The battle for the top score in the 1981 arcade classic Donkey Kong has been going on for decades. In the past five years, the world record top score in Donkey Kong has changed hands multiple times, but this latest score in Nintendo's classic game sounds like it will be nearly impossible to beat.
On May 5, Wes Copeland set a new all-time high score of 1, 218,000 while playing on an original Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. That's the highest score ever recorded for the game, across any platform. It's an incredible feat, one made even more incredible by the fact that Copeland does it all in one life.
"This will be my last record score," Copeland says in a Facebook post that includes an image of his top score (the score rolls over at the one million point mark). "I don't believe I can put up a game any higher than this."
Copeland had previously set a goal of reaching 1.2 million, saying he would retire if he ever succeeded in his dream. It looks like he is staying true to his word, and will now be retiring from the competitive Donkey Kong scene.
He might not be the only one retiring, either. The man who held the world record prior to Copeland, Robbie Lakeman, responded to Copeland's post with, "I'm not lucky enough. Good enough, but not lucky enough." Copeland beat Lakeman's score by 27,800 points. Lakeman hasn't definitively stated he would retire, but he will certainly have his work cut out for him.
It took Copeland three hours and 20 minutes of nonstop playing in order to snag the record. You can watch the whole world record attempt in its entirety below.
Donkey Kong has been around for decades, but the pursuit for the world record top score became even more popular after the release of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. The film documented the battle between two world record-holders, Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe, for Donkey Kong supremacy. Mitchell's latest high score puts him at rank 19 on the list of all-time greatest Donkey Kong scores, while Wiebe clocks in at rank 18.
