got me started.

So for me no KOK start but anyway I really love it now cause the game is really challenging. Simply love the randomness of the game 

[marky_d]

I'm pretty much in the same category as Dave. I started playing "2nd time around" in 2010.

[Simpsons99]

Yeah i played it in the arcades when it first came out..   Then allmost every system it came to ...  But i never really played it to a higher skill level intell after watching the King of Kong Then doing a Trade and getting my DK Machine .

[Xermon54]

Yeah, I did mention the "Donkey Kong generations".

Personally, the best definition of these would be:

1th generation: Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, Steve Sanders, Brian Kuh, Tim Sczerby and some others players from back in the day. The "1st" generation are the ones that played Donkey Kong on a "competitive" level from when the game came out, which is 1981, up to the movie King Of Kong, which is 2006.

Even if this 1st generation lasted 26 years, it's still one generation, since the high score didn't really progress during that time, and there wasn't any "new" people that started playing that game, and the strategy didn't really evolve. The first generation uses "basics" Donkey Kong knowledge and gameplay, without making any progress in the strategies involved. However, the rivalty between Billy and Steve in King of Kong made the transition between the 1st and 2nd generation, with the start of progression of scores, and the start of strategy developping (mostly with some point pressing).


2th generation: These are the players that started playing after King of Kong in a COMPETITION level (even if you started playing back in 1980's and restarted playing seriously after KoK, you're still in the 2nd generation, since you started playing in a competition level after KoK). The start of the 2nd generation was mainly made by Dean Saglio and Ross Benziger. I know that some other people (like Ben Falls) also started pretty much at the same time as Dean and Ross, but I consider Dean and Ross only the start of the 2nd generation because this 2nd generation is also characterized by the start of point pressing knowledge/technique.

The 1st generation was the "kill-screen" generation, and the beginning of point pressing knowledge. And the 2nd generation is the real progress of point pressing knowledge, as well as the post-King of Kong players DURING that transition period of point pressing evolution.

2nd generation players: Dean, Ross, Hank, Vincent, Ben, Dave, Mark, etc. These are the players that started playing Donkey Kong during the evolution of point pressing technique, and during the evolution of high scores.

3rd generation: These are the players that started playing slightly before and/or after the first Kong Off back in march 2011. Why? Because from 2007, to beginning of 2011 was the 2nd generation, since it's mainly during that time that players started playing after watching King of Kong, and it's during that time that people were making progress with point pressing technique/knowledge, and it's during that time that maximum point pressing technique reached the top of the knowledge.

The 3rd generation are the players that don't even need to discover any more knowledge about point pressing/how to reach a kill screen/etc, because  between 2007 to 2011, all the Donkey Kong knowledge have pretty much been found. The 3rd generation only need to put into application the knowledge the 2nd generation discovered.

The 3rd generation didn't start because of King of Kong years, but at the Kong Off's year. The 3rd generation started in the competitive environment of the first/second Kong Off, instead of being post-King of Kong. King of Kong obviously inspired the 3rd generation to start playing, but they mainly started since/because of the competitive environment of Kong Off's.

So, to make a recapitulation:

1st Generation (1981 to 2006): Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, Steve Sanders, Tim Sczerby, Brian Kuh
- Basic knowledge of Donkey Kong to reach a kill screen/1m
- The pioneers of Donkey Kong that started playing this game since 1981, to 2006, before Donkey Kong started to regain popularity
- No real competition was involved (Billy and Steve started the transition of the 1st generation to the 2nd generation in King of Kong)

2nd generation (2007 to 2011): Dean Saglio, Ross Benziger, Hank Chien, Vincent Lemay, Dave Mccrary, Benjamin Falls, Mark (etc)
- Started right after King of Kong (and because of KoK)
- Starting of the point pressing strategies development
- Starting of the real Donkey Kong high score progression until it reach a "near" maximum we now know of

3rd generation (2011 up to now): Jeff Willms (I would put him in generation 2.5 though), Robbie Lakeman, Allen Staal, Mike Groesy, Steve Wiltshire, Mitchell, etc, etc, etc
- Started right before/during/after the 1st/2nd Kong Off. They started during the competitive moment of Donkey Kong (with Kong Off's), unlike the 2nd generation that started after King of Kong.
-They started when pretty much all the theory behind Donkey Kong/point pressing/kill screen technique have been discovered. They don't need to discover anything anymore, just need to put into application what people from the *1st* and 2nd generation have found.

[stella_blue]

Allow me to join this little club Dave and Mark have formed.  I started playing casually when the game first game out, and for a period of several months back in 1983-84, played daily at a variety of locations.  Then I suddenly stopped, and I really don't remember why.

I started occasionally playing again on my PC back around 2005 or so (definitely before KoK).  I didn't know anything about Twin Galaxies or MAME; I just discovered some random website that was hosting a variety of arcade games.  After watching "King of Kong" in April 2010, I was finally introduced to Twin Galaxies, and shortly thereafter, MAME.

And there we are.

[TheSunshineFund]

I'm pretty much in the same category as Dave. I started playing "2nd time around" in 2010.

Same here. 

Played from mid 80's to around 1990, then again after KoK came out.

[syscrusher]

I did play some back in the day as a kid, but not much, and definitely not seriously.  I don't ever remember even seeing the pie factory screen until I discovered MAME somewhere around 2001 and played casually on occasion...rarely made it past the 3rd elevator.  I started taking the game a bit more seriously when I moved to Brooklyn and found Barcade in 2005.  I loved the idea of having a high score board and DK was my first target.  The score to beat was 476K which was way higher than I could get.  I didn't even know you could steer barrels or leech from Kong at that point.  It was Jeff Wolfe's INP on MARP that taught me the basics and soon after I beat the score with 535K.  And then after KoK came out I went for the KS in 2007.

[mikegmi2]

I saw KoK years before I started actually playing.  A friend of mine told me about the movie around 2009 i think, watched it, really liked it being a big video game fan, but never crossed my mind to attempt to get a high score.  The first time I watched the movie was around the same time I was starting up a small business...which took up nearly all of my free time.

Flash forward to 2012, I gave up on the small business as it was too much work with too little results...so i had a lot of free time, for whatever reason I got the urge to watch KoK again...found it in pieces on YouTube, and after watching I downloaded MAME and played it on MAME for about a week or 2.  A different friend of mine then challenged me to get a high score...and helped me find a machine.  Once he challenged me, I immediately wanted a machine...not only becuase it was a good excuse to buy a cool arcade machine...but also because I understood that scores would only be official if played on a real machine.

Found a machine after only a few weeks, in March 2012, and i've been playing pretty regularly ever since.  I started off having to do a small repair (cleaning Roms), and replacing a few Roms that weren't original.  Shaun Boyd helped me out with this via the TG message board.  I ended up reading all the old TG, CAG, and KLOV threads relating to DK...which lead me to Twitch user names...and I immediately started watching streams, mainly Dave and Dean.

I remember watching the movie, thinking...this game can't be that hard...just look at it, jumping barrels, running away from fireballs...etc...I bet I could beat these guys.  Turns out it really IS that hard.  Then, when I started finding out there was this whole community of people that were seriously playing this game, trying to get the world record, I was like, crap, they beat me to it...now look...the world record is even higher than what Steve and Billy got in the movie.  I had to give it a try though, and i'm glad I did because it's been a lot of fun and I got to meet a lot of really cool people along the way.

I kind of always have to have something 'extra' going on, something new, something challenging, something pretty time consuming.  I have the same "OCD" problem Steve's wife talks about in the movie...video games get me in trouble sometimes = )  So far, i've done... 1. cover band (played drums, guitar) 2. small business venture (fail) 3. Donkey Kong (TBD).

[ChrisP]

Let's not forget to include John Marks (voodoo chilly) in the second generation. He was the first post-KoK player to get a kill screen. Billy actually called him when he did it!

I don't think Scott Kessler would take it too kindly to be left out of this group either. That's been a problem for him...

I want to tell my "origin story" but even the medium-long version is self-indulgently lengthy and the short version is too lacking in detail to be worth telling.

Long story short: it wasn't KoK or the Kong Off that got me playing seriously. Over three years passed between me seeing the movie in January 2008 and getting into DK on MAME in April 2011. The Kong Off actually happened the same month, but I didn't even know about the Kong Off at the time, and I started playing for totally unrelated reasons. My goal was to get 333,300 points and be done with it.

I didn't get REALLY serious about going for a kill screen until six months later, and that was Eminem's fault!

I guess I'll make a post about my story, though I'll have to make another thread for it...

[marinomitch13]

I started playing on November 16th 2010. I had watched KoK about 7 times by then, and I finally decided to give DK a try (but, actually, after watching KoK my first time I had gone online and played that lame Flash version of DK -terrible version; it turned me off to the game, even though I knew it wasn't the real deal). So I went through the effort to learn how to set up MAME and try the real thing. It was so much harder than I imagined that I got hooked. I loved the idea of playing a game 'soundly' -playing in a manner which prevented any deaths- this always appealed to me, as I love logic, and I realized that once you had acquired enough skill, DK was all logical strategy based upon probabilities. I got so into DK, I will admit that I spent time playing it even over my honeymoon (the way I see it, the honeymoon was both with my wife and DK! ) It wasn't until maybe February of 2011 that I tracked down twitch usernames in the TG forums and found Dean's stream. I would go on to watch Dean stream as a guest for maybe 5-6 months before I ever got up the courage to make a twitch account and start chatting with people. I also watched several of Dave's archived videos at that time as well (I think he had a 996k game or something). But it was also during the first days of watching Dean on twitch in February of 2011 that I found out about the Kong Off 1. When I found out about that, I was so excited. I had every stream open on my computer when that event came around (I was so close to even going to the KO1 as a wildcard, but I felt my pb of 370k wasn't good enough to merit it at the time. From there, in November I got my first machine locally for $300 (up until then I had mostly played on MAME and occasionally at a local Dave and Busters), and the rest is history.

Edit: Oh yeah! I just remembered that when I broke 300k for the first time I decided to friend Hank on Facebook and send him a message. He took the time to message me back and congratulate me. I thought that was so cool to be friends with the DK world record holder! Hank, do you remember that? lol, I still have the FB message!

[lakeman421]

I've been into classic gaming for about two years now and after I had broken a couple records last year, I felt like playing a tough game with a lot of competition would be a fun thing to try and DK seemed to be the game to play since KoK came out.  My friend was against it thinking the game had been tapped out and we made a bet that if I ever got top 20 on the TGI board he would buy me a beer every time we went to Funspot.  Took about nine months between learning the game, playing the game, and even some time off playing the game but the beer will taste sweet 

[ChrisP]

Mitchell, I was curious about you because I'm interested in the very young players like you and Vincent. You seem to be serious about classic games in general.

I was four when DK came out, had DK merchandise that I prized, and I thought arcade games were literally the most amazing thing in the world. But it's telling to see that people who weren't even alive then find the classics compelling. It sort of proves that there is indeed something special about these games, that they are universal and timeless and not just nostalgia for a bunch of old dudes.