Thanks, Steve.
<p>
Do you happen to know which level Billy Mitchell reached when he got
his world record?
<p>
The last level (150m on DK (100m on CK); the rivets one) is really
impossible to do the regular way. Even if there were no fireballs,
taking the shortest possible route to get all the rivets won't do it.
You can only get 4 or 5 rivets this way and then time will have run
out on you. As I mentioned somewhere else, once I had found this out,
I spent quite some money looking for secret exits on the rivets level
(like the "jumping through the floor" on the barrel level on CK), but
I never found one. And if nobody else knows of one, then I guess the
only way to find out if there are any is by taking a ROM dump,
disassembling it, and reading the source code. I may actually start
doing that one day. Unless the programmers are kind enough to reveal
all the secrets they put in. Or maybe they don't even know; an exit
might be the result of a bug and never have been put in
intentionally. My guess is that that is the case with the extremely
rare exit appearing on CK's 50m (the conveyor belt level).
<p>
But you are correct that on DK (without the existence of the "jumping
through the floor" exit), the barrel level already is close to
impossible. And one would to have to finish it not once, but even
three times in order to get to the impossible rivets level. Did Billy
ever make it past a barrel level on L=22?
<p>
As for 1M points, based on the highest score I ever got on CK (654300
for 88 levels (4 levels each for L=01 through L=22), and taking into
account that the first 12 levels (through L=03) offer less points
(because of the timer starting at less than 8000), and taking into
account that on L=22 there aren't many points to be earned (because
of the reduced timer, the time bonus there will be between 3600 and
4000 points), taking into account that the barrel levels on DK offer
more points than on CK (because of the higher barrel frequency),
taking into account that the barrel levels occur more often on DK
than on CK (which is important, since, usually, the barrel level is
the most rewarding as far as points are concerned (unless you are
lucky on the rivets level)), then extrapolating that to 122 levels on
DK, I think I agree that 1M points is possible, but it is very hard.
Even apart from the (most important) fact that you have to live that
long, I think you'll have to have a lot of luck as far as the amount
of barrels and fireballs you get to smash (and also hoping you get
800 points lots of times for the fireballs and the special barrels
(the ones that turn into fireballs)), and you'll probably have to do
some point leaching to get there. With the limited amount of hammers,
leaching isn't very rewarding, though (usually only 100 points at a
time, which is reduced by the bonus timer counting down). The only
way to leach that offers some nice points is one that you can only do
a limited amount of times, too, and I used that strategy on CK a few
times: Get as many points you can get on the barrel level until time
runs out and kills you. Then do the same thing with your next life,
etc.. Like I said, you can only do this a limited amount of times (4,
although the 4th won't be very effective if you do it on L=22), and
it will make it very much harder, because accidental deaths will even
further reduce the number of times you can do it.
<p>
I guess that the strategy of maximising the amount of points earned
on each level requires a different way of playing, much like the
patterns to eat all the ghosts on Pacman. (Not that I know too much
about Pacman, but I've played it a few times, and I've read a lot
about it.) From what I've read, though, it *is* possible to finish a
split screen on Pacman (isn't there an inp on MARP in which somebody
does it?), but of course it's like playing with a blindfold on.
Another thing is that, as long as your pattern on Pacman doesn't
change, neither will the ghosts' patterns; CK and DK have more
randomness to them, so it doesn't look like there is one pattern on
CK and DK that will always give you (close) the maximum number of
points on a level. Well, at least you won't have to play continuously
for over 6 hours to reach the end on CK or DK; if I remember
correctly, my record of 654300 on CK took about 1 hour and 20
minutes, so the end on DK should be reachable well within 2 hours.
<p>
Just some thoughts...
<p>
Cheers,
Ben Jos.
--
walbeehm@walbeehm.com
