Here at Twin Galaxies, we love a good high score and a record time. So each week we look deep in the wealth of Undisputed and Verified scores in the Twin Galaxies Adjudication Archive and dig up some spectacular recent scores! On this edition of the Scoreboard Spotlight, we look some more retro maze mastery on a run of Lock ‘N’ Chase and some fiery fighting prowess in The King of Fighters 2001 and Street Fighter II, just to name a few.
Michael Antle - Ristar (Nintendo Wii Virtual Console): Points
Ristar is a quirky and colorful platformer from the original Sega days. This star boy goes on a journey from planet to planet, defeating baddies to stop the galactic machinations of the evil Kaiser Greedy. For this Spotlight, Michael Antle takes up the stretchy arms of Ristar to headbutt, swing, and climb his way to points and treasures throughout the game’s many planets. On his record Ristar run, Antle finds each hidden treasure, pushes his points, and clears the game in excellent fashion to wrestle control from Greedy and put up a final score of 219,500 points. Though Antle sits alone in his command of this admittedly underrated game on the Wii Virtual Console, it’s worth noting that he holds the Ristar record across all versions of the game on Twin Galaxies, topping Ryan Genno’s 2016 record on the Sega Genesis edition by over 100,000 points. As interesting a game as Ristar is in the stylized years of Sonic and other colorful Sega icons, we’d love to see more action in this title and are happy to see Antle raise the bar on this awesome game.
Keith Bailey - The King Of Fighters 2001 (M.A.M.E.): Tournament Settings - Points
For our next Spotlight, we look at a solid entry in the long history of The King of Fighters. For King of Fighters 2001, Keith “Rowcom” Bailey puts his solid team together and goes on a run against the gauntlet of teams in the game. With Andy and Terry Bogard, Sie Kensou, and Clark Still in his roster, Bailey rampages through team after team in his King of Fighters 2001 run, landing practically untouchable performance after untouchable performance until he gets taken out by one of the traditionally super cheap and overpowered SNK bosses. Before he drops though, Bailey manages to land a powerhouse of a score at 489,800 on the M.A.M.E. KOF 2001 Leaderboards, almost tripling the previous record set by Rodrigo Lopes in 2009. Having failed to beat the Zero (as completely ridiculous as the fight is), the fact that a fight with Zero and the real boss Igniz afterwards makes us believe this is a score that can be pushed even further. We hope to see this track taken even further, but until then, Bailey is undisputedly Twin Galaxies’ King of Fighters (2001).
Marcel Schewe - Barnstorming (Atari 2600/VCS - Emulation): Hedge Hopper (Expert) – Lowest Time
For this particular Spotlight, we look at a fresh attempt at the Atari 2600 classic, Barnstorming. Very simply, the goal is to take your plane through every barn while dodging windmill towers and birds to get the best time. In this, Marcel “oORaydenOo” Schewe puts in an ace run through the Hedge Hopper course of the game on Expert. This challenging course has a lot of obstacles to deal with and it takes Schewe quite a few attempts to find his way through it, but when it does, it’s great to watch. He dodges, dives, and darts around each obstacle to find his way to the finish line. Although the run isn’t quite perfect (due to a nasty little blocking bird at the beginning of the run), Schewe still pilots well to put up an impressive 33.45 second score, making his mark on the Emulated category of the Barnstorming Leaderboards. There’s improvement to be made, but with what we saw in this fine run, Schewe most certainly has the talent to do it. This run is well worth the watch to see how tight the dodging needs to be to achieve high-tier scoring in this classic game.
Patrick Stanley - Lock ‘N’ Chase (Game Boy/Game Boy Color): Points
Lock ‘N’ Chase is a peculiar take on the Pac-Man arcade format of getting a maze full of goodies and escaping baddies. On the Game Boy version of the game, players must also traverse doors in the maze to reach certain areas and escape via other doors with the loot. Planning around the patterns of the police that want to put your thief away for stealing the maze’s treasures means planning which doors you’ll use and precisely when. In this challenge, Patrick “Blackflag82” Stanley does greatly to navigate Lock ‘N’ Chase’s unique challenges in his record run. He occasionally gets caught out, but at the end of it, Stanley finds the right paths that take him from maze to maze, up until he gets himself the big prize at the end of the game. For his efforts, Stanley makes off with a fantastic prize of $125,710 as his final score to top the Lock ‘N’ Chase Game Boy Leaderboards, soundly outdoing Ryan Johnson’s $109,010 record from 2012. Stanley’s run isn’t without mistakes, but it is an amazingly decisive and strategic run of Lock ‘N’ Chase nonetheless, and it will take some considerable play to overcome the haul of loot he gets away with for his efforts.
Chris Gleed - Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting (Arcade): Tournament Settings - Points
To wrap up our Scoreboard Spotlight we go to one of the world’s favorite fighters, Street Fighter II, with a new and stellar recent record in the game. Chris “YesAffinity” Gleed gets his bare-knuckle on in the Hyper Fighting Arcade edition of Street Fighter II for this run. With a master-class Ken Masters under his belt, Gleed plows through fight after fight, pulling in perfect bonuses every step of the way. Moreover, Gleed capitalizes on special bonuses throughout the game, not only quickly knocking out bonus rounds with a little property destruction, but also secret bonuses like knocking off Vega’s claw when he can. When all is said and done, Gleed found his way to an outstanding score of 1,592,700 points, landing him at the top of the Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting Leaderboard, just ahead of Evan “EVN” Weston’s own impressive record set just recently in April 2018. Will we see more competition for the top spot in this fantastic game? We sure do hope so, but a big congrats to Gleed for edging out the top spot with an amazing run of the game nonetheless.
And that covers our Scoreboard Spotlight for this week. As a reminder, these were just a few of exceptional records that were adjudicated and accepted recently. Every record that made it through verification and landed on our leaderboards 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 an amazing marathon run of a classic novelty arcade game by Matthew Ackerman.
