Your Story: Road to KS / PB Ladder

[Fliplismc]

Was wondering when did you start playing DK and how you did you progress . Would be cool to see peoples road to their killscreen/Personal Best and how long it took.

I first started playing Donkey Kong at a backpacker hostle back in September 2009 when I was travelling around Australia for 3 months. It was just a random cabinet with a 60-in-1 in it.
When I came home to Denmark in early December 2009 I was hooked but took me a while before i finally bought a tabletop cabinet with a 60-in-1 and later when those 60 games wasn't enough I build a full side MAME cab.

Here's my PB's since i staret:

Score:    Level:        Date:                 Location:    Platform:

xx.xxx        ?          Sep 2009           Australia      60-in-1
124.500    5-4       26. March 2011   Denmark      60-in-1
130.000    5-4       21. May 2012      Denmark      60-in-1
173.700    6-?       16. Oct. 2012      Denmark      60-in-1
212.500    7-?       19. Nov. 2012     Denmark      M.A.M.E.
230.400    7-5       30. April 2013     Denmark      M.A.M.E.
248.800    8-1       21. May 2013      Denmark      M.A.M.E.
264.600    8-4        4. June 2013      Denmark      M.A.M.E.

My Mate Rass beat my High Score at the Shed and scored over 300k so when I got back I started playing again (Thanks Rass)

291.000   9-2        17. Jan. 2014     Denmark      M.A.M.E.
502.300  13-4       18. Jan. 2014     Denmark      M.A.M.E.
712.200  18-4         4. Oct. 2014     Denmark      M.A.M.E.
715.200  18-3       11. Nov. 2014     Denmark      M.A.M.E.

At this point I was racing with Anders Lasbo   ​to be the first Dane to reach the KS, he beat me to it and got 748.400 on the 16th of July   

I knew for 3 months i would leave Denmark in Sep. 2015 to go away for a year and work and travel in Australia and didn't know when i would get the chance to play again so when i left Denmark without getting the KS i thought it would never happen.
After working for 3 Months I went down to Bartronicia a arcade bar in Melbourne and that's where I got my KS.

852.500  KS       27. Dec. 2015   Australia - Bartronica    - Arcade
853.500  KS       25. April 2020   Australia - Netherworld - Arcade

It took me 6 years on/off playing but it finally happened. So funny how things turns out.

[Barra]

Awesome! I never knew you started playing so early. Before  even!!

I started playing soon after joining this forum. I had played a lot of other CAGs before but was never really interested in DK or the DK series. Thanks to everyone here, that changed! ( or  ) ?
I actually did some charting back when I was learning DK in 2013/14 (jry loves it)


This is PB progression. I was lucky enough to play from 0 to KS on Retro Uprising, so all of these games have been saved


This is all credits (excluding the many quick restarts) from 31/1/2014 until I stopped recording on 6/6/2014 with a PB of 785k (692k first man lo, Vince/Mitch ). I killscreened on 26/8/2014

[Fliplismc]

Insane it only took you a year!

Love the stats, thats so cool! I hope I can find my dk diary i my storage room one day (: Im a paper and pen kind a guy. Technology hates me.

[Fliplismc]

Realised you can't edit your post so would be sweet to get this moved to another category. Just didn't know where els to post it . Thanks

[dollopuss]

Funnily enough, I started to get serious about DK about a year ago this month. I haven't even been part of DKF for a full year yet! Feels longer 

I don't have charts, but my PBs gradually jumped from a 500*k, 600*k, 700*k to 888100 KS over 7 or 8 months? I wasn't a CAGer until the crazy high difficulty of DK confounded me and I stubbornly had to get better at it.

[SithOfSpades]

Mine is less well documented than Barra's, but I will give it a go.

~1985 - Definitely played as a kid, but not much. No score recollection. I put 1985 as that is when I probably start going to the arcade.
~2008 - Played some MAME inspired by the scripted document airy King of Kong. Recollect scoring about 80 K
August 5, 2018 - Got an arcade cabniet
August 28, 2018 - 93,600
August 29, 2018 - 119,000
September 3, 2018 - 233,00
September 16, 2018 - 280,500
October 1, 2018 - 288,300
October 6, 2018 - 382,500
October 9, 2018 - 447,300
October 30, 2018 - 455,300
November 11, 2018 - 553,200
November 21, 2018 - 590,000
November 29, 2018 - streamed 391,200 for my first verified score.
December 1, 2018 - 720,400
December 6, 2018 - 813,500 KS. First KS
January 8, 2019 - 880,700 KS
January 26, 2019 - 900,800 KS
June 6, 2019 - 991,900

The scores before November 29, 2018 are all unverified and there are some gaps. I have a bunch of pictures I used to track the progression.

So first quarter drop to KS, about 33 years. From serious attempts to improve to KS, 4 months and 1 day.

[xelnia]

I started playing on March 1, 2013. I'm fairly certain I never played DK in an arcade before that (or even the NES version), and the only reason I started is because I struck up a friendship with Ethan Daniels while we were both grinding Pac-Man Championship Edition DX on PS3. I kept a record of all my PBs starting with 19,200 on March 6th. I KS'd on February 23, 2014 during DKO 2014 #1. I remember that it was going to be my last credit of that streaming session because I had been playing for almost 5 hours. At the time I think it was #34 on the HSL; now it's #62. All of my PBs have been on MAME and my arcade PB is 796,700.

The graph below is a little different than what you'll find under my name on kongtrac.kr, but reflects my true PB progression. When I was adding my scores to KT I only added scores that I still have an INP or video for. So, my provable games start with the 78k on March 11th. I don't have an INP for the 682k game because that was when I really started trying to customize MAME command-line/batch files for myself, and of course I screwed it up. Luckily I was streaming that game. I don't remember if I submitted it since it was only an 8k increase over my PB. To date, I have never had a game end in the 800,000 - 899,900 range.

[homerwannabee]

I didn't have a smooth road.  I played the game at least 500 or so hours.  I think I had six personal bests in the 300k range.  September of 2013 I had my breakout game of 851,500.  I died on level 21-4.  It would remain this way until last year where I started playing again because of the Kong Off.  I got an 868k score, but died on Level 21-2.
I really wanted to killscreen before the Kong Off, but it simply didn't happen.
At the Kong Off I started off horribly.  I had three or four games in a row where I kept dying before the third level.
Then I finally a game where I got past the 2nd level.  I think I died on either the 3rd or 4th level.
This time I decided that I was going to play on because I was tired of restarting the game.  My goal of getting to at least 400k wasn't looking so good.
Then for some reason that second man had wings, and I flew off. I kept going, and going with the simple goal of getting as high of as possible.
I finally lost my second guy late mid game.
This was probably the hardest part.  Trying to remain focused after having a good run on a man.
My whole goal never changed.  Get as high of a score as possible.  I couldn't, and wouldn't allow myself to enter into my head that I had a shot at a killscreen.  After all, I couldn't do it on MAME after hundreds of hours of play.  I had a horrible first few starts on Arcade.
In the background Billy Mitchell starts saying how I am going to get a killscreen when I had two men left on Level 15.  I told him I am not getting a killscreen. And Barra who was playing next to piped up with something like, "no he's not going to get going to get a killscreen, he's going to totally choke.  That made me smile, and in some weird way that helped. 
I really didn't think about actually getting a killscreen until level 21-5. I now had a rather decent sized crowed behind me.  Mainly because I was close to becoming the first person to killscreen at the very first Kong Off held in Banning.
For a second I contemplated sacrificing a guy on Level 21-5, but didn't because I simply didn't want one of the most epic fails at a killscreen to happen.
I then got a killscreen, and like a zealous idiot got on top of the machine.
Of course it was cool to see my DKForum peeps behind me and a few strangers as well.
So after all the trying, and failing to get a killscreen, that all that frustration of being so close, and failing was all worth it for one of the most epic first killscreens a person could have of all time. 
Even though I had so many failures getting there, I don't think I would change a thing. 

[Barra]

And Barra who was playing next to piped up with something like, "no he's not going to get going to get a killscreen, he's going to totally choke.  That made me smile, and in some weird way that helped. 

Don't remember that at all but definitely something I would say to you (all fun of course). Glad to know it helped

[dnickolas]

I never cared much about the killscreen, since I had seen it already and figured it was more a stop to the game than anything else. Since it was also immediately apparent that playing at a high level and running boards were substantially different in terms of difficulty, my thought process was that I should just learn top level strats so that the "right" behaviors were automatic. That way I wouldn't have to unlearn bad habits at some point when I wanted to advance.

That said, I worked for some years. I don't know exactly when I started, but it was in the years and not in the months. I'd watch Dean's 1.206 game to learn how to play barrels. I'd post on here to find out what I was missing about springs. I'd test out different pie strats to see how they worked out.

Here are some things that I did as far as practice, before ever getting a killscreen.

1. Run rivets from a save state until I passed 25 in a row. This took several days and was thousands of runs, between meetings at work and before dinner at home.

2. Run elevators until I got 8k 10 times in a row. This is harder than it might seem. RNG can make it impossible.

3. Reset on any L1 cumulative score under 20k for any sort of Start attempt.

4. Practice each distinct start level until I was comfortable with the spawn/change times.

5. Try to get 3 levels from a save state to be 200k. I never achieved this. I got 250k in 4 levels, but never the 66,666 average I wanted in the actual goal.

6. Ran over a thousand elevator boards working on right approach.

7. Increased start PB to over 130. This is weird, because I can get 130 pretty consistently now but never have gotten 135 officially. It's bizarre having a PB right around a target that you regularly achieve. Maybe 2 days after the 134200 recently my next streamed start was 133400.

8. Ran 1-1 thousands of times to get a 12700. I want a 13000 but when the RNG lines up I screw up, and when I play great the points just aren't there.

So I was clearly training to be a good player, and figured I'd eventually get some of the scores people typically target along the way.

This has not yet happened.

Last year I said F it I'll get a killscreen running boards and did one run a day for a bit and did 2 6 hour streams where I just tried to do it. I learned something. I had no idea how to run boards. You'd think that it's easier, and it clearly is objectively, but you definitely see situations that you never see when you've never skipped a bottom hammer in your life. Even now, I pretty much have to get up top as if I'm going to get into grouping position and then pretend a fireball is coming up to make me grab the hammer. It's bizarre, but it's a thing.

Anyhow, I had some 600s and 700s, and ended up at 717 on like 17-6 or something.

I kinda stopped this for a bit and went back to just playing like I wanted to play, and then we had Yolympics. It was a different mame version than I had ever used, and figured "hey I'll just try to get a million on this thing." First run had a death on level 3 so I immediately restarted. My next run got the start, and then around level 6 or 7 or something I took a death. Then I took another one around level 7 or 8. They may have been the same level. I don't really remember it well, though it's on Kongtrackr if you care. The whole thing felt wrong. It was like there was lag, but I don't know how much. Anyhow, it scared me into wanting to only make moves that were perfectly safe, since any tight maneuvering made me think I was going to hit something and die again. I just wanted a score for yolympics so I could get back to a mame I trusted. At one point Thomas popped in to say good luck or something and I commented that I was just running boards. When he replied that I shouldn't tell Allen that running boards means 2 hammers I realized that I forgot that I was trying to skip those. I laughed, said oops, and it reminded me to get back to not taking them. That's what happens when you train yourself to play a certain way, you inadvertently revert to it if you break concentration.

I took a death on level 11 rivet. After that, I made it to the end and got my killscreen. I skipped everything. Didn't really care about points at all. Tried to be as efficient as I could be.

Anyhow, my path was different than most. I measured my own progress by my contrived challenges I'd use for myself when I'd have half an hour or whatever to work on my game. In the end, I was not able to just run boards immediately, it was some months and even a couple very long streaming sessions of failure. And that's after years of studying games and practicing strats.

Hard game is hard.

[krehztim]

I am an oldster.  Growing up, I lived about 30 miles from the nearest grocery store, but I did live 5 miles away from a local skating rink (Hugo's Skateway).  If anyone's taken the segment of Route 17 in Virginia that connects I-81 to I-95, you may have seen a giant roller skate on the side of the road.  In the 70s and even until the late 80s, it was the only arcade within a half hour, and it was also known to be a haven of discrimination, see https://openjurist.org/974/f2d/1408/johnson-v-hugos-skateway . 

At any rate, living in the sticks, the only place we had for entertainment was Hugo's.  I started going there in 4th and 5th grade, so about 9-10 years old (I was born late 1970).  I didn't go to skate, I went for the arcade games.  I vividly recall its pre-DK days, when there were 5-6 games against the wall - Asteroids, Pac-Man, Missile Command, Space Invaders, and Sea Wolf.  There was also a Warlords game in another part of the skating rink.  At first, I was fine w/ Asteroids, and I learned all the Pac-Man patterns, including 9th key, but at 10 years old, I was topping out in the high 700k range at Pac-Man.

As the golden age of arcade games blossomed, the number of games grew, and the rink built a separated room to the side for the "arcade", probably a dozen games, eventually adding Wizard of Wor, Scramble, Defender, Gorf, and finally Donkey Kong.  For those of us who came for the games, DK was a revelation.  I loved it from the get-go, and can remember being mesmerized by the colors of the pie factory screen.  We were all 11-12 years old, so I can remember the first time I cleared the pie factory, and I remember my friend being the first one to clear the L4 springs.  All we had to go on at the time was a rumor about these 4 springs in a row, and running on the fourth.  At the time, my PB was 81,000.  The same friend was the first to top 100k, in that game where he cleared the L4 springs.

I was addicted at that point, and I remember being the first on that machine to clear 200k, with a PB of 205k sometime in 1982, when I was 11.  That's about as far as I got at the time, as the game list started growing to Mr. Do!, Track and Field, Xevious, and eventually Hyper Sports, Two Tigers, and DK Jr.  I started getting addicted to vertical scrolling shooters, and especially button mashers.  My DK days were over, or so I thought.

Sometime around 2006, my company hired a guy from California, and he'd been friends with Chris Kirmse, and he told me about MAME.  I bought a multi-DVD set of MAME32 v0.90u1, with a couple thousand ROMs, and I started playing all the classics, but not a ton of DK.  I still preferred consoles at that point, especially anything Mario or Nintendo.

In 2014, I found Retro Uprising (retrouprising.com), and its scoreboard and replay capabilities blew me away.  I veered away from my own MAME to the convenience and competition on RU, where I first found people like Barra, Wolf, and QAOP Spaceman.  Around that time, I also watched King of Kong, and I started playing a LOT of DK.  I managed to get my pb over 300k (312,800), but I was still frustrated on the springs.  A google search in 2016 (or so) led me here to DKF and the Spring Theory thread.  I started using save states until I passed the springs 100x without dying.  I got my PB up to 542,800 in 2017, I think to L=14.  I started watching a lot of Wes, Robbie, and other streams, but I stopped playing DK.  I crossed to the dark side and got a CK killscreen for a bounty (I AM a capitalist), but haven't dedicated enough time to DK practice to go any further.  My goal apparently has become to be the Oldest Person to achieve a First Killscreen (I'm 48 and nowhere near the KS).  I know HOW to do it, I just don't want to dedicate the TIME to do it.  My job is killing me and is a veritable black hole of my time.  DK KS is still high on my list of things to do before I'm 50, but time is running out.  My main issue is barrels and learning NOT to point press.  I obsess over my score and pace, and until I conquer that, I'm probably screwed.  I have the utmost respect for those of you who can put the time in and get em. 

So, I'm literally in my 38th year of playing this game and still no ks.  I am the Ultimate Loser LOL.

[Flobeamer1922]

For me, it all started in mid-2017, when Summoningsalt had uploaded his Donkey Kong World Record Progression video (which he has since removed in the wake of the cheating fiasco). Before this point, I was unaware that the game (or CAGs in general) had a competitive scene outside of King of Kong. That video led me to Wes Copeland, which led me to DKF. I started seriously playing the game around August or September of that year, and I went from there. I learned how to play DK from watching a bunch of people playing the game live on Twitch, such as Barra, Jry, Ethan, and serphy. By the end of that year, my PB was up to 422,200. Then came 2018.

In April, my mother and I flew to Brazil to visit family we hadn't seen in over a decade. Before we left to go on this trip, my PB was 550,900. The night after we got there, I played a few credits. During this session, I somehow managed to skip 600k and 700k, and end with 809,400 on 19-6; just two levels away from the kill screen. About a week later, I managed another PB of 862,900 on 20-4 (which is probably the highest DK score ever done in Brazil at the time of me writing this). We returned home a few days later, and in May, I got 884,500 on 20-6. That kill screen was so close. It was at this point that I decided I should stream the remainder of my kill screen attempts. Then, the following month happened. At long last, in the early morning of June 28th, 2018, I did it. I got my kill screen, and ended that game with a score of 920,100.

So that's my kill screen journey. To date, that's the only time I've kill screen'd Donkey Kong, and I've been trying for a million points ever since... (We all know how that's been turning out. ) My current PB at the time of writing is 976,100.

[TheSunshineFund]

I grew up in a town not far from the East end which was primarily inhabited by men, with the women mostly comprising the West end.  The locals likened it to a dead end in that the future was perhaps as bleak as the not to long off past.  Once at a local eatery there was a dust up with chairs and tables flying in all directions, police were notified as a mad man was loose wrecking havoc.  Eventually he was apprehended in close proximity to a dive bar he had attempted to access via the subway or tube system as it were.

Residents say often they hear whispers from this man while wandering the streets at night, the building walls plastered with posters of lost faces.  Few options exist for those with empty pockets, binary options of hard or soft, which would I choose?.  One might hear Blondie's Heart of Glass blasting on a lonely jukebox one Saturday night but the stark realization of your current situation has you reflective regarding your future here.  Sadly, it's somewhat comparative to nearly every city from Bern to Helsinki and so this begs the question...'How far have you been?'