Golden Era Game of the Week 12/3/05: Donkey Kong

[Weehawk]

Golden Era Game of the Week

See introduction here

The Game: Donkey Kong

romname: dkong

Screenshot:

(click to see current MARP scores)

Reward: $100 (usd)

Deadline for submission to MARP: December 9, 2005 2359 hours GMT

Further Bounty: $250 (usd) for exceeding one million points by February 28, 2006.

Another obscure little title that probably no one has ever heard of...



Use WolfMAME .101 or .102

[awesome]

Another obscure little title that probably no one has ever heard of...



Use WolfMAME .101 or .102

Hey, it looks like a clone of Mr. F Lea!

[Weehawk]

Another obscure little title that probably no one has ever heard of...



Use WolfMAME .101 or .102

Hey, it looks like a clone of Mr. F Lea!

There was in fact an omen:

And practice on one of the portions may be of value in the last week of GEGOTW...hint hint hint.

[Weehawk]

Sunday's bonus points to zylquin.

[Ahigh]

Sunday's bonus points to zylquin.

Good job. I saw zy pass my 315,500 with e-mail notifications. I wouldn't have known about gegotw being DK otherwise. I don't know if I can compete, but I'm going to try if I can get some free time.

Besides billy, Steve Weibe is the only person I know who can kill a million. Steve & I played at Cal extreme 2005 and he gave me some pointers. So I should be able to bust 500K pretty easy. Steve doesn't know how to do MARP, so I don't think anybody has to worry about him entering the race.

--
- Ahigh (Aaron Hightower - amh on Marp)

[Weehawk]

Tuesday's bonus points to zylquin.

[Ahigh]

I just spent a long wihle getting DK with wolfmame set up. I haven't used wolfmame before.

My best score so far for the evening was 239,000 .. not enough.

I wanted to report since I'm not uploading scores under my posted Marp score (I don't know if I can best my 315).

If I can beat my own score .. I'll be happy .. but I feel I can taste that 400K+...

--
- Aaron

[zylquin]

I've had no luck the past two nights. Nothing of note in over 60 starts. Only about 10 of those 60 even see a second man before I hit escape.
I really have to find a defense to those wild barrels. They seem to ruin so many potential decent games.

[Ahigh]

I've had no luck the past two nights. Nothing of note in over 60 starts. Only about 10 of those 60 even see a second man before I hit escape.
I really have to find a defense to those wild barrels. They seem to ruin so many potential decent games.

I'm sure you already know that walking towards a ladder generally makes a barrel go down that ladder on stages 4 and above.

What you might not know is that it isn't just walking, but pushing left or right on the joystick (towards .. not away from .. the barrel in question) even when on a ladder causes the barrel to go down the ladder.

To avoid wild barrels, starting on the third ladder that you go up on, right before you get to the top, there will be a barrel on top of the broken ladder to your upper right. While still on the ladder, push the joystick right, and the barrel will go down the broken ladder. I saw Steve Weibe doing this, and it's key to avoiding the wild barrels when your trying to get up to the level with the 2nd hammer on it.

You want to keep barrels away from the second hammer completely by making all of them go down the broken ladder as much as possible. DK throws more wild barrels when you have barrels in your vicinity and are trying to get to the second hammer.

No barrels around the second hammer, no wild barrels. In general...

That's the trick.

The trick to getting a million is mostly learning to get the first hammer and clean house without being killed. Being around the first hammer at the same time as a bunch of barrels will induce wild barrels as well, so you have to be good. I saw Steve pull some amazing moves getting 300's by jumping between wild barrels and rolling barrels one after another .. then grabbing the hammer and cleaning house.

Also, getting the first hammer will prevent the fireball from killing you up top later (he gets fast).

--
- Ahigh

[AL]

I saw Billy Mitchell do some serious damage with the hammer on the barrel levels when he showed his 1,047,000 score at the CGEUK2005 event.

Gotta say, amazing stuff.


Cheers,


AL

[awesome]

I've watched both Billy and Steve play live. In general, Steve tends to get around 9 barrels/flames with the bottom hammer. Billy seemed to get around 11 barrels/flames with the bottom hammer. The barrel level is the level that shows up the most in the game. The whole key to getting a million is the use of that bottom hammer each and every time. I think (I might be counting wrong) there are 57 barrel levels in a complete game. Let's say you used to skip using the bottom hammer and now start to use it and get 9 barrels/flames with it for all those levels. That adds 153,900 assuming you only get 300 for each flame or blue barrel. I think the hammer generally lasts around 800 on the timer so you lose that which is around 44,600. So using this method will generally net you over 100k by just starting to use this bottom hammer proficiently. With most kill screen games coming in from 850k - 875k, this trick get's you a long ways toward that million point score.

Also, besides getting more barrels/flames in general with that bottom hammer, he also goes all the way up to third level, sucks a few barrels into groups to jump for bigger points, then as they pass him he drops back down the ladder to the second level to jump the group yet a second time. He does this to waste time until a blue barrel is the first barrel he gets with that hammer. This gives the maximum possibility of getting a second blue barrel before the hammer time runs out. It also frequently sucks the flame from the bottom up so that he gets that too. So there are at least 3 possible chances at points more than 300 plus all the barrel jumping points.

Also, Billy has had a first board score of 13k (not common but it goes to show you the level of proficiency he has to maximize points).

[zylquin]

No barrels around the second hammer, no wild barrels. In general...

Very interesting. I always assumed the frequency of wild barrels was pretty well random. I'll try this tactic and see if it reduces the number of times hit by a wild barrel.

If I can find the discipline to not blindly head up that short ladder underneath the 2nd hammer until I know Kong's next barrel wont be a wild one, that should help too. Although I'm hoping your hint will eliminate this danger altogether. Thanks for the info.

[Weehawk]

Thursday's bonus points to zylquin.

[Ahigh]

three more games over 200K .. no games over 230K.

[zylquin]

Max of 364,500 tonight. That's it for me for the week.