Hank Chien Reclaims Donkey Kong High Score

An anonymous reader writes "If you can say anything about Hank Chien, it's that he evidently doesn't take defeat very well. Sure, he knew not so deep down that his Donkey Kong World Record score wouldn't last forever, but he couldn't have foreseen that it would have been toppled so quickly. Twice, even. But he also knew that more Kong competition would be coming his way; namely Richie Knucklez Kong-Off in March. So Hank had something to prove, and prove he did. Scoring a massive 1,068,000 points in less than three hours, Hank has officially reclaimed the high score in Nintendo’s 1981 arcade classic."

The economic aspects of Rome are more complex

[Moraelin]

The economy of Rome is even funnier than that, actually.

For a start, it a right-wing paradise of sorts, in that the Senatorial class -- which was non-elected and hereditary by now in the Empire times that you mention -- paid no taxes, although they owned most of the land. Although many also set up merchant enterprises in the name of their freedmen, with them owning most "shares" so to speak and taking most profits... and again paying no tax whatsoever for that either.

As the rich quickly gobbled up more and more of the former free men's farms, essentially more and more of the Roman economy didn't contribute a cent any more to the state.

I would say that the spending of private coins to import stuff from the East was a much more minor factor than the fact that none of those coins would go into taxes anyway.

Imperial Rome almost at no point actually had a sustainable economy per se. It was a robber economy, simply put. They _had_ to keep expanding and plundering new countries, even to keep paying their legions.

Heck, they plundered even their own citizens, as essentially they paid all the wages in overvalued silver coins and demanded the taxes only in gold.

Re:Is there a maximum possible DK score?

[gazbo]

I've partly answered this in a previous comment, but as an illustration of how much higher the score can go, take a look at level 1-1 (the first barrel round). In Wiebe's highest scoring game, he scored ~8000 points on that level. Twingalaxies opened a track for who could get the highest score on that level, and although the site is slashdotted, from memory it was well in excess of 12000. The barrel rounds are by far the most common in the game so that suggests a huge margin for improvement.

Of course, the 1-1 barrel round is quite different from the 5-1 barrel round. In the latter the timer counts down far faster, so there's less time to points press. On the other hand, you have far more control over the barrels, which makes higher scoring easier (if you ignore that whole 'death' thing).

If I had to make a guess, I'd say there's theoretically hundreds of thousands more points to score. Maybe even break 2 million if the game cooperates?

Re:My Hero

[arth1]

With Donkey Kong, it's not about reflexes but rather the opposite: anticipating, so you don't run yourself into a situation you can't get out of, and pixel/frame precision, so you jump at exactly the right time and spot.
For high score chasing, judicious use of the powerup is also rather important, and this has to be planned, not done by reflex.

I'm personally not too impressed with Donkey Kong, Frogger and Pac Man scores, cause it's mostly repetitive action.
I'm much more impressed with masters of Defender, which requires reflexes, precision steering, and being able to handle a boatload of buttons. It's fiendishly difficult in its simplicity.