My Donkey Kong Junior Ambitions

[Donkey Kong Genius]

As many of you know by now I seem to have a natural knack for Donkey Kong Junior. This was by far a surprise to me. However, I wanted to create this thread so that I can post my score updates that are not necessarily new personal best scores. About a week ago or so I achieved the world record for the fastest score of one million points from starting to play the game, with a score of 1,010,400 Killscreen. A few days later I got 1,008,900 points at a 1.1M pace. I actually had two extra men at 950K at this pace but I was tired and lost control of the game. I knew that I needed to press the game more for my future attempts. Because of this almost 1.1+ score, I wanted a better challenge. I am now playing at a 1.25M pace, and this is the pace I will play at from now on. If I can get to the end with two extra men that I can sack on E.3, then that could account for an extra 70,000 points and may give me the opportunity for 1.32M.

My first submission after only two or three attempts is 429,800 losing last man on 9.1. I died at the top, miss timed a jump with the blue snapper coming at me. Not one of my better moments. There was 4500 left on the ticker and the two yellow fruits on the right.

Because the pace is new to me, I will need to fine tune a few things and get some practice with it. When to press, and when to give up some points for safety reasons. Knowing exactly how I want to play. I am confident that in the next month or two I would like to be able to submit a new high score. Until then I will use this thread to show my progress.

[TheSunshineFund]

As many of you know by now I seem to have a natural knack for Donkey Kong Junior. This was by far a surprise to me. However, I wanted to create this thread so that I can post my score updates that are not necessarily new personal best scores. About a week ago or so I achieved the world record for the fastest score of one million points from starting to play the game, with a score of 1,010,400 Killscreen.

JC can do user name changes I think for a very nominal fee, probably less for just adding the "Jr" to the user name.

[ChrisP]

About a week ago or so I achieved the world record for the fastest score of one million points from starting to play the game, with a score of 1,010,400 Killscreen.

I would caution against thinking in terms of the speed at which one achieves something in days/weeks/months, because time as measured in anything other than gameplay-hours is highly problematic. Introduce MAME savestate practice into the equation and it gets even more problematic.

Actually, if you don't have the record in gameplay-hours you're probably close to it (it's either you or Graham Wolfe), but day/month/year-counting can be very misleading because of all the variables involved.

If I got a Junior kill screen tomorrow it would have "taken me almost a year", but I literally have not played more than a game or two of Junior since the run that ended with the last key on E-4  about 20 pixels from going in, and that was seven months ago. And THAT was after learning the game on a non-standard ROM, etc. Variables forever.

[homerwannabee]

You can claim it's misleading, but it's still a heck of an accomplishment no matter how you slice it.  Getting 1 million in 3 weeks time is epic.  If it's because of a lot of time spent playing the game during those days than you can say he worked his tail off those 3 weeks to pull off what no one else has done in three weeks time.  My whole point is it really doesn't matter how he got there, just that he got there.  It's still an awesome achievement.

Also, I see where you are going with that goal Corey! LOL   

That would place you just above me with a slightly higher MAME score which thus would make you the MAME world record holder.  I remember when I passed Donald Hayes for the official world record on Donkey Kong Junior score of 921,900.  It may not have been higher than the Donkey Kong Junior Arcade record, but it was still a cool day for me anyways.

So it would be cool for me to see you beat that score.  I will always be fond of my Donkey Kong Junior MAME score even if one day it gets knocked out of the top 10 simply because it was the result of almost a couple of thousand hours of time to get there.

[Donkey Kong Genius]

I don't know the exact amount of game-play hours but I can tell you it is not very much. I mainly only played when I streamed in the evening, and I usually only got to do one or two attempts. And every other day really did not get much attention at all.  I spent time watching games while I fed the baby, and I feed the baby a lot. And yes, George, I think that with the right game, and me playing at my best, that I may have a chance at the record. But I will need to fine tune a few things and just keep at it to get more experience. I think that is the main factor right now, experience. I will keep updating my scores as I inch closer to it with this pace.

[Donkey Kong Genius]

I collected all of the available data that I have concerning how long it took me to get one million in terms of hours.

Twitch Broadcasts 11.031 hours
minus non-playing (5%) .55 hours
Total broadcast time: 10.481 hours
Assuming 10% off streaming play
Grand total of 11.53 hours.

This includes the near 3 hours it took to get my score. As far as I know Twitch has not deleted any of my broadcasts. I got the score on day 19. And some of those days I did not play at all or very little. It is possible that Twitch deleted something, it is also possible that my 5% and 10% assumes are not 100% accurate. But that is the best I can share. Understand that I work full time and have three children, and most of the time I get very little time for gaming.

[Donkey Kong Genius]

From what I can see, Graham submitted his first million on Sept. 4. and got his 1.29M on Sept 17th. This last score should be around the 10 week mark- that is what he told me. Therefore, he did his first million around week 7 or 8. If I wanted to beat his progress to 1.2M+ then I will need to get my new score soon. In his 1.2M game, almost 1.3M, he got to the end with two men to sack, so he was playing at about 1.23 pace or so. That may be what I end up with near the end of my 1.25 attempts.

[ChrisP]

That's pretty impressive. Looking forward to seeing if you beat Graham.

[hchien]

Agree with all the statements above.  Getting 1M in 3 weeks is very impressive.  While I agree that how fast you improve at a game is generally a good indicator of your natural talent at that game, it's not necessarily accurate.  A good example would be Dean.  I don't think Dean has ever gotten 1M or a killscreen on Jr.  However, he plays the game for a world record, not for a killscreen.  Therefore he's going to improve "slower" than his scores would indicate.  Furthermore, some improve rapidly in the beginning and then hit a roadblock that they can't surmount.  Other people hit a roadblock early on, but bypass it and then the sky's the limit.  Most people's roadblock on Jr is the springboard stage.  Using Dean as an example again, I'm fairly confident that if he got past that roadblock, he'd have the WR in no time.

Also, it's hard to claim a WR when most people don't have any accurate stats on how long/much they've played.  I can claim I killscreened Jr in the fewest games-- 38.  Would that be accurate?  Probably not.  Who knows how much time I practiced using save states, how many games I played on different computers/machines, or how many of those 38 were restarts?  Who knows how many games it took Graham to killscreen Jr.?  No one keeps track of those things.




Having said that you are clearly naturally talented at Jr.  I look forward to hearing about your future exploits.

[TheSunshineFund]

I'm more disappointed in the lack of DK3 starts according to that pic.

BOTA!

Then again...it took me 3 games of DK3 to break 1m.  Therefore, I suspect you are already at 2m.  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[hchien]

I'm more disappointed in the lack of DK3 starts according to that pic.

BUSTED!  3 games, but only at 100K.  I got some work to do =).

[Donkey Kong Genius]

All of this is true Hank. I can only offer as much evidence as I can. And if someone comes along with strong evidence that they did it in less hours or across so many days, I will no longer make the claim.

Another issue that I have been thinking about in connection to my progress vs. Grahams is that he admits here on the forum that he double mapped the jump button to use on the spring board screen. We don't know whether he used this in his 1.29M game or not. https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=495.msg8939#msg8939 He said this 3 days before he got his first million. Did he ever stop using this method?

[ChrisP]

Yikes, it would be one thing to do that on casual kill screen-type runs, but that would be a major no-no for 1.2M+ scores. Being able to guarantee a good spring jump would be huge when playing at high pace.

[Donkey Kong Genius]

Whether it offers an advantage or not, he does not think that it did. No matter, it is not really needed though. There was no official rule against it in the submission rules, though I do believe that Marp and TG did not allow it as far as I know. But again, how do you check?

Tonight I got 465,400 at the usual 1.25M pace. 3 dumb deaths. One was just something I should have done well on, the other two were just in the realm of a learning experience. And one that I don't mind because there was a wall of red snappers coming down at me on the blue vines. Level was 9.3. Yup I died on a hideout, just was not my night. I will try again sometime soon. This might take awhile but at least this is a small increase.

[gstrain]

Whether it offers an advantage or not, he does not think that it did. No matter, it is not really needed though. There was no official rule against it in the submission rules, though I do believe that Marp and TG did not allow it as far as I know.

This is expressly against MARP rule 2.c which states:

At Marp, it is not permitted to use more than one key or button in MAME for the same arcade machine button simultaneously.

Example1: You map keys Q,W,E,R,T,Y to Hypersports running button 1 and smash them simultaneously, to get unhuman button pushing speed ---NOT OK