The New Kings of Kong

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Ever since Chien won the inaugural Kong Off at Richie Knucklez Arcade Games in Flemington, NJ back in 2011, Lemay has been nipping at Chien's heels. His guiding mission in life now, other than getting Hulked out at the gym, is annihilating Hank Chien at Donkey Kong. Last month, Motherboard traveled to Denver, Colorado, to attend The Kong Off 3, the highly anticipated and near-capacity Donkey Kong world championship, held at the 1UP arcade and bar. During four loopy days of shooting inside a subterranean cave of amusement, which assaulted our senses with flashing lights, blippity bloops, and killscreens, we witnessed first-hand the drama of a showdown between a video game's top contenders."

Re:

[similar_name]

How can life go on when I'm not sure who won?f

Re:

[Joce640k]

Jeff Willms won with 1,096,200.

Chien was third with 1,056,900

Sooo Many Games...

[EETech1]

If I had a nickel for every time I stuffed a quarter in that game...

Even just the times I played while wearing roller skates...

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[c0lo]

If I had a nickel for every time I stuffed a quarter in that game...

Just sayin' ... (not that is relevant in any way, but ... hey... its precise; precision should worth something, aint it? :)... So what was I saying? Oh yes.
if you'd have that nickel back, you'd still had spent 2 dimes per game.

Re:

[JustOK]

nickleback sucks!

Re:Sooo Many Games...

[BringsApples]

omfg dude, the memories that you just spawned off in me! I had totally forgotten about arcade gaming with skates on. I think it was a custom to SLAM the bumper of the skate into the bottom of the game in order to use it to stop yourself. And when you die, faaade backwards, back to the rink. Jesus Christ, I can almost smell the place, and feel that cold air breeze that seems to come along with all rinks.

Thanks!

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[EETech1]

Are you staying for Sock Hop?

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[wonkey_monkey]

omfg dude, you just spawned off in me!

What happens when you read things too quickly on a Friday morning.

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[BringsApples]

Friday the 13th, no doubt!

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[MonkeyPaw]

And when you die, faaade backwards, back to the rink.

That's pretty funny. I remember doing that as well. But I didn't until you brought it up.

Never mind Kong, what about Pong?!

[haruchai]

If you're going to go old school, do it right.

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[c0lo]

If you're going to go old school, do it right.

Do it right, you say? Let me try...
The New Pings of Pong

Hey, whaddya know??!! As worthy of /. as the current title
(killin' time... /. bein' good at it, looks like)

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[phantomfive]

Pong wasn't the oldest computer game, by a long shot......

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[haruchai]

Spacewar wasn't very common in arcades and doesn't rhyme with Kong.

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[phantomfive]

Spacewar wasn't the oldest computer game either.

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[haruchai]

So what was?

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[phantomfive]

Probably insulting people [bit.ly]. I had an EDSAC emulator that had an old tic-tac-toe routine......

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[haruchai]

Again, I'm talking about arcade games or something the general public would have had access to.

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[gl4ss]

no point system.

in dk, there's sufficient skill involved and also a slight bit of luck.

it's not like pacman either where you can just keep playing till the crash stage.

Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Who won the stupid game?

Expect me to read a 1500 word article on stupid game do you? I already put my time in with that movie. I think you greatly overestimate how much I care about who has the hi score.

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[wonkey_monkey]

I think you greatly overestimate how much I care about who has the hi score.

Who won the stupid game?

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[vux984]

? your point ?

He cares enough to catch the name of the winner in a 5 line summary, but not enough to read a 1500 word article.

Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Like cure the sick, help the poor, etc.

Become a surgeon, perhaps?

Re: get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

What have you done then, o great life liver! Tell us all your great deeds so we may applaud you!

Re:

[c0lo]

Do something productive with your life, develop a real skill. Like cure the sick, help the poor, etc.

Why stop at this?
I mean, there's endless possibilities, like: heal the sick, cure all disease, drive out demons, open blind eyes, heal the broken hearted, walk on the water, turn water into wine, raise the dead, etc.
Some say there was someone that did all of the above. How's the world better now because of it?

(my point: you are free to consider it a waste of time for yourself. But why cast stones on those who see it otherwise?)

Re:get a life

[phantomfive]

Do something productive with your life, develop a real skill.

Not to dissuade from your rant, but that is, in fact, a real skill.

Re:Does old school DK go pattern?

[bigwheel]

Mostly pattern. We used to maintain notebooks with the winning routes.

Same with most of the original old-school games. However, later versions of most games were more random than their originals.

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[freeze128]

So it's pretty much established that you can get a high score on DK by using patterns. How well would these fellows fare at playing a different game? Is DK the only thing at which they can excel?

Lets face it, saying that you got high score on a 30+ year old video game by using patterns is not that impressive. Go back to 1983, and you'll be a hero. Today, you're just another loser.

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[phantomfive]

Lets face it, saying that you got high score on a 30+ year old video game by using patterns is not that impressive. Go back to 1983, and you'll be a hero. Today, you're just another loser.

No one's a loser for doing what they love.

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[BancBoy]

What if you love losing?

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[Mike Buddha]

Totally, bro.

Summary respects hose dongle nack

[Max Threshold]

It wasn't until I got to the link that I had any idea what the fuck I was reading about.

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[pspahn]

It was on the news several times, it had full page ads in The Westword, ads on the radio, and posters all over town. Yet, you seem surprised to hear about this. Did you just get back from active duty or something? Or maybe you just don't get out enough to realize Denver is actually kind of a happenin' place.

Huh?

[wonkey_monkey]

Ever since Chien (who?) won the inaugural Kong Off (the what?) at Richie Knucklez Arcade Games in Flemington, NJ back in 2011, Lemay (who?)has been nipping at Chien's (who again?) heels. His guiding mission in life now, other than getting Hulked out at the gym, is annihilating Hank Chien at Donkey Kong (ah!). Last month, Motherboard (who or what?) traveled to Denver, Colorado (okay, now you're just making up words)

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[psithurism]

you can't piece together what a Kong Off is

I know all about Konging Off! I Kong off all the time; in fact I'm Konging off right now.

You know what Donkey Kong is

Actually, I'm only 30; It was only recently that some old guys explained to me that Donkey Kong was not invented in that psuedo-3d game for the super Nintendo (which I imagined this story was about). Apparently, it has something to do with Mario (that guy I know from Super Mario 3). I've never seen the original game.

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[wonkey_monkey]

Yes, I know what Donkey Kong is. But since the word "Donkey" doesn't show up until the end of the second sentence, I think I might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps submitters should take a little more care with what they write - sorry, what they copy and paste - and that editors might be better off taking a glance themselves and, y'know, editing once in a while.

Who do we blame here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Daniel_Stuckey for writing a terrible summary or samzenpus for posting the terrible summary?

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[greg1104]

Conservative Donkey Kong play does not get you a world record. The bonus for finishing a board goes down faster than you can sustain earning points once all the hammers are gone. That means that the faster you get through the low scoring parts of the board, the higher your score. And with only a limited number of boards to play before the kill screen, the core of top tier play is balancing how much risk you're willing to take on to finish the board with higher points. If you are too conservative, even i

I suppose you could say...

[Chris Mattern]

(glasses) ...it's on.

(YEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!)

Turn it into a real LAN party

[slashmydots]

I'd love to troll them by going there and basically turning it into Xbox Live meets every LAN party ever. I'd start swearing at Donkey Kong and calling his mother a whore and accusing him of aimbotting and cheating and hacking and exploit-using and stealing my loot drops.

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[Mike Buddha]

So get good at Donkey Kong.

Near capacity?

[DerekLyons]

"the highly anticipated and near-capacity Donkey Kong world championship, held at the 1UP arcade and bar."

*Yawn* looking at the images I can find on the web, "capacity" is maybe a couple of hundred people. You'd have to have a very narrow special interest or live in a very remote area to *not* be able to gather that kind of 'crowd'.

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[wonkey_monkey]

You'd have to have a very narrow special interest or live in a very remote area to *not* be able to gather that kind of 'crowd'.

I'm President of the Ascension Island chapter of the Doctor Who (Classic Series) Appreciation Society, you insensitive clod!

Glory Days

[hurfy]

Just let me know if anyone wants to be the world champion of Space Duel. Til then i am still claiming it !
Ah, the good old days. Was traveling with a Drum Corps at the time and set high scores on every single machine i came across all over the country for a few years from Seattle's Space Needle to Disneyworld.

Didn't see how long that takes them to do. I went up to 45 min per game of Space Duel and that was a LOT of little asteroids :)

Hmm, almost everyone one of those scores was higher than the current world

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[Jack Griffin]

I used to be pretty good at Bombjack. My high score of 1.4 Million and highest level 39 was at least twice as good as anything I've ever seen. Until the Internet that is. Apparently the record is over 50 million...