Lemay Puts Up a Monster

"It's like playing fucking Battlezone..."

October 21st, 2012 - Struggling with a glitching video board that has turned his Donkey Kong machine into "Slender Kong," world record contender Vincent Lemay just played through a rip roaring kill-screener that reached a final point total of 1,084,500... beating the standing officially-ranked scores of both Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell.

As the game neared the final stretch with a full house of viewers—including Hank Chien—looking on live via Twitch TV, the chat bounced with activity. Fellow Kongers cheered, the champ sweated, and I (with a thousand things to write for this blog already) lamented my inevitable duty:

If verified, the score would place Lemay second on the arcade leaderboard, behind only Dr. Chien.

The game is ineligible for Twin Galaxies submission, however, due to Lemay's glitching boardset, not to mention his impromptu post-game hardware verification—which gleefully ignored all of the officially-proscribed "do's" while breaking several "dont's":

"That is an original Donkey Kong machine... that is an official Donkey Kong bed... that is my official TV control... Oh! And we will go to the back here... we don't see shit, but this is official!

Did I miss something?"

The point is moot, of course, since Lemay wouldn't have submitted the game anyway. He is waiting for "the big 1.1"... and we all know that he is more than capable.

Of course, so is Billy Mitchell.

The former King of Kong is rumored to have achieved scores well in excess of 1.1 million points behind closed doors, and has soft-played and surrendered public games that were on pace to do so. Suffice it to say, Mitchell's current third place score is far from his personal best.

But today is Lemay's day. "Official" or not, his score is good enough for all who witnessed it, and I'll venture to say that this is the highest Donkey Kong score ever achieved on malfunctioning video ROM chips. Under the circumstances, the feat is all the more amazing.

Lemay's game (with a "highlight reel" purportedly on the way) can be viewed on his Twitch TV channel.

Well done, Vincent. Allow me to trust Google Translate when I say félicitations à mon ami!

9 comments:

Phil Tudose said...

excellent article! way to go again vincent! i cant wait to watch you guys at KO2

NightmareJames said...

Nice Job Vince. Good Luck at Kong Off 2, hope you do well.

Anonymous said...

I should get credit for coming up with Slender Kong, I said it first. And Vincent is now the odds on favoritive to win

H2O Stylezclash

Anonymous said...

How much do Billy Mitchell and Steven Wiebe care?

Anonymous said...

*Steve. It would be nice to have a proper Kong Off between the two regardless of the likes of Chien and Lemay surpassing them.

Anonymous said...

Ignore last two comments as well as this one. Just saw the two are participating in Kong Off.

Andy said...

Hi,

Is Vincent from Canada?
Was he the guy who was the previous MAME record holder?

Well Done bye the way :)

Chrispy said...

Andy: Like many of the great Donkey Kong players (both established and up-and-coming), Vincent is Canadian, specifically French-Canadian. English is his second language, and it tends to make things interesting. :)

Duck Life said...

I LOve Lemay.

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