Ever since watching the documentary King of Kong, I’ve been fascinated with the people who have spent countless hours trying to achieve the highest possible scores on decades-old arcade games. Think about it: these were games that weren’t even designed to be beaten. They were supposed to be hard enough to continuously take your money away, and most gamers can’t survive more than a few levels of Pac-Man or Q*bert. Yet, people like Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe have continuously achieved impossibly high scores on several arcade classics, most famously Donkey Kong. In fact, Steve Wiebe is currently preparing to overtake Mitchell’s DK record at E3 in June. So what’s the guy to do in the meantime? Break some other records, naturally.

This weekend, Steve Wiebe claimed the Donkey Kong Jr. world record, with an astronomically high score of 1,139,800. He beat Ike Hall’s previous score of 1,033,000, which trumped Billy Mitchell’s decades-long run as Donkey Kong Jr. world champion. Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day had this to say about the feat:

"This is a profound performance. On March 19, 1983, Billy Mitchell set a then-World Record of 957,300 points at the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard in Ottumwa, Iowa. That record stood for 25 years until Ike Hall of Port Angeles, WA scored 1,033,000 points on August 10, 2008, lifting the record 86,000 points. Even though the World Record was able to creep up by only 86,000 points in those 25 years, Steve has managed the unimaginable and has lifted it another 106,000 points by scoring 1,139,500 points."

I’m looking forward to seeing Wiebe attempt to reclaim the Donkey Kong title at E3, and if he does, he truly will be the King of Kong. Yeah, it’s totally on like Donkey Kong. Okay, I’m done.

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