you can tell from how far it's from kong's foot .  There should be a picture or something showing all the different sizes of the springs.

Length between springs. If the length between is short, don't go. If the length is long, then go

I set the speed to 70 or 80% early on, then increased the speed to 120% when I felt like I had it figured

This is a smart idea I never thought of

I have a fondness for Popeye! My PB is around 700K, which I think is good (?) but only like five people have ever tried to seriously play it, and I think I'm in fifth place among that group. I bought a PCB over a decade ago to play in my DK cab.

It's not a great game, and I understand why it doesn't have a following. Like TSF said, I think it starts with the premise, which is off-putting and disempowering and demoralizing right off the bat. It's in that category of games like Pac-Man or Burgertime that are very popular among casual CAG fans, but not so much among hardcore CAG competitors, because it has that deadly combination of being tedious but lacking in real gameplay depth. You have to put in some work to develop the muscle memory and timing, but once you've done that, it just kinda comes down to not screwing up, and there's no real point-pressing to speak of. Having said that, Max Haraske is great at maximizing points per screen and definitely deserves the 3.2M record that he has on MAME. If someone like Jason Vasiloff were to turn their attention to it, you could see that broken. Barra could do it too, but I think he would rather die than try.

As a new player currently the deadliest board is the springs board. I know the basic strategy of lining Mario up with the yellow elevator piece and running when I get a long spring and I probably get it about 50% of the time. My biggest struggle is being able to react to if I get a second long spring and not retreating in time. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to most effectivly practice this board? Any tips would be appreciated.