March 9, 2008

If you’re here, you probably stumbled on my site while looking for information on Donkey Kong… or the word “dramastic.” You can find the origin of the word dramastic via the link. Now, on to Donkey Kong.

I played Donkey Kong a few times growing up. I liked the game, but I was never any good. I may have made it to the 2nd or 3rd level in all my times playing back in the 80′s and 90′s. But, lately something has happened. I was introduced to the move “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” by a friend. And it was all over…

Prior to watching the movie, I had purchased a MAME cabinet from someone near Cincinnati. The cabinet was an old Chase H.Q. game that had been painted black. It came with a 21″ CRT monitor (2 spares), a 2-player X-Arcade joystick, and some, uh, “software.” The machine had been gutted out, but the original glass, flashing lights, and pedal remained. I’m not doing the machine justice, so here are some pictures.

Anyway, I had access to several games and Donkey Kong was one of them. So, after watching the “King of Kong” I decided to give the game a shot again after about 15 years.

Getting to know Donkey Kong again…
The first game was, well, pathetic. I think I may have made it to the 3rd level… no, not 3rd level as in the elevators, but as in climbing 2 ladders. I think I scored 400 points. I tried again and scored somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 points. After that, I pretty much gave up.

But then the same friend that introduced me to the “King of Kong” came over for a visit. I mentioned Donkey Kong, so we decided to give it a shot. We went back and forth a few times, eventually scoring into the thousands. Yup, I said thousands.

Over a few days, we made it to a high of something like 30,000. I had the previous high, then Andrew took over. Fortunately, he had to go home so I got in plenty of practice. In a matter of about a week, I destroyed his 30,000 point game by scoring 50,000, then 55,000, then 70,000, then 80,000 (of course, these numbers are estimated). So within a week or week and a half of playing 3 and 4 hours a day, I went from 400 points to 80,000 points.

You might ask, “how do you have some much time to play? Do you live in your parents basement?” And I say to you, “no, they kicked me out because I was playing too much Donkey Kong” But on a more serious note, I work 40 hours a week and my wife (Melissa) is a CPA. So all of this is happening during “busy” season, aka”tax time.” I have several hours to myself during the evenings to perfect my craft.

Playing the game for real…
As I was slowly approaching the magical 100,000 point mark, I told Melissa that once I start scoring 6 figures on a regular basis, I’m going to invest in an actual Donkey Kong machine. Within about 2 weeks after I began playing Donkey Kong, I hit 120,000 points. In another 3 or 4 days, I was hitting 100,000 points in 1 out of every 3 or 4 games. I would say that’s pretty consistent, wouldn’t you? And thus I began searching for a Donkey Kong machine.

I searched eBay and checked out craigslist.org for locations within a couple of hundred miles. I had a near hit when I saw an ad for a machine just north of Cincinnati for $250. But, unfortunately someone else knew how great of a deal this was and jumped all over it. The only machines I could find on eBay or craigslist were either 1000 miles away and affordable, or a couple hours away and $1,500, with one being borderline in Athens, Georgia (about 450 miles) for $475.

I brushed off the one in Athens even though it was so tantalizingly close. I contacted a couple of local dealers, but the best I could do was one possibly being available in a couple of weeks for $1,200. It wasn’t looking very good.

The machine in Athens kept weighing on my mind. About 2 weeks after it was listed, I contacted the person that owned it, thinking it was long gone. Much to my surprise, it was still available. Was there something wrong with it? Was it not an authentic machine, but one of the 48 in 1 that everyone seems to own? Nope, it just seems Georgia residents don’t appreciate a good Donkey Kong machine. It was in used shape, but it was nothing like what you would expect a game that is 27 years old to be. In fact, here is the picture that was sent to me.

I contacted Andrew (the person who introduced me to King of Kong, keep up people) since his parents live close to Athens. I asked if he would like to ride down in the off chance he would want to spend his weekend riding to a state he’s not too fond of to help bring back a Donkey Kong machine. Fortunately for me, he did. I emailed the owner of the machine, made an offer, and we settled on $450. The trip to Georgia was on.

Being in central Kentucky, the old saying holds true. “If you don’t like the weather, hang around for 5 minutes.” I am a HUGE fan of snow. Unfortunately, due to global warming or lolcats, we have had a few snows measuring maybe 2 inches in the past 3 or so years. That is, until I’m wanting to travel out of town for the weekend. All of the sudden there’s a call for 6-10″ of snow in our area. I wouldn’t expect it any other way.

Georgia on my Mind
So, due to inclement weather, both Andrew and I knocked off work early on Friday. We set off for Georgia to crash at his parents house for the night and then head to Athens in the morning to pick up the machine. But, it turns out “the ‘rents” were going to be out of town for the weekend. That was OK, because Andrew had a key for the side door… the only lock, it turns out, his parents had to change.

We snooped around the place for a little while (their neighborhood watch is apparently HORRIBLE by the way), trying the key in every possible door. We entertained the idea of grabbing a ladder from the garage to try a second story window, but thought better of it. We were hit with a dilemma… try to find a hotel or pull the car into the garage and crash there. We opted for the garage. It was already late and we would be leaving about 6 or 7 am anyway. Why waste money for a hotel? Well, it turns out sleeping in a Rav4 is really uncomfortable.

Andrew had his laptop, so we watched Mallrats and ate dinner we had picked up from Georgia’s finest Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell. Afterwards Andrew reclined in the passenger seat while I curled up in the back. Now I know why my dogs hate lying down when we go on long trips.

We were on our way shortly after 7am with *maybe* a combined 8 hours of sleep. But it was OK, I was getting a Donkey Kong machine. There were a few uneasy minutes of unanswered calls to the sellers cell phone. But, he called back and met us at his office. After moving the machine down the stairs, some odd looks and questioning from security, we loaded the machine into my Rav4. We were all pleasantly surprised to find out you can comfortably fit a full size arcade machine in the back of a 2006 Rav4.

Back it up…
Revisiting the “King of Kong”, Steve Wiebe is attempting to set the world record for the highest Donkey Kong score. The people of TwinGalaxies (Walter Day and crew) are in charge of verifying scores for this and many, many other video games. As it turns out, they even have a list for Donkey Kong as played on MAME. During the time I began searching for a machine, I decided to see what the requirements were for submitting a score. After finding out it was relatively simple, I downloaded the proper program (WolfMAME) to record my game play. Shortly after, I submitted a score of about 124,000 to get on the board.

Current day…
Even though it seems like all this is ancient history, we actually just got back from Georgia yesterday. We unloaded the machine and managed to carry it up a flight of stairs to my already somewhat cramped game room. It is currently sitting parallel to my MAME cabinet. I haven’t had time to play it much yet, but in my first game, I logged about 59,000 points.

The night before leaving for the Peach State, I submitted my second score to TwinGalaxies for Donkey Kong (US Set 1) as played on MAME. Currently, I sit at #16 with 223,400 points.

To be continued…
I plan to turn my focus to playing the authentic Donkey Kong arcade machine. Playing an actual machine differs greatly from playing MAME on a 21″ monitor with an X-Arcade joystick. For one thing, there is more play in the Donkey Kong machine controls. Another difference is, in my MAME machine the monitor is flush against the glass. In the Donkey Kong machine, the 19″ monitor sits back inside and the top leans away from the player. So, the perspective is completely different. However, it will just take getting used to. All the strategies stay the same.

Someday, when I finally get the feel for my Donkey Kong machine, I plan on videotaping and submitting scores to TwinGalaxies for verification. I may never be as good as Steve Wiebe (THIS is as close as I will get to being like him), but I am aiming for Brian Kuh. Watch your back, Kuh!