Some stats and thinking from my play during the Race to 1 Million event!
STATSTotal coins dropped: 105 (76 arcade; 29 MAME)
Total games aborted: 83 (68 pre-5-1; 15 5-1+)
Total games played to completion: 22 (16 arcade; 6 MAME) --NOTE: in at least half a dozen of these "complete" games, I was on my last man so early that I carelessly goofed off with it, so they could arguably be put into the "aborted" category. It's possible I really only played 15 or so games all the way out.--
Best scores (400K or better):2015/08/13 605,000 14-5
2015/08/16 524,400 12-6
2015/08/12 496,600 12-4
2015/08/31 482,100 12-1
2015/08/25 467,900 11-6
2015/08/31 442,600 11-3
2015/08/31 434,700 11-1 (MAME)
2015/08/31 434,600 11-3
2015/08/15 405,100 10-3
Total contest days: 23 (8/9 through 8/31)
Number of days with at least one coin-drop: 14 (did not play on 9 of the 23 days)
Total gameplay time: 35 hours (Total recording time was 36 hours, 38 minutes, but I played the "difficulty 30" hack during one of those streams for 1 hour and 10 minutes, and I'll round it down another half hour or so for yammering between/after games.
Average gameplay time per contest day: (35 hours divided by 23 days) 1.52 hours
MAME savestate practice time: only 2-3 hours over the length of the contest
ANALYSISSome might laugh at these stats, and how diligent I was about keeping them. Heck, I'm laughing too.
However, I DID spend 35 hours actually playing the game. So spending a little extra time to ensure data points were collected will help me spend the NEXT 35 hours playing smarter, not harder. And crunching stats/numbers is part of the fun.
First of all, my ability to maintain pace looks fine. Every game that went past 400K was pretty much where I needed to be, with a few exceptions, such as my highest-scoring game (the 605K) which was probably about 10K below pace. That was a relatively early game though, and my efficiency improved dramatically as the event went on and I got sharper. Efficiency fades quickly when falling out of practice, and might be the last thing to come back!
One issue that these stats show that I clearly need to do something about is abandoning games early. Seeing that I aborted 83 out of 105 coins (68 of those before Level 5) is pretty eye-opening. I need to either keep going despite early deaths, or find some way to make myself care more and play better during the early levels. I'm burning a staggering amount of time just trying to get a game started.
It has long been true for me that I flat-out do not enjoy playing Donkey Kong until Level 9 or so. I find levels 1 through 6 or so almost intolerably tedious, and the dragon I'm chasing is the "high" that begins to set in about one hour deep, when I'm on the open highway, things are flowing smoothly from one board to the next, and that feeling of trepidation and stultifying apathy that characterizes the early game fades into an excited, hungry, dizzy, confident aggression.
So, if I find the first 25 boards or so "intolerably tedious" (I do) and only start enjoying myself later, but I'm spending over 80% of my coin-drops trying, and failing, to get through those first 25 boards, then it's no wonder I've been semi-retired from DK for almost four years! I think, for a while, I just need to experiment with forbidding myself from restarting, even if I get murder-barreled on L3.
OTHER NOTESI was playing poorly for much of this contest. Having said that, on games when I WAS playing well, my luck would turn, suddenly and brutally, right around the halfway point. It happened again and again. The 524,400 game, in particular, was stolen from me by screwings on a pie factory and rivets, and a semi-screwing where a barrel board fireball climbed as the hammer was expiring (I had exactly one smash to get it, but on the last swing turned away to reposition myself). The expiring-hammer-fireball-climb is my nemesis, and it bedeviled me throughout the contest.
To sum up, it was a whole lot of early-game shitty play, but then, when I survived long enough to actually get one going, mid-game shitty luck.
Without a doubt though, I am better at the game than I was when the event started. And I am finally getting used to what a full-length two-hammer game actually feels like.
We'll see if I can make this happen during the next DKO.
