Yo yo. Figured it would be a cool idea to pen some of my adventures with DK, the pursuit behind my latest PB and other miscellaneous ramblings. It'll probably be pretty long as I've never really written about my gaming life before. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to read this crap, haha.
I have been gaming all of my life. I'm 35, so my earliest memories came in the mid 80's with the Atari 2600 and Super Mario Bros. I can specifically recall being around 3 or 4 and watching my Uncle and his friend playing SMB1. I wanted to play it, but he said I wouldn't be able to get through the first level, so he made me play Duck Hunt, instead. I looked up to my Uncle my whole life - he was the best gamer I knew. I would always sit by his side as he ran through Ultima: Exodus, Hexen, Sim City and eventually Diablo, Ultima Online, etc. He's still the man, in my eyes.
Years would go by and many games would be played. During my early teens, I discovered Final Fantasy and, for a while, JRPG's were my life (I can't freaking wait for FF7 Remake in March!). I even created an online Final Fantasy 7 club over on Yahoo! that ended up getting a little over 2,000 members. I was super hardcore about FF and loved everything about it (and still do).
I did not realize that I was a competitive gamer at heart until the Halo series came out. That game changed my life in many ways. Xbox Live opened me up to an entire world of online competition that I hadn't seen before. By the time it came out, I was around 20. I devoted so much time to getting better at it. I would endlessly study the MLG pros. After a while, I became really good - good enough to at least win a couple of small online free-for-all and 1v1 tournaments. For some reason, though, I never fully applied myself and thus, I never went to any major MLG tournaments. It is one small regret I have, but, at the same time, I ended up making many friends through the game, so I do not regret my time spent with it. Even as of a few years ago, I was still fairly serious about it, but still never serious enough to take it anywhere special. I have a YouTube page with a couple of Halo-related videos on it, if you want to check it out. Nothing exciting.
I can remember the exact day I started playing Donkey Kong. It was July 22nd, 2018. I know this because, from day 1, I started taking screenshots of all of my personal bests and putting them in my "High Score" folder on my Desktop. To be honest, this wasn't the first time I had tried DK. About 2 years earlier was when I had downloaded MAME for the first time. I played it for maybe 20 minutes before calling it quits and letting it fall by the wayside.
What inspired me to try out Donkey Kong was the same thing that inspired a lot of people - the King of Kong doc-u-ment-ary film. I thought it was the coolest movie ever. I can't remember when I first saw it. It might have been around 2011 or 2012. Obviously, at the time, it did not light a spark in me to try the game out for myself, but it was a movie whose soul resonated with me and would eventually get me into the scene. Of course, knowing what I know now about the film and the characters involved, it's significantly different than it was when I first watched it.
So, July, 2018 comes around. I don't remember exactly why I said to myself, "let's give this another shot," but it must have been because Halo was dying and I was looking for something to be competitive in. Something that did not require teammates, had no online lag and whose outcome would be soly up to me to determine. I realized pretty quickly that I should have been competing in old-school games this whole time. They are exactly what I've been searching for!
Looking at my DK screenshots right now, my progress looked like this:
July 22, 2018 - Day 1. Highest score: 41,600.
July 28, 2018 - Day 7. Highest score: 72,500.
July 29, 2018 - Day 8. Highest score: 99,600.
July 30, 2018 - Day 9. Highest score: 106,300.
August 1, 2018 - Day 11. Highest score: 125,800.
August 14, 2018 - Day 24. Highest score: 171,400.
August 16, 2018 - Day 26. Highest score: 246,900.
Auguest 22, 2018 - Day 32. Highest score: 330,500.
Auguest 24, 2018 - Day 34. Highest score: 384,100.
August 30, 2018 - Day 40. Highest score: 482,800.
At that point, I stopped making screenshots and started focusing purely on INP's. On October 7th, 2018, day 77, I got as far as I ever had - board 21-5. Final rivets. And... I died. The final score was 881,700. I was pretty crushed but not to any significant degree. I had it in my mind that I could, at that point, recreate this same game any time I wanted to. 5 days later, October 12, 2018, day 82, I finally got my first kill screen with a score of 888,000.
It was at this point that I began to ask myself (as many of us have) what I wanted to do next with the game. I could go for 900k, 950k, 1m, 1.05m or 1.1m. I decided that I didn't want to improve gradually, piece-by-piece. I wanted to start learning all of the strategies that went into getting a 1.1 game from day 78. So, it began...
It wasn't long after I started doing that that I decided to stream my efforts. With this, I met many of you guys. I started becoming a fixture in everyone's stream. I wanted to soak up all of the DK knowledge I possibly could. I would play, practice save states, fail and then watch Serphy and Robbie and Wes and Dean and Thomas and JP and anyone else I could learn from. I would die to something new even when I thought I had every way to die mapped out in my head and I would turn to the best players to see how they would have handled it differently. I would visualize barrel boards and how to optimize combos while transitioning. I would literally fall asleep watching Serphy's gameplay - constantly searching for any clues I could find on how to get good at this game. I always believe that watching the best players in any field is the fastest, most efficient way to get good in that field.
After about 2 months of streaming and failing in my 1.1 pursuit, I decided to go offline and pay a visit to "The Island". I started chatting less and less in everyone's stream. I went "into the shadows", if you will. The truth is, I felt like I knew a lot about DK, but I did not feel in my heart that I had a score that qualified me to be able to talk about it at any serious level, so I didn't say much at all. You guys have probably seen me lurking like a creep in some of your streams. After talking to Lyriell yesterday, he said he thought Rayfinkel was a "bot", lmao. Love it!
The other reason I stopped streaming was because I realized that I no longer wanted to pursue 1.1 strats. I felt like it would be really fun and an even greater challenge to learn how 1.15 plays. With this came a massive amount of additional failure. Everything I did I failed at. In my heart of hearts, I believe that failure is the key to success. Not just that, of course, but how you respond to it. Some people get dejected and others are thankful. One of my favorite sports is competitive arm wrestling. One of the elite's in the sport is Devon Larratt. He is so used to winning and has been doing so for a long time. However, last year, he suffered a pretty brutal couple of defeats. In an interview, he said that losing was the best gift he could ever receive. It allowed him to open his mind to new possibilities - to receive new motivation and learning opportunities. That is exactly how I feel when I fail at DK. Yes, some deaths are brutal and you can't do anything about them. However, even the most brutal deaths have a lesson if you search for them deeply enough. Even the rivets have many lessons to teach if you're ready to receive them with an open mind.
7 months after my kill screen, I still hadn't cracked 1.1. I hadn't even touched 1 million, yet. I made the decision in May, 2019, to stop pursuing 1.1 and 1.15 strats for at least a week to see if I could hit the 1m mark. Sure enough, after some initial struggle (it is actually really hard to mentally unlearn 1.15 strats for the sake of 1m), I got my first million on May 12, 2019. Day 294.
After my million, it was back to the 1.15 grind. Months would go by and many INP's would be stored in my "Failed INP's" folder. On September 11th, 4 months after my first million, I cracked the million for the first time on 1.15 pace. 1044400. For weeks prior to this, I was starting to routinely hit 800k with multiple men in reserve. I just kept choking in the 800-900k range. Alas, I knew that the experience was much needed. The more I hit 800k on pace, the less nervous I got. It became "normalized", in a sense. Nothing beats end-game experience, in my opinion.
About 4 weeks after my 1044400, I cracked a million again. 1070000 on 1.15 pace was achieved on October 14th. Another heartbreaker - this time on board 20-5. A part of me wanted to cave in, but again, I took this as another notch of end-game experience under my belt.
On October 27th, 3 days ago, day 462, I finally came as close to my target as I ever had. 1142200. It wasn't 1.15, but it was enough for me to feel like I had finally achieved a big goal. It was a feeling of pure elation that I know many of you can relate to. Pure relief, honestly. When you fail so many times, even the most alpha and hardened people start to experience doubt creeping into their minds. I'm most likely not alpha and I do get unbelievably nervous near the end. I was elated and super stoked to broadcast my gameplay to you all.
When the stream went live, I was so happy to see so many of you there. I wasn't sure if anyone would really be interested in watching me play, so it was crazy when so many familiar names popped in. Having you guys in there was the best feeling. This community, as I said when I posted my score, is filled with some of the nicest, most genuine people I have ever met. Alas, I'm pretty thankful that Halo sucks nowadays, hahaha.
Anyway, if you've read this far, then I apologize for having wasted so much of you guys' time! Who the hell wants to read my nonsense? As far as what the future holds... I will probably take a short break from the game. It's actually kind of funny, though. Between my first kill screen and the beginning of this month (a full year), I had been using a PlayStation 3 controller for all my attempts. This past Saturday, I randomly bought a new mechanical keyboard (HyperX Alloy Core RGB) and, one day later, got the score. How stupid is that? This keyboard is amazing, though. Would highly recommend. Kinda makes me want to keep grinding just because it's brand new.
What I would really like to do, at some point, is buy a cab. I've reached out to a couple of you guys for deets on that. I am worried I will end up spending $1500 on a piece of trash haha. I don't want to talk very seriously about it quite yet, but very soon I am going to start considering it.
Thanks again, fellers. More to come. Also, I use Facebook quite regularly, so hit me up in a PM and maybe we can be franz.
