Billy Mitchell, Steve Weibe, and Hank Chien have a new competitor to gun for on the "Donkey Kong" leaderboard. His name is Robbie Lakeman, and he hails from Phoenix, Arizona. His score is an impressive 1,141,800 points, shattering the previous high score of 1,138,600 set by Chien in late 2012.
In an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix, the 27-year-old Lakeman remained humble and positive, saying: "I do love the simplicity of ('Donkey Kong')...that's kind of what attracts people like me to these games. I pretty much have been playing every other day, or if not every day, just practicing and grinding and seeing how well I can do, it's a lot of work. I just wanted to see if I could make it into the top 20 (high scores), and it kind of took off from there."
The classic Nintendo arcade game is 33 years old, but has had a resurgence of popularity in recent years because of the 2007 movie, "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters." The documentary film highlighted the trials and tribulations of everyman Steve Weibe, on his quest to unseat the long-standing - and somewhat nefarious - "Donkey Kong" champion, Billy Mitchell.
In March of 2015, Lakeman plans to attend the annual "Kong Off" competition in Flemington, New Jersey which attracts top-notch "Donkey Kong" players from around the world. Hopefully, his record will still be standing six months from now, because he knows full well that everyone is now looking to knock him from his high horse.
"(The record) can be taken away just as fast as I got it, so I've always said I'm going to enjoy it while I have it, but I have my name in history now and no one can take that away," Lakeman concluded.
