FINALLY... broke 300K on DK tonight.

Racetech

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Man, I had been stuck at a high score of 276,000 for almost 2 months.

Donkey Kong can be so cruel--twice in the last week I had gotten to 200,000 with three lives left. Then I got hammered to death with wild barrels and didn't even break 250,000.

Tonight was looking like it was going to be the same old story when I lost two lives on one barrel screen at 260,000...except...this time I somehow hung on for 40,000 points on the last life to hit 303,800. A dumb unforced error ended things on the elevators--I failed to make the jump to the down elevator and jumped straight up and down onto the fireball. Ah well.

On another note, I added the final details to my DK restoration project--I installed a new set of blue & orange buttons from Mike's Arcade. I also installed a reproduction of the bezel instruction decal. It's done!

Maybe it was the new buttons that helped?

Donkey Kong Restoration
 

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Stealing your fire to brag about mine, I broke my high score of 313,800 with 353,400.

The awesome / shitty thing about it was I set 313,800 on 4/4/2009, and I broke it with 353,400 on 4/3/2010.

Awesome because it was so close to one year later, shitty because it took a year for a 39,600 point improvement.

Did you use the bottom hammer, or rush to the top?

Sweet resto btw.
 
I know theres tons of threads on this, but point pressing and using the bottom hammer should really only be used if you can hit the kill screen.
 
Awesome! Stuck in the 200k myself, any tricks help you out?

Not so much "tricks" as just giving your brain a chance to make the required skills automatic (conditioned response). Some of the key skills IMO are:

1. Learn when to go and when to retreat on the elevators and execute it every time. Once you do that, it's the only level where nothing is there to make you die but you. I welcome the elevators now.

2. Be diligent about controlling barrels on the 3rd girder down and watch Kong for wild barrels. I was getting way too far to the left (between the two left ladders) on the 3rd girder down before I put the barrels where they need to be. The farther you are to the right, the harder it is for a wild barrel to get you too. Once you get them arranged well, you can get between the left ladders--but don't linger in one spot and keep an eye on Kong or you'll take a barrel to the head when you're going up the ladder.

3. Be flexible on the 150m rivets--don't force a pattern. The fireballs move fast and with aggression--use that against them--they'll often follow you down. I watched Wiebe play all the way to 932,000. On those 150m levels, he'd run all the way down to the bottom after getting the left side rivets almost every time to lure them down and give himself a better chance to get those upper right rivets. Don't try too hard to get the lower hammer. Adapt to what the fireballs dictate.

4. Control the fireballs as much as you can on the conveyors. If 3 or 4 fireballs start coming down, I run all the way to the left and keep slamming Mario into the left wall. This seems to make most of them retreat back up the ladder. Then you can ether find a good chance to get up there or you can use the hammer to clear some space. If you do get up the the very last ladders and the fireballs close in... retreat! If there are one or two in your way, go up and down the ladder and they'll move. Usually.

5. DO NOT POINT PRESS unless it's truly safe. It's not worth it. Treat each life like it's your last. Never say die, never surrender.

There are other (and better) DK players here--they may have other/better suggestions.
 
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Stealing your fire to brag about mine, I broke my high score of 313,800 with 353,400.

The awesome / shitty thing about it was I set 313,800 on 4/4/2009, and I broke it with 353,400 on 4/3/2010.

Awesome because it was so close to one year later, shitty because it took a year for a 39,600 point improvement.

Did you use the bottom hammer, or rush to the top?

Sweet resto btw.

Thanks for the compliment on the resto.

On my high score game, I only used the bottom hammer on the 1st screen and, even then I did it with caution. I wound up with only 6600 points. I quit worrying about points on the first screen because I found ways to get tons of points on the early rivets (you can jump in the left side of Kong's cage for those 100 pt bonuses, just hit the joystick to the left instead of the right). I do that until the fireballs get their act together or you often wind up only getting one or two. Then I jump in the right side of Kong's cage to finish the level--unless I had to alter it. Then I get the last rivet after there are about 500 bonus points left.
 
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Man,I love those DK cabs! Never get tired of seeing them,blue or red. I can't remember my exact high score on DK,but it was somewhere around 110k,not too great.
 
Gratz on your high score, I'm also in the 300K club, so I know what it takes to get there! I haven't been playing DK very much lately, but every once in a while I'll get in the mood and hit it pretty hard...

How do you like the new buttons, are they worth replacing the stock buttons with them in your opinion?
 
I'm STILL trying to break 100K! Tonight I had a great game going. Had racked up 18,600 points on the first level (meaning the first two screens) without losing any lives. I got up to about 92,000 or so. ALL of my high scores are above that level, but below 100,000. I usually get around or just past the third elevators on a good game. I used to have the game set to 5 lives, but now that I have lowered it to the standard 3 lives, I know that I am getting better, since I am achieving the same score level as before with two extra men...
 
Not so much "tricks" as just giving your brain a chance to make the required skills automatic (conditioned response). Some of the key skills IMO are:

1. Learn when to go and when to retreat on the elevators and execute it every time. Once you do that, it's the only level where nothing is there to make you die but you. I welcome the elevators now.

2. Be diligent about controlling barrels on the 3rd girder down and watch Kong for wild barrels. I was getting way too far to the left (between the two left ladders) on the 3rd girder down before I put the barrels where they need to be. The farther you are to the right, the harder it is for a wild barrel to get you too. Once you get them arranged well, you can get between the left ladders--but don't linger in one spot and keep an eye on Kong or you'll take a barrel to the head when you're going up the ladder.

3. Be flexible on the 150m rivets--don't force a pattern. The fireballs move fast and with aggression--use that against them--they'll often follow you down. I watched Wiebe play all the way to 932,000. On those 150m levels, he'd run all the way down to the bottom after getting the left side rivets almost every time to lure them down and give himself a better chance to get those upper right rivets. Don't try too hard to get the lower hammer. Adapt to what the fireballs dictate.

4. Control the barrels as much as you can on the conveyors. If 3 or 4 fireballs start coming down, I run all the way to the left and keep slamming Mario into the left wall. This seems to make most of them retreat back up the ladder. Then you can ether find a good chance to get up there or you can use the hammer to clear some space. If you do get up the the very last ladders and the fireballs close in... retreat! If there are one or two in your way, go up and down the ladder and they'll move. Usually.

5. DO NOT POINT PRESS unless it's truly safe. It's not worth it. Treat each life like it's your last. Never say die, never surrender.

There are other (and better) DK players here--they may have other/better suggestions.

Good advice. Especially "Never say die, never surrender." I've had couple games where I've lost 2 lives before 100,000 points, then gotten a couple good stretches and ended up close to 400,000 points. You can go a long way on one man sometimes.
 
Gratz on your high score, I'm also in the 300K club, so I know what it takes to get there! I haven't been playing DK very much lately, but every once in a while I'll get in the mood and hit it pretty hard...

How do you like the new buttons, are they worth replacing the stock buttons with them in your opinion?

As many know, there are no new original stock (NOS) DK buttons available. Mike's Arcade uses ones that are at least reasonably close in color (the blue is a shade lighter). They turn down the shank part in a lathe so they fit into the slightly smaller DK control panel holes. These buttons were a bit shorter than the non-original ones in my game, so I readjusted the microswitches accordingly.

The feel is somewhat different (weaker spring) but you get used to it pretty fast. In a perfect world, these replacement buttons would use an e-ring instead of just being snapped together. Anything that snaps together can snap apart--I saw a photo from the Kong-Off event where one jump button popped out. I'd be tempted to add more tension to the spring, but then it'd probably come apart more easily. My orange jump button quickly became sticky which was really distracting, but a shot of pinball playfield lube/cleaner and it was fine.
 
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Good advice. Especially "Never say die, never surrender." I've had couple games where I've lost 2 lives before 100,000 points, then gotten a couple good stretches and ended up close to 400,000 points. You can go a long way on one man sometimes.

It took me a while to realize that, if you're still alive, you have all you need--life. No need to get your dobber down. Party on.

Having just one life left won't work for guys trying to break the WR--if they don't have spare lives to kill off before the kill screen, they can't get the last 10,000-15,000 points (if they lost those lives on screens like the elevators and conveyors that don't have many points other than the bonus points).

But a hack like me won't be challenging those guys any time soon or ever. If they can play one life to 1M points, I can surely get 50,000 to 100,000 or more.

BTW, I noticed an error in my play advice--I said "barrels" on the conveyor level when of course I meant "fireballs" (changed it). I'm also not sure people understood what I mean by "slamming Mario into the wall"... it's a run + jump on the bottom left wall, not just a run. The fast jumping you can do that way seems to make some of the fireballs retreat back up the ladder. Just not always. Not always is the key to Donkey Kong--I've taken barrels to the head in the "safe" spot before. I've had 6 wild barrels rain down on me in a row.

But isn't that why DK is so much fun?!

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon, do the other things, and play Donkey Kong, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." John F. Kennedy
 
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Man, I had been stuck at a high score of 276,000 for almost 2 months.

Donkey Kong can be so cruel--twice in the last week I had gotten to 200,000 with three lives left. Then I got hammered to death with wild barrels and didn't even break 250,000.

Tonight was looking like it was going to be the same old story when I lost two lives on one barrel screen at 260,000...except...this time I somehow hung on for 40,000 points on the last life to hit 303,800. A dumb unforced error ended things on the elevators--I failed to make the jump to the down elevator and jumped straight up and down onto the fireball. Ah well.

On another note, I added the final details to my DK restoration project--I installed a new set of blue & orange buttons from Mike's Arcade. I also installed a reproduction of the bezel instruction decal. It's done!

Maybe it was the new buttons that helped?

Donkey Kong Restoration

I was really happy to break 100K and I only did that once.
 
Nice work on 300k. I was stuck at 270k for the longest time but finally went just over 300k like you. It's a frustrating game sometimes because you can be playing great and then lose 2 or 3 guys in a heartbeat due to "uncontrollable" circumstances. Great players know how to control those uncontrollable circumstances, I wish I could do that better.
 
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