Is 1,218,000 on DK the most difficult to beat beatable real Arcade score?

[anningmay]

Sante, chill.

What Wes is referring to was a public event, and many of us watched it streamed live. The premise of the event: Wes and Robbie, the two greatest arcade DK players in the world, would attempt, on ROMs hacked especially for the occasion, to beat Steve Sanders' fictional DK score of 3M+. It was for fun, and what we all discovered is that DK is difficult to impossible to marathon. Since one of these players (Robbie) actually HAS marathoned a game for a WR (Super Pac-Man), this is a pretty big deal.

I tend to agree with danman across the board. Well put, sir.

That said, I'm not challenging Mr. X to beat the JrPac WR. That score is laughably out of his league. No, I'm challenging him to beat a mere 600k, the JrPac equivalent of passing L=05. How hard could it be?

[f_symbols]

 

[aarontruitt]

[jerky]

Black Widow     930,100     100.00%     James Vollandt     1984-05-01
Actually, I'd put that Black Widow score tied for #1 with Carnival.

I was able to just beat that James Vollandt score on an Ultracade machine with beat up joysticks using continues+warps just like they did in the 80s (imo). Even then it was pretty tough to do because the game bumps you back to a lower warp if you don't advance the levels on the current one. All those scores from back then line up with a game played using continues scoring wise. I doubt anyone can match those TG scores "legit"  because the game speeds up so fast when you play one credit versus continues (esp the rocket bug bonus waves which are slower otherwise). Just review the back and forth between Chris Point(FGS) and myself in the 400k-500k point range. It gets even faster after that with about 40 waves still to go b4 you match the 80's scores.

There are only a handful of players who could make it to the wave 104 kill screen on Black Widow this way (or any other) while there is a small army of DK experts all drawing from a large community with years of research and game-play to learn from.

I agree with some of the other titles you listed (T&F, Millipede, Dig Dug) and with many of the other titles listed by others here (esp Robo 5 man, Asteroids Deluxe+Smash TV 1cc). There are just too many tough games out there to claim DK is the hardest to top with all due respect. That said it still is one of the toughest challenges in gaming right now.

Ps. You don't see the 931,025 point BW score in the high score table above because the Wave 104 kill screen locks up the machine before you can enter it.

Pss. I might get back into playing some DK eventually 

[SanTe]

Pole Position?   

OP said beatable.  Based on what I know and have seen, if Les and Mike were indeed playing on the same settings as the rest of us then Les played the perfect game, IMO.

Richie seems to think it's beatable.

I hope he's right, then.  It would be exciting if it happened.

Sante I actually prefer the TGTS records over the marathon recorsd.

So do I.  But I'd also prefer non-marathoners not disrespect what marathoners are doing.

P.S. - To clarify "marathoning" DK is playing on the No-KS Romset.

You say tomayto; I say tomahto.

Hell I've played Halo, COD and GOW for a lot longer than 12 hours in a row does that make me and elite marathoner everyone?

No, it would make you a marathoner.  As already mentioned, the "ultra" designation (a.k.a "elite" if you must) doesn't kick in until 24 hours.

By the way, it wasn't me or the player community that defined these things; it was TG, the recognized authority for competitive videogaming rules, over a decade ago when Mruczek was head ref and all of the refs had long discussions about it.  There was an epic-length post from Mruczek about it (oh who am I kidding; all of Mruczek's posts are epic-length  ).

And this is exactly what's so maddening about competitive arcade gaming, that people can just redefine terms and rules to suit their own preferences.  If we're gonna redefine things years later then I wanna know who's is charge of the rules, because clearly people are just making shit up as they go along.  Par for the course for this hobby though.

Lets be real for one second here all. ANY game that the score is a "legit" score on and not some made up, multi-credit insult from yester-year can get beaten. The point made by Serph and others is what other title in the CAG community has any level of people playing and attempting world record or even just high scores like DK has in the recent past? (Yes all due to KoK).  There are thousands of games everyone can start talking about how "Well this game is uber hard because of xxx" or "no my game is the hardest due to yyyy". Space Firebird can make a claim it's harder than ALL of these games since it had a 30 day bounty on it and no one got it so now what?

Sante I actually prefer the TGTS records over the marathon recorsd. You know why? Because that is more skill based to me than "I stayed up 45 hours so now you stay up 50 hours ok". Sure there are some impressive scores out there but if ANY of them got a serious following to beat they would be almost certainly be gone. This small microcosm of people playing games (even the elite guys that have some amazing skill) are not anything among BILLIONS OF PEOPLE in the world. Wanna see 1.25 million in DK? Put a 100k bounty on it. Wanna see 16 million on Galaga? KS on Jr Pac-Man? Score X on Game Y? Do the same... ANY of these scores if they are legit can be broken unless they are a maxout perfect score. Even that fake Robotron and Frogger nonsense would go down as well. Its really about having more than 3 people trying to get a record and even when just a few people get serious about it records tend to fall. Case in point Missile Command, Gyruss, etc, etc, etc

You essentially are arguing that unless a ton of people have played a game that the documented top score for it is weak and more easily beaten.

I just don't buy your argument, at all.  There are games in this hobby that have been pushed to their absolute limit by one person or by a small handful, and would be an absolute bitch to top.  (Kinda the whole point of this thread until it got derailed by the DK-superiority folks.)  The fact that dozens of people have seriously attacked DK for the last ten years still yields the same result: one, or two (actually three) scores all within 1% of each other, and people are still saying there is room for improvement.  So how many people playing a game is enough for you to be satisfied that it has reached its potential?  A hundred?  A thousand?  A million?  Ten million?

Sante, chill.

anningmay, don't make presumptions about my disposition.  Stick to the discussion at hand, please, rather than trying to insinuate that there's something wrong with me.

A few people here get butt hurt that I won't bow to the ring and accept their ridiculous claim that DK is the ultimate yardstick for competitive gaming and I get condescending remarks aimed at me for it?  My views on this topic are every bit as valid as anyone else's.

But this is donkeykongforum.net, a forum devoted to a single game and a self-reinforcing echo chamber if there ever was one, so I'm not at all surprised.  Like I said, some of you guys need to get out more.  The dismissive attitudes I've seen from a few of you with regards to any game that isn't DK when it comes to difficulty speaks volumes, as does your ignorance.

What Wes is referring to was a public event, and many of us watched it streamed live. The premise of the event: Wes and Robbie, the two greatest arcade DK players in the world, would attempt, on ROMs hacked especially for the occasion, to beat Steve Sanders' fictional DK score of 3M+. It was for fun,

That does sound fun.

and what we all discovered is that DK is difficult to impossible to marathon.

...on that day when they (presumably) first tried it.  Keep practicing and adopt some different strategies and I bet both players would surprise themselves down the road.  After all, these two guys, more than anyone except maybe Dean, are used to playing every board balls out with maximum point pressing.

You guys can talk all you like about the game's AI but it is, after all, a pretty slow moving game compared to many other games of the era.  Would bitch fireball and Firefox behavior eventually rob you of all of your lives?  Probably.  But this is no different than any other marathonable game of the era except for the handful of games like Pac-Man that are 100% patternable.  People can and have killscreened DK on one life.  Based on that alone I'd expect that 3,195,300 to be beatable in the long run.  That's 791,325 per man, which is a very safe, conservative kill screen pace.  I've no doubt someone could do that four times in one game eventually.

Since one of these players (Robbie) actually HAS marathoned a game for a WR (Super Pac-Man), this is a pretty big deal.

What does one player marathoning a completely different game have anything to do with whether or not Donkey Kong can be marathoned?  Robbie can marathon Super Pac-Man but not Donkey Kong, therefore DK is a much harder game?  Yeah, that makes sense.     How many players can get 1M+ on DK but can't play Super Pac for shit?  A lot, I'd imagine.  There is no logic to this argument.

I tend to agree with danman across the board. Well put, sir.

You say tomayto; I say tomahto.

That said, I'm not challenging Mr. X to beat the JrPac WR. That score is laughably out of his league. No, I'm challenging him to beat a mere 600k, the JrPac equivalent of passing L=05. How hard could it be?

Don't know who Mr. X is but at this point I'd love to see someone, anyone, play something at a world class level that isn't among the same old 20 games that have been given more than their share of attention in the 10 years since "The King of Kong" brought so many people to the hobby.  I own a DK but quit playing back in 2009 when I thought the attention the game was receiving was getting out of control, to the detriment of the hobby at large.  Since then we've had, what?, four Kong Offs, and a forum dedicated to one game, while hundreds of other just-as-great games are ignored.  It's a little sad, don't you think?

[SanTe]

I was able to just beat that James Vollandt score on an Ultracade machine with beat up joysticks using continues+warps just like they did in the 80s (imo). Even then it was pretty tough to do because the game bumps you back to a lower warp if you don't advance the levels on the current one. All those scores from back then line up with a game played using continues scoring wise. I doubt anyone can match those TG scores "legit"  because the game speeds up so fast when you play one credit versus continues (esp the rocket bug bonus waves which are slower otherwise). Just review the back and forth between Chris Point(FGS) and myself in the 400k-500k point range. It gets even faster after that with about 40 waves still to go b4 you match the 80's scores.

There are only a handful of players who could make it to the wave 104 kill screen on Black Widow this way (or any other) while there is a small army of DK experts all drawing from a large community with years of research and game-play to learn from.

Ps. You don't see the 931,025 point BW score in the high score table above because the Wave 104 kill screen locks up the machine before you can enter it.

I know.  I own a Black Widow and have done this as well.  The last time took just under an hour from start to finish, although I wasn't able to top James' score.  (Had 920k at the end, IIRC.)  I didn't think to keep track of how many continues I used but it was far less than the previous time I reached the kill screen.

The Black Widow rules say, "Maximum Star[t] @ Level 21" and "Special Rules: You may freely choose your Starting Warp. No continues are permitted."  It's the same old problem: with golden era scores we have no way of knowing if the settings were the same or if the same rules were used.  Did James use continues?  Were continues allowed in 1984?  Only he knows (and the ref who verified his game and entered the score).  James was in the Twitch chat stream during a marathon (McAllister's Joust, IIRC) and was asked about it, and he claimed no continues.  I'd long suspected that he did use continues but I hesitate to make such judgments.  Every now and then the community is wrong, dead wrong.  You never know when a player has figured out something that few others have, or just has a skill set that is light years beyond anyone else (like Carnival Fred and Crystal Castles Frank).  Maybe it's the way a certain enemy reacts if you do (or don't do) a specific thing, or if when and how you fire is different, or or or....  Who knows.

It's why it bugs me when I see people trying to flatly state that something is 100% true in this hobby when it is actually subjective ("DK is the hardest score to beat, period" and the like).  Sooner or later, more often than not, they're proven wrong.  I've been in this hobby for many years now myself, and have done my fair share of competitive play and world record chasing, setting a few myself along the way (including an actual marathon, I might add).  My opinions are as valid as anyone else's on this forum.

Calvin Frampton had a long lost 1.295M score for Donkey Kong Junior that most of the community was positive was bullshit.  When Calvin was tracked down and asked about it he couldn't remember details of his game from 30+ years ago and people vilified him for it, and flatly stated he was lying.  There was a lot of egg on a lot of peoples' faces when it was later proven that such a score was possible.  Now the record is over 1.4M.  Interestingly, Calvin Frampton's score is still nowhere to be found on the TG leaderboard for Donkey Kong Junior, despite the fact that TG recognized it at the time.  And to this day I've yet to see an acceptable explanation for TG's pulling it.  The moral of the story is that groupthink cannot be trusted.

[xelnia]

My opinions are as valid as anyone else's on this forum.

Absolutely, and I hope you're not thinking that you're being marginalized for "not being a DK player." Like you said, a site called donkeykongforum.net is going to have people that go to bat for DK 100% of the time. But I think this site is unique among niche sites in that most people here don't really care if you're a DK player or not. Everyone is welcome. Fly is a welcome regular here and his distaste for the DK series is well-known. So, keep sticking it to the DK players here, and roll with it when they try to stick it to you. 

And besides, this whole thread is pointless anyway. We all know Intrepid is the gold standard. 

[SanTe]

And besides, this whole thread is pointless anyway. We all know Intrepid is the gold standard. 

I fucking love that someone put Intrepid on the 412-in-1.  Who says the Chinese don't have a sense of humor?

[marinomitch13]

Well, I, for one, don't think DK's WR is the hardest to beat -namely, because I don't know enough about all the other games out there and their WRs to be able to make such a claim. And, even if I did, I don't know what kind of metric one could use to objectively prove such a thing sufficiently. It seems, at the very least, that it'd take some intense research on many different fronts, if it is even theoretically possible.

[homerwannabee]

OK, let me go into a little more detail about why I think the way I do.   The speedrunning community has solidified my mind on this over the past few months.  Here I present a video about the Super Metroid world record progression.  In the beginning of this video this guy describes a speed run player by the name of Hotarubi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL8rdn00IU

 At the time eight years ago his speedrun was so amazing that people thought that the run was fake because people even after seeing the video thought it wasn't humanly possible to do what he was doing.  So where does his time rank today?  I decided to check on that.  My jaw hit the floor when I saw his speed run is now in 86th place.  https://www.speedrun.com/supermetroid

You see the speedrunning community compared to eight years ago when did the speedrun is much, much, much, much bigger, and there are an army of people on games that used to have only two or three people at max for that particular game grinding away.

Next, for kicks, I decided to see how man speedrun records on popular games have stood the test of time.  Again my jaw hit the floor when I realized that virtually all of them had records that were less than a year old.  It was a massacre as the army of players on each game completely smashed the speed run record for almost every game.   https://www.speedrun.com/games

Lastly I present a my DK3 score as an argument.  There are 175 scores submitted for this game. https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=1170.0

Now a statistician would say that 175 scores would be enough of a sample size to plug in all the numbers, and the statistician would probably say something like a standard deviation for a DK3 score was around around a million points.  Maybe actually lower.  Well golly gee, when you do that I'm freaking 12 standard deviations away from the mean.  Knowing that 3 standard deviations is in the 100 to 1 area, then 12 standard deviations would be something like in the 100 million to one area. 

But I know a little secret about those 174 other players.  None of them have come close to putting the time into the game I have.  I doubt that a single one of those players spent more than 200 hours on this game.  I have on the other hand have spent over 1,000 hours on this game.

So the question becomes, if all 174 people spent over 1,000 hours on this game would I still have the record?  Well if I didn't make an effort to raise it, I really doubt it.  In fact I would probably be knocked out of the top 20 if all 174 people spent that much time on the game.



So here is what I conclude.  It's all about time spent on the game.   For all those records that look insane I'm almost positive that if you had 20 people spend 3 hours a day for a year on the super hard records to beat that almost all of them would fall by the way side.  There is one exception to the rule though.   If you picked 20 classic gamers from random who had very little experience on Donkey Kong, and had them spend 3 hours a day for a year trying to beat 1,218,000 on Donkey Kong I don't think any of them would break the record.

Why is that?  Because unless you are exceptionally talented at Donkey Kong you are not going to break the record in less than 1100 hours(3 times 365= 1095). 

And finally do one last thing.  Go ask the world record holders how much time they have spent to get their record.  I doubt that many of these unbeatable records have more than 1,000 hours spent on said game.

[SanTe]

OK, let me go into a little more detail about why I think the way I do.   The speedrunning community has solidified my mind on this over the past few months.  Here I present a video about the Super Metroid world record progression.  In the beginning of this video this guy describes a speed run player by the name of Hotarubi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL8rdn00IU

 At the time eight years ago his speedrun was so amazing that people thought that the run was fake because people even after seeing the video thought it wasn't humanly possible to do what he was doing.  So where does his time rank today?  I decided to check on that.  My jaw hit the floor when I saw his speed run is now in 86th place.  https://www.speedrun.com/supermetroid

You see the speedrunning community compared to eight years ago when did the speedrun is much, much, much, much bigger, and there are an army of people on games that used to have only two or three people at max for that particular game grinding away.

Next, for kicks, I decided to see how man speedrun records on popular games have stood the test of time.  Again my jaw hit the floor when I realized that virtually all of them had records that were less than a year old.  It was a massacre as the army of players on each game completely smashed the speed run record for almost every game.   https://www.speedrun.com/games

Lastly I present a my DK3 score as an argument.  There are 175 scores submitted for this game. https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=1170.0

Now a statistician would say that 175 scores would be enough of a sample size to plug in all the numbers, and the statistician would probably say something like a standard deviation for a DK3 score was around around a million points.  Maybe actually lower.  Well golly gee, when you do that I'm freaking 12 standard deviations away from the mean.  Knowing that 3 standard deviations is in the 100 to 1 area, then 12 standard deviations would be something like in the 100 million to one area. 

But I know a little secret about those 174 other players.  None of them have come close to putting the time into the game I have.  I doubt that a single one of those players spent more than 200 hours on this game.  I have on the other hand have spent over 1,000 hours on this game.

So the question becomes, if all 174 people spent over 1,000 hours on this game would I still have the record?  Well if I didn't make an effort to raise it, I really doubt it.  In fact I would probably be knocked out of the top 20 if all 174 people spent that much time on the game.

So far so good.  I like your reasoning.

So here is what I conclude.  It's all about time spent on the game.   For all those records that look insane I'm almost positive that if you had 20 people spend 3 hours a day for a year on the super hard records to beat that almost all of them would fall by the way side.  There is one exception to the rule though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wD7wDo0juY

Your last three paragraphs head straight into speculation and an opinion based on it.  That's fine, as it's just an opinion and opinions come from somewhere and at least yours has a solid foundation of reasoning behind it (examination of speedrun community scores).  But stating that there is one exception in the CAG world (Donkey Kong) -- that is where you and I part ways.  It is my opinion that there are more exceptions than just Donkey Kong, several of which have been mentioned in this thread.  It is my opinion that if you unleashed a DK-community-sized army of gamers on these games that most of them would withstand the onslaught.

I can appreciate that DK has been attacked harder in recent years so we have a lot more data for it compared to other CAG games, but I don't agree with jumping to the conclusion that all other CAG scores would follow a similar pattern of defeat.  We now know that Bill Mitchell's 874k DK score was a garden variety killscreen game that didn't really point press much, if at all.  You can just run the boards and wind up in that range.  Hell I've beaten that score (928k, albeit on a cab that was set to 6 lives) and I never bothered to learn anything beyond light, safe point pressing.  But his score was so far past the competition of the time that he didn't need to submit anything higher and no one challenged it.  So a garden variety killscreen score languished as the record until 2000 or so when and needed something to do.  What I'm saying is that scores on some other games were pushed to the max back in the day, usually when a top player had a worthy rival and they both spent 1000 hours or more on it.  (Ask Alpiger how many hours he put into Crystal Castles.)  It doesn't logically follow that these scores, too, would so easily fall now if we threw dozens of talented gamers at it for a year or two or more.  Let me put it this way: the work wasn't really put into DK back in the day; it was for some other games (albeit by fewer dedicated players), in my opinion at least.

I have more than once seen a bias in the community toward modern scores.  I believe it is for a variety of reasons, that a) we are in the here and now and seeing these games played at a high level for ourselves, b) videotaped evidence from the early '80s is exceptionally rare due to video cameras being expensive and uncommon, especially when it came to recording video game play, c) enforcement and documentation of the settings played on was quite lax compared to today, and d) we now know that lying about scores was not uncommon back in the day.  I think there is a tendency for some to conclude that most of the top scores from the '80s can't be trusted.  I can see why they think so, but that doesn't mean it's true.

If you picked 20 classic gamers from random who had very little experience on Donkey Kong, and had them spend 3 hours a day for a year trying to beat 1,218,000 on Donkey Kong I don't think any of them would break the record.

Why is that?  Because unless you are exceptionally talented at Donkey Kong you are not going to break the record in less than 1100 hours(3 times 365= 1095).

I'm with you here, on one principle at least: practicing something a lot does tend to make you a lot better at it.

And finally do one last thing.  Go ask the world record holders how much time they have spent to get their record.  I doubt that many of these unbeatable records have more than 1,000 hours spent on said game.

Pure speculation.

Thanks for the thread though.  It has prompted some good discussion, even if there can be no consensus.

[danman123456]

Its already getting to long in this thread but billions of people exist and records are made to be broken. Georges speedrun analysis is perfect and I disagree with the concept that even DK is there. DK gets a nod simply because the record is newer and had recent strives to push it up but its the same as any other super high score. If any amount of people keep playing a title the score will get even higher. That's what happens and would happen to ANY game period.

I firmly believe this just as I firmly believe a lot of the scores from the 80's are complete nonsense given the utter lack of any standards back then and using the "well everyone didnt have a camcorder" argument is simply not a valid one. We know for a fact tons of people had fake scores or did it with continues or anything else to get there name in the paper. Even if they didn't realize it was against the rules because well there simply were no rules. The rules were get the highest score. If your only means of validating a score was your friend saying you got it then its fair game to question it.  Calvins DKJr score has a lot of reasons for people to not believe it and no point in dredging that up but just because someone now has topped an older score doesn't mean there isn't a reason to question an older score. That is the problem with a lot of this someone goes thru a ton of effort to beat a score and everyone goes "See that score must be legit".

Face it people lied all the time it was par for the course. That is how we got 2 million frogger scores and 3 million dk scores and 6 million pac-man scores and even 511 million Robotron scores as well as recent 20 million Galaga scores. What was the motivation? Only god knows why people did it. Does anyone really think those are the only "fake" scores? I hope not...

Its not some "DK is the most elitist game ever" its simply had more competition than other games recently so therefore the score is harder to beat. This is also completely subjective its just a feeling because its been pushed so high recently.  I dont think DK is an exception as George stated. I think its the same as any other title period. Hard is always subjective but if 10,000's of people started trying all of the LEGIT scores would be crushed. Then at some point you reach a plateau but I dont think we are there yet. Unless the game has a max confirmed score you simply aren't there.

[serphintizer]

Yo Yo Yo SanTa...do you even video game bruh?

[SanTe]

Yo Yo Yo SanTa...do you even video game bruh?

You are absolutely fucking hilarious.  Do you have your own writers?

[WCopeland]

Calvin Frampton had a long lost 1.295M score for Donkey Kong Junior that most of the community was positive was bullshit.  When Calvin was tracked down and asked about it he couldn't remember details of his game from 30+ years ago and people vilified him for it, and flatly stated he was lying.  There was a lot of egg on a lot of peoples' faces when it was later proven that such a score was possible.  Now the record is over 1.4M.  Interestingly, Calvin Frampton's score is still nowhere to be found on the TG leaderboard for Donkey Kong Junior, despite the fact that TG recognized it at the time.  And to this day I've yet to see an acceptable explanation for TG's pulling it.  The moral of the story is that groupthink cannot be trusted.

Change the word "was" to "is". Most of the community still is positive this score is bullshit.

Your logic is flawed. Just because a score is proven possible 20 years after a game's release doesn't mean a bullshitter who says they did it BITD actually did. Calvin admitted to not knowing anything about point pressing or the kill screen, yet somehow magically pulled nearly 1.3m out of his ass.