Well, it’s been some time coming, but I’ve now racked up my 30th million point game. It came earlier this afternoon (21 July) when I posted 1,386,650, my new sixth best score.
It was a quite an unusual effort in that I managed to lose my first Pengo in the very first Act of the game. I lost another two in a disaster in Act 16 at around the 650,000 mark, but the fifth man battled on exceptionally well, taking the score through to 1.1 million before the last man was lost in an Act 7 when I was suckered into a disappointing death.
Along the way, I cleared one of the Act 16’s in just 19 seconds - the first time I can remember getting the 5,000 point time bonus for an Act 16. I also cleared an early Act 1 in 11 seconds, which tied an existing record. And to cap it off, I managed to finish an Act 7 with the 10,000 bonus in 23 seconds - again equaling an existing record.
In the period leading up to this game, I’d scored 1,270,480 on 22 June in a fairly straightforward, solid game followed a couple of weeks later with a very strong 1,488,480, my new third highest score. That came on 6 July after a four day break and took just over two and a half hours.
Looking back to my first million point game on this quest just over two years ago, it’s clear we’ve come a long way. Back then, I reported it with the somewhat breathless title of “ONE MILLION!!!”, and said:
Only just, but I made it. The score - 1,005,030.
…
I happened to be jotting down some additional scores and other bits and pieces as I was going along … On the one million game, I was 160,100 after the first set of 16 Acts; 285,270 (and one Pengo down - in Act 10) after the second set; 430,500 after the third set; and 559,350 after the fourth set - still with only one Pengo lost.
By the end of the fifth set, I was 714,290, but had lost another two Pengos during it - one as the result of complacency in Act 7 and another during Act 15. The machine also ‘clocked’ at 655,310 - the same high score it had clocked at during my 900K effort a couple of weeks back.
With the final Pengo battling away, I cleared the sixth set with a score of 865,780 (655,310 + 210,470). And then somewhere in Act 13 in the seventh set, when I noticed the accumulating score had just clicked 345,000, I knew I’d broken the magical seven figures. The loss of the final Pengo during the next Act (14) was almost an anti-climax, and probably pay-back for managing to escape a few very close shaves along the way.
In terms of individual sets during that game, I did feel I was getting more and more defensive as the game wore on and not worrying too much about the 10,000 bonuses. On the basis that a reasonable, or par, score for a set is 160,000, my ‘splits’ for each set were (1) 160,100, (2) 125,170, (3) 145,230, (4) 128,850, (5) 154,940, (6) 151,490, and (7 - up to Act 14) 139,250.
I haven’t been as diligent as I probably should have been in maintaining these sorts of statistics during games, but it’s probably just the result of not carrying around a pen and piece of paper any more. The note-taking facility on my phone doesn’t really feel the same. And I won’t mention the number of games over that period where I’ve crashed out in the 900,000’s, or even in the 990,000’s, but each of them still hurts.
So, for those who might have lost track along the way, and as a special treat for the rest of you, following is the full list of my million+ scores:
1. 1,884,380 - 21 February 2015
2. 1,548,250 - 6 December 2014
3. 1,488,480 - 6 July 2015
4. 1,452,130 - 31 July 2014
5. 1,421,010 - 8 May 2015
6. 1,386,650 - 21 July 2015
7. 1,365,400 - 22 January 2015
8. 1,358,180 - 12 June 2015
9. 1,272,650 - 30 December 2014
10. 1,270,480 - 22 June 2015
11. 1,269,950 - 13 January 2015
12. 1,248,570 - 9 February 2015
13. 1,237,950 - 15 July 2014
14. 1,194,580 - 28 May 2015
15. 1,193,270 - 31 December 2014
16. 1,191,920 - 17 February 2015
17. 1,164,090 - 22 October 2014
18. 1,157,930 - 7 June 2015
19. 1,148,940 - 23 February 2015
20. 1,131,740 - 15 May 2015
21. 1,079,010 - 21 April 2015
22. 1,077,940 - 12 August 2014
23. 1,075,130 - 11 January 2015
24. 1,068,090 - 21 April 2015
25. 1,059,670 - 19 December 2014
26. 1,017,250 - 8 June 2013
27. 1,016,940 - 15 August 2014
28. 1,012,700 - 20 March 2015
29. 1,005,030 - 26 May 2013
30. 1,002,130 - 19 October 2014
And for good measure, my other records and milestones are as follows:
• Fastest Act clearance - 11 seconds
• Fastest Act clearance with 10,000 bonus - 23 seconds
• Highest score after first 16 Acts - 221,880
• Total scores over 1,000,000 - 30
• Total scores in excess of current official world record - 13
And, of course, 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
Here’s to the next 30!
