Twin Galaxies Officiates Steve Wiebe Donkey Kong World Record Attempt from E3 on G4tv – A First-Hand Account by Patrick Scott Patterson, TGI Director of Marketing
An electric atmosphere and a thrilling end were just some of the highlights from our presence during Steve Wiebe’s Donkey Kong World Record Attempt at E3 on June 2.
Myself, Walter Day, and David Nelson arrived late, late, late Sunday night after flying straight from Funspot XI to Los Angeles. Luckily, the dress rehearsal was late Monday afternoon, so we got to sleep and rest some. Rehearsal was short, but upon return to the hotel we discovered an Xbox Live party going on in the hotel, so we just had to crash it. Everyone was excited to see Twin Galaxies, and it wasn’t long before myself and David were challenged to take it to UFC Unleashed 2009, which we took to quickly.
The next morning started early. The car from G4 was scheduled to pick us up at 5:30am to take us to the set at the LA Convention Center. Steve Wiebe along with Galaga TGTS World Record Holder Andrew Laidlaw, who came in late the night before, met us in the lobby and we were all driven out to E3.
The guys and gals at G4 are total professionals and incredibly cool, but there was little time to eat some breakfast and head to the set. Steve kicked off Game #1 at 8am. Poor David had to stand there all day as the referee for the attempts under the super-hot lights. Walter was there to add color commentary to the games when they broke back and I was helping feed the statistics and highlights seen on the broadcast to the truck, and to be on-hand in case of a technical issue with the game.
Steve appeared very nervous in the first game and lost all his extra lives before hitting 500,000 points. At this time, it was being broadcast but E3 had not opened yet, so there were really no spectators. Mid-way through, Steve opened up, and ran for over 500,000 points more on his last life. It seemed the day might start with a kill-screen and a million point game that fell just short of the World Record, but Steve found himself pinned in the upper right on a pie factory board, and was a half second away from completing it when a fireball shifted onto him. 924,000-plus game to start the day.
Very short break before his next attempt was scheduled to begin. By this time, some people had managed to trickle into the G4 set and a crowd began to form. Steve seemed tired to me at this point in time, yet pulled off a miracle move. Donkey Kong tossed not one… not two… but THREE wild barrels in a row, and Steve managed to dodge all of them, and even jump the last one, despite being in-between the paths of them. I don’t think I managed to express this moment to the G4 producers properly, who highlighted Steve’s jumping of three barrels instead of this three wild barrel moment, but alas… things moved mega-fast on the set that day. Steve’s second attempt ended just shy of 700,000.
Here came a long break before the big one… the prime-time attempt as part of X-Play on G4. Steve took it easy in the back, chatting with Mr. Laidlaw and Ed Cunningham, one of the guys who brought us The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I took about 30 minutes to finally stroll around E3 a bit, playing Madden NFL 10 for a bit and making some business connections before heading back to the G4 set.
Hundreds of people had now surrounded the set. In fact, so many had crowded around it that myself and Steve couldn’t get through to the set. Ironically, nobody in the crowd that had come to see Steve’s attempt seemed to notice us trying to squeeze through them.
Now it came time for the prime-time attempt. Steve started off fast, but well off a good scoring pace, but it all mattered little to the live crowd who was loving every second of it. Then came the shocker… the power to the game cut out!
Lesson learned for this kind of event, as I was in the back with the production team to feed them game stats and pace, but was also there to keep the game running, yet quickly realized that I had no path to the machine! I couldn’t run across the set during a live shot, so I had to simply tear through the crowd like an NFL running back to get to the machine. X-Play was scheduled to go off the air in 2 hours and 40 minutes… and a kill screen game takes 2 hours and 30. Ugh.
Quickly checked the machine to discover that it wasn’t the issue. The game was simply not getting any power, nor were the cameras on the machine. The culprit turned out to be a blown power strip under the stage. The G4 technicians quickly bypassed the machine to another power source so that Steve could re-start the game, and then had to re-work the camera feeds after the fact. Time left in the broadcast now sat with 2 hours and 25 minutes left… time enough for a killscreen?
I got stuck in the crowd again trying to get back to the producers area and ended up in a camera shot of the crowd upon return from a commercial break.
Steve took off running on the renewed score run, this time point pressing very hard early and being close to the pace he needed to be on to gain the record. While he fell off pace more and more starting around Levels 3 and 4, Steve played very well. He got pinned in the same pie factory situation that ended his first game of the day several more times but escaped them all.
The crowd began to go wild and Steve began to play to the crowd. I can only describe the atmosphere as electric, as the crowd began to applaud upon level completions.
When Steve crossed 900,000 with a life in reserve, I began to call a kill-screen game to the G4 production team. I was convinced, however, that he would burn off the extra live for more points on Level 21-5, but I guess he realized that he wasn’t going to make the cut for the World Record, so he just ran for the kill-screen.
The audience exploded at this point, with reactions that rival anything you’d see at a pro wrestling or MMA event from a crowd. While a new record was not made, the crowd didn’t care, as a kill-screen had been given to all of them live, and just before the show was scheduled to go off-air for the evening as well. It was almost a Hollywood ending to the event.
As the cameras cleared, Steve was smiling ear to ear and told me that he felt on top of the world. While he had to catch a plane right away, he took time out to shake hands, sign items for the crowd, and pose for pictures with all who asked before leaving directly for LAX to fly back home. He had to go to work the very next day.
It was an incredible moment for competitive video gaming, Twin Galaxies, G4tv, and everyone involved. Once Steve left, everyone wanted to talk to us, at both E3 and even in the hotel lobby afterward… a trend that continued into the next day.
Between the photo ops and interviews for various websites and TV shows, myself, Walter, and David did not get much time to experience E3, so it was a bit of a crash course. I did get to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii and it’s great…. I can’t wait to see who can become the first Twin Galaxies World Record Holders on this title this holiday season. The guys inside the All-Access Pass only area at Capcom were great and showed off the wonderful Street Fighter IV-style competition stick for the Nintendo Wii. Ghostbusters looks great.
Dave Nelson had to leave for the airport at 1:30pm on the 3rd, followed by myself and Walter having to leave at 2:45. While we didn’t get too much time to see all of the E3 event itself in that timeframe, I can’t imagine we would have had time to see it all in a week of time. It’s THAT big.
Huge props to Walter and David for all they did over a 13 hour broadcast day on the 2nd, and special thanks go to everyone at G4, including Kristen Wheeler, Sonja Wright, Andrea Jarvis, Abbie Heppe, Michelle Epram, Kristen Adams, Olivia Munn, Jeff Wilkov and everyone else who was so nice to us and treated us incredibly well.
I will try to post links to interviews done after the event with myself, David, and Walter as I find them posted online, and will be showing a ton of photos off somewhere here very, very soon!
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