Green Beret Goes Green…

…and of course Green means I’ve reached 100k on the game! Following the progress reported in my last update, I progressed past the target more quickly than anticipated and finished with a score of 102,120. As I wasn’t expecting to get 100k quite so quickly, I didn’t record the achievement, but I do intend to record a few hints on this one soon.

That brings the total games with 100k attained to 15, with hopefully more to come in the next few weeks before I head off to America.

High Scoring Friends and Loved Ones

While I’ve been plugging away on my games, big congratulations are in order to a couple of people this week for increasing their personal best scores on their respective favourite games.

First up we have my friend and Pac-Man master Jon Stoodley, who edges ever closer to becoming the first British player to obtain the perfect Pac-Man score. His new record is 3,317,480 and you can see the video of his marathon six and a half hour video of this achievement by clicking here.

Second, and closer to home, my girlfriend Anna posted an astonishing update to her existing Bank Panic score this weekend, breaking the one million points barrier and surpassing her previous record by almost 500k in a single game, to 1,081,000 – mightily impressive!

Congratulations to both of you, and hopefully we’ll see both records broken again when we meet up at Funspot next month…

Triple Score Boost – Hacking, Stabbing and Clowning Around!

I’ve been playing a few different games from my list this week and with a  bit of persistence have managed to make some progress on three of them.

First up is Taito’s hack n’ slash platformer Rastan. This is quite a tough game, especially with those annoying bats, but I have been learning the level layout and can now make it mid-way through the castle stage. The result is a score increase to 97,500, so I expect to push this past 100k pretty soon, and will be videoing all future plays.

The other two games are both from Konami. First, I’ve posted a modest increase on Green Beret, with my latest score being 82,900. I’ve finally worked my way through the second level and on to the third, so with a little more practice I should be able to push that score up quite quickly. The second Konami game is Circus Charlie, and after some infuriating practice, I’ve finally worked out how to negotiate the challenging fifth stage, which involves riding a horse and jumping over trampolines, and push my score to 73,280.

I’d call that a pretty good week’s work!

Back with a Bang!

Well then, it’s been nine months since my last update. There are numerous reasons for this which I won’t go into, but as of this past weekend I am officially restarting the 100k Challenge!

In the last nine months I have not done a lot of arcade gaming, but I’m now focussing back on the MAME cabs for the next couple of months because we are heading off to the USA for the annual Funspot tournament at the end of May, so I need the practice!

My initial preparation for the tournament has been to play games that are available at Funspot (and therefore might be in the competition) but are also on my 100k Challenge game list. This practice had reaped almost instant rewards, as I’ve now passed my target score on Konami’s Contra, with 126,500 points!

Interestingly, this score was achieved on what seemed to be one of my worst-ever games. I lost two lives before I even reached the enemy base on the first level, but then proceeded to get through the base and past the first boss without losing another life, which was a first. I then got to the second base before meeting my demise, but by then the 100k was well secured. There’s no video for this one (it was just a practice session) but it was hardly a vintage performance anyway and most players should easily be able to pass 100k after a few attempts.

Since my last update, the only other game I’ve made any improvement on is Donkey Kong, pushing my score up by a little over 2,000 points to 97,300 – that 100k is getting painstakingly close now!

So as a reminder, the current state of play is shown below. Hopefully there will be some more updates soon!