Many people have seen the documentary “The King of Kong” which delves into the world of high-score record setting on classic arcade games and the center of that story revolves around Steve Wiebe. We have mentioned him before and even after that documentary, he continues to make headlines with his awesome gaming skills, this time on Donkey Kong Jr. The first world record on Jr. was set back in 1983 by Billy Mitchell (who still holds the record on the original DK and he holds records on several other games) who was topped 25 years later by Ike Hall only some months ago. Now Mr. Wiebe has toppled that record by 106,800 points with his score of 1,139,800 and it just so happens that he is going to take another shot at the Donkey Kong score at this year’s E3 event.
I think it’s great that the attempt to set the world record on a classic game can still generate excitement for people, especially in this day and age where many video games have completely dumped the score system in favor of the “cinematic experience”. Arcades haven’t dumped it of course and I hope that the never do, without a high score board it makes it difficult to call a game an “arcade”.
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I can hardly believe how many hours Wiebe spent playing that game during that one competition day; he must have been slamming the Red Bulls