Steve Weibe, a Washington state native and professional Donkey Kong gamer attempted to dethrone Billy Mitchell from Donkey Kong glory yesterday in a live broadcast attempt at the staggering world record of 1,050,200 on G4TV at E3 in Los Angeles.
How did he do? Sadly, after 4 dramatic tries at the record, Wiebe ultimately fell short in every instance.‚ Was it the pressure packed scenario? Not likely. Wiebe has competed on live television before.‚ Was it a failure of mental aptitude? Again, not likely, as Wiebe is an advanced Algebra teacher and is known to break down the game to a mathematical base.
So what did the man who was first to break the 1,000,000 barrier in the legendary arcade game suffer from in his attempts?‚ Pure, cold, bad luck.
A first attempt yielded a mighty score of 923,400.‚ His second try garnered a tally of 653,700. A third attempt was disrupted by a brief power failure forcing the man to try again, and this time, believe it or not, the infamous “kill screen” halted Wiebe’s efforts at an impressive mark of 989,400.
This event marked the first time ever a Kill Screen was broadcast on live TV, and man oh man, what an unfortunate time for its occurrence.
A kill screen, for those unaware is, according to my main man Wikipedia, any stage or level, most commonly in Arcade games “that stops the player’s progress due to a programming error or design oversight. Rather than “ending” in a traditional sense, the game will crash, freeze, or behave so erratically that further play is impossible.”
Was legendary rival Billy Mitchell behind the power failure and happy to see the kill screen?‚ The world may never know. ‚ As far as we know the man resides in Antarctica perpetually practicing Donkey Kong only to arise when his record is broken.‚ Nah, he lives in sunny Florida, and is a respectable man, but we know Wiebe should be king.