After an extended absence from competitive gaming, Steve Wiebe found himself in a familiar place again: inspecting the set up of his “garage office,” with a camera trained over his shoulder while seated in front of his original Nintendo arcade cabinet.
“Hello, this is Steve Wiebe here,” he announced for the video recording, “I’m going to restart the machine and play a game of Donkey Kong.”
Three hours and 17 minutes later, Steve watched as his last player died on the game’s kill screen. The result led to Steve’s first submission to Twin Galaxies in 10 years with a score of 1,106,200 points, eclipsing his career high score and former world record while also reaching the celebrated Donkey Kong competitive threshold of 1.1 million points.
Having just returned from a quick weekend getaway, Steve decided to do a couple of practice runs before streaming for only the third time on his new Twitch channel. While practice runs have sometimes been high score graveyards for gamers who skipped on setting up cameras, Steve was prepared.
“At this stage in my DK career,” observed the former world record holder, “I only play for high scores, so there would be no chance of not recording a game.”
In the context of Steve’s journey, the achievement itself is a personal stepping stone: Hank Chien first crossed the 1.1 million threshold in 2012, six years after Steve became the first Donkey Kong player to achieve a TG verified million point game. In that sense, the true significance of his 1.1 million score rests with what it hints for the future, putting an exclamation point beside his return to competitive gaming.
“Hopefully I can hit my next milestone of 1.15 million soon,” explained Steve.
With Robbie Lakeman recently reclaiming the world record crown from John McCurdy and the approaching debut of the newly-formed Kong League's DK Survivor Series tournament on July 1st, there's a renewed sense of energy and competition in the Donkey Kong community, one that is looking to the future to celebrate new milestones, new achievements, and new stories.
With Steve’s score currently in adjudication, both newcomer and veteran alike can see all of the evidence of his achievement by visiting the following link:
But for those feeling a bit nostalgic about Steve’s earlier score submissions, he was ready.
“The VHS tape of the gameplay is in the mail,” he joked.
You can catch Steve and his Donkey Kong streams on this Twitch channel stevejwiebe
