George, the reasons why I ranked Mark and Dean how I did has to do with the relative difficulty of the games as well as the fact that I *know* they could master DK3 to at least close to your level if they tried. Mark has proven himself capable of learning all sorts of games, and I have watched Dean play DK3 enough to know he is capable as well. IMHO DK3's difficulty is significantly less than DK and DKjr because of all the extra lives, which gives a better chance for a player to refocus if they do die. Additionally, DK and Dkjr pose a different type of challenge because of the fixed number of screens, and I think most who have played both types of games (one with a fixed length vs. one with many lives where you need to survive as long as you can) would say that the first type of game is usually harder to get a great score on -since pressing all-out is usually harder than what is simply needed to consistently survive.
In the end, even some of the people I listed below you may be in the same boat as Mark and Dean where they could master DK3 as well, if they tried. But, I just don't know the details about their ability as well as I do for Mark and Dean. I also just don't know if the others I am thinking of (Billy, Steve Wiebe, Ike and Donald) actually even have a score on that game. Besides, as it stands, Mark and Dean have much stronger scores/ability on the two harder games (again, IMHO) than they (the others I mentioned) would have anyway.
Edit: And I have been thinking about it, I would actually be willing to rank you first if, all things as they are now, you had about 1.04m on DK -not 1.1m like I said previously.
2nd Edit: And, yes, Brian, my putting Allen Staal and George Leutz in my list was just a joke to get you worked up . All the rest of my list is completely serious though.
Definitely a much stronger argument than Brian's. I'll give you that. I'll disagree with you that Dean, and Mark have "Much stronger abilities" in Donkey Kong Junior. Yeah, Mark is better than me at DKJr, and Dean is better than me on 3 of the 4 boards of DKJr. But "Much better". No, I have to disagree with that.
Also the argument that DKJr, and especially Donkey Kong is harder than Donkey Kong 3 is definitely true for me, but that may not be true for all Donkey Kong players. Remember Donkey Kong 3 is a shooter game more than a platform game. Ben Falls, and Steve Wagner do really well at Donkey Kong 3 because they are actually pretty good at shooter games. I don't know much about most of the top notch Donkey Kong players besides Dean.
I do know one thing. The former record holders Dwayne Richard, and Shawn Cram are all around great gamers. They don't put up weak scores. It's easy to get to a million, and not that hard to get to 1.5 million. Enough gamers have done that. The real trick is getting to 2.5 million on TG settings. Only 3 gamers have ever done that.
Is that because the players feel uninspired to do better or is there something else I am missing? I have no clue as to why people stop at 1 million or 1.5 million, but they usually do.
There is one thing you may not know about Donkey Kong 3, that maybe a factor. The game is exhausting both physically, and mentally after a certain point. Donkey Kong has safe spots, and so does Donkey Kong Junior. There are times you can go on autopilot with these games even at the highest level.
With Donkey Kong 3 it's different. There are no safe spots, and yeah keeping it mentally together for a million points when the game constantly gives you men is not the hardest thing in the world. Especially on Easy settings that most people play it on. But getting to 2.5 million on TG settings is another matter.
And unlike other shooter games this one has a timer that will kill you if you take too long, and has enemies that can not be killed that actually block your shots against other enemies.
There really isn't any game like Donkey Kong 3 out there. It's even unique as a shooter game. So maybe Donkey Kong 3 especially on TG settings is not the easiest thing to do. Just saying.