Donkey Kong Forum
General Donkey Kong Discussion => General Donkey Kong Discussion => Topic started by: homerwannabee on May 09, 2017, 08:21:34 am
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For me I don't think it's close. There is not an Arcade game record that does not max out that is harder to beat. It's the end all, and be all of Arcade scores. The amount of time, talent, effort, focus, and skill to beat this record is by far the hardest thing to do. Can Dean, or Robbie beat it? Of course they can, but both of them have put in a massive amount of time into this game. Jason McCurdy, and Jason Wade may one day do it too, but both of them also have put in the crazy grind that's needed to be as good as they are, and they'll have to put even more of a crazy grind to get there.
So for me, I don't care what the game is Ms. Pac-man, Galaga, Donkey Kong Junior, Donkey Kong 3, Robotron 5 man, Junior Pac-man, or any other arcade game. This is by far the hardest Arcade record to beat, and there is not a single arcade game that can hold a candle to that.
Yes, there are some fake arcade scores that can't be beaten because the person was lying through their teeth in 1982, but that's another matter.
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This is by far the hardest Arcade record to beat, and there is not a single arcade game that can hold a candle to that.
I disagree:
Crystal Castles 910,722 100.00% Frank Seay 1988-03-17
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I don't know enough to say Yes or No, so I didn't vote. But It's definitely an extremely difficult score to beat.
It's a very public score on a popular game with a lot of people gunning for it unlike more obscure game.
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Abstaining,
I don't know enough about other games to make such claims.
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Probably not the toughest since all the knowledge needed to beat it is public. For many other arcade games, such knowledge is not public.
I'd argue Mark's Donkey Kong Jr. world record is much tougher to beat than the 1,218,000. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Mark's score is never beaten.
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It's definitely high on the list for sure. As Chris mentioned Crystal <Pigger> is a good one. Also you mentioned Jr. Pac Man, only one person has finished the game which is still amazing to me. Also only one person (to our knowledge) has 1 cc'd Smash TV which is equally amazing. Of course DK has volume of play/popularity adding to its lore and that certainly has to be a factor. If no one is playing something, how do we know if it's really that difficult to top? I'm not sure what the most difficult score to beat across every classic game would be, I'm not even sure such an assessment can be so boldly made, but I think one could definitely come up with a Top 10 list and I know a great sub forum for such things. <YSG>
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Also you mentioned Jr. Pac Man, only one person has finished the game which is still amazing to me.
To add to this: he didn't do it publicly, and his WR score (which WAS done publicly) was not a KS game. So, officially speaking, NO ONE has ever finished Jr. Pac-Man.
So... have to disagree with OP here.
Dave
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A great score for sure, possibly among the top hardest to beat scores, but not the absolute pinnacle. Adding another to the list, and echoing what Wes said that the info is out there for DK, whereas it isn't for other titles, I present Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.
Yes, that's my #2 place holding, and that is an accomplishment in a list of many #1's on street fighter titles for me. Enthusiasts all agree that the AI on this title is ridiculous. I have been on pace for 1.3M on the best of best days, I think once. Beating the current world record, by my best calculation, would require two perfect rounds against every computer opponent, winning those perfect rounds with a super move that provides significant points (20-40k range, per super victory), and would require dumping one round for points per opponent AND pulling off a super move for adequate points (10 - 20k) during that round but not killing with it.
The MAME world record is 1.246M, for comparison.
Maybe Jason Wilson knows a secret that the rest of us don't.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo [Points [Tournament Settings]]
1 1,865,000 100.00% Jason Wilson 1999-07-31 Referee
2 1,070,100 57.38% Chris Gleed 2016-11-18 TGSAP
3 1,069,809 57.36% Dan Rodriguez 1997-12-10 Referee
4 838,500 44.96% David Spence 2000-06-24 Referee
5 729,301 39.10% Jesse Howard 2000-06-24 Referee
6 679,500 36.43% Chris Wong 2000-06-24 Referee
7 445,101 23.87% Jesse Cardenas 2000-06-24 Referee
8 283,800 15.22% Mike Watson 2000-06-24 Referee
9 236,200 12.66% Wes Truelson 2000-06-24 Referee
10 140,100 7.51% Jason Gonzalez 2000-06-24 Referee
11 125,300 6.72% Paul Deaville 2000-06-24 Referee
12 112,000 6.01% Seth Killian 2000-06-24 Referee
13 19,400 1.04% Nick Popovich 2000-06-24 Referee
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TRB has a 2m point score on MARP, though I don't recall if TG uses default or whatever MARP is using.
http://replay.marpirc.net/r/ssf2t (http://replay.marpirc.net/r/ssf2t)
I agree, that game is crazy hard, the CPU input reads are ridiculous.
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It seems to me that a lack of competition has made an obscured understanding of how difficult some of these games are to beat.
Case in point, the Arm Wrestling Arcade world record. I had seen statements before about how this was some kind of super score because no one in 30 years had gotten within half of the score. After less than 200 hours spent on MAME I got a score that was higher. I personally spent over 400 hours on Donkey Kong trying to get my ho hum 851k score.
I understand that not all games are for all people, but I truly believe the right person on the right game can take down the high score on that game if they simply are willing to study, grind, and focus for a very very long time.
Most of these super high scores on these games are simply mirages because of the lack of competition. If by some miracle the Arcade/MAME competition got as popular as speedrunning is now you'd see almost all these Arcade records fall. Maybe the people who lied would have their scores remain, but that would be it..
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Same thing applies with DK. 874k seems near impossible to beat, but now everybody's beating it.
It's kindda tricky to judge which score is the hardest compared to Donkey Kong, because no arcade game has ever been played competitively as much as DK. I'm 90% sure that if each arcade game had been played as much as DK, and by all the great DK players, all of the arcade top score would've fallen (the legit ones, obviously).
Back then, a perfect pac-man game was seen as a huge achievement, but in fact, I once got to 1m on a perfect pace after playing for like a month. I could've probably gotten a perfect game within 2 months of playing.
And same thing applies with DK: If all the great esport gamers in the world had invested as much time in DK as in starcraft/league of legend/dota, 1,218m would've definitely been crushed by lots of people.
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TRB has a 2m point score on MARP, though I don't recall if TG uses default or whatever MARP is using.
http://replay.marpirc.net/r/ssf2t (http://replay.marpirc.net/r/ssf2t)
I agree, that game is crazy hard, the CPU input reads are ridiculous.
Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm The secrets are available. Thank you for that! Time to study... <stirpot>
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Isnt the secret to the SF series a bunch of perfects and double kos that keep the matches going on and on and on? :D
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Isnt the secret to the SF series a bunch of perfects and double kos that keep the matches going on and on and on? :D
Only on the original (SF2 World Warrior), and maybe on Champion Edition. I think it is corrected in Champion Edition, too, though, because in the original days, guys would put a quarter in each, start a 2P game and then practice the moves like dragon punch and fireball that nobody truly knew how to do yet, indefinitely on 2 quarters and double KO's.
As of Champion/Hyper Fighting and later, if you get to a round 4 against the computer, that will be the final round no matter the outcome and there is no bonus points award for perfect or timer. If you double KO on the 4th round, the game ends. So, you get 3 rounds per computer opponent effectively to max out points.
But yes, perfects are the bigger part of the points equation.
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Hey Chris, do you have a favorite in the Street Fighter series? I seem to recall you don't sway much into the crossovers, such as X-men vs. Street Fighter.
Hmm, so I was pondering the subject of this poll, and it brings to mind a thread on Twin Galaxies that I believe RTM started a while back, but for the life of me, I can't seem to locate. It was similar, but called upon folks to list which feats in gaming they believe to be extraordinary and difficult. The two I would've responded with are David Gomez's 100M marathon of Robotron on maximum difficulty (10), and Tim Hett's single archer run of Millipede on hard settings of 202k.
As others have stated though, there's been more competition with Donkey Kong, than many other games, especially in the classics. Pop culture has a bit to do with this. Every now and then when I'm at a bar arcade in Chicago, or one of the freeplay arcades in the west suburbs, someone'll bring up King of Kong. As it stands, there's perhaps only so much more that the game can be pushed, and even Hank suggested the cap may be 1.3M if I recall correctly.
I'd say though, that speed runs may be the tougher feats to topple, but certainly Wes' incredible achievement stands on its own.
-Duc
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Hey Chris, do you have a favorite in the Street Fighter series? I seem to recall you don't sway much into the crossovers, such as X-men vs. Street Fighter.
I've got love for all of the SF2 series, SF Alpha series, SF4 series. Not so much SF3 or SF5 or anything like the Tekken x Capcom or Tatsunoko x Capcom. I own XMVSF and MVC boards, would like to get MSH and MSHVSF boards in my collection, and enjoy the crossovers up to but not including MVC2, but admittedly was never very good at the crossover series games and haven't put in anywhere near the time that I have on the SF2 series. :) If I had to pick a favorite, probably SF2: Hyper Fighting for single player, Super SF2 Turbo for versus play. <pacman> <blinky>
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Can we talk for a second about how insane John McAllister's 1.23 million on Robotron 2084 5-man is? This is a score that will probably never receive the props and attention it deserves. Even though Robotron is not a game that technically has a theoretical limit like Donkey Kong, it's a game in which it is extremely difficult to survive for a long time, mainly due to the sheer difficulty and randomness of the brain waves.
To put things into perspective - nobody else has proven a score of over a million on 5 lives. Abdner Ashman was in the mid 900's, my best is 875k. Playing it again in the BOTA, it was such a STRUGGLE just to get 700k. At least in the case of Donkey Kong, although Wes's 1,218,000 is getting close to the point where everyone feels the game is maxed out in terms of scoring potential, he at least has Robbie and Dean right on his heels. There's at least some competition there, with any one of those 3 players posessing the ability to someday squeeze a little more out of the game (and then you also have John and Jason making strides to hit that 1.2 million mark in the last couple months).
Robotron though? Who's going to step up and reach 1.2 million in THAT?
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To put things into perspective - nobody else has proven a score of over a million on 5 lives. Abdner Ashman was in the mid 900's
I watched John and Abdner play H2H at Richie's some years back and it was arguably the most fun I've had in classic arcade gaming. An awesome watch. They played a best of 3 set. John won 2 out of 3 matches and Abdner had the highest score with an 800 something IIRC, could have been lower though I forget.
I like that the games are very short which makes it more entertaining for me since I have a short attention span.
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OK, as far as the argument about McCallisters 1.2 million Robotron score. I have my doubts. Here are my reasons why.
1) The game in Arcade is easier than MAME. For instance, I hit over 200k probably over 20 times on Arcade practice. On MAME with keyboard, I never hit 200k. I never hit 170k on keyboard to be honest. What does this mean?
It means that a person needs to get the machine or somehow get a two stick set up to make up for the handicap that is found on MAME. So McCallister's numbers are sort of skewed because not everyone can legitimately play the game the way it was meant to be played.
2) Your 875k score. You are someone who is known for putting up great scores on many, many games. Because of that, you move from one game to the next. You are not someone who is playing this game 3 hours a day, day in, and day out. I remember when this game came out on Roulette a few months ago, and you said how it had been awhile since you played the game. I don't believe you spent the time on this game like you did Shock Troopers. In fact, your Shock Troopers score might be a harder score to beat than McCallister's 1.2 million 5 man Robotron. My guess is that given that you are already at 875k, that if you were to play this game 3 hours a day that you would be able to break the record within a two month time period. Sides, without much practice leading up to BOTA you have been able to hit 800k twice on Robotron, and the other time was over 725k. If you play this game 3 hours a day on Arcade, you are bound to have a breakout game.
3) I don't think McCallister's playing this game, day in, and day out either on arcade. So I think McCallister can probably do much better on this game because of that.
Having said that, I also think McCallister's score is an amazing score. Definitely somewhere in the top 5 all time for any arcade score in my book.
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If you play this game 3 hours a day on Arcade, you are bound to have a breakout game.
You can get in a LOT of games in a single session on these settings as well.
FWIW Mark Michaels on my BOTA team got his 300k something score during the tourney on keyboard in MAME, because our Robotron took a dump. It was pretty cool to see, I've never seen anyone play it on a keyboard before.
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If you play this game 3 hours a day on Arcade, you are bound to have a breakout game.
You can get in a LOT of games in a single session on these settings as well.
FWIW Mark Michaels on my BOTA team got his 300k something score during the tourney on keyboard in MAME, because our Robotron took a dump. It was pretty cool to see, I've never seen anyone play it on a keyboard before.
Mark has done a million on keyboard, on hard settings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-d2JcJ3a_o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-d2JcJ3a_o)
Kreygasm
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EXPERT KEYBOARD
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If you play this game 3 hours a day on Arcade, you are bound to have a breakout game.
You can get in a LOT of games in a single session on these settings as well.
FWIW Mark Michaels on my BOTA team got his 300k something score during the tourney on keyboard in MAME, because our Robotron took a dump. It was pretty cool to see, I've never seen anyone play it on a keyboard before.
If he can get 300k on keyboard, then he probably can get at least 500k with a little practice.
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i saw this and thought to chime in. The crystal castles is definitely one of the hardest. It is almost a perfect game from level 3 on to get the extra 10 K.
Donn Nauert's cheyenne and crossbow scores are up there.
The 80 million on zookeeper.
Abners Jr pac score.
tutankham 996 000 on 3 plus one and one flash
star wars 6 shields david palmer
720 score lots of knowledge lost on that game
Everything is relative to effort expended. If a game never gets played it will never get beat but the skill level needed for those listed above is amazing.
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Beating 5.4 million on Mario Bros.
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I'd have to say Johnny (The Machine) Macs 3.3M WR on Asteroids Deluxe is mind bogglingly insane. I've never heard of ANYONE who could flip an Asteroids Deluxe even BITD... That's just crazy talk. John made it look easy and ran it up to 3.3M before rounding off the score and calling it a day. Wanna see what a AD roll over looks like? Can we post links here?
Check out the cool free man glitch at 999,000. Very cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DG-GJENHgg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DG-GJENHgg)
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I'd have to say Johnny (The Machine) Macs 3.3M WR on Asteroids Deluxe is mind bogglingly insane. I've never heard of ANYONE who could flip an Asteroids Deluxe even BITD... That's just crazy talk. John made it look easy and ran it up to 3.3M before rounding off the score and calling it a day. Wanna see what a AD roll over looks like? Can we post links here?
Check out the cool free man glitch at 999,000. Very cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DG-GJENHgg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DG-GJENHgg)
Feel free to post links here. This place is all about having fun and isn't overly policed <Pigger>
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OK, as far as the argument about McCallisters 1.2 million Robotron score. I have my doubts. Here are my reasons why.
1) The game in Arcade is easier than MAME. For instance, I hit over 200k probably over 20 times on Arcade practice. On MAME with keyboard, I never hit 200k. I never hit 170k on keyboard to be honest. What does this mean?
It means that a person needs to get the machine or somehow get a two stick set up to make up for the handicap that is found on MAME. So McCallister's numbers are sort of skewed because not everyone can legitimately play the game the way it was meant to be played.
Yes, I've said before that Robotron is a game that is easier on arcade than MAME. Not just because of control issues, but I also feel that there are still very tiny differences in the way the blitter spawns the Enforcers and Tanks, and that they spawn sooner in MAME... but that could just be a placebo effect. Yes, people that have access to a cabinet are at an advantage. There's a lot of games like this where having access to the original cabinet + control scheme puts you at an advantage over whatever you'd be trying to do in MAME (like Sinistar), unless you somehow have the original control panel wired up to your computer (which some people have done). That's just the nature of some arcade games. But it's not as if Robotron is an impossible game to find - sure it goes for high prices now (like everything else in this hobby lately), but the high production count means there were tons of cabinets out there, and it's a common fixture in home arcades and barcades today.
But anyway. Is the point you're making here that because the arcade version is a little easier, people just never have the opportunity to beat his score like they would in MAME? I mean, the game's been in three BOTA's. We had four groups of people throughout the US playing it a few weeks ago. Granted it was in a tournament with 11 other games, but it's been in several BOTA's where people have had the opportunity to play it on a cabinet. Of course, not every cabinet has sticks that feels as responsive as Ken House's cabinet (sorry to hear about the RK cab), but people had the chance to play it. And in not one of those three BOTA's has anyone broken 900k.
2) Your 875k score. You are someone who is known for putting up great scores on many, many games. Because of that, you move from one game to the next. You are not someone who is playing this game 3 hours a day, day in, and day out. I remember when this game came out on Roulette a few months ago, and you said how it had been awhile since you played the game. I don't believe you spent the time on this game like you did Shock Troopers. In fact, your Shock Troopers score might be a harder score to beat than McCallister's 1.2 million 5 man Robotron. My guess is that given that you are already at 875k, that if you were to play this game 3 hours a day that you would be able to break the record within a two month time period. Sides, without much practice leading up to BOTA you have been able to hit 800k twice on Robotron, and the other time was over 725k. If you play this game 3 hours a day on Arcade, you are bound to have a breakout game.
Ok a lot to take in here, I'll address the Shock Troopers thing at the bottom of this post, lol.
No, I don't play Robotron regularly, because of my distaste for playing it in MAME (I was dying way too much when it came up in Roulette, but maybe I can partially blame that for having to do it under a distracting streaming environment and that is a game that does not give you much time at all between waves to read stream chat). But it's not as if I've never played the game before. I mean, I was too young for it when the game was new in the arcades but I sort of found respect for it on some PC port of Williams games in the mid-90's, even though the control scheme wasn't that good. Wasn't until sometime in the early 2000's that I saw a cabinet of it again at an arcade that decided to put in a few classic cabs and then discovered I had the skillset to be able to marathon the game on the default settings. As for those 800k scores on 5 lives, I've actually broken 800k a total of 4 times - twice during BOTA's, once during a pre-BOTA practice stream (I put the clip on youtube), and once on Chris Manfield's machine. And ya know, it takes a lot of attempts to finally get that one good game. At the point I'm at, having this "breakout game" basically comes down to being insanely lucky on brain waves, like I mentioned. There is never a good plan for these waves, and getting past one without dying is insanely rare past Wave 15. Having to do one of those every 5 waves means at least one very difficult death to avoid. And that's just assuming you don't get screwed by an Enforcer bullet on one of the waves somewhere before then! This might come off as a tiny bit dickish, but... as a 200k player you might not be aware of the difficulty of these later stages and just how difficult it is to consistently get by those later brain waves without one of the 5 deaths you're alloted.
3) I don't think McCallister's playing this game, day in, and day out either on arcade. So I think McCallister can probably do much better on this game because of that.
Having said that, I also think McCallister's score is an amazing score. Definitely somewhere in the top 5 all time for any arcade score in my book.
Oh yeah, he definitely doesn't play it that much, he's just very gifted at it. He barely played it at Ken's during BOTA, he played maybe a few games, got his 600k and moved on. Way less attempts to break 600k than I took. I don't know how much he was playing back when he got his 1.2 mil, he just kind of dropped it on everyone out of nowhere.
Now since you mentioned Shock Troopers, you give me an excuse to mention that lol. It's highly unlikely that unless I offered a cash bounty or something that anyone would ever come forward and beat my 32,703,800 on it. I've done my best to try to get people interested in playing it, always shared my info and uploaded replays and videos and streamed some score runs, but nobody was ever interested in playing it for score. Everything I figured out for that game was on my own since I had nobody to bounce ideas off of, just me chasing after a 31.3 million score reported in a Japanese magazine. But knowing what I know about the game, 32.7 million is not unbeatable in theory. Taking my highest scores from each individual stage puts together a score that's over 34 million, the problem is there's a lot of randomness involved in things like the point drop items from killing enemies. Kinda like the fruit in Ms Pacman. But then again, maybe better patterns for optimizing the clock in each stage are possible, it's why I've always tried to get people to play it, to get a fresh perspective from someone else, but nobody is interested in taking me up on that. So yes, that 32.7 million score will probably stand unless I get motivated enough to try to break it.
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Still given the time you put into Shock Troopers, and the time you put into Robotron I feel that your Shock Troopers score probably ranks higher for you than your Robotron score. So if it ranks higher than your 875k on Robotron, than maybe it actually ranks higher than the 1.2 million on Robotron as well. It's a shame no one has tried for a super high score like you. Eventually someone will come along. They do for all games.
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Still given the time you put into Shock Troopers, and the time you put into Robotron I feel that your Shock Troopers score probably ranks higher for you than your Robotron score. So if it ranks higher than your 875k on Robotron, than maybe it actually ranks higher than the 1.2 million on Robotron as well. It's a shame no one has tried for a super high score like you. Eventually someone will come along. They do for all games.
Well yeah, obviously I'm more proud of my Shock Troopers score than my Robotron score, even if there is nearly nobody else on the planet who appreciates everything that went into it. But I still think McAllister's score is the more impressive feat, although maybe I'm just trying to stay modest. It's just such a standout score that is far and away above everything else people have done on the 5-lives track, and people have actually put in effort on those settings.
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This is by far the hardest Arcade record to beat, and there is not a single arcade game that can hold a candle to that.
I disagree:
Crystal Castles 910,722 100.00% Frank Seay 1988-03-17
I'm going to correct myself, as I remembered this one today at work:
Carnival 386,750 100.00% Fred Pastore 2001-06-01
I'd put that one at #1, and Crystal Castles at a very close #2. Both are technically beatable but near goddamned impossible to do so. I'd probably put McAllister's 1.2M 5-man Robotron at #3, beatable but very very difficult and needing hundreds of attempts, if not a thousand or more, by highly skilled Robotron players, just like the Crystal Castles score. Probably the same for Carnival, although there are far fewer known experts on that one.
OK, as far as the argument about McCallisters 1.2 million Robotron score. I have my doubts. Here are my reasons why.
1) The game in Arcade is easier than MAME.
No it isn't. It used to be true that MAME played harder than Arcade, because there were issues with the Williams CPU and blitter video processing code (http://www.robotron2084guidebook.com/technical/gameplatforms/mame/erasofrobotronemulation). This problem was tracked down and squashed a few years ago. If you are using a relatively recent version of MAME (0.148 or newer) it essentially plays identical to Arcade, especially if you use PS/2 controller inputs to eliminate the very slight lag that exists with USB inputs.
3) I don't think McCallister's playing this game, day in, and day out either on arcade. So I think McCallister can probably do much better on this game because of that.
Johnny played everyday for a couple of months to pull off that score. Make no mistake, he worked hard for it, and even he has told me that he doesn't think he can beat it. Things change though.
i saw this and thought to chime in. The crystal castles is definitely one of the hardest. It is almost a perfect game from level 3 on to get the extra 10 K.
Donn Nauert's cheyenne and crossbow scores are up there.
The 80 million on zookeeper.
Abners Jr pac score.
tutankham 996 000 on 3 plus one and one flash
star wars 6 shields david palmer
720 score lots of knowledge lost on that game
Everything is relative to effort expended. If a game never gets played it will never get beat but the skill level needed for those listed above is amazing.
Good ones, Dwayne. The 720 score, though, may not be real, or at least it looks problematic. There is a certified 720 nut (http://www.720zone.com) I've met who insisted to me that it isn't possible on the documented settings. Read his analysis here (http://www.720zone.com/720-World-Record-Theory.html).
I also remembered this one today before I read your post:
Battlezone 23,000,000 100.00% David Palmer 1985-08-30
A couple of months earlier he did 10M on his first life at the TG Video Game Masters Tournament and killed it off because there were other games he wanted to play.
I might be inclined to throw Robert Mruczek's 300M Star Wars marathon (http://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?platformid=2&gamename=Star Wars) on the list. Only one person has ever come close, but the guy played six hours longer than Robert and still came up more than 16M short. I'd say that makes Robert's score extremely difficult to beat. With a max of six shields and only seconds between levels you have no time for naps and no real time for bathroom breaks. You'd have to get real creative on that, in addition to maintaining hand/eye coordination and reflexes on a very fast game for over two days straight. At least with a Robotron marathon you can build up 200+ lives and take a short nap.
I'd have to say Johnny (The Machine) Macs 3.3M WR on Asteroids Deluxe is mind bogglingly insane. I've never heard of ANYONE who could flip an Asteroids Deluxe even BITD...
Yeah, another good one. I too have never seen/heard any evidence of anyone else rolling Asteroids Deluxe.
Shock Troopers... But then again, maybe better patterns for optimizing the clock in each stage are possible, it's why I've always tried to get people to play it, to get a fresh perspective from someone else, but nobody is interested in taking me up on that. So yes, that 32.7 million score will probably stand unless I get motivated enough to try to break it.
Welcome to my (http://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?platformid=2&gamename=Arabian) world (http://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?platformid=2&gamename=Wild Western).
P.S. 1,099,900 on Wild Western is literally impossible since the game maxes out at 999,900, which I proved, but TG doesn't give a shit to pull this previously pulled fake score that they inadvertently reinstated a few years ago during a change in ownership, despite my bringing it to their attention more than once.
P.P.S. My best Arabian score is higher than that. ;)
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Actually 2 player Mario Bros. Hardest difficulty, getting 1 million points. Almost impossible.
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As far as least likely to be beaten I think it's video games where the person who set the record overpaid the price for the record by an insane amount.
That's why Todd Rogers 105 million score on Journey Escape for the Atari 2600 is the score I considered least likely to ever be broken. No one is going to spend over 85+ hours to get a record on Journey Escape. It's not even in the Atari 2600 top 50 games list to be honest.
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The truth I think this thread points out is that a wide variety of scores from different games are considered the most difficult score to beat. I stick by my Donkey Kong statement just because it's the most competitive, and the most competitive game tends to be the game with the most difficult score to beat.
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That's why Todd Rogers 105 million score on Journey Escape for the Atari 2600 is the score I considered least likely to ever be broken.
Given Todd's history with high scores, one has to wonder if this was another "prototype cartridge" or another "coffee stain".
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Excellent call on Fred Pastore's Carnival, Chris. I totally forgot about that one. Insane.
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For 5 man scores you have to play for days and days and work backwards from 10 men back to 5 so you are used to playing higher levels and everything is still in your memory. John had a period of free time and motivation to play as many marathons he could fit in. The robotron score could be beaten by abner if he actually had the time and a machine. When he got that 900k score he was on level 35 with 2 men left which is the 2 mikey's.
When i talked to John he had broke a million but didnt tape it then in the short run continuing to play he recorded the 1.2. And what i remember he had a few perfect brains to boost his final score. I don't know what the level was but i think he did it in under 35 levels.
for joust and the other five man deal you have to have that happy medium of knowing what to expect when you get there and then having the experience to play through it on one man.
No one has spent anywhere near the time John did on a robotron. Not that means it will be beat but i think if abner had the chance he would break the million for sure and possibly the wr.
Carnival fred is amazing he doesnt miss a shot. That one will probably not be broken by anyone not named fred.
As far as 720 goes I talked with Jeff Peters about that 720 score and it is legit. but all the problems with rom versions controls and technics to score is an open ended problem. No one was anywhere as critical then as we are today. It was serious but still more casual then you could stand. When Jeff and the amusements players association where in control of tg they cleaned up the contemporary scores to the best of their ability.
I used to play with the 2 continues at the end to point press. I thought was one of the standards to get the highest score. I have to ask jeff about that again. Your friends 720 page had alot of info not thought about or considered, but knowing the times and it was supposed to be set at a guinness event that was not under walters supervision but steve and jeff. The guys from socal would have called bullshit if it never happened.
There where a number of games greg gibson slaughtered and people thought his score were bogus but they were not. I talked to Donn Nauert about that in the past 7 years when i interviewed him. Same with jim hernadez he was a really great player that came out in the later 80's to put up scores when there really was no tg and then electronic gaming monthly took over but not so much concerned with scores just the concept of a team.
As far as sinstar i think that one was with strictly 30k a free man and not the multiplier. And When i talked to Chris i think he got that score at the game show when it was introduced in new Orleans. So it could be a totally different romset or was set easier. But walter was there is that is probably how that one got in the list of scores.
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I think it's great that some of these games being mentioned are outside of the super competitive games. Hopefully it gets people to play some of these games. It got me to play Carnival a couple of times. 8)
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The wealth of information online and elsewhere about DK certainly brings the difficulty down a notch or two. The huge player base gives some relativity as to how difficult it is as well and so may seem the hardest, but it's hard to compare to a game like carnival where there is one person so far and above the rest.
On that subject, how the hell do I play carnival? Damn birds lol. Seems like a fun game if you knew what's going on.
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There are also quite a few GAMEST records by Japanese players that are pretty freaking mind blowing and would be extremely difficulty to beat that haven't been mentioned here.
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As far as sinstar i think that one was with strictly 30k a free man and not the multiplier. And When i talked to Chris i think he got that score at the game show when it was introduced in new Orleans. So it could be a totally different romset or was set easier. But walter was there is that is probably how that one got in the list of scores.
Yeah I don't believe that 761k was on the default settings at all.
468k though? Yeah, I can see that being possible. My best score on defaults is 397k and I'm pretty sure I lost my last two lives back-to-back. But yes, there is definitely a problem with locations that changed the game to lower difficulty levels or more extra lives because of how difficult it is, which makes it difficult to verify if the scores are legit. Ground Kontrol here briefly rotated in a Sinistar cab that was clearly set to an easier difficulty, I noticed the warriors were a lot more docile and let me get away with a lot of stuff before they fired. I actually broke 500k on that cab but I'm like 99.9% sure the settings were not correct, hahaha.
And then there's the 255 lives glitch, which I did manage to pull off once just for funsies when Ken House was borrowing a cabinet of it for BOTA 2012. Got it past a million before I killed it off. Man, Sinistar is a messy game for scores...
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I believe that the Donkey Kong world record is THEE gold standard when it comes to video game world records...period.
Here are some reasons why:
1. The sheer difficulty of the game right off the bat (could be Game Over in the very first minute! <Billy>).
2. The famous beyond your control RNG that can steal all of your lives on one riviot board (mostly due to lack of skill Kappa)...100 points shy of beating the world record (Lakeman lits it).
3. Enduring 3+ hours of some of the most intense mental toughness known to man.
4. The hand-eye coordination mixed in with the on the fly decision making connected to the RNG can get pretty rough.
5. The size of the player pool and world-class competitiveness on this game is in a category by itself.
6. I am confident that the best Donkey Kong players could go out and obliterate some of these other world records that people say are harder to beat.
7. Who has not heard of Donkey Kong?!
I am sure I left out some important points that would further vindicate my belief...but whatever...I am not getting graded on this Kappa.
Please—show me a video game world record (not some obscure, unrealistic piece of garbage where only a select few play it while working in Roswell) that is harder to beat than the Donkey Kong world record.
If you can find a legitimate contender, I will retire from playing Donkey Kong and go play that...
Actually, forget about this post...
I forgot about TUGBOAT Kreygasm ROFL.
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I have to agree with Serphy that some of the scores mentioned in previous posts are pretty dubious when compared to going for 1.2m on DK. I respectfully disagree with 5.4m on MB being tougher than a DK 1.2m. It's like apples and oranges, as MB has no point pressing, no kill screen, and relatively manageable randomness.
Hank, who has always been my favorite player, once said that very few people truly realize what playing at 1.15+ pace on DK is like, regardless of their arcade background. 1.15 is hard enough, but the sad truth is it's only the minimal foundation for what's required to get 1.2m. When Robbie and I played DK on marathon settings in Banning, I remember a well-known Joust player making some comments in the chat about how we were exhausted after such a short marathon. This totally ignores the fact that DK requires intense and active decision making for virtually every moment of play whereas 99% of arcade games that people marathon don't have this aspect (and simultaneously award infinite or hundreds of extra lives).
I think one thing that can be taken away is there are many different kinds of difficulty when it comes to playing arcade games. Decision making, problem solving, hand-eye coordination, pattern recognition, multitasking, mental endurance, and physical endurance are just some of these traits. Different games test these traits in different ways and to different degrees, so it's tough to compare "difficulty" between many games because they're just different beasts altogether.
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When Robbie and I played DK on marathon settings in Banning, I remember a well-known Joust player making some comments in the chat about how we were exhausted after such a short marathon. This totally ignores the fact that DK requires intense and active decision making for virtually every moment of play whereas 99% of arcade games that people marathon don't have this aspect (and simultaneously award infinite or hundreds of extra lives).
I think I am going to have to disagree with this. Just running the boards is vastly different than high level point pressing. If you are going for highest score just running the boards there are places you can take a break. The barrel boards for instance you can leave Mario up on the top a good 40 seconds, and mentally check out. Since this board is every other board after level 5, there are many opportunities to take a mini break. Plus there is the mindless point pressing of the rivet boards as well that can last a good half minute.
Yes, you are right that 1.2 million is tougher than 5.4 million on Mario Bros., but to be fair I do think running the boards on Mario Bros. is harder than running the boards in Donkey Kong. I don't think there is a place to rest except the bonus level, and even there you are sacrificing a lot of points to do so.
To pimp my favorite game DK3, one thing I do like about the game is there is no respite, and definitely no hiding spot. Basically to paraphrase the guy in Taken, if you try to take a break Donkey Kong will look for you, will find you, and will kill you. While I don't think the Donkey Kong 3 record is on the same level as Donkey Kong, I do think it's a hard game none the less.
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Break 600k on Jr. Pac-Man.
Then, realize that the WR is 3.3M and that no one has ever hit the KS officially.
First things first: break 600k. Consider the gauntlet thrown. It would be nice to have some competition.
See you in a few years...
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I believe that the Donkey Kong world record is THEE gold standard when it comes to video game world records...period.
Here are some reasons why:
1. The sheer difficulty of the game right off the bat (could be Game Over in the very first minute! <Billy>).
2. The famous beyond your control RNG that can steal all of your lives on one riviot board (mostly due to lack of skill Kappa)...100 points shy of beating the world record (Lakeman lits it).
3. Enduring 3+ hours of some of the most intense mental toughness known to man.
4. The hand-eye coordination mixed in with the on the fly decision making connected to the RNG can get pretty rough.
5. The size of the player pool and world-class competitiveness on this game is in a category by itself.
6. I am confident that the best Donkey Kong players could go out and obliterate some of these other world records that people say are harder to beat.
7. Who has not heard of Donkey Kong?!
I am sure I left out some important points that would further vindicate my belief...but whatever...I am not getting graded on this Kappa.
Please—show me a video game world record (not some obscure, unrealistic piece of garbage where only a select few play it while working in Roswell) that is harder to beat than the Donkey Kong world record.
If you can find a legitimate contender, I will retire from playing Donkey Kong and go play that...
Actually, forget about this post...
I forgot about TUGBOAT Kreygasm ROFL.
This is the funniest, most deluded CAG post I've read in years. Thanks! ;D
Seriously, you guys need to get out more.
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When Robbie and I played DK on marathon settings in Banning
Unless you're playing on a hacked DK ROM set that fixes the kill screen, there is no such thing. Claiming otherwise is an insult to real marathoners.
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Oh wait, almost forgot. Here's four more for you:
Black Widow 930,100 100.00% James Vollandt 1984-05-01
Track & Field 95,350 100.00% Hector T. T. Rodriguez 2009-01-23
Millipede 10,627,331 100.00% Donald Hayes 2005-02-07
Dig Dug 5,429,010 100.00% Donald Hayes 2017-04-11
Actually, I'd put that Black Widow score tied for #1 with Carnival.
There are plenty of CAG records that are technically beatable but are near their theoretical maximums. People who think DK is the end-all-be-all in that department have spent way too much time playing DK and not enough playing anything else.
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<popcorn>
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No love for the 15,999,990 Galaga score?
No one (that I've heard of anyway) has been over 10m since. MAME record (by the same person) is only 6.8m
I don't play a lot of the other games mentioned so maybe I can't appreciate their top scores as much as I should
:)
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Pole Position? <YSG>
Also I'll echo Track and Field. Such a unique physicality to the controls. Hec can answer this, but I'm not sure you can "learn" how to get up to WR speeds on standard arcade controls.
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I wasn't going to say anything, but SanTe mentioned the Millipede WR... Current record is an 8 hour game. Longest possible "break" would be about 2 seconds, maybe 6 or 8 seconds if you let a few men die. Pretty generous with extra men, but you can only have 6 at a time and they can go very quickly. You have to be extremely focused for the entire time playing, it's very intense physically and unrelenting, very fast with lots happening on screen. Not saying it would be impossible to beat (hopefully possible...) but it's a serious undertaking.
Everyone has a game they think would be super hard to beat, and many games not mentioned that would be hard to beat. I suspect that as the hobby continues there will be more scores that are more or less "maxed out."
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When Robbie and I played DK on marathon settings in Banning
Unless you're playing on a hacked DK ROM set that fixes the kill screen, there is no such thing. Claiming otherwise is an insult to real marathoners.
Why would I claim otherwise? That's precisely what we were doing.
"Real marathoners" -- Robbie has a marathon WR so I'm not sure what your angle is here.
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When Robbie and I played DK on marathon settings in Banning
Unless you're playing on a hacked DK ROM set that fixes the kill screen, there is no such thing. Claiming otherwise is an insult to real marathoners.
Why would I claim otherwise? That's precisely what we were doing.
"Real marathoners" -- Robbie has a marathon WR so I'm not sure what your angle is here.
Donkey Kong [No Kill-Screen! (The Real King of Kong)]
"No results found."
Also, it's been long established in this hobby that a marathon is any single credit game that is longer than 12 hours. Did that happen? If so, my apologies. I don't go to Banning or TG events in general since I think their current way of doing things is stupid. But if a 12-hour+ game of DK happened I'm surprised I haven't heard about it. I don't do Facebook either but I'm sure it would have been mentioned on any one of the half dozen or so arcade-related forums I check at least semi-regularly.
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Pole Position? <YSG>
OP said beatable. Based on what I know and have seen, if Les and Mike were indeed playing on the same settings as the rest of us then Les played the perfect game, IMO.
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Pole Position? <YSG>
OP said beatable. Based on what I know and have seen, if Les and Mike were indeed playing on the same settings as the rest of us then Les played the perfect game, IMO.
Richie seems to think it's beatable.
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Donkey Kong [No Kill-Screen! (The Real King of Kong)]
"No results found."
Are you implying that if it's not on TG that it never happened? I have tons of unsubmitted scores. After all the trouble that TG has given me, it's probably going to stay that way.
I'm seeing some conflicting things in your posts. First, the definition of a DK marathon is playing on no-KS roms, in which multiple 2m+ scores have happened between Robbie and myself. Second, the definition of a DK marathon is a 12hr+ game. Is it both? I am but a lowly DK player, so please provide illumination here.
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Are you implying that if it's not on TG that it never happened? I have tons of unsubmitted scores. After all the trouble that TG has given me, it's probably going to stay that way.
No, I'm saying I had never heard of anyone marathoning DK since even the longest games are no longer than 4 hours, and a marathon is at least 12 hours. You said you and Robbie were playing on hacked ROMs to eliminate the killscreen, so I went to TG to see if they had a track for it, and they do, but there are no scores listed. Based on the only information available to me, there have been no DK marathons to speak of. Again, if someone had played a 12-hour+ game of DK I'm confident that we all would have heard about it.
So claiming you are marathoning DK is, IMO, an insult to real marathoners. Clear now?
I'm seeing some conflicting things in your posts. First, the definition of a DK marathon is playing on no-KS roms
No, the commonly accepted definition of a DK marathon, of any marathon in this hobby, is a 12-hour+ game on a single credit (and 24-hours+ is an "ultra marathon"). You're the one who is conflicting information, unless you have had a 12-hour+ game of DK. If so, then congratulations. I still wouldn't put that up there in the most-difficult-to-beat department as long as an 8-hour+ game of Millipede exists. And by that measure technically there have been no Millipede marathons, either. But I do hold that score in high regard regardless of the time involved; I don't see anyone else beating it anytime soon, if ever.
I am but a lowly DK player, so please provide illumination here.
Don't be arrogant. I take issue with your use of the word "marathon" in the context of DK, as I feel it is disrespectful of what it means to actually marathon a game. That's all.
I've gotta go to work now. I'll be home late tonight if you want to keep arguing that what you're doing is marathoning.
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Pole Position? <YSG>
Also I'll echo Track and Field. Such a unique physicality to the controls. Hec can answer this, but I'm not sure you can "learn" how to get up to WR speeds on standard arcade controls.
I'm glad someone else brought this one up. I didn't want to toot my own horn or pat myself on the back, but his one is super fkn hard. For starters, you would have eliminate contenders that cannot get better than 8.10 on the 100m. Speeds like that cannot be developed much beyond what you are born with. So that alone eliminates most of the population. And 8.10 is IF all other events are done to near perfection. Like 2.51 on HJ WITH the 1000 pt bonus. 99.49 Hammer. 9.72 LJ. 95M jav and 2 1000pt bonuses. And to this day, the only score higher than mine was on MAME and used a mouse foot pedal to jump Hurdles while doing 8 finger, a joystick on HJ and Buttons only for 100m.
I'm not saying it's the hardest score to beat, but by default, most people are eliminated from having a go at it right away no matter how much they play.
Hec
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Interesting thread to say the least.
Lets be real for one second here all. ANY game that the score is a "legit" score on and not some made up, multi-credit insult from yester-year can get beaten. The point made by Serph and others is what other title in the CAG community has any level of people playing and attempting world record or even just high scores like DK has in the recent past? (Yes all due to KoK). There are thousands of games everyone can start talking about how "Well this game is uber hard because of xxx" or "no my game is the hardest due to yyyy". Space Firebird can make a claim it's harder than ALL of these games since it had a 30 day bounty on it and no one got it so now what?
Sante I actually prefer the TGTS records over the marathon recorsd. You know why? Because that is more skill based to me than "I stayed up 45 hours so now you stay up 50 hours ok". Sure there are some impressive scores out there but if ANY of them got a serious following to beat they would be almost certainly be gone. This small microcosm of people playing games (even the elite guys that have some amazing skill) are not anything among BILLIONS OF PEOPLE in the world. Wanna see 1.25 million in DK? Put a 100k bounty on it. Wanna see 16 million on Galaga? KS on Jr Pac-Man? Score X on Game Y? Do the same... ANY of these scores if they are legit can be broken unless they are a maxout perfect score. Even that fake Robotron and Frogger nonsense would go down as well. Its really about having more than 3 people trying to get a record and even when just a few people get serious about it records tend to fall. Case in point Missile Command, Gyruss, etc, etc, etc
Am I trying to belittle any record or skill level now? Of course not. All the examples given are impressive iin their own rights. Hec your T&F score is a monster and yeah so is the Jr Pac-Man score and all of the other scores/records described here but these discussions almost never work out with anyone changing an opinion for the most part. At what point does DK get the same love? A 1.3 million score? 1.4 million? I'll tell you when. Never because someone always has their "Well this is harder see" answer to give and that applies to ANY game you discuss. This subject could be "Is 15.9 million on Galaga the most difficult to beat beatable real Arcade score?" - This discussion would almost certainly look exactly the same :)
P.S. - To clarify "marathoning" DK is playing on the No-KS Romset. You can try and equivocate that it can ONLY mean you must play DK for 12 hours before its "marathoning" but for most here that is not how it's described and its not an "insult" to any of the marathoners. Hell I've played Halo, COD and GOW for a lot longer than 12 hours in a row does that make me and elite marathoner everyone? :)
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Sante, chill.
What Wes is referring to was a public event, and many of us watched it streamed live. The premise of the event: Wes and Robbie, the two greatest arcade DK players in the world, would attempt, on ROMs hacked especially for the occasion, to beat Steve Sanders' fictional DK score of 3M+. It was for fun, and what we all discovered is that DK is difficult to impossible to marathon. Since one of these players (Robbie) actually HAS marathoned a game for a WR (Super Pac-Man), this is a pretty big deal.
I tend to agree with danman across the board. Well put, sir.
That said, I'm not challenging Mr. X to beat the JrPac WR. That score is laughably out of his league. No, I'm challenging him to beat a mere 600k, the JrPac equivalent of passing L=05. How hard could it be?
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<confused>
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<popcorn>
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Black Widow 930,100 100.00% James Vollandt 1984-05-01
Actually, I'd put that Black Widow score tied for #1 with Carnival.
(http://i.imgur.com/DbW5TO3.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/1ojQrKj.jpg)
I was able to just beat that James Vollandt score on an Ultracade machine with beat up joysticks using continues+warps just like they did in the 80s (imo). Even then it was pretty tough to do because the game bumps you back to a lower warp if you don't advance the levels on the current one. All those scores from back then line up with a game played using continues scoring wise. I doubt anyone can match those TG scores "legit" because the game speeds up so fast when you play one credit versus continues (esp the rocket bug bonus waves which are slower otherwise). Just review the back and forth between Chris Point(FGS) and myself in the 400k-500k point range. It gets even faster after that with about 40 waves still to go b4 you match the 80's scores.
There are only a handful of players who could make it to the wave 104 kill screen on Black Widow this way (or any other) while there is a small army of DK experts all drawing from a large community with years of research and game-play to learn from.
I agree with some of the other titles you listed (T&F, Millipede, Dig Dug) and with many of the other titles listed by others here (esp Robo 5 man, Asteroids Deluxe+Smash TV 1cc). There are just too many tough games out there to claim DK is the hardest to top with all due respect. That said it still is one of the toughest challenges in gaming right now.
Ps. You don't see the 931,025 point BW score in the high score table above because the Wave 104 kill screen locks up the machine before you can enter it.
Pss. I might get back into playing some DK eventually ;)
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Pole Position? <YSG>
OP said beatable. Based on what I know and have seen, if Les and Mike were indeed playing on the same settings as the rest of us then Les played the perfect game, IMO.
Richie seems to think it's beatable.
I hope he's right, then. It would be exciting if it happened.
Sante I actually prefer the TGTS records over the marathon recorsd.
So do I. But I'd also prefer non-marathoners not disrespect what marathoners are doing.
P.S. - To clarify "marathoning" DK is playing on the No-KS Romset.
You say tomayto; I say tomahto.
Hell I've played Halo, COD and GOW for a lot longer than 12 hours in a row does that make me and elite marathoner everyone? :)
No, it would make you a marathoner. As already mentioned, the "ultra" designation (a.k.a "elite" if you must) doesn't kick in until 24 hours.
By the way, it wasn't me or the player community that defined these things; it was TG, the recognized authority for competitive videogaming rules, over a decade ago when Mruczek was head ref and all of the refs had long discussions about it. There was an epic-length post from Mruczek about it (oh who am I kidding; all of Mruczek's posts are epic-length ;D).
And this is exactly what's so maddening about competitive arcade gaming, that people can just redefine terms and rules to suit their own preferences. If we're gonna redefine things years later then I wanna know who's is charge of the rules, because clearly people are just making shit up as they go along. Par for the course for this hobby though.
Lets be real for one second here all. ANY game that the score is a "legit" score on and not some made up, multi-credit insult from yester-year can get beaten. The point made by Serph and others is what other title in the CAG community has any level of people playing and attempting world record or even just high scores like DK has in the recent past? (Yes all due to KoK). There are thousands of games everyone can start talking about how "Well this game is uber hard because of xxx" or "no my game is the hardest due to yyyy". Space Firebird can make a claim it's harder than ALL of these games since it had a 30 day bounty on it and no one got it so now what?
Sante I actually prefer the TGTS records over the marathon recorsd. You know why? Because that is more skill based to me than "I stayed up 45 hours so now you stay up 50 hours ok". Sure there are some impressive scores out there but if ANY of them got a serious following to beat they would be almost certainly be gone. This small microcosm of people playing games (even the elite guys that have some amazing skill) are not anything among BILLIONS OF PEOPLE in the world. Wanna see 1.25 million in DK? Put a 100k bounty on it. Wanna see 16 million on Galaga? KS on Jr Pac-Man? Score X on Game Y? Do the same... ANY of these scores if they are legit can be broken unless they are a maxout perfect score. Even that fake Robotron and Frogger nonsense would go down as well. Its really about having more than 3 people trying to get a record and even when just a few people get serious about it records tend to fall. Case in point Missile Command, Gyruss, etc, etc, etc
You essentially are arguing that unless a ton of people have played a game that the documented top score for it is weak and more easily beaten.
I just don't buy your argument, at all. There are games in this hobby that have been pushed to their absolute limit by one person or by a small handful, and would be an absolute bitch to top. (Kinda the whole point of this thread until it got derailed by the DK-superiority folks.) The fact that dozens of people have seriously attacked DK for the last ten years still yields the same result: one, or two (actually three) scores all within 1% of each other, and people are still saying there is room for improvement. So how many people playing a game is enough for you to be satisfied that it has reached its potential? A hundred? A thousand? A million? Ten million?
Sante, chill.
anningmay, don't make presumptions about my disposition. Stick to the discussion at hand, please, rather than trying to insinuate that there's something wrong with me.
A few people here get butt hurt that I won't bow to the ring and accept their ridiculous claim that DK is the ultimate yardstick for competitive gaming and I get condescending remarks aimed at me for it? My views on this topic are every bit as valid as anyone else's.
But this is donkeykongforum.net, a forum devoted to a single game and a self-reinforcing echo chamber if there ever was one, so I'm not at all surprised. Like I said, some of you guys need to get out more. The dismissive attitudes I've seen from a few of you with regards to any game that isn't DK when it comes to difficulty speaks volumes, as does your ignorance.
What Wes is referring to was a public event, and many of us watched it streamed live. The premise of the event: Wes and Robbie, the two greatest arcade DK players in the world, would attempt, on ROMs hacked especially for the occasion, to beat Steve Sanders' fictional DK score of 3M+. It was for fun,
That does sound fun.
and what we all discovered is that DK is difficult to impossible to marathon.
...on that day when they (presumably) first tried it. Keep practicing and adopt some different strategies and I bet both players would surprise themselves down the road. After all, these two guys, more than anyone except maybe Dean, are used to playing every board balls out with maximum point pressing.
You guys can talk all you like about the game's AI but it is, after all, a pretty slow moving game compared to many other games of the era. Would bitch fireball and Firefox behavior eventually rob you of all of your lives? Probably. But this is no different than any other marathonable game of the era except for the handful of games like Pac-Man that are 100% patternable. People can and have killscreened DK on one life. Based on that alone I'd expect that 3,195,300 to be beatable in the long run. That's 791,325 per man, which is a very safe, conservative kill screen pace. I've no doubt someone could do that four times in one game eventually.
Since one of these players (Robbie) actually HAS marathoned a game for a WR (Super Pac-Man), this is a pretty big deal.
What does one player marathoning a completely different game have anything to do with whether or not Donkey Kong can be marathoned? Robbie can marathon Super Pac-Man but not Donkey Kong, therefore DK is a much harder game? Yeah, that makes sense. ::) How many players can get 1M+ on DK but can't play Super Pac for shit? A lot, I'd imagine. There is no logic to this argument.
I tend to agree with danman across the board. Well put, sir.
You say tomayto; I say tomahto.
That said, I'm not challenging Mr. X to beat the JrPac WR. That score is laughably out of his league. No, I'm challenging him to beat a mere 600k, the JrPac equivalent of passing L=05. How hard could it be?
Don't know who Mr. X is but at this point I'd love to see someone, anyone, play something at a world class level that isn't among the same old 20 games that have been given more than their share of attention in the 10 years since "The King of Kong" brought so many people to the hobby. I own a DK but quit playing back in 2009 when I thought the attention the game was receiving was getting out of control, to the detriment of the hobby at large. Since then we've had, what?, four Kong Offs, and a forum dedicated to one game, while hundreds of other just-as-great games are ignored. It's a little sad, don't you think?
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(http://i.imgur.com/DbW5TO3.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/1ojQrKj.jpg)
I was able to just beat that James Vollandt score on an Ultracade machine with beat up joysticks using continues+warps just like they did in the 80s (imo). Even then it was pretty tough to do because the game bumps you back to a lower warp if you don't advance the levels on the current one. All those scores from back then line up with a game played using continues scoring wise. I doubt anyone can match those TG scores "legit" because the game speeds up so fast when you play one credit versus continues (esp the rocket bug bonus waves which are slower otherwise). Just review the back and forth between Chris Point(FGS) and myself in the 400k-500k point range. It gets even faster after that with about 40 waves still to go b4 you match the 80's scores.
There are only a handful of players who could make it to the wave 104 kill screen on Black Widow this way (or any other) while there is a small army of DK experts all drawing from a large community with years of research and game-play to learn from.
Ps. You don't see the 931,025 point BW score in the high score table above because the Wave 104 kill screen locks up the machine before you can enter it.
I know. I own a Black Widow and have done this as well. The last time took just under an hour from start to finish, although I wasn't able to top James' score. (Had 920k at the end, IIRC.) I didn't think to keep track of how many continues I used but it was far less than the previous time I reached the kill screen.
The Black Widow rules say, "Maximum Star[t] @ Level 21" and "Special Rules: You may freely choose your Starting Warp. No continues are permitted." It's the same old problem: with golden era scores we have no way of knowing if the settings were the same or if the same rules were used. Did James use continues? Were continues allowed in 1984? Only he knows (and the ref who verified his game and entered the score). James was in the Twitch chat stream during a marathon (McAllister's Joust, IIRC) and was asked about it, and he claimed no continues. I'd long suspected that he did use continues but I hesitate to make such judgments. Every now and then the community is wrong, dead wrong. You never know when a player has figured out something that few others have, or just has a skill set that is light years beyond anyone else (like Carnival Fred and Crystal Castles Frank). Maybe it's the way a certain enemy reacts if you do (or don't do) a specific thing, or if when and how you fire is different, or or or.... Who knows.
It's why it bugs me when I see people trying to flatly state that something is 100% true in this hobby when it is actually subjective ("DK is the hardest score to beat, period" and the like). Sooner or later, more often than not, they're proven wrong. I've been in this hobby for many years now myself, and have done my fair share of competitive play and world record chasing, setting a few myself along the way (including an actual marathon, I might add). My opinions are as valid as anyone else's on this forum.
Calvin Frampton had a long lost 1.295M score for Donkey Kong Junior that most of the community was positive was bullshit. When Calvin was tracked down and asked about it he couldn't remember details of his game from 30+ years ago and people vilified him for it, and flatly stated he was lying. There was a lot of egg on a lot of peoples' faces when it was later proven that such a score was possible. Now the record is over 1.4M. Interestingly, Calvin Frampton's score is still nowhere to be found on the TG leaderboard for Donkey Kong Junior, despite the fact that TG recognized it at the time (http://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/134084-The-Mysterious-Lost-Triumph-of-Calvin-Frampton?p=729755). And to this day I've yet to see an acceptable explanation for TG's pulling it. The moral of the story is that groupthink cannot be trusted.
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My opinions are as valid as anyone else's on this forum.
Absolutely, and I hope you're not thinking that you're being marginalized for "not being a DK player." Like you said, a site called donkeykongforum.net is going to have people that go to bat for DK 100% of the time. But I think this site is unique among niche sites in that most people here don't really care if you're a DK player or not. Everyone is welcome. Fly is a welcome regular here and his distaste for the DK series is well-known. So, keep sticking it to the DK players here, and roll with it when they try to stick it to you. :)
And besides, this whole thread is pointless anyway. We all know Intrepid is the gold standard. Kappa
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And besides, this whole thread is pointless anyway. We all know Intrepid is the gold standard. Kappa
I fucking love that someone put Intrepid on the 412-in-1. Who says the Chinese don't have a sense of humor?
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Well, I, for one, don't think DK's WR is the hardest to beat -namely, because I don't know enough about all the other games out there and their WRs to be able to make such a claim. And, even if I did, I don't know what kind of metric one could use to objectively prove such a thing sufficiently. It seems, at the very least, that it'd take some intense research on many different fronts, if it is even theoretically possible.
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OK, let me go into a little more detail about why I think the way I do. The speedrunning community has solidified my mind on this over the past few months. Here I present a video about the Super Metroid world record progression. In the beginning of this video this guy describes a speed run player by the name of Hotarubi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL8rdn00IU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL8rdn00IU)
At the time eight years ago his speedrun was so amazing that people thought that the run was fake because people even after seeing the video thought it wasn't humanly possible to do what he was doing. So where does his time rank today? I decided to check on that. My jaw hit the floor when I saw his speed run is now in 86th place. https://www.speedrun.com/supermetroid (https://www.speedrun.com/supermetroid)
You see the speedrunning community compared to eight years ago when did the speedrun is much, much, much, much bigger, and there are an army of people on games that used to have only two or three people at max for that particular game grinding away.
Next, for kicks, I decided to see how man speedrun records on popular games have stood the test of time. Again my jaw hit the floor when I realized that virtually all of them had records that were less than a year old. It was a massacre as the army of players on each game completely smashed the speed run record for almost every game. https://www.speedrun.com/games (https://www.speedrun.com/games)
Lastly I present a my DK3 score as an argument. There are 175 scores submitted for this game. https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=1170.0 (https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=1170.0)
Now a statistician would say that 175 scores would be enough of a sample size to plug in all the numbers, and the statistician would probably say something like a standard deviation for a DK3 score was around around a million points. Maybe actually lower. Well golly gee, when you do that I'm freaking 12 standard deviations away from the mean. Knowing that 3 standard deviations is in the 100 to 1 area, then 12 standard deviations would be something like in the 100 million to one area. <gasp>
But I know a little secret about those 174 other players. None of them have come close to putting the time into the game I have. I doubt that a single one of those players spent more than 200 hours on this game. I have on the other hand have spent over 1,000 hours on this game.
So the question becomes, if all 174 people spent over 1,000 hours on this game would I still have the record? Well if I didn't make an effort to raise it, I really doubt it. In fact I would probably be knocked out of the top 20 if all 174 people spent that much time on the game.
So here is what I conclude. It's all about time spent on the game. For all those records that look insane I'm almost positive that if you had 20 people spend 3 hours a day for a year on the super hard records to beat that almost all of them would fall by the way side. There is one exception to the rule though. If you picked 20 classic gamers from random who had very little experience on Donkey Kong, and had them spend 3 hours a day for a year trying to beat 1,218,000 on Donkey Kong I don't think any of them would break the record.
Why is that? Because unless you are exceptionally talented at Donkey Kong you are not going to break the record in less than 1100 hours(3 times 365= 1095).
And finally do one last thing. Go ask the world record holders how much time they have spent to get their record. I doubt that many of these unbeatable records have more than 1,000 hours spent on said game.
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OK, let me go into a little more detail about why I think the way I do. The speedrunning community has solidified my mind on this over the past few months. Here I present a video about the Super Metroid world record progression. In the beginning of this video this guy describes a speed run player by the name of Hotarubi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL8rdn00IU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL8rdn00IU)
At the time eight years ago his speedrun was so amazing that people thought that the run was fake because people even after seeing the video thought it wasn't humanly possible to do what he was doing. So where does his time rank today? I decided to check on that. My jaw hit the floor when I saw his speed run is now in 86th place. https://www.speedrun.com/supermetroid (https://www.speedrun.com/supermetroid)
You see the speedrunning community compared to eight years ago when did the speedrun is much, much, much, much bigger, and there are an army of people on games that used to have only two or three people at max for that particular game grinding away.
Next, for kicks, I decided to see how man speedrun records on popular games have stood the test of time. Again my jaw hit the floor when I realized that virtually all of them had records that were less than a year old. It was a massacre as the army of players on each game completely smashed the speed run record for almost every game. https://www.speedrun.com/games (https://www.speedrun.com/games)
Lastly I present a my DK3 score as an argument. There are 175 scores submitted for this game. https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=1170.0 (https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=1170.0)
Now a statistician would say that 175 scores would be enough of a sample size to plug in all the numbers, and the statistician would probably say something like a standard deviation for a DK3 score was around around a million points. Maybe actually lower. Well golly gee, when you do that I'm freaking 12 standard deviations away from the mean. Knowing that 3 standard deviations is in the 100 to 1 area, then 12 standard deviations would be something like in the 100 million to one area. <gasp>
But I know a little secret about those 174 other players. None of them have come close to putting the time into the game I have. I doubt that a single one of those players spent more than 200 hours on this game. I have on the other hand have spent over 1,000 hours on this game.
So the question becomes, if all 174 people spent over 1,000 hours on this game would I still have the record? Well if I didn't make an effort to raise it, I really doubt it. In fact I would probably be knocked out of the top 20 if all 174 people spent that much time on the game.
So far so good. I like your reasoning.
So here is what I conclude. It's all about time spent on the game. For all those records that look insane I'm almost positive that if you had 20 people spend 3 hours a day for a year on the super hard records to beat that almost all of them would fall by the way side. There is one exception to the rule though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wD7wDo0juY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wD7wDo0juY)
Your last three paragraphs head straight into speculation and an opinion based on it. That's fine, as it's just an opinion and opinions come from somewhere and at least yours has a solid foundation of reasoning behind it (examination of speedrun community scores). But stating that there is one exception in the CAG world (Donkey Kong) -- that is where you and I part ways. It is my opinion that there are more exceptions than just Donkey Kong, several of which have been mentioned in this thread. It is my opinion that if you unleashed a DK-community-sized army of gamers on these games that most of them would withstand the onslaught.
I can appreciate that DK has been attacked harder in recent years so we have a lot more data for it compared to other CAG games, but I don't agree with jumping to the conclusion that all other CAG scores would follow a similar pattern of defeat. We now know that Bill Mitchell's 874k DK score was a garden variety killscreen game that didn't really point press much, if at all. You can just run the boards and wind up in that range. Hell I've beaten that score (928k, albeit on a cab that was set to 6 lives) and I never bothered to learn anything beyond light, safe point pressing. But his score was so far past the competition of the time that he didn't need to submit anything higher and no one challenged it. So a garden variety killscreen score languished as the record until 2000 or so when <Tim> and <Wiebe> needed something to do. What I'm saying is that scores on some other games were pushed to the max back in the day, usually when a top player had a worthy rival and they both spent 1000 hours or more on it. (Ask Alpiger how many hours he put into Crystal Castles.) It doesn't logically follow that these scores, too, would so easily fall now if we threw dozens of talented gamers at it for a year or two or more. Let me put it this way: the work wasn't really put into DK back in the day; it was for some other games (albeit by fewer dedicated players), in my opinion at least.
I have more than once seen a bias in the community toward modern scores. I believe it is for a variety of reasons, that a) we are in the here and now and seeing these games played at a high level for ourselves, b) videotaped evidence from the early '80s is exceptionally rare due to video cameras being expensive and uncommon, especially when it came to recording video game play, c) enforcement and documentation of the settings played on was quite lax compared to today, and d) we now know that lying about scores was not uncommon back in the day. I think there is a tendency for some to conclude that most of the top scores from the '80s can't be trusted. I can see why they think so, but that doesn't mean it's true.
If you picked 20 classic gamers from random who had very little experience on Donkey Kong, and had them spend 3 hours a day for a year trying to beat 1,218,000 on Donkey Kong I don't think any of them would break the record.
Why is that? Because unless you are exceptionally talented at Donkey Kong you are not going to break the record in less than 1100 hours(3 times 365= 1095).
I'm with you here, on one principle at least: practicing something a lot does tend to make you a lot better at it.
And finally do one last thing. Go ask the world record holders how much time they have spent to get their record. I doubt that many of these unbeatable records have more than 1,000 hours spent on said game.
Pure speculation.
Thanks for the thread though. It has prompted some good discussion, even if there can be no consensus.
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Its already getting to long in this thread but billions of people exist and records are made to be broken. Georges speedrun analysis is perfect and I disagree with the concept that even DK is there. DK gets a nod simply because the record is newer and had recent strives to push it up but its the same as any other super high score. If any amount of people keep playing a title the score will get even higher. That's what happens and would happen to ANY game period.
I firmly believe this just as I firmly believe a lot of the scores from the 80's are complete nonsense given the utter lack of any standards back then and using the "well everyone didnt have a camcorder" argument is simply not a valid one. We know for a fact tons of people had fake scores or did it with continues or anything else to get there name in the paper. Even if they didn't realize it was against the rules because well there simply were no rules. The rules were get the highest score. If your only means of validating a score was your friend saying you got it then its fair game to question it. Calvins DKJr score has a lot of reasons for people to not believe it and no point in dredging that up but just because someone now has topped an older score doesn't mean there isn't a reason to question an older score. That is the problem with a lot of this someone goes thru a ton of effort to beat a score and everyone goes "See that score must be legit".
Face it people lied all the time it was par for the course. That is how we got 2 million frogger scores and 3 million dk scores and 6 million pac-man scores and even 511 million Robotron scores as well as recent 20 million Galaga scores. What was the motivation? Only god knows why people did it. Does anyone really think those are the only "fake" scores? I hope not...
Its not some "DK is the most elitist game ever" its simply had more competition than other games recently so therefore the score is harder to beat. This is also completely subjective its just a feeling because its been pushed so high recently. I dont think DK is an exception as George stated. I think its the same as any other title period. Hard is always subjective but if 10,000's of people started trying all of the LEGIT scores would be crushed. Then at some point you reach a plateau but I dont think we are there yet. Unless the game has a max confirmed score you simply aren't there.
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Yo Yo Yo SanTa...do you even video game bruh? (https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/emoticons/v1/84608/2.0)
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Yo Yo Yo SanTa...do you even video game bruh? (https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/emoticons/v1/84608/2.0)
You are absolutely fucking hilarious. Do you have your own writers?
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Calvin Frampton had a long lost 1.295M score for Donkey Kong Junior that most of the community was positive was bullshit. When Calvin was tracked down and asked about it he couldn't remember details of his game from 30+ years ago and people vilified him for it, and flatly stated he was lying. There was a lot of egg on a lot of peoples' faces when it was later proven that such a score was possible. Now the record is over 1.4M. Interestingly, Calvin Frampton's score is still nowhere to be found on the TG leaderboard for Donkey Kong Junior, despite the fact that TG recognized it at the time (http://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/134084-The-Mysterious-Lost-Triumph-of-Calvin-Frampton?p=729755). And to this day I've yet to see an acceptable explanation for TG's pulling it. The moral of the story is that groupthink cannot be trusted.
Change the word "was" to "is". Most of the community still is positive this score is bullshit.
Your logic is flawed. Just because a score is proven possible 20 years after a game's release doesn't mean a bullshitter who says they did it BITD actually did. Calvin admitted to not knowing anything about point pressing or the kill screen, yet somehow magically pulled nearly 1.3m out of his ass.
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Calvin Frampton had a long lost 1.295M score for Donkey Kong Junior that most of the community was positive was bullshit. When Calvin was tracked down and asked about it he couldn't remember details of his game from 30+ years ago and people vilified him for it, and flatly stated he was lying. There was a lot of egg on a lot of peoples' faces when it was later proven that such a score was possible. Now the record is over 1.4M. Interestingly, Calvin Frampton's score is still nowhere to be found on the TG leaderboard for Donkey Kong Junior, despite the fact that TG recognized it at the time (http://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/134084-The-Mysterious-Lost-Triumph-of-Calvin-Frampton?p=729755). And to this day I've yet to see an acceptable explanation for TG's pulling it. The moral of the story is that groupthink cannot be trusted.
Change the word "was" to "is". Most of the community still is positive this score is bullshit.
Your logic is flawed. Just because a score is proven possible 20 years after a game's release doesn't mean a bullshitter who says they did it BITD actually did. Calvin admitted to not knowing anything about point pressing or the kill screen, yet somehow magically pulled nearly 1.3m out of his ass.
That was my entire point above. Same as all the bullshit Missile Command scores and when asked Victor couldn't remember squat about it either. I'm sorry but im sure 20 years from now Wes will still have a vivid memory of his score and probably a lot of details about DK and how to point press for said score. Its ok someday other crazy claimed scores may indeed get beat if its POSSIBLE to beat them. Eventually someone may get 2.2M on Frogger and 512M on Robotron and when they do that gives validation to all the lying back in the day? Ok sureeeeeee....nope...