Anyone who knows Twin Galaxies knows we love ourselves a good high score, a low speed run, and a record-shattering playthrough. That’s why we dug around the Twin Galaxies Scoreboards looking at the latest players to have officially taken their place as the greatest in the world at their game of choice. This week on the Scoreboard Spotlight, we pulled up the latest of several impressive scores in a pocket-sized Pac-Man, saw a masterclass of effort in a Missile Command run, and watched a player devastate some dastardly diseases with a monstrous score in Dr. Mario 64, just to name a few. These are just a handful of the Undisputed and Accepted Twin Galaxies records jumped out in the recent week!
Craig Henry Palffy – Pac-Man (Game Boy): Points
Our first record comes in a pocket-sized power play. Craig Henry Palffy took his Game Boy copy of Pac-Man and went on an amazing stampede through the mazes of the game. With split-second timing and turns, Palffy manages to rack up an admirable 66,060 points before the ghosts catch up to Pac-Man one last time and put an end to the short, yet exciting run. That 66,060 is enough to put Palffy on the tip-top of the Game Boy Pac-Man scoreboard. Interestingly enough, players have been chipping away at this particular game frequently as of late. Palffy’s score comes in just ahead of 2nd place Ryan “Starsoldier1” Genno’s score, entered only days before, and quite a stride ahead of Patrick “Blackflag82” Stanley’s score, which was entered only days before Genno’s. Palffy gets the honor of claiming King of the Hill for the time being, but will there be even further competition on this particular game as players actively try to outscore? We have a feeling Game Boy Pac-Man will be a fantastic game track to watch in the foreseeable future. Until then, congrats on the crown to Palffy.
Paul J. Tesi – Donkey Kong Country Competition Pak (SNES / SFC): Points
It was over a couple decades ago that Blockbuster Video stores in the United States were hosting a handful of their own video game tournaments. Produced for these events were specialized competition software like that which is featured on Paul “Mega RetroMan” Tesi’s latest gaming escapade. In this specialized version of Donkey Kong Country, the point is to collect as many bananas and bonuses as possible within five minutes. Tesi runs gauntlet after gauntlet, looping through the first area of the competition pak with nearly flawless execution, run after run. The moment when the final seconds are up and the final bonus bananas are counted, Tesi has found himself at the top of the Donkey Country Country Competition Pak leaderboards with an impressive 5,863 score. It’s enough to put him ahead of his closest competition, Joe “Ssdnija” Jackmovich, who logged 5,606 in April of 2017. The intensity in Tesi is palpable up until the very last banana is tallied, but when that moment comes, the elation feels stunning. It’s a well-played and well-earned record to be sure.
John Brissie – Missile Command (Atari 5200 - Default Settings): Points
This next one is a bit of an outlier, but it most certainly has a place here. Missile Command on the Atari 5200 starts off simple enough, but it quickly turns into a maelstrom of back and forth ordinance as players try to send off volleys of explosives at the right trajectory and catch groups of missiles and aircraft coming down towards cities they’re trying to protect. John “Jmb” Brissie took a new track ball for his Atari 5200 out for a spin and managed to score his way to 75,400 in the intense shooter. Brissie’s score put him in third place on the Missile Command leaderboards, which is nothing to scoff at. The higher-ups from Brissie sit over the 100,000 mark, with 1st place Michael Ferguson and 2nd place Morgan Davis sitting at 148,550 and 126,405 respectively, but the next score down from Brissie’s is Brien King, sitting at 39,220. It would seem there’s a wide disparity between pretty good and transcendent, and Brissie may inhabit what looks like a tight space in the middle, but his score is more than well-earned. As fast as missiles come down in the later screens, you have to have pinpoint aim and reflexes to catch every last one as they go. That said, once Brissie has broken in his trackball a little further, perhaps we can hope to see even more Missile Command high scoring from the current third place holder.
Nick van der Vis – Block Hole (M.A.M.E.): Points
Arcade puzzle shooter Block Hole is a quirky game to say the least. Players pilot a space ship, shooting blocks into oncoming arrangements of shapes to turn them into squares and rectangles after which they’ll disperse. Let the shapes come near the bottom line of play and your ship will blow up. As players work to meet the balance between scoring the most out of large arrangements of blocks and making sure they clear shapes in danger of ending the game, balancing scoring with survival can be hectic. That said, Nick “nick666101” van der Vis makes it look like cake for a long period of time. He went on a playthrough of Block Hole on M.A.M.E. that will be difficult to beat. Vis cycled through Block Hole’s level system nearly two and a half times and logged a crazy high score of 1,380,650 points which puts him handily in first place on the Block Hole leaderboards with his nearest competition, Eric Schafer, far and away at 177,530, logged in January 2016. Vis knows where to be and when to be there, with pinpoint accuracy and rarely ever a shot wasted in his push towards the high score. You’d better have skill, determination, and more than an hour on your hands if you want to match this masterful record.
Andrew Baker – Dr. Mario 64 (Nintendo 64 NTSC – Classic Mode, High-Speed): Points
This next one is a doozy of a score that will take time and dedication to beat as well. Dr. Mario is a classic puzzle game in which the player must match four colors either horizontally or vertically from dropped pills to clear all the viruses on the game board. Andrew “ZepLander” Baker went on a tear to destroy illness as we know it in the world of Mario. He put in a Dr. Mario 64 run in Classic Mode on the highest speed settings and played for well over two and a half hours, clearing board after board and killing virus after virus. Baker’s sheer understanding of when to go for small combos and when to amass something much bigger is something you simply have to behold to believe. By the end of the lengthy run, Baker had crushed all opposition on the Dr. Mario 64 High-Speed Points category, amassing 2,531,000 points across over 40 levels of play. His closest competitor is Mandi Barker, who logged a score of 321,600 in August of 2017. The craziest part is that Baker wasn’t even in danger of losing. He pretty much quit at the end because he didn’t want to go any further in this particular run. Baker has most certainly and handily gained the top spot in the Dr. Mario 64, but the fact that the limits of this game remain unreached by admission and concession of Baker himself means the challenge is just waiting to be taken. Until then, Baker can bask in a score that utterly annihilates most that came before him.
That covers our Scoreboard Spotlight for this week, but don’t think for a second that this covers all of the record-breaking action that has passed through Twin Galaxies Adjudication. It was another hot week of high-scoring and the competition for top spots among all titles continues to flow through the Twin Galaxies archives. Keep scoring high and timing low on your favorite games and maybe you might find yourself on our next Spotlight!
In the meantime, check out our Scoreboard Spotlight from last week in which Pete Hahn put in not one, but two perfect scores in Yie Ar Kung Fu among others!
