Pengo High Score!
I was taking a break from reading my economics tonight, playing my favorite game Pengo and trying to decide what my blog entry for tonight would be. I have a list of items I want to write about, but before I realized it, I had made it to level 14 in Pengo without dying and I was racking up quite a score and I knew what my topic would be.
I swore when I played Sega’s Pengo in Mame, that the levels and the difficulty rolled over at some point back to level 1. I was thinking Pengo rolled over at level 14, but as you can see below I had proven this wasn’t the case. Tonight I beat level 16 and got a nice surprise, I was back at level one, with the less aggressive and lesser quantities of Sno-Bees and all sorts of opportunities to easily line up the diamond blocks. By the time I was done, I had trashed my previous high score with a score of 226,610! Check out my high scores list;
Before that point, I had given up on returning to easy levels, and couldn’t fathom how all of the top Pengo players on Twin Galaxies lasted long enough to get scores higher than 400,000, 600,000 and even a score of over 1,000,000 (Rodney Day). My Pengo score in theory would put me at 11th place! I was hoping I cracked the top 10, but now I know to concentrate harder on beating level 16 to really run up that score.
I checked my dip switch settings (set for freeplay on Jrok’s Pengo enhancement pack), here’s my configuration;
Switch Bank 1
- 1 – On
- 2 – On
- 3 – On
- 4 – On
- 5 – Off
- 6 – Off
- 7 – Off
- 8 – On
Switch Bank 2
- 1 – Off
- 2 – Off
- 3 – Off
- 4 – Off
- 5 – On
- 6 – On
- 7 – Off
- 8 – Off
According to my switches, I am playing Pengo on the “hard” setting, and I am setup for three lives. The settings for Twin Galaxies Tournament Settings are for medium difficulty with five lives. I don’t want to erase my Pengo scores and start over, but I know for sure that I would do that much better with more lives and an easier difficulty.
Can anybody out there informally challenge my high score? Meaning, a higher score played on an actual Pengo machine? A score not submitted to Twin Galaxies because it’s a little self indulgent and because it can be difficult to submit.
Here are some similar arcade posts
- Pengo High Score – 347,430
- Got my Pengo High-Score Saver and Enhancement Pack
- Back on top of Donkey Kong Junior
- Jrok Pengo High Score Save Kit Released!
- Purchased a 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Jeff, thanks for the encouragement. Do you play Pengo on Mame? Or do you have an upright or cocktail?
I haven’t figured out my strategy yet, and I don’t think there are Pengo strategy guides out there like there were for Pac-man and Donkey Kong. Too many random mazes, 30 plus or something like that.
But, I generally do, get the diamond blocks lined up through about level 12, and then concentrate on staying alive. I don’t know if I should just concentrate on staying alive at about level 8…or if I should just kill myself if I die once before level 6, or what. But I would like to be top five all time Pengo scores at some point, and I have a lot of school to finish up with my MBA, so that means a lot 10 and 15 minute Pengo breaks over the next two years.
I am sure my score wouldn’t count with the Prok score kit, not a factory unmodded board, but screw it, I could still whoop tushie on a regular setup if you give me some ear plugs for the crappy, non-popcorn theme.
For now, I’ve been playing on MAME, but I’m on the hunt for a Pengo in any form. I missed out on one locally not too long ago, so hopefully another comes up soon.
I’m in Utah…
My first priority right now is getting a Star Wars, but Pengo is in there with the other cabs I’d grab if they turn up in listings.
Heh, you caught that? It’s actually only noticeable when it’s powered down. If I could catch it in play I’d have already replaced it by now. But yeah, I’m planning on replacing the monitor during the summer (after getting my yard taken care of this Spring).
I need to get new arcade pics up, I’ve remodeled and added since then.
Lol, this post is more difficult to follow when there are two “Jeffs”.
Jeff Rivera, do you have a monitor with Pac-man screen burn as well? Mine is fairly bad, and I have been debating on what to do about it. I have two brand new arcade monitors from Happ, one is a friend’s and the other one I was going to use in my Pac-Mame machine. But I love Pengo, and would love to have a new monitor to play.
I also have been in touch with Blaine at Twin Galaxies. Very helpful guy, but confirmed that I would have to swap out my Jrok save kit for the original processor. That isn’t going to happen anytime soon, so, I will have to take over some of the top all time Pengo high scores unofficially:)
Leave a comment
Your email address is never displayed and cannot be spammed. If your comments are excessively self-promotional you will be banned from commenting. Read our comment privacy policy.
March 3, 2008
Wow, that’s really impressive. I’ve been getting more into Pengo recently, and it’s something my wife is starting to warm up to. I’m not nearly good enough to make a run at the TG score tables, but I love hearing about others who do.
Keep it up!