So... who won the Kong-Off?

http://www.examiner.com/arcade-game...donkey-kong-playoff-steve-wiebe-places-second

Some guy named Billy Mitchell came in 7th.

Source:
http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2011/03/21/who-is-the-king-of-the-kong-off/

Here is the place and score of the entire Kong Off field:

1. Hank Chien – 994,400
2. Steve Wiebe – 986,900
3. Eric Howard – 941,800
4. Dean Saglio – 912,800
5. Vincent Lemay – 851,900
6. Ben Falls – 846,800
7. Billy Mitchell – 821,200
8. Ben Mazowita – 817,800
9. Mark Kiehl – 774,600
10. Ross Benziger – 765,200

Video Links Here:

http://www.justin.tv/richieknucklez/videos
 
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Here's the scores
http://www.aurcade.com/events/tournament.aspx?id=33

Steve and Hank had kill screens one right after the other in the last few hours. Steve hit his, had the high score and had to leave to catch his flight. Hank was still in mid game at that point. Hank had lost 2 men right after each other on a rivet board, about 500,000 into his game, and he got all the way to the kill screen on his last man. Pretty impressive. It seemed like the winners were playing it safe instead of trying to break 1,000,000 points. A couple guys went for the gusto but it didn't work out.
 
Man, those scores are nuts. I'm terrible at DK, I need to practice more! :)
 
Did you notice that Steve Sanders, (the guy in the movie King of Kong, the guy who wrote a book about playing DK and who became a lawyer in KC after lying about having a DK score in the millions) had 386,400. That's in my range. I should write a book.
 
There are some pretty unknown (to me at least) dudes in there with some awesome DK chops.
 
I love this quote from Hank.

Next time you have a free weekend try the following experiment:
- Spend half your Friday travelling and make sure at least one thing goes wrong (your baggage gets lost (Dave McCrary), your flight arrives at midnight (Steve Wiebe))
- Next stay up until 1:30am (because we had to wait for Steve Wiebe to arrive before having our organizational meeting)
- Try to find your hotel at 2am in the morning in suburban NJ
- Go to bed at 2:30am, but make sure you drink 5 cups of coffee before going to bed, because that's about the amount of restlessness that you will have
- Make sure you wake up at 8am to arrive by 10am.
- Invite 200 of your friends over to watch you play Donkey Kong
- Tell them to remain as quiet as possible
- Make sure you replace the control panel and monitor with ones you're not familiar with
- Make sure there are sounds from 10 other Donkey Kong machines right next to you
- Play from noon to 10pm, but make sure your friends stand 2 feet behind you and are taking flash photos.
- You're allowed to break, but make sure no gaming session lasts less than 2-3 hours (an average session with a 500K game includes restarts and aborted attempts) and have your friends ask you for autographs, pictures, and interviews continuously while you're on break
- While you're eating your 1 hot dog for the entire day (Hank Chien) or eat nothing at all for the entire day (Steve Wiebe) make sure your friends continue to ask for autographs and pictures.
- You are allowed to go to the bathroom, but make sure your friends ask you for an autograph or picture every step of the way to the bathroom and make sure there are 1 or 2 people in line ahead of you
- At 9pm when you're trying to get your last serious attempt for the day, blast Howard Stern's show with the biggest speakers you have. Have them interview you while you are trying to get past the spring board (Hank Chien). Have them yell obnoxious comments and curse in your ear (Billy Mitchell).
- Don't leave until midnight, because your fans will want to talk to you or the radio show will want to interview you.
- Eat dinner at midnight
- Get a good night's sleep. Only drink 3 cups of joe this time.
- Repeat Sunday, but pour beer into your control panel
- When you reach 700K on your last man at over 1M pace, make a bet with one of your friends: If you break 941K you get $400 (=$1000-$600), if you don't you lose $600 (I'm guessing the average travel/other expense of each contestant was $600)
- If you break 1M under these circumstances, then you can complain.
 
There were a few people saying they expected a 1,000,000 game and he does a great job of politely making his point.
 
There were a few people saying they expected a 1,000,000 game and he does a great job of politely making his point.
With a collection of good players like that, I don't know where you could expect a better chance at witnessing a 1,000,000 point game. So it sounded more than just a little whiny to me. If you don't want to do it, then don't commit to going. Problem solved! But then again, what would a Kong Off be without Hank Chien. Who?
 
Here's Hank's whole post. That one excepert was his aside at the end.
First off, thanks to the organizers, fans and fellow competitors. This was truly an amazing event and a once in a lifetime experience. I will have memories that will last forever from this event. Despite what anyone says, I felt EVERY competitor did a fantastic job and I was truly impressed by the scores that were being put up right from the start. The fans were as respectful as possible in a room of 200+ people. (The red rope was crucial!) And the organizers did a fantastic job.

I have little to add, but I can tell you the weekend from my perspective (all scores/times/details below are approximate!):

On Saturday, I had trouble getting a game started. It was mostly due to butterflies in my stomach causing me to do completely retarded things like jump into a pie which I would normally never do. The adrenaline was also making everyone jump earlier than usual (many of the other competitors were saying their 2nd jump wasn't registering). My own control panel started to not feel like my own control panel. This probably set me back about an hour compared to the other players (who seemingly were able to get good games going almost immediately!). This actually turned out to be an advantage.

What happened was Dean pretty much immediately (about 2 hours in) put out a 700K+ game and was in the lead. About an hour later, (and mad props to him) Eric put out a 941K killscreen and took over the lead. While all eyes were on Eric, I had a 500-600K game going at 1.03M pace with no deaths!!! (if I remember correctly). Unfortunately by the time I hit about 750K, I was down to my last man, so I had a very serious decision to make: run boards and secure 1st place or put the pedal to the metal and put up a 1.03M. This is where I had the advantage. Since Eric's game finished ahead of me I had a target score to reach and knew exactly how much risk I would need to take to beat them. I decided to run boards and thought I had enough points in reserve that I would still break a million. However several things happened at the end of my game. The last 2 conveyers (20-2, 21-2) screwed me HARD. I probably lost about 10,000 points between the 2 boards. I'm not exaggerating. Both boards came down to single digit bonus times. If someone has the stream saved, please tell me where I can watch it. On the last rivet (21-6), ALL 5 fireballs immediately stormed left and down to the bottom 2 levels. I think I managed to clear 1 plug and grab the bottom prize and was happy to even salvage 900 points from it— ending 1 board shy of the killscreen. Billy Mitchell who was standing right behind me at the end of my game said "I've never seen anything like that." Final score: 981K.

Day 1 personal game summary (all games played at 1.03-1.04M pace at least early in the game) in chronological order:

Aborted attempt, Aborted attempt, 981K, 800K+, 600K+.

That score stood for the rest of the afternoon/evening, but several significant things happened that day: Billy Mitchell somewhere in there put up a 821K (non-point pressed) and Dean had, in my opinion, the most impressive game of the weekend: a 910K game at about 1.05M pace (correct me if I'm wrong Dean). Steve Wiebe's high for the day was only 600K+. As my pick to win the Kong Off, I asked him what was going on. He told me he was feeling good, but I think he just had some bad luck. He had one game at 600K with no deaths and then died 3 times in a row on the same rivet.

Now comes Sunday. As little red riding hood would say "Someone has been playing on my control panel" because it was sticky and felt like someone spilled beer into the joystick. It was sticking like crazy especially to the left. I would let go of the joystick and jumpman would continue to move for a second. I should have just stopped playing and asked to have my control panel cleaned, but somehow I was hoping it would get better. While we were playing I joking said to my competitors sitting next to me: "Either a fan spilled beer into my joystick last night or one of you guys is trying to sabotage me!" That got a laugh out of Mark Kiehl sitting to my left and David McCrary sitting to my right. Anyhow that game turned out to be the winning game. Rewind. Steve Wiebe just killscreened with 986K taking the lead. The crowd roared as the fan favorite just put up his first big score of the weekend. Meanwhile, I'm sitting on a 700K game (again) at 1.03M pace (again), but on my last man since 400K. Remember, my joystick is still sticking. Same choices; same decision. I ran boards the rest of the game and ended on the killscreen just under 1M, again (Final score 994K). The crowded roared as I reached the killscreen. I turn around to 50-100 people taking pictures. I yelled "Sorry Wiebe fans" as I reclaimed 1st place just moments after losing it. The crowd chuckles. Someone in the crowd yelled back "We love you too Hank!" That was the highlight of my weekend.

During my break, John McAllister helped me clean out my joystick (thank you John!!!) with some WD40. It felt better than new now. I was on a mission now to beat 1M as I had the lead and no one to beat but myself. I put up a sign "1,000,000 or BUST" on my marquee. Unfortunately, things didn't work out to plan and I apparently play better with beer in my joystick. So the person who tried to sabotage me can come clean now, because I need to know what brand beer it was.

Day 2 summary (all games to 1.03-1.04M pace at least the early game):

994K, aborted attempt, 400K+

The score stood for the rest of the event, but not without threat. Dean who started his last game right before the 5:30pm buzzer was threatening to win the event. He got all the way up to 800K+ at over 1M pace and died on a spring. OUCH. It's weird competing with your friends. You're rooting for them, but you also are rooting for them to die. I have to say, your last spring death hurt me too, Dean (I guess our friendship is worth more than $1000). I went up to Dean and patted him on the back to comfort him and congratulated him on the effort and keeping it exciting to the last moment. Several other significant things happened that day. By day 2 a number of competitors were discouraged and decided to run boards to boost their confidence. Vincent managed to killscreen on his very last game with 850K+, so as to not leave empty handed. It was great being a spectator to that and being part of the large crowd that cheered him on.

At the awards ceremony, I presented Billy with a bottle of my new soy sauce "Hankkoman" that was specially labeled for the event (does someone have a picture of this? I would love to see Billy's reaction.) Richie/Billy presented me with a big check that read "Konk Off" and then an embarrassing crown that resembled a tiara (somehow that picture has already made it's rounds on facebook). Richie then presented to me with a fake $1000 bill before turning it over in real cash. Afterwards, we all ate a good meal and had drinks at TGIF.

Event summary:
# Killscreens: 4.5 (I'm counting my 21-6 as half) (Eric 1, Hank 1.5, Steve Wiebe 1, Vincent 1)
# 1M games: 0
World record: No
Mood: Wicked
Red Bull Girls: I missed... can someone fill me in?


Quote from: up2ng
I need to thank Hank for graciously allowing me to use his control panel to practice with arcade controls for a couple of weeks leading up to the event.

You're very welcome!

I hate to end on a negative note, so please stop reading if it doesn't apply to you.
To all of you who say they're disappointed that no one beat a million, let me explain the circumstances so you might better understand.
. . .
 
There is some luck involved in scoring a million points on this game and the average game for an expert player will usually fall short.

Which reminds me, I need to practice. A lot.
 
Is there a list of the settings they use for the high scores and tournaments? Not that I would ever get within a tenth of these guys scores. I just want to see how bad I actually suck at this game. :)

If this has been posted or is common knowledge please disregard this post!
 
There's not really any difficulty setting in DK, other than # of men to start. There's also a setting for when you get an extra man. I believe it's 7K/10K/15K/20K, so anyone who can clear 2 or 3 boards, that extra man setting is not really an issue :D The official settings though, are 3 men to start, extra at 7K 1 coin/1 play and the upright/cocktail dipswitch can be either way. Basically this is all dips off except for the upright/cocktail (on=upright, off=cocktail)
 
Are these basically TG/Manuf. Default settings? And, if so, can you provide a link? Thanks

Here you go
Dip-Switch Bank:
1-7 = OFF
8 = ON/OFF [Upright/Cocktail]

Note: The above Dip Switches, are not only the FACTORY DEFAULT settings, but are also the correct Twin Galaxies Tournament Settings for this title and will provide the following settings;

Number of Jumpman: 3
Score Level for Extra Jumpman: 7,000 Points

Any and all recorded Donkey Kong arcade scores must adhere to the procedure outlined in the RECORDING FAQ, which can be viewed here : Donkey Kong Arcade Recording Rules

These guidelines must be followed precisely, else your score may be disqualified.
www.twingalaxies.com
 
I don't think Nintendo actually specified a particular setting as "factory default" (it doesn't in my manual and "backdoor" sheet), but since most machines were set up with what TG specifies, that's probably how they left the factory. The only "default" that would be different would be the upright/cocktail.
 
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