About Me

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Sunday 8 March 2015

Another Record!!

The Pengo everest of 2,000,000 is in sight.

At 6:26pm on Saturday 21 February, after more than 3 hours of play, I finally lost my 6th and last Pengo - with the score at a monumental 1,884,380. For a moment there, as I was doing the maths during the game, I felt like the 2 million point milestone was in touching distance. It was one of those rare games where just about everything went my way. No stupid mistakes. No real fatigue or other natural issues (despite consuming two large pots of green tea during the game). Some quite fast scoring. And all the time in the world. While I didn’t think to calculate it, my third Pengo must have come close to scoring 1,000,000 points just on his own in what was a flawless run. But at least I now know what’s possible.

Earlier in the month, I’d hit another million (on 9 February) with a score of 1,248,570 - my overall 6th highest. This game was particularly notable for the first man surviving 4 sets (each comprising 16 Acts) and then another 8 Acts - a total of 72 Acts without dying. While I haven’t been keeping a tally, that has to be some sort of record. And about a week later, on 17 February, I managed yet another million - this time 1,191,920.

To complete something of a purple patch for the month, I also clocked up 1,148,940 on 23 February - just a couple of days after the 1.8 million effort.

So after all that, the various records now stand as follows:

Top 5 scores:
1. 1,884,380 - 21 February 2015
2. 1,548,250 - 6 December 2014
3. 1,452,130 - 31 July 2014
4. 1,365,400 - 22 January 2015
5. 1,272,650 - 30 December 2014

• Fastest Act clearance - 11 seconds
• Fastest Act clearance with 10,000 bonus - now 23 seconds, down from 24 seconds after a freakish run in an Act 5 on 8 February during a 950,000 game
• Total scores over 1,000,000 - 19
• Total scores in excess of current official world record - 8

The top 5 official Twin Galaxies high scores remain as follows:
1. 1,217,650 - Paul Hornitzky, 9 September 2012
2. 1,110,370 - Rodney Day, 13 August 1983
3. 809,990 - Kevin Leisner, 25 February 1983
4. 723,950 - Frank Lupia, 20 September 2008
5. 694,030 - Paul Elia, 31 March 1983

Finally, and further to my previous post on public Pengo machines, I should add that when I was in London in September 2014, I trekked out to a reasonably new - and hyped - video arcade venue, called “Heart of Gaming”. It was located in a fairly drab, industrial, area of west London, a short walk from North Acton tube station. I’d read somewhere that they operated a Pengo game and so arrived mid-afternoon full of expectation and planning on a lengthy session. As it turned out, after searches by the staff there, Pengo was, sadly, one of the few downloadable arcade games they didn’t offer. But if your video game interests are slightly less myopic than mine, feel free to check them out.