Understanding Pace

Anyone who intends to enter the fray of competitive Donkey Kong—whether as a player or a spectator—will get a lot more out of it once they understand the concept of pace.

The Threshold Between Worlds

"There’s a certain level that is really hard to get through and most people who are just casually playing Donkey Kong, they can’t get through this one particular level."
     - Will Forte, actor

"The average gamer on Donkey Kong will never get past the third elevator stage."
     - Robert Mruczek, (former) Twin Galaxies Chief Referee

Level 4.4 (screen 13) of Donkey Kong is the portal, the enchanted wardrobe, the "first star to the left," the rabbit-hole, between the normal world and the world of the Donkey Kong adepts. It's a border, a gate... guarded by a merciless and terrifying onslaught of gigantic scissor-jacks.

Most will never get through this gate. Some will sneak past now and again by accident. But the player who has applied himself to the craft will be able to cross over at will at any time.

(Well, at almost any time. Even the elite masters die on "the springs" every now and then!)

To successfully climb the final ladder on screen 13 is to crack the surface and descend into the true depths of the game. It's a test. It probes all who approach in order to assess their worthiness, and clears out the everyday riff-raff.

The Fire IS Random

One of the first lessons the Donkey Kong initiate learns is that the barrels above (and only above) Mario can be steered by player input. Moreover, this steering must be mastered in order to master the game.

But what about Mario's other obstacles and enemies? Which things can be controlled, and which cannot?

There is no known method for influencing the springs (nor is there a pattern for their appearance). You get what you get.

That leaves Mario's most difficult and active enemies, the fireballs and firefoxes.

The Key Trait

"I never knew that the Guinness World Record Book was so... I never knew it was so important. Some people sort of ruin their lives to be in there."
     - Jillian Wiebe

One might ask, "so if I wanted to be in the top 10 at Donkey Kong, or even break the world record, what would that take?"

Aside from the basic situational prerequisites—that is, the means and opportunity to play in the first place—it's not so much a matter of what you need to do as it is a matter of the qualities you need to possess.

One in particular stands above all others. It's not fast reflexes, it's not intelligence, it's not stamina, it's not even concentration (though all of those help).

Average Is What Counts

"Success has always been a great liar."
     - Nietzsche

So you're playing Donkey Kong one day, one thing leads to another, and suddenly you find yourself entering your initials next to a score of over 500,000 points. Your very best, up to then, was 310,000. Holy crap, right? This was it! You've broken through your plateau! You're there! Next stop: kill screen.

Not so fast.

Most of what happens in Donkey Kong, in terms of movement of obstacles and enemies, is controlled by an ever-oscillating random number generator. This RNG determines whether or not a particular barrel will roll down a ladder, whether or not you are able to "steer" it, whether Kong releases it normally or as a "wild" barrel, where and how the fireballs and firefoxes move, when and from where the cement pans emerge, and so on.

As any experienced Donkey Kong player well knows, the random nature of each of these events, and how they cluster together, results in a game that can vary greatly in difficulty from one screen to the next. And every now and then, you'll play a game characterized by a kind of sustained easiness, where everything seems to go your way: you get a "free pass" on the conveyor screen every time, the firefoxes always spawn on the bottom on the rivets screen, you never have to retreat on a bad spring, the barrels steer exactly where you want them to (and Kong never seems to drop one in your face).

It's mathematically inevitable that you will see games like this. The result, when you do, is that you end up with a huge score, one that exceeds your average by as much as several hundred thousand points.

(Conversely, you'll sometimes have games that are horrifically unfortunate.)

For this reason, it is important, when evaluating your own ability, to go by the average of your best ten scores, and not by the very best score you've ever gotten. If most of your ten best games scored in excess of 500,000, that's meaningful, and almost certainly means that you're getting there regularly, and may even be due for a kill screen. But playing one, or even two, 500,000-plus point games, when the rest of your top ten are in the low 300s, means that the big games were almost certainly flukes, and that in reality you're still at the 300K level.

Unless you've had a major revelation or discovered a technique that makes some regular part of the game much easier, or you introduce a major deviation in your typical play strategy, there is simply no such thing as a single "breakout" Donkey Kong game. A breakout happens gradually, over the course of days or weeks and spanning several games. Even those periods where you find yourself playing "above the rim" for several games in a row can dissipate.

Be wary and don't fool yourself. The tendency will be to discount the rough, low-scoring games as temporary bad luck (they most likely are), but to think that one or two big games means that you've "cracked it open" (you most likely have not). Only your average score, not the one you miraculously hit that one day, can tell you how good you really are.