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Donkey Kong's World Record High Score Has Been Beaten - News

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 09 March 2010 / 13,318 Views

If you've seen the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, you'd know that Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell have been trading the world's highest Donkey Kong score record back and forth for a while now.  As it stands their highest scores are only 1,100 points apart.  One game takes about two and a half hours, and Wiebe's best is 1,049,100 while Mitchell's best is 1,050,200.

None of that matters anymore.

Hank Chien, a 35 year-old plastic surgeon in New York just found out that in only two and a half hours you could smash a world record and become nerd-famous.  He even says he'd only played Donkey Kong once in his life, in 2006, and he didn't even like it.  He died on the first screen and thought the game was stupid.  Then he saw King of Kong.  Then he got serious and began his intense training with an original Donkey Kong machine at his home.  He crossed a million points for the first time on September 13th, 2009, just barely missing the world record, and now he has just raised the world record to 1,061,700 in 2 hours and 35 minutes.  This has already been verified by Twin Galaxies.

This guy didn't just fall out of the sky though.  In an interview at Twin Galaxies he revealed that in his spare time, he does speedruns of the Luigi's Purple Coins stage in Super Mario Galaxy and puts them on YouTube.  He also says he "played it safe" on the last stage of Donkey Kong when he realized he was close to the world record, and probably shaved 5K or 10K points off his score.  But now that he has the world record under his belt, he'll be "going all out" and aiming for 1.1 million before anybody takes the record back.  This guy is a machine.

Meanwhile, Steve Wiebe has been planning another run for the record at this week's Game Developer's Conference, but now he has to beat his best score by 12,600 instead of 1,100.  I expect we'll be hearing lots of people at GDC asking Steve Wiebe about his new challenger.  I also expect Billy Mitchell won't go down without a fight...

Sources: Twin Galaxies press release and Twin Galaxies interview with Hank Chien


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32 Comments
moondeep (on 10 March 2010)

This is so absurd it's entertaining :)

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joehok.gr (on 10 March 2010)

king of kong 2 is coming!!!!this is great news

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hankakacjd (on 10 March 2010)

plastic surgeon, liking the sound of this guy. lol

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amp316 (on 10 March 2010)

Good for him. Now maybe we can have a sequel to King of Kong that opens up with Billy Mitchell crying in a bottle of booze and Wiebe playing in his garage, obsessing about breaking Chien's record. The drama would be unparalleled.

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Siko1989 (on 10 March 2010)

im gonna try to beat his record lol

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XiaoMay (on 10 March 2010)

who cares

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Porcupine_I (on 10 March 2010)

There is a potential donkey kong kill screen coming up!!

There's a kill screen coming up, if anybody wants to see it!!

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welshbloke (on 10 March 2010)

Well done, I think?

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AquariusCold (on 10 March 2010)

Maybe Steve want put some much pressure on his self to go at it again now that Mitchell is out of the top spot. Anyway, props to Hank Chien! This is his moment.

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SmoothCriminal (on 09 March 2010)

(In the words of Luke Skywalker)

No! That's not true! That's impossible!!!!

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stof (on 09 March 2010)

"Hey everybody, I just want to let people know we may have a possible Donkey Kong Kill Screen"

We all have to give this flick another watch in Mr. Chien.

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dtewi (on 09 March 2010)

Yeesh. That's a hell of a lot.

And please, anyone can do that in Galaxy. It's not hard.

..........

goes to do it

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woopah (on 09 March 2010)

this guy can get ALL the coins in Luigis purple coins. Yahtzee said mastering galaxy is only for Koreans but clearly its for the Chineese as well

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johnsobas (on 09 March 2010)

i love how after all of that between billy and steve some chinese american plastic surgeon takes the crown. That's great.

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Mr. sickVisionz (on 09 March 2010)

Those King of Kong guys ride Billy Mitchell dick so hard that I'm surprised they counted it as legit. Mitchell will probably reclaim the spot by sending in a glitchy and highly suspect video tape that gets verified and approved in 3 minutes.

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Kasz216 (on 09 March 2010)

I can't believe someone saw King of Kong... and decided the movie portrayed a lifestyle worthy of pursuing. Good movie though.

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XanderZane (on 09 March 2010)

That's too funny. The only game I set a record on was Star Wars. I played it for over 5 hrs straight. The game only does 99 levels and then stays there. I can't remember what my final high score was though. That was some 15+ years ago. The only reason I stopped was because we got kicked out of the arcade. It was fun watching people put quarters on the machine so they could play next and then taking them down 30 mins later. lol!! My initials were POM. The machine I set the high score on was bounced around Cambridge, MA. Good times.

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Opa-Opa (on 09 March 2010)

haha I'm sure Billy Mitchell is shitting himself. He's such a freaking douchebag, egocentric prick.

Steve Wiebe on the other hand, seems like a humble, down-to-earth guy.

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The Ghost of RubangB (on 09 March 2010)

I'd like to see Hank Chien speedrun some surgery.

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tripleb2k (on 09 March 2010)

I can do that but I don't want too.

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naznatips (on 09 March 2010)

I think there's something slightly odd about a 45 year old man going by the name "Billy" still. Maybe it's just me though.

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Naum (on 09 March 2010)

I have seen that documentary #king of kong"... this is serious buisness :-)

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mysticwolf (on 09 March 2010)

that Billy Michell is a jerk

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forest-spirit (on 09 March 2010)

I saw a documentary some year ago about Donkey Kong about Steve Wiebe's "road to glory" or something like that :P. For those interested I would recommend searching for it.

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Carpevi (on 09 March 2010)

This game is awesome...jajaja

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Thrillhouse (on 09 March 2010)

We gotta "Kill Screen" coming up!

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Cobretti2 (on 09 March 2010)

This will end up like that episode of bones where someone gets killed and the other person claims the world record.

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huaxiong90 (on 09 March 2010)

Good lord.

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Jordahn (on 09 March 2010)

Two thumbs up.

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superchunk (on 09 March 2010)

lol, jk. I'd do it if I could.

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superchunk (on 09 March 2010)

NERD FIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!!

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Imphamis (on 09 March 2010)

My god

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