The Last Kings of Donkey Kong

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-last-kings-of-donkey-kong-high-score/

by MattF • 11 years ago

48 14 11 years ago

Interestingly, despite the mention of the theoretical perfect score (1,265,000), I've never actually seen the calculation for that. I've also never seen a TAS of Donkey Kong aiming for score; if that perfect score is actually achievable, it should be possible to construct a TAS that does so.

MrJagil• 11 years ago

"a random number generator determines the value of many of the prizes you encounter and the path some of the obstacles take."

Seemingly, you would still need several TAS-tries because of the RNG, right? (Unless you can rewind and the 'random' is calculated as a function of something separate from the running instance of the game.)

rizzin• 11 years ago

Some games have mechanisms to manipulate their RNG and it is even used in some TASes.

During this year's SGDQ's TAS block they had a TAS of a Sonic game that used exactly this technique: the bot waited at the title screen the exact amount of frames to manipulate the seed of the game's RNG.

Perhaps a similar mechanism can be used for DK.

chkuendig• 11 years ago

See also: "The King of Kong", an amazing introduction to the scene of competitive donkey Kong playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi2lApoZ5lY

misnome• 11 years ago

Which is explicitly mentioned in the article, as inspiring a "New Wave" of players.

Kiro• 11 years ago

It's amazing but also mentioned several times throughout the article.

toxican• 11 years ago

It's a very good documentary, but I've heard that it's edited in such a way to make the original highscore holder look like more of a villain. Not to mention that the highscore changed hands several times over the years, but it was presented as though it had been held by one guy for the last 20-30 years.

cbd19842• 11 years ago

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1303

It's extremely misleading at best. It might even be fiction if you're strict enough about the facts.

cbd19842• 11 years ago

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1310

hnal943• 11 years ago

I still prefer Chasing Ghosts, which features Billy Mitchell and his other friends from the 80's.

herbig• 11 years ago

A moderately inquisitive person would think from the title of the article that this would be related in some way to the movie.

One could then ctrl-F just in case, to see if it's referenced, and still get away with pretending to be interested in this stuff without spending your time actually reading.

I can only assume you've also not watched the "amazing" documentary you've cited.

The Last Kings of Donkey Kong

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