Back home

It seems some of the glow from the Galloping Ghost visit has survived the 30+ hour flight back to Sydney with a rousing return to play at Newtown’s Milk Bar café.

In the five games played since I’ve been back, I’ve managed to accumulate another three million point games, with the fourth falling just 35,000 points short. The fifth had to be ended at just over 700,000 when a film we’d booked in to see was about to start in the cinema next door. As is often the case when 'film-time' beats me, I was doing quite well, having lost only three Pengos with another million pointer firmly in sight.

And all that was in addition to the 1,155,670 I scored on Friday 4 March, a couple of weeks before I left for the USA. I died at Act 15 on that one after a huge run by the 5th man and a solid stint from the last one to make it past the magic million. It followed some easy deaths earlier in the game in each of Acts 1 and 3.

My first game back was on 6 April 2016, where I had a solid start and some good middle game play but with steady losses to the point where the last Pengo managed to hold it together to get over the line and keep going to reach a very acceptable 1,281,370.

The second game two days later was an absolute boomer - 1,810,780. It was one of those games when everything went right. The timing was near on perfect and I just seemed to be moving that fraction of a second faster. I lost my first man at around 460,000 and the second just before 1 million. I lost the next two a couple of hundred thousand points later fairly close together, and the last two on the same Act when the café was about to close for the evening. I probably rushed it a bit knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to make the 2 million mark, but I was also starting to get very tired. Overall, it was a very easy effort and a pleasing outcome.

The third million point game was on 11 April - a solid 1,180,810. It featured another great start but a lousy middle section followed by a reasonable finish with the last Pengo putting on a good 250,000+ to get over the million.

With all this, my scoring record now stands as follows:

Top 5 scores:
1. 1,905,430 - 17 August 2015
2. 1,888,030 - 19 February 2016
3. 1,884,380 - 21 February 2015
4. 1,810,780 - 8 April 2016
5. 1,785,850 - 29 July 2015

Other records/milestones:
• Fastest Act clearance - 11 seconds
• Fastest Act clearance with 10,000 bonus - 23 seconds
• Highest score after first 16 Acts - 228,840
• Total scores over 1,000,000 - 63
• Total scores in excess of current official Twin Galaxies world record (1,217,650) - 28

The top 5 official Twin Galaxies high scores are unchanged:
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

But, of course, there’s been a shake-up at the top of the official Aurcade high score list:
1. 455,340 - PengoQuest, 27 March 2016
2. 432,780 - Robert Macauley, 28 March 2014
3. 160,100 - James White, 29 November 2015
4. 120,250 - David Nelson, 29 May 2009
5. 119,010 - John Payson, 19 April 2014

This might look a little different if my other Galloping Ghost high scores of 385,620, 348,080, 314,590, 261,130, 256,850, 232,540, 227,180 and 186,370 were added in, but the full Aurcade list seems only to include one score from each player - which I suppose I can understand.

When I get a moment, I’ll try and work out the difference between the two rankings and report back in a future post.