Quest for 6,000,000

The Quest for 6,000,000 was an effort starting by the Charter Chipsters around 1998 to achieve a score of 6,000,000 in the original Chip's Challenge 1. It has now been long known that achieving 6,000,000 points is unfortunately impossible. Currently, the Melinda Score is 5,977,740, so obtaining 6,000,000 would require an additional total improvement of 2,227 seconds on even the theoretically perfect maximum known scores.

Since CCLP2 has no untimed levels and therefore has more time bonuses, 6,000,000 has been achieved in CCLP2, the Melinda score being 6,050,990+. 6,000,000 has also been achieved in CCLP3 in both rulesets, as well as CCLP1 in the MS ruleset. The quest started again for CCLP1 in the Lynx ruleset, but has since been accomplished.

History

The origin of the Quest for 6,000,000 began at the MSN Chip's Challenge BBS. Early Chipsters were disappointed in the lack of a Chip's Challenge 2. To keep entertained, they began improving their previous scores in the original Chip's Challenge. They had discovered various ways to greatly improve their times such as backwards boosting and expert monster dodging. Their scores quickly grew, and then Maybelle Poole posed whether it was possible to achieve a score of the perfect 6,000,000.

Impossibility

Soon after this quest was posed, Ruben Spaans quickly doubted its possibility. At the time (May 1, 1998), the Melinda score was 5,973,770. Off the 6,000,000 points, 5,587,500 would be earned by obtaining the full level bonus for each level. 412,500 more points, equal to 41,250 seconds, must be earned via the time bonuses. If you add the time the games gives you for all 120 timed levels, you're given 46,634 seconds to complete the game. Therefore, the player must complete the game in 5,384 seconds; an average of about 45 seconds per level. In 1998, 54 levels had already been solved in less than 45 seconds. Also at that time, there needed to be 3,074 more seconds to be shaved off in order to reach their goal, which is an average of a 25 second improvement on each level. More than a decade later, we realize this is sadly impossible. From 1998 to the present, the overall score for CC1 has improved by 363 seconds. That is only 12 percent of what was needed to reach the 6,000,000 mark.

The Second Quest

Shortly after the release of CCLP1, the Quest for 6,000,000 was posed again, this time for the Lynx ruleset, as early score reports showed only another 100 seconds were needed. For quite some time, there were 10 theoretical seconds between The Last Starfighter and Blobs on a Plane. Seven of these have since been obtained; the 3 remaining seconds on the former are so far beyond the realm of feasibility, requiring several hundred blob moves to be in specific directions with very few wrong moves allowed.

In July of 2014, 6,000,000 was proven to be achievable—albeit including the 3 nearly impossible seconds in The Last Starfighter. Six million without those 3 seconds was proven achievable on September 3, 2014 (GMT), and was actually achieved the next day.

External links

• Alice Voith's site, which contains information about the Quest
• Mr. Anderson's site, which maintains scoreboards for the official level packs