Here at Twin Galaxies, we love ourselves a good high score and a record time. It’s why every week we look deep in the wealth of Undisputed and Verified scores in the Twin Galaxies Adjudication Archive and dig up our favorite scores of the previous week! On this edition of the Scoreboard Spotlight, we took a look at some hot shot flying and bullet-hell survival in the Raiden series, some fresh new inaugural records on Nintendo Switch and NES Classic Edition tracks, a Vs. Duck Hunt run that would make the greatest marksmen blush, and more!
Derek Camin - Raiden Trad (Sega Genesis/Master System - NTSC): Points
Among bullet hell shooters, the Raiden series may be one of the most well-known for both its fun and its difficulty. Taking a single credit and playing as far as you can in a Raiden game is no easy task and Raiden Trad on Sega Genesis is no exception. Nonetheless, Derek Camin takes this edition of the series and makes a solid go of it. Half of the challenge in a game like Raiden is building power-ups to make yourself as deadly as possible without dying and losing it all. In Camin’s Raiden Trad run, he manages to build a nearly full arsenal, which is no easy feat on its own. He survives long enough to manage to keep his weapons going and amass hundreds of thousands of points, while evading screens full of enemies, their attacks, and some very near falls. Even after he gets taken out, he manages to recover for another stretch of points until his last life is taken at a tidy 358,400 points, enough to put him above the competition on the Raiden Trad leaderboard. With no continues allowed in this run, it’s a tough endeavor to match for sure. You’ll have to keep your reflexes cool and your weapons hot if you want to get ahead of the mark set by Camin.
Alan Heras - Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo Switch): GBA Mario Circuit - Fastest Lap
One of our newest record tracks takes us to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch where Alan “EMPZuruhMX” Heras lays down a heck of a lap on the GBA Mario Circuit track. In the course of the race, Alan uses Link on the Sport Bike with the Slick Tires and Gold Glider to cut a swatch through the course and set a rather great bar for this record at 27.97 on his third and final lap of all attempts in the run. The difference maker in this lap is in his clever balance between speed mushrooms and drift boosting. With a few mushrooms in his back pocket, Heras manages to stay tight on some curves and boost through others, altogether circumventing them. Though many of his laps tease at this balance, his last lap executes it in incredible fashion, ensuring the shave of just a few precious milliseconds for the personal best he finally sets. With so many good turns and shortcuts utilized, Heras’s record be a tough lap to beat, but it’s also a fresh record track and waiting to be challenged. It’ll be awesome to see who steps up to the plate and if it can be done better.
John McAllister - Space Invaders (Atari 2600 - NTSC): Game 1, Difficulty A - Points
For this particular run, John “redelf” McAllister takes a crack at the Atari 2600 version of the classic Space Invaders. We should all know the drill by now. Kill the rows of aliens as they slowly float down and fire at your tank. That said, the traditional bases we know of do little in this version of the game. There are only 3 of them, they’re small, and once they’re gone, they’re gone for good. Nonetheless, McAllister proves the adage, “the best defense is a good offense.” Even without protection he rolls through row after row of alien ships in his record run, hitting fly-by bonus ship after bonus ship. In the course of his game, McAllister dodges and deals death to the invaders to roll the score over 6 times and arrive at a final of 68,705 points, putting him around 20,000 points ahead of his closest competition on the Atari 2600 Space Invaders Scoreboards. Even still, McAllister admits and laments a couple deaths that could have easily been avoided. Can this score be topped? Maybe so, but for now, McAllister sits handily ahead of the pack.
Tim O’Donnell - Donkey Kong Jr. (NES - Classic Edition): Difficulty A - Points
In another new set of record tracks featuring the more recently released NES Classic Edition, we look at a run made on Donkey Kong Jr. by Tim O’Donnell. In his run, O’Donnell takes the brave little ape through a good 20-plus minutes of play, collecting fruits and points at every turn and dodging danger to make his mark on the boards. By the time he loses his final life, O’Donnell was able to put in an admirable 197,100 points in a fun and harrowing run through the tight obstacles of the game. O’Donnell’s record may sit behind quite a few others on the various console and arcade forms of Donkey Kong Jr., but he has opened the gate to some interesting competition on a new format of the game and claims the right to be the first to mark the books for Donkey Kong Jr. on the NES Classic Edition. We hope to see people re-explore more of these classic titles on the relatively new system and fill the leaderboards with competition and high scores, but for now, a big congrats to O’Donnell at a solid score and an enjoyable record run.
Mitch Mitchell - Vs. Duck Hunt (Arcade): Funspot Tournament Settings - Points
Vs. Duck Hunt was a special version of the light gun Nintendo game that was made just for arcades. This tricky version of the game has you take on the classic formula of shooting ducks and clay pigeons in rounds of 12 targets. If you miss a target, you lose a life, so accuracy in this version is everything. Mitch Mitchell shows that accuracy in stellar form in his Vs. Duck Hunt run. Through 43 rounds of the game with bonus rounds in between, Mitchell strings together shot after shot on each target to ensure his continued play throughout the hefty run. Bear in mind, the life limit is 3. That means Mitchell hit almost 516 targets, not including extra points for ducks in bonus rounds, and only missed 3 that mattered for an estimated accuracy of 99.4% (510 hits out of 513 targets) across all rounds. That kind of accuracy, patience, and poise is what allowed him to claim a final score of 1,134,600 points and put himself proudly at the top of the Vs. Duck Hunt leaderboard, and it’s a spot well-earned to say the least.
And that covers our Scoreboard Spotlight for this week. As a reminder, these were just a handful of the wealth of amazing records that were adjudicated and accepted. Every record that made the cut and landed on our leaderboards is has a well-deserved place in the Twin Galaxies gaming pantheon. Keep scoring high and finishing fast and you just might end up on our next Scoreboard Spotlight!
In the meantime, check out our previous Scoreboard Spotlight featuring some master-level Shaq-Fu!
