Highest Donkey Kong score ever recorded happened yesterday

SanTe

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Highest Donkey Kong score ever recorded happened yesterday

When Dean Sagilo scored 1,206,800 on Donkey Kong playing in MAME back in October 2013, many rightly wondered if the score would ever be broken. Dean was the first to break the 1.2 million barrier and at the time the next highest score ever recorded was Hank Chien's then-world record score of 1,138,600 for the Arcade platform, i.e. playing on original hardware.

A couple of years go by. Then up-and-coming DK players Robbie Lakeman and Wes Copeland spend the next two years swapping the Arcade world record back and forth, pushing the score up a little at a time. The record changed hands between them five times. At one point Wes posted a new world record only to have Robbie beat it back the very next day. All the while Dean's massive MAME score loomed as the elephant in the room.

Recently Robbie posted his current best of 1,190,200, beating Wes' score by only 100 points, taking back the Arcade record at the last possible second on the kill screen. Wes responded shortly after by pushing the Arcade record up another 5,000 points to 1,195,100. Then yesterday happened:

Wes Copeland scores 1,218,000!!!
http://donkeykongforum.com/index.php?topic=1635.0

Wes scored 1,173,800 on his first man and was able to sack all of his extra lives for an extra 36,700 points before proceeding to the kill screen. This is certainly the most perfect game of Donkey Kong ever played. With each rise of the highest recorded score the odds of pushing it any further get longer and longer, necessitating many, many more attempts by its best players for it to become less of a statistical impossibility.

Wes' game lasted 3 hrs 16 min 32 sec and currently can be viewed here.
 
So this was done on real hardware, aka a real Donkey Kong machine?

Damn impressive either way.
 
Ha! So true. It's something I'll have to look up his order. I do not recall what his exact order was.
Thought it would be a funny @ even funnier if it was in fact, what he ordered.;)
 
Some media are reporting today that this was a "perfect" score and cannot be broken.

Anyone think differently?

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

As usual, the media is wrong and doesn't do even basic research. There can be no such thing as a perfect game with randomized scoring elements and freeform movement. There can be a huge difference between a perfect score and a game that has been perfectly played, as there is in this case.
 
Yeah "perfect" in this case doesn't mean "impossible to beat". BUT, due to the nature of how points are scored in DK, his score is nigh untouchable. You'd have to play an equally perfect game AND have a statistical outlier of a game in terms for your average points for each smashed barrel/fireball, etc. I strongly suspect that Wes' score will stand for many years.
 
Yeah "perfect" in this case doesn't mean "impossible to beat". BUT, due to the nature of how points are scored in DK, his score is nigh untouchable. You'd have to play an equally perfect game AND have a statistical outlier of a game in terms for your average points for each smashed barrel/fireball, etc. I strongly suspect that Wes' score will stand for many years.

A higher score is definitely possible. This guy's score was actually tracking to be less than the WR until he hit level 20. So there were points that were missed on some earlier levels.

Bottom line: this was not a "perfect game" and there is clear evidence that it could be surpassed. How long will that take? Who knows? But it could be achieved with the right combination of skill and luck.

Still, a great achievement.
 
I watched the beginning of the video and was wondering what was the sprite screen flashings and/or board resetting prior to him starting his game?

I have had about 4 boards and have never seen this when starting a game.
 
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Amazing. Easily one of the best classic arcade scores of all-time, if not the best.
 
What always blows me away about these videos is how effortless these players can make these kinds of games look.

I only watched some of the video, but does the difficulty level of DK plateau at some point?
 
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