Setting A World Record: Popeye for Nintendo

I've decided to attempt and achieve a WR score on an NES game. I've narrowed it down to one of two games. The first being "Original" Mario Bros. (not super!) or Popeye. Although I enjoy both games it seems the real challenge has been finding the games. After scouring eBay I finally have a copy of Popeye on its way. Finding Mario Bros. has not been as successful, and therefore Popeye will be WR of choice.

As with most things that I involve myself in (specifically WR scores) I like to pick apart the approach necessary to achieve the record or the desired end result. In this case, I obviously had to do a little research. For starters the current record for Popeye is 1,485,610 points set by Tom Votava on 12/01/2005. I don't know Tom Votava personally but I'm going to assume that this is probably a pretty substantial score because 1.) Tom Votava has plenty of records already, and 2.) the second place score for Popeye is 212,250.

Now that I know what the goal is, the next thing I like to do is determine how long it would be necessary to play the game to achieve the record. In this case I'll either benchmark the game by timing a few levels and recording the score, or in this example of Popeye, I'll refer to http://www.youtube.com/ for a reference. When bench marking any game that has repetitive levels such as Popeye or Mario Bros the longer the bench mark is the more accurate of an estimated time of completion you can come up with in achieving the record.





I decided to use the above video for the benchmark. The player in it takes a casual approach missing opportunities to point press. When benchmarking always take the casual players time and score. You don't want to compare yourself with a relative expert because you'll burn yourself out. After the first level the player scored 10,430 in about 1 minute 25 seconds. He completed the second level in about 1 minute 7 seconds with a score of 5,600 points more then what he had at the end of the first level, and he completed the 3rd level in 2 minutes 38 seconds earning about 16,700 points. All in all, in about 5 minutes 10 seconds you can easily earn 32,730 points.

To complete the bench mark you take the world record and divide it by the total points for all three levels. In this case it would be 1,485,610 divided by 32,730 which equals about 45. This means at an exaggerated minimum it would take completing all three levels 45 times to get the record. Determining how long it would take involves multiplying 45 by however long it took to complete the three levels (which in this case is about 5:10) which adds up to about 3 hours 52 minutes.

Now that I know how long I'll have to play for the next step is determining my availability to practice. Setting a recording isn't as easy as simply sitting down and playing, especially when you have a full time job and a small boy. Those two things obviously take precedence. So a little creativity will be necessary to pull this off. This is where I'll turn to my Nintendo DS. Without going into the exact details I can play the original Nintendo version of Popeye on my DS. We'll just leave it at that. The DS has similiar controls to an NES controller so for the most part it should be seamless in terms of practice and game play. Now, if necessary I can practice anywhere. Well almost anywhere- although my employer probably wouldn't mind me playing games at work (it is part of what we do here) they might not take too kindly if we were playing on a competitors system.