I thought I’d share with you a summary of a random period in my Pengo life (that is, the last three weeks) to give you a sense of how much I actually play this game and for what sort of result.
As it transpired, this was a reasonably productive period with another three one million point games, including a new second highest score of 1,785,850.
By way of background, just about all my games, including the ones documented below, are played when I’m either on the way to somewhere else, or on the way home. And usually I only play one game at a time, while having a pot of green tea and maybe some sweet potato fries, chicken and mushroom pasta, or some other item on the Milkbar café’s delicious menu. At the rate I play (roughly 600,000 points per hour), my visits usually last around an hour to 90 minutes - give or take.
On rare occasions, I need to cut a game short because a film I’ve booked in to see at the adjoining Dendy cinema is about to start, or because I’ve bumped up against the café’s 10:00pm closing time. But generally, I just play the games out. While I’ve felt like it from time to time, I’ve never actually quit a game because I’ve been going badly. Whatever the circumstance, I always remind myself of past occasions when the last one or two Pengos have racked up many hundreds of thousands of points to bring some modicum of respect to what might otherwise have been a quite mediocre score.
This snapshot covers the period from 23 July (the first game after my last post where I’d just achieved my 30th million point game) to today (12 August). I’ve rounded the scores which were less than one million.
23 July - Off to a flying start on the next 30 million point games with a score of 1,144,340
24 July - 840,000
27 July - 682,000
29 July - 1,785,850. A new second best score, achieved in just over three hours. It was one of those games that felt very smooth the whole way through, despite losing the first two Pengos in the first set. The third Pengo died just after the score had passed one million and as time went by, especially with the fourth Pengo scoring 500,000 on his own, I started getting visions of my first two million point game. But then the last two Pengos fell relatively cheaply and I was left hanging, a mere 200,000 points short.
During the game, I clocked the machine twice at 655,350 and finished with 475,150 on the score line. I also worked out that my last man died in Act 14 on the tenth time through, meaning that I’d completed a total of 157 Acts, dying in the 158th. It was also quite a high-scoring game in terms of points per Act. Usually, an average of 10,000 points per Act for a high scoring game is good going. But for this game, it averaged well over 11,000 points for the duration. I actually made a note of the scores for the final three sets, being 188,070 for the 8th, 167,000 for the 9th, and 146,500 for the incomplete 10th. All-up, it was a very impressive game and worthy of a new high score - if it had gotten to that point.
31 July - 598,000. A very poor start but a reasonable recovery.
6 August - 513,000
7 August - 336,000 and 813,000
9 August - 471,000 and 406,000
10 August - 1,234,120. Very happy with this effort after a series of outs.
12 August - 307,000 and 477,000. Both very disappointing efforts.
Overall, I managed to play on 10 of the 21 days, playing a total of 13 games, with three one million point games. That’s a strike rate of roughly one million point game every four to five games, which sounds about right.
All of which means there’s a couple of changes to the following summaries:
Top 5 scores:
1. 1,884,380 - 21 February 2015
2. 1,785,850 - 29 July 2015
3. 1,548,250 - 6 December 2014
4. 1,488,480 - 6 July 2015
5. 1,452,130 - 31 July 2014
Other records/milestones:
• 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 - 33
• Total scores in excess of current official world record - 15
Top 5 official Twin Galaxies high scores:
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
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