Opening Day

First, in Donkey Kong news -  there isn't any.  I have taken a break for the last 2 weeks or so.  Before that I was routinely scoring up in the 180 and 190ks and broke 200k on a couple of occasions but, alas, 250k remains a glass ceiling for the time being.

But today is Opening Day eve - except for the Dodgers and Padres, who open tonight.  As such I thought that this would be a good time to put my thoughts on the season together.

The 25-man roster was finalized yesterday and is comprised of the following:

Catchers: Welington Castillo and John Baker

Infield: Anthony Rizzo, Darwin Barney, Mike Olt, Starlin Castro, Emilio Bonifacio and Luis Valbuena

Outfield: Junior Lake, Ryan Sweeney, Justin Ruggiano, Nate Schierholtz and Ryan Kalish 

Starting pitchers: Jeff Samardzija, Travis Wood, Edwin Jackson, Jason Hammel and Villanueva

Bullpen: Jose Veras (closer), James Russell, Wesley Wright, Brian Schlitter, Pedro Strop, Hector Rondon and Justin Grimm

Unless you are an even bigger Cubs fan than me, a lot of those names are probably unfamiliar to you.  In fact, unless my math is wrong I believe there are only 11 players that carried over from last year's opening day (Castillo, Rizzo, Barney, Castro, Valbuena, Schierholz, Samardzija, Wood, Jackson, Villanueva, and Russell).  That's a lot of turnover in one year.

Does this represent rock bottom or the point where all these players nobody had ever heard of broke through and became stars?  Who knows.

Rizzo and Castro have to anchor the team this year.  End of story.  If they have another year like last year . . . well, it will turn out like another year like last year.  Schierholtz needs to repeat his solid performance last year.  Castillo had a decent year and now needs to take the next step forward.  Barney . . . needs to be relegated to a bench role ASAP.  Bonifacio is a very good 4th outfielder but if he's in the everyday starting lineup we've got big problems.  Same with Valbuena at 3rd.  John Baker - eh, who cares about the backup catcher. The rest (Olt, Sweeney, Lake, Ruggiano, and Kalish) are prospects getting their shot - they need to prove they belong.  Olt has by far the most upside.  He could turn into a bona fide superstar - or he could flame out spectacularly like so many other top prospects do.

The player in the minors to watch is Javier Baez, particularly whether or not they start playing him at 2nd or leave him at short.  If it's 2nd, then I think the clear plan is to get him up here ASAP (I'd guess May 15th or so) and then either bench, trade, or waive Barney.  If he's left at short, then I think they're on a longer timeline with him and they may still be thinking of moving Castro to 2nd or trading him.

On the pitching side of things I think the starting pitching will be serviceable if mediocre and the bullpen is just one huge question mark.  There's certainly no one in the starting 5 that you feel good about when going up against a true ace (or even a good team's number 2) but on the other hand there isn't anybody that I'm marking down as an automatic loss either.  The bullpen is just a huge question mark.  Russell is the lone holdover and is a very solid arm.  Veras is a veteran that has been largely good throughout his career but at 33 who knows how much he has left.  Strop has a good arm but has been inconsistent.  Everybody else is either young and inexperienced or, in the case of Grimm, was a starter and is trying out a new rule.  As such, the pen could end up being a strength, disaster, or pretty much anywhere in between.

Samardzija *should* really be the only one possibly dumped at the trade deadline so at least we shouldn't have to worry about them completely tanking just as they are starting to play well in mid-July like the last two seasons.  But the thing about having a young team is that who stays and goes will be determined by on field performance.  There are a number of other players (like Baez) knocking on the door at AAA so if the MLB team does not perform this is a roster that could be very much in flux this year.

My overall prediction: I'll be semi-optimistic and say 77-85.  I think that they will be a fairly fun team to watch in the sense that you're watching young players who are still excited to play at this level rather than older veterans who are treating it like work.  I think they will show flashes of the talent they have and will probably put together 2-3 long good stretches (1-2 weeks each) where it looks like it's all coming together.  But the youth and inexperience that is sometimes an asset will also show up in inconsistency, mental lapses, and struggles to turn things around during the inevitable bad times.  So out of the 6-month season, I predict they'll play 3 months at or within 1-2 games of .500, one month way above .500, and 2 months way below .500.

On the season ticket front, the home opener is set for Friday and the forecast is . . . less than ideal.  High in the low 40s and 90% chance of rain.  Wasn't planning on going to but may end up having to go if the tickets don't sell.  Time to drop those prices on Stubhub! 

My high score so far

So far, the high water mark is 255,700, which was achieved this past Sunday night on only my second game since returning from our vacation in Houston.  It is actually only my 2nd highest score all-time if you include when I was playing on an emulator a couple years ago (that high was 313,000) but I don't really count that since it wasn't on an actual machine.

You can also see that I reached Level 8 (that's the L=08 in the upper right corner), which is also a high.  This equates to the 36th screen.

A Donkey Kong Tutorial

For the uninitiated, here is a little bit of background on how the game works so that you can have some context with the scores and levels that I am going to post.

The first thing to understand is the difference between levels and screens.  Contrary to what most people think, the game is not just endlessly jumping over barrels - that is just one of the screens (though it is the one that occurs most often).  In total, there are 4 different screens in Donkey Kong, but you have to reach Level 3 before you have seen them all.  Here they are (note that these are just taken from the web, not from my actual machine):

This is the "Barrel Screen" and it is the one that usually comes to mind when people think about DK.  It is the first screen in the game.

This is the "Factory Screen".  It does not appear until Level 3 and is the last of the 4 screens to be revealed.

This is the "Elevator Screen".  It's also the trickiest screen in the game and the one that was designed to kill off the average gamer and force them to fork over another quarter.

This is the "Final Screen" - not because it is the last screen in the game but because it is the screen that always ends a particular level.  You will note that in all the other levels, Donkey Kong is standing next to a ladder at the top.  When you reach the top he grabs Pauline (our maiden in distress) and climbs up to the next level.  But on this level, once Jumpman (yes, that's correct, it's not Mario) removes all the yellow rivets he falls down and the happy couple is reunited:

The game then starts over again at the next level at the "Barrel Screen".  The goal in the first 3 screens is the same - reach the top without being hit by anything.  In the "Final Screen" Jumpman has to walk across all of the yellow rivets to remove them while avoiding the fire.

Level 1 has 2 screens (Barrel and Final), Level 2 adds the Elevator screen, and Level 3 adds the Factory screen.  Levels 4 and 5 add 1 and 2 (respectively) additional Barrel screens and then the game stays at 6 total screens for the rest of the game.  Here is the complete sequence:

Level 1 - Barrel, Final
Level 2 - Barrel, Elevator, Final
Level 3 - Barrel, Factory, Elevator, Final
Level 4 - Barrel, Factory, Barrel, Elevator, Final
Level 5+ - Barrel, Factory, Barrel, Elevator, Barrel, Final

So reaching the end of Level 5 equates to completing 20 screens and then each additional level completed adds another 6 screens.  The game increases in difficulty up through Level 5, at which point it stays constant and you are basically just replaying Level 5 again until you either die or reach the Kill Screen on level 22 (which is screen 117).  For the curious, here are details on the Kill Screen - but the jist of it is that due to a programming error when you reach this screen the game doesn't give you enough time to complete the level, thus making it impossible to continue.

As a final note, the switch settings allows you to adjust the number of lives you have as well as the point where an extra life is earned.  I am playing it at the "official" settings - 3 lives to start, with one additional bonus life earned at 7,000 points (for a total of 4 lives to complete the game).

Blue Christmas

Christmas Eve with a Donkey Kong is a joyous event.  You gather around the soft glow emanating from the finest techonology that 1981 could produce and ridicule your family mercilessly when they continuously fail to get past the first screen.

And so it was this year for me, and a grand time twas had by all.  When at last it was time to retire for the evening, I cheerfully said goodnight to DK, flipped the switch, and went to sleep with visions of hammers and barrels dancing in my head.

On Christmas morning Charlotte awoke bright and early and, as had become her custom, came directly downstairs happily pointing to the machine excitedly saying "Donkey!  Donkey!  Donkey . . . fall down."  So I walked over, turned on DK, and was greeted by this:

Disaster!

Surprisingly, after about 2 minutes of this it suddenly started working fine again.  It was a Festivus miracle!  However, I didn't delude myself that the problem was fixed permanently.  I knew the writing was on the wall.  By the end of the day, the entire left side of the screen was completely freaking out and when I turned it off that night it never turned back on again (at least not in a playable form).

So there it sat - looking sad, dark, and lonely in the corner.  Every morning I'd come downstairs and look sadly over, and every morning Charlotte would still come down, pointing and excitedly saying "Donkey!  Donkey!" and I'd have to explain that it was still broken.

And that is where we stood until earlier this month when I finally got Rick from Rick's Game Repair out to take a look at.  Turns out that the capacitors were getting tired (after a mere 30 years of service) and that's what was originally causing the squished screen on the left side and eventually caused the entire display to lose hold.  So after "quickly" popping off 50 capacitors and soldering new ones back in, he plugged it in, made a couple adjustments, and hallelujah!  We are back in business!

In Cubs news:

Today is the Spring Training opener for the Cubs at the all new Cubs Park in Mesa, AZ, thus officially ending the offseason.  While it will still be 4 and a half weeks until they make their way over to this part of the country, it warms my heart to know that baseball is being played somewhere - even as my ass remains frozen solid in Chicago.

The Blogging Dead

Like a bad horror movie, I have once again risen from the ashes to shuffle mindlessly across the virtual world.

As I did with my novella experiment (which performed very poorly with the public at-large but quite strongly amongst the highly sought after "DeForest" demographic) I am once again repurposing this blog.

Why?  Well, it has much to do with the events of December 7th of last year.  On that day, I awoke bright and early at 5:00 A.M. and headed out into a snowstorm on my way down to Quincy, IL.  Why did I do this and why am I continuing to ask rhetorical questions?  Because at my destination a beautiful, original Donkey Kong machine was waiting for me.  I passed many a stranded vehicle and one jack-knifed semi during my travels, but managed to return safely from my 600-mile, 12-hour journey with the cargo safely intact.

And while I was heading back up I-55 with DK in tow, I was also simultaneously officially becoming a Chicago Cubs sucker season-ticket holder.  My brother Joe and I will be sharing 2 tickets in the lower level to all 81 nauseating glorious home games. 

So I thought that I would use this blog to chart my experience with these two over the next couple months.  I will also throw in some other random thoughts as they occur to me, but these will be the main topics.  So if you don't like Donkey Kong and you don't like the Cubs . . . well, I guess you can just go on ignoring this blog like you have for the past 10 months.

Without further ado:

Donkey Kong:  Bit of a long story (which I will spare you the minute details of) but I actually am only the temporary custodian of this machine.  It will be going to its permanent home at some point, probably in the next 6 months to a year.  So time is of the essence!  I have no desire to make a run at any of the records (you need over a million points just to crack the top-20) but I would like to make it to the kill screen - which happens on Level 22.

The Cubs:  You know the old axiom about the stock market "buy low, sell high"?  Well that's what I'm trying to do here.  Because it doesn't get much lower than where the Cubs are right now.  Losers of 90+ games 4 years in a row (and 101 games in 2012) it is really no surprise that after 8 years my number came up in the Chicago Cubs Season Ticket Wait List.  In fact, as I recently found out, the Wait List is no more - they went through every person on it and still have some additional seats available.  But it has been a dream of mine to be a Cubs season ticket holder so I'm glad I could make it a reality.  My goal for this year is to sell enough of the "premium" games that it doesn't end up costing me an arm and a leg and hopefully the Cubs will surprise everyone and prove to be at least watchable.

It's tough to tell, but this is DK loaded into our Mazda5, ready for its voyage to its foster home.

Here it is in all its glory.

Zac, playing his first game (and big kudos to him for helping me get it in and downstairs)

Our respective scores from our first game - not a good score for me but at least not completely embarrassing

Scores from Day 2 - the 4th and 5th place scores demonstrate what happens when you play with kids on your lap.

Starting to get respectable . . .

Well, the score is definitely good but what's going on with the left side of the screen?  Hmm . . . more on that next time.