As anyone who reads my website updates knows, I am a huge Donkey Kong fan. I’m also a fan of the recent movie “The King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters”. The movie, presented as a documentary but not truly “accurate”, made a fun rivalry between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. The movie quickly became a cult classic, renewing interest in classic arcade gaming and competitive gaming. Even though there have been several classic games that have recently had long-standing world records toppled, such as Joust a few months ago, Donkey Kong is still the king. When Donkey Kong has its record beaten, it makes national news. Interest in the movie also spawned many new competitors beyond Steve and Billy. One such competitor, Hank Chien, surpassed both Billy and Steve and took the World Record last year. The record has passed between all three since then, and is currently held by Hank.

It was only a matter of time before someone was going to be able to put together the ultimate Donkey Kong tournament. Richie “Knucklez” Vavrence, owner of Richie Knucklez Arcade Games in Flemington, NJ held such a tournament this past weekend. Richie is a fantastic promoter and has created some great classic arcade events. This latest event, called “The Kong Off”, lined up 11 of the greatest Donkey Kong players in the world to play for the highest score over a two-day period.
The event was well attended by fans, and in the end Hank Chien passed Steve Wiebe and Eric Howard to claim the Kong Off crown and a $1000 grand prize. I was not able to attend the event but I did check in from time-to-time via the live webcam broadcast of the competition and through various Tweets and blog sites. I’ll post some great links to the end of this post if anyone is interested in reading more about the event.

Donkey Kong cabinets all lined up ready for the tournament. What a great sight! Just like in the 80′s when Donkey Kong was the hottest game in the arcades. Thanks to Eric Howard for the picture!

Great atmosphere with all the fans packed in to watch these guys play. This picture was taken directly from Richie’s Justin.tv broadcast video. It was great to watch during the event! Thanks Richie!

Watching this event has really made me want to make another run at my Donkey Kong high score. I spent several months working on my score and last year finally beat 300,000 points. That was good then but not nearly competitive after seeing all of these other people scoring three times that. I’ve never been close to seeing a Kill Screen (Level 22), so it’s time to try again. I’m going to start playing this game on a regular basis, with the goal of reaching the Kill Screen. I worked on my Joust skills with the goal of reaching 1,000,000 points and recently achieved that milestone. Now time for the true test. Very few people have successfully reached the Kill Screen. I want to be on that list!
I started playing again seriously last night. I only hit 139,400 points, but I guess that’s a start. I’m going to log my scores and levels reached over the next few months and see if I can come close to that Kill Screen. There are several things that I know I do not do well, such as retreating between springs on the later elevator levels. I’ll continue to work on these skills and hopefully get much better. Wish me luck!

Here are some links you might like:

• The Kong Off Official Site
• Richie Knucklez Arcade Games – The home of The Kong Off and Flashback Fridays. Be sure to check out the live Justin.tv streaming!
• Aurcade.com – The Kong Off Tournament Results Page
• The Kong Off Recap by Patrick Scott Patterson (Arcade Game Examiner)
• Rhode Island Donkey Kong contender scores at The Kong-Off (profile of Eric Howard at the Kong Off) by Patrick Scott Patterson (Arcade Game Examiner)

Well, since tomorrow I am going to be playing some DK with with a few other collectors that live close by, I thought I’d better warm up. Played one game this morning. I only hit 92K on the first man, then I died twice on a barrel level at 140K. My last guy I made it over 300K finally. I was getting really nervous once I hit about 250K, and my hands were shaking at 280K. Still, I hit the milestone (barely) with a score of 300,600!

Here’s the screen shot:

I was so excited to hit the score that I ran upstairs to get my camera. Once I hit the top of the stairs I remembered I didn’t enter my initials in yet. I ran down but didn’t enter them quick enough before time ran out. Crap, now I have to beat it 5 times to fix that screw-up!

This past weekend I just received some exciting news from Jeff Rothe of Coinopspace.com. COSP is going to host a live chat with Steve Wiebe. Steve is the Donkey Kong player profiled in the movie King of Kong. It is a great “documentary” about what it is like to try to challenge a long-time classic arcade game world record. I highly recommend the movie if you have not seen it! Steve is a great guy and it will be interesting to hear some of his stories about his life after making KOK.

Here’s the link to the event: Chat with Steve Wiebe

Also, make sure you sign up for an account on Coinopspace.com, even if you do not plan to attend the chat. It’s a great site that has several networking tools for classic arcade game collecting.

Here’s the promotional text from Coinopspace.com covering the event:

On April 15th 2009 Steve Wiebe will be on Coinopspace.com, participating in a live group chat even with Donkey Kong fans and general coin-op enthusiasts. Steve is the latest in a monthly series of live chat sessions that has seen the likes of Tim Skelly, Owen Rubin, Jeff Kulczycki and Brian Colin.

If you aren’t a Donkey Kong fan, and somehow have been living under a rock for the past two years, Steve Wiebe is one of the best Donkey Kong players in the world and starred in the movie King of Kong, a documentary about his quest for the top score. Steve has one of the only 1,000,000 point scores ever recorded in public, and is one heck of a nice guy to boot.
Coinopspace.com is a brand new website for arcade, pinball and console enthusiasts to connect and share stories. Coinopspace.com isn’t just a forum based website, but has every feature for sharing your collection and restoration hobby that you could possibly imagine. There are advanced customizable profiles, photo hosting, a live chat section obviously, hosted blogs, videos and so much more. In the coming months we hope to connect collectors with more arcade game and pinball creators to ask those questions about your favorite games you’ve been dying to know.

To participate in the Steve Wiebe chat you need to sign up for the website and then you can RVSP for the event at the following link:
http://www.coinopspace.com/events/creator-chat-steve-wiebe

You can view all upcoming creator chats and events on the events page at
http://www.coinopspace.com/events

Ask Steve all those questions you have after watching King of Kong, there may be no other better time!

Here’s how I did:

If you haven’t seend King of Kong yet, you have to see it. It really got me excited about making a run at my Donkey Kong high score. King of Kong is a documentary about a couple guys’ attempt to beat each others’ world record high scores in the original Donkey Kong arcade game. There are some “inaccuracies” and some supposed misrepresentation of some of the characters in the film, but overall it is an enteraining movie. If you watch it, make sure you Google some of the more recent information as well as some of the revealing truth behind the movie.

Click here to see more on The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Here are a couple links for more information, or more insight into KOK:

• The King of Kong Official Message Boards – Has some interesting debate on the validity of the movie. Some people are a bit “obsessive”!
• AV Club Billy Mitchell Interview – Great impromptu discussion with Mitchell about the facts of the movie
• TexasGeek.TV King of Kong “Director’s Cut” Clip – Nice video of further Wiebe exploits after Mitchell beat him yet again…

Just a quick note to mention that I received my replacement D2K kit. Tried it out, and it works perfectly. I’m going to play it for a week or so, then post a review of the kit and the game itself here on my blog.

I’ve only done one other Multi-game kit review so far, for Clay Cowgill’s Multi-Pac. Just reposted it on my site. Check back soon for more reviews, including D2K!