In December 2020, I got a chance to catch up with “rayfinkel”, aka Justin Elliott. In the summer of 2018, rayfinkel began grinding original Donkey Kong, breaking into the Donkey Kong Forum high score list with a score of 246,900 (193rd place), which became 888,000 by the end of the year. By the end of 2019, fink had risen to 7th place all-time with a score of 1,142,200 points. But he wasn’t done there. On October 11 of 2020, fink joined the exclusive 1.2 million point club – the fifth player in history to hit that mark – with a score of 1,206,900, breaking the great Dean Saglio’s MAME record which stood for seven years.
In this interview, we discussed fink’s journey rising to the heights of the Donkey Kong rankings, and the high-level DK strategies that make it possible. And yes, we also discussed you-know-who.
Note that since this interview first went live, a Japanese player by the handle “ACU-AZU” has become the sixth member of the 1.2 million club. But he still has a way to go to catch up to rayfinkel, who has since upped his top score 1,233,000 (as of August 31, 2021), making him currently third place all-time. Odds are, he won’t stop there.