While there might be a lot of talk about the next generation of games at the moment, not everyone is eagerly looking forward. Some are looking back; way back, to 1981.
The Kong Off is an annual Donkey Kong (original 1981 arcade edition) competition that sees the worlds best going head to head to see who's the current top dog in live competition. Usually this doesn't produce record breaking scores, but it does see some magic.
Over the last few days, the first qualifying round for the Wild Card placements went down and it produced a bevy of impressive scores. These gamers tended to be those that haven't proved they can hit a million points and therefore don't get the special attention of ex-champions like Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe or current champ Hank Chien.
Despite that though, the scores were impressive, with at least four kill screens being achieved and a couple of million + results. The top three after the first round of qualifiers were:
Dean Saglio: 1,087,500
Phil Tudose: 1,051,600
Jeff Wolfe: 997,800
They each stand a good chance of making it into the final eight, which will be decided after two more rounds of qualifying. Those with the eight best scores will progress on to the first round of the Kong Off and will be joined by the top eight of the live qualifiers set to take place this November 3rd, at the 1UP Barcade in Denver Colorado.
That will then get whittled down to a final four before the champion is crowned.
How are your personal scores with this? My MAME best is around 80,000. Pathetic by these standards, but a fair bit better than the average gamer I'd wager.
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