September 12th, 2019 was just a few days ago, and that date marks the 20th anniversary of Ben Jos Walbeehm's 893,400 MAME killscreen game. While most people get caught up in the drama involving
,
, and
, Ben Jos rarely gets the credit due to him as a champion of the game. There have been previous threads discussing his scores, but I thought it would be nice to post a small summary in recognition of the 20th anniversary and in honor of a great player who is no longer with us.
Ben Jos was an active member of the MARP community and while his Kong'ing mainly focused on the Crazy Kong variants, he posted two very significant scores on Donkey Kong:
893,400 - September 12, 1999
904,100 - November 30, 2001
Both of these games were done with MAME and both were killscreens. The 893k score is significant because it was the first score known to beat Billy Mitchell's 874,300 score from the 80s. It was also the first publicly available killscreen game. Ben Jos made it to Level 21 on his first man and employed what now seems like a very odd sacrifice strategy...sac'ing men on each barrel board of Level 21 by jumping single barrels near the final ladder. The 904k was the first known 900k+ score ever done and stands as an official TG and DKF score.
Whatever your thoughts are on comparing MAME and arcade scores, there can be no doubt that Ben Jos had the highest known DK scores between September 12, 1999 and June 30, 2003 when Steve Wiebe scored 947,200...kicking off the drama regarding Double Donkey Kongs, 8-way joysticks, and everything that followed.
Ben Jos' scores weren't without controversy however, as he explains in a June 22, 2009 post on CAGDC:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,1437.msg23404.html#msg23404I guess I'd like to correct a few minor things. And to confirm other things.
PL (Pat Laffaye?) was mostly correct in telling my story. I grew up in Europe. I got addicted to Crazy Kong. And I mean REALLY addicted. I think I was 13 or 14 years old. And all the money I made from my allowance and from delivering newspapers went into Crazy Kong. And then I got to the kill screen on CK.
For those of you who don't know CK, it has 4 screens on EVERY "L". The first (always 25 m) is "barrels", the second (always 50 m) is "pies"/"conveyors", the third (always 75 m) is "elevators", the fourth (always 100 m) is "rivets". But, thanks to the CK trick of "jumping through the floor" on "barrels", the kill screen was not on L=22, 25 m, but L=22, 100 m. "Conveyors" (50 m) could be finished in the limited time if you were relatively fast and "elevators" was a joke. Of all 22 Ls, it was by far the easiest 75 m of the entire game. The springs came out at a much lower frequency than at any of the preceding Ls. So 100 m was the kill screen there. However, on Donkey Kong, after a few Ls, "barrels" occurs 3 times, not just once, so on most Ls, DK has 6 screens, not 4. So the total number of screens on DK to get to the kill screen there (L=22, 25 m) requires more screens to be cleared than the kill screen (L=22, 100 m) on CK.
Also, there are some differences in behaviour on each of the 4 distinct screens, but let's not get into those now.
I moved to the US in 1995 and discovered MAME pretty soon afterwards. I was delighted to see CK. 
I pretty quickly got number one spots on MARP on every one of the clones. At that point, I considered DK (and all its clones) to be just clones of CK. So when I had gotten the #1 spots on all CK clones, I started playing DK. Well, I was in for 2 BIG surprises. And I don't mean the extra "insertions" of the "barrels" screen. My first big surprise was the "behaviour". Barrels and springs, most significantly, behaved quite differently.
Anyway, it took me a while, but I eventually got very nice scores on DK, thinking nothing of it. Just another clone for me. But I didn't realise how popular DK was here in the US (SURPRISE NUMBER TWO). Finally, when I scored higher on DK than Billy's arcade WR, did the sh*t come down. If I recall correctly, the first time I did that, I THINK (but I'm not entirely sure... ) my score wasn't even over 900 k, but people started questioning me left and right, because I HAD scored higher than Billy's WR. At first, I was not aware of any hostility and I gladly shared any knowledge I had about the game with everyone. And, after all, I had already shared my MAME recording. I remember I submitted my first 900 k recording and people started calling me a cheater. How could such a newbie be so good? Well, truth is, I wasn't a newbie. I had maxed out CK literally over a hundred times, way back in the 80s.
Things got worse and worse. And, really there were only a few people who were being VERY hostile to me. People who were very good at DK in their own right, and who had done it on the actual arcade machine, but who were not as good as Billy. In fact, Billy NEVER said anything bad about me to the best of my knowledge. Just a few of the "arcade" people said bad things about me. The majority of MARP was on my side. As for TG, Mark Longridge was on my side and Walter Day also NEVER said anything bad about me.
Nobody ever offered me a plane ticket to Funspot, on any condition. In fact, I had a lot of talks with Mark Longridge back then and I really wanted to visit Funspot. ON MY OWN DIME. No strings attached. But, ironically, I had NEVER EVEN SEEN an actual DK machine at that time (nor even now), let alone played one (nor even now). So I asked Mark if we could meet at Funspot under the condition that he would not tell anyone who I was. So that I could actually play the machine for the first few times while not being under scrutiny. Mark readily agreed.
However, things on the message boards steadily got worse and when it got to the point where people were personally attacking me (not just my DK skills, but me as a person, saying bad things about me that had NOTHING to do with gaming), I had had enough. I had so much wanted to go to Funspot (paying for it myself, because, again, there NEVER was any mention in any way I might get reimbursed), but I became so revulsed at the idea of actually meeting some of the people who had punched me underneath the belt so many times. I called it off. MAYBE if it had been CK, I still would have gone. But DK was NOT my favourite game. CK was. To me, DK was just a clone that I liked a lot less.
Someone also mentioned real life might have gotten in the way. Yes, that is also true. But not that I couldn't afford a plane ticket. And it wasn't intercontinental by that time either, because I lived (and still live) in Florida then. But, yes, real life got in the way too. But not enough that I wouldn't have bought my own ticket to Funspot and played DK there.
Yes, it is true that that was the beginning of the end for me. Playing a video game is something I always did for fun. It stopped being fun for me. Real life has always been much more important to me. I hardly play any games anymore now, and haven't for most of the years since 2001 or so. And I CERTAINLY won't record and upload any games I play anymore. It's not worth it for me. Especially not after my experiences on DK.
I'd like to thank everyone who was supportive of me over all those years (and that, fortunately, includes most people, and CERTAINLY most people who knew me MUCH better than those people who attacked me (like all the people I talked with at length on a daily basis on IRC)), but I'd much rather be, say, a good husband and a good father, than a world record holder on a video game.
AL (Alex Weir?)... thank you, too.
Sorry for making this thread active again, but I felt I had to correct a few things.
Ben Jos.
Earlier DKF threads:Ben Jos Walbeehm - 893,400 (September 12, 1999)Ben Jos Walbeehm - 904,100 (November 30, 2001)Gameplay Videos:893,400
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSNdyagN-TI904,100
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/13080880Game Stats:893,400904,100Ben Jos passed away in 2013 and while I never had the chance to meet or interact with him I know I'm poorer for not having known him. Hopefully there are others out there with memories to share. At the very least we should all remember him as a DK legend and King of Kong.
