DK in the news/on the net.

[ChrisP]

Keep in mind, this is now the EIGHTH time the record has been broken since (and including) when Robbie initially broke it in September 2014. I'm fairly confident Wes will make it nine before too long. The record is now going down an average of once every two and a half months.

I joked in the shoutbox the other day that the higher the DK record goes, the more often it gets broken!

When Robbie initially beat Hank it was a big deal, since Hank had been the champion for over four years, and Wes beating Robbie was pretty spectacular too, given how that went down.

But generally speaking, each specific record-breaking event is becoming less and less newsworthy, simply by dint of how quickly each new score is following the last. I think the gaming press, the blogs *cough* etc., are just taking a more reserved approach nowadays. You can only post the same story so many times...

As for me, I'll put something up on the DK blog soon, but I'll level with ya, it's gonna be short!

[blackraven15]

All very true, I still figured it would have made more ripples

I'm still gonna congratulate people who pull off these insane feats cuz dang o.0 I work my butt off to hit 60 k on remix haha

Its rather fascinating to watch them play in all honesty

[marky_d]

New Playboy article:

The New Kings of Kong Are Cool With Sharing The Throne

http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-new-kings-of-kong

When the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was released in 2007, it pulled back the curtain on a subculture that few knew existed: an insular community of gamers that lived to set video game world records.

The members of this community were holdovers and nostalgia seekers from the arcade golden age of the late ‘70s and ‘80s, when video games were still curiosities to the mainstream public. And the most notorious player from this era was Billy Mitchell, a hot sauce salesman with a bad mullet and a smug attitude (or so the documentary characterized him). He was also a world record holder—the first person to attain a perfect game on Pac-Man—and up until the mid ‘00s Mitchell was the (nearly unchallenged, save by one player named Tim Sczerby) Donkey Kong arcade champion, his best run totaling 939,900 points.

But then—as the beloved film documented—lovable hard luck case and high school math teacher Steve Wiebe broke the world record. It was an epic tale of nepotism, betrayal, and self-worth that pitted an arrogant, insulated king (Mitchell) against an overmatched, conspired-against underdog (Wiebe). There were even loyal subjects of Mitchell—Hands of the King like Brian Kuh—who apparently disliked Wiebe on principle, and according to the documentary, rooted for him to fail.


Like all great documentaries about niche subjects, The King of Kong touched on broader, more expansive topics beyond the immediate subject matter. One of the main themes was the power of the solitary individual. Wiebe’s pursuit of the world record was a lonely one. He practiced and played mostly alone in his garage; any public attempt for the world record was special and noteworthy. And in their limited interaction, Mitchell and Wiebe were cagey and guarded toward one another. They weren’t sharing strategies or swapping tricks; their single-minded competitiveness made them natural enemies.

In the post-King of Kong world of competitive retro gaming, however, the apparently cutthroat nature of the competition has slowly been replaced by something more vibrant and—surprisignly—friendly.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD


Harvard graduate and plastic surgeon Hank Chien had a completely different, more positive experience. Inspired by watching The King of Kong, Chien first started playing the game on his home computer before graduating to a real arcade machine at Brooklyn’s Barcade. It was through Barcade that he met up with a player named Ben “The Crusher” Falls, who got him even more involved with the online community. He bought a personal arcade machine and practiced on it at home for hours at a time.

Then, on Feb. 26, 2010, the moment of truth arrived: a snowstorm hit New York, giving the doctor all the time he needed to play Donkey Kong. He broke Wiebe’s arcade world record for the first time, with a score of 1,061,700.

“A lot of the reason why I stuck with Donkey Kong and broke the world record is because I met some great people during the process,” Chien told me. “There was teamwork; everyone was doing the best that they could, and everyone was helping each other.”

“I think that culture developed after the documentary,” said Chien. “It inspired a new generation of players who were more collaborative with each other.”

‘IT INSPIRED A NEW GENERATION OF PLAYERS WHO WERE MORE COLLABORATIVE WITH EACH OTHER.’
 
Halfway through the year, Chien lost the record back to Mitchell, who then traded it back to Wiebe; Chien took it back again at the beginning of 2011, and he continued, through late 2012, to beat his own score and push the world record higher. He eventually topped out with a personal high score of 1,138,600 points.

Today, Chien still plays in the “Kong Offs,” the public competitions where the best players compete against each other to achieve the highest scores. He is not, however, currently training for a world record. All told, Chien held onto the arcade record for close to four years before losing it to a competitor named Robbie Lakeman in 2014.

Lakeman began his own Donkey Kong journey in 2012. He and several of his friends would go to Funspot Arcade in Laconia, N.H.—the same arcade where segments of The King of Kong were filmed—to play on Sundays. What started as an innocent bar bet became a journey that would eventually lead to Lakeman’s own world record.

It took a lot of dedication. When Lakeman first started angling for the record, he went to Funspot approximately two to three times a week for up to six hours at a time. On more extreme days, he could play for up to ten hours. Lakeman was taking online courses for his Master’s degree at the time, and he would sometimes bring his laptop with him to the play sessions.

He had to assert himself to get play time. The Donkey Kong arcade machine was very popular; everyone who saw The King of Kong wanted to play on the machine where the Mitchell-versus-Wiebe drama took place. Lakeman remembers one kid who actively rooted against him just so he could have a turn.

Even though the online community existed when Chien was in his prime, it was tiddlywinks compared to the organized depth of knowledge that exists today. Lakeman is an active member of an online Donkey Kong community called donkeykongforum.net, and he enjoys the friendly, group-oriented nature of the current crop of competitors. They motivate each other to increasingly higher levels of success; posters will start new threads about basic and advanced strategies, and people who know how to read the code of the game will post about their latest findings.

“We’re all friends,” Lakeman told me. “It’s such a small, niche community, so everybody knows who everybody else is, and there are new players coming in all the time. We all hang out when we have the chance. We have the ‘Kong Offs’ every year, and that’s our big party.”

[homerwannabee]

I am always amazed at how great some of these articles are about Donkey Kong, and this one didn't disappoint.  This was a very nice read.

[Fly]

Cliff notes version plz. 2 meny wurdz.

[f_symbols]

Cliff notes version plz. 2 meny wurdz.

Tl;Dr Records were had

[d3scride]

That Playboy article was surprisingly quite good.

[marky_d]

Meet the 'Neil Armstrong' of Pac-Man 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/02/us/golden-age-of-arcade-games-billy-mitchell-pac-man-the-eighties/

[f_symbols]

[Barra]

Since then, 11 other gamers have surpassed Mitchell's score.



Come off it, CNN

[tilt]

Since then, 11 other gamers have surpassed Mitchell's score.



Come off it, CNN

Pfttt, that implies that research is done outside of the interview, who has time for such unimportant things

[marinomitch13]

DK made with paper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYw6aAKqXW4&ab_channel=MysteryGuitarMan

[ChrisP]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/02/us/golden-age-of-arcade-games-billy-mitchell-pac-man-the-eighties/

 

[danman123456]

http://www.geek.com/games/create-a-raspberry-pi-arcade-using-ikeas-cheapest-table-1654241/

Ok this is a stretch but the pic shows Donkey Kong on the machine!

[tilt]

http://www.polygon.com/2016/5/8/11635188/donkey-kong-all-time-high-score-wes-copeland-perfect-game