A slow start to the past month of semi-regular Pengo play accelerated nicely over the past week or so with four million point games in eleven days. Up until then, I just couldn’t seem to get back into the rhythm of it at all, with a frustratingly long succession of games ending in the 500K-700K region. It was uncanny that, no matter how good a start I might have got, I just kept on dying without passing those sort of scores.
Before my extended Camino break, I was in a purple patch, scoring a million points on just about every second game I played. But on my return, the million-pointers were proving very hard to come by. I’m not sure what it was. My timing still seemed to work OK and my overall game management was sound. But for some reason, I just didn’t get the breaks I used to get. Or I’d lose two or sometimes three men at once when I should have only just lost the one.
But maybe things have turned around over the past couple of weeks, with one of the million point games being my new 6th highest all-time score.
To recap.
Since my last post, I’ve managed to clock up another six million point games, to take my total of million-pointers now to 70 (since records began back in May 2013).
The first was on 24 August with a 1,174,860. The highlight of this particular game was a new record clearance of 10 seconds. It came on an Act 2 and beat my previous fastest clearance of 11 seconds which hadn’t been bettered for a very long time.
The second million came on 1 September with a 1,241,540. And then after something of a drought, came a score of 1,166,710 on 11 September. Five days after that, it was 1,063,780.
And then in quick succession came an exceptional 1,616,010 on 19 September (where the final two pengos combined to score over a million points to convert an otherwise lacklustre game into an almost heroic one) and a tradesman-like 1,322,340 on 21 September.
I’m not going to have a whole lot more time over the next several months to build on these scores with various scheduled absences out of Sydney, including a trip back to the Camino and elsewhere in Europe for much of the (Australian) summer. So I’m hopeful of keeping on striking while the iron is hot in the short time left before then.
The updated summary statistics are 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 - 10 seconds
• Fastest Act clearance with 10,000 bonus - 23 seconds
• Highest score after first 16 Acts - 228,840
• Total scores over 1,000,000 - 70
• Total scores in excess of current official Twin Galaxies world record (1,217,650) - 32
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
As is 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
