Ben Jos Walbeehm - 904,100 (November 30, 2001)

[xelnia]

Graham Hawkins just streamed the INP of Ben Jos Walbeehm's 904,100 game. This game was uploaded to MARP on November 30, 2001. The broadcast is in two parts:

Part 1: http://www.twitch.tv/stormdata/b/470396183
Part 2: http://www.twitch.tv/stormdata/b/470400789

[Hawkins]

I thought I'd better make highlights of these recordings as I lost a recording of mine the other day by accident.
This also allowed me to edit them down.

P1: http://www.twitch.tv/stormdata/c/3101766
P2: http://www.twitch.tv/stormdata/c/3101775

[JNugent]

Thanks for broadcasting this score! 

[ripper]

I remember this replay very well.  Ben Jos Walbeehm was like a Steve Wiebe.  He kind of came out of nowhere and was the only person getting these kind of scores on DK and was also the first person to break 900K on this game.  Poor Ben Jos Walbeehm was taking so much crap for this as well.  It was very much like seeing Steve Wiebe but 20 yrs. earlier.

[dimmu--borgir]

Great upload.

Any source for this Ripper? The crap-talking i mean?

Btw, there is only one date in the DK  history that counts. August 17, 2000! 

[ripper]

Great upload.

Any source for this Ripper? The crap-talking i mean?

Btw, there is only one date in the DK  history that counts. August 17, 2000! 

I'm not sure if there is still a source around or not but I believe it may have been on the old old TG forums from 15 years ago and maybe on CAG now.  It pretty much came down to people not believing he made the scores or that anyone could actually get this kind of score.  Some people may have thought he cheated and spliced together some kind of MAME replay even though the guy got scores like this all the time and even on DK Japan.  You look at his scores now and it's just a normal but decent kill screen game and not even near 1M.  It's the history of DK and every time someone broke a record on it or got a really decent score on it then it just caused a lot of non believers.  Do you remember  ?  He was totally over looked in the KOK and I think they could have just gave him 2 seconds of credit in the movie but they choose not to.  Now, these scores are known to be possible and people accept them a lot easier with no bad comments.

[NightRider]

I don't think the original posts are around any more, but you can get the story straight from Ben Jos here:

http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,1437.msg23404.html#msg23404

[ripper]

I don't think the original posts are around any more, but you can get the story straight from Ben Jos here:

http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,1437.msg23404.html#msg23404

Wonderful find NightRider!  That story brought back so much that I had forgotten about including the Crazy Kong part.  Who knows what would have happened if Ben had of showed up at FS and gotten the DK WR instead of  .  History would have been different.

[ChrisP]

Actually, thinking about it, there likely would not have ever been a "DK community" at all if Ben Jos had taken the record.

Billy vs. Steve would not have played out the same way, so the movie would not have played out the same way, probably not at all, and without the movie, none of this would be happening.

Wild!

[ripper]

Actually, thinking about it, there likely would not have ever been a "DK community" at all if Ben Jos had taken the record.

Billy vs. Steve would not have played out the same way, so the movie would not have played out the same way, probably not at all, and without the movie, none of this would be happening.

Wild!

I'm not sure about this.  The big thing was that Steve Wiebe didn't beat Billy's classic score of 874,300 but he broke a million before anyone else.  Remember, Tim Sczerby    actually beat Billy's score in August 17, 2000, before the KOK was ever released or before  was ever around.    was just left out of the documentary though, which is such a shame.

http://donkeykongblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/donkey-kong-world-record-history.html

[xelnia]

Another interesting fact is that Ben Jos actually beat Billy's score (on MAME obviously) before Tim did it on a cab.

Here's the Wayback Machine capture of the MARP leaderboards from January 10, 2001. Scroll down or Ctrl+F to find Ben Jos' killscreen score of 893,400, with an upload date of September 12, 1999:

893,400

You can make all the arguments you want about MAME vs. Arcade, but I think it's important to recognize that Ben Jos beat Billy's score with games that were publicly available, on more than one occasion, BEFORE Tim and Steve. I've attached the INP of the 893,400 game to this reply.

Player		Score		Date		Platform
Billy Mitchell		874,300		August 13, 1982		Arcade
Ben Jos Walbeehm		893,400		September 12, 1999		MAME
Tim Sczerby		879,200		August 17, 2000		Arcade
Ben Jos Walbeehm		904,100		November 11, 2001		MAME
Stevie Wiebe		947,200		June 30, 2003		Arcade...DDK board...and the start of the verification drama

[ripper]

I was around during this time and I remember how things were.  And I agree with you.  I'm just saying for the arcade platform it was a little different.  If Ben did this on the arcade platform back then then the whole story would have been different, I agree.

[dimmu--borgir]

So Tim Szcerby has always been no:3? THREE? For gods sake! Put things in another perspective. Thank god he's playing mame in these days. Otherwise he would never accept being third. Maybe black goo on Ben Jos PC motherboard then.

Now, let's hope  , ehh, sorry, Ben Jos finds his way to DKF for a new KOK drama.. 

[ChrisP]

Billy vs. Steve would not have played out the same way, so the movie would not have played out the same way, probably not at all, and without the movie, none of this would be happening.

I'm not sure about this.  The big thing was that Steve Wiebe didn't beat Billy's classic score of 874,300 but he broke a million before anyone else. 

What I meant is that KoK came into existence as a result of a lot of things being "lined up" in just the right way.

If Ben Jos had done anything on DK that would have changed the way Steve Wiebe went about going for the DK record (or 1 million), or if Ben Jos had done something on the game to make Billy react to *him* instead of Steve, or if Ben Jos had put up a score that took Steve slightly longer to beat, etcetera, etcetera, then the situation that led to the storyline that the filmmakers were attracted to might never have come about, or have been just different enough for them not to be interested.

I'm thinking in terms of the butterfly effect here, how if you were to go into the past and change just one small but critical event or circumstance, you could end up with a crazy alternate universe.

I just think that Ben Jos is one of the people who was in a position to have made a critical difference in how things played out. (Of course, for that matter, Tim was too, if Tim had been more aggressive about coming back for the record once Steve beat it.)

[ripper]

Sure, things could have been different but I think the filmmakers had their eyes set on Steve Wiebe, because he was 1st to break a million and Billy, because he was always a well known name and held the record for so long.  Even if Ben was there at 900K and Tim was in 3rd with his score and Billy was 4th I don't know what would have happened.  Maybe they all get in the movie but the way it worked out is OK except for the fact they left  out completely.