Well, I finally did it.  I made it to level 49.  I did that by setting traps and losing a life to do it.  I had a couple of close calls in the earlier levels.  One of which, I had 2 lives and about 300 clock ticks left.

 

After proving to myself that I could beat level 49 once, I practiced on a different machine to make traps without losing a life.  I somewhat perfected this, although I couldn't do it flawlessly every time.  I played level 49 couple more times and then decided that I wanted to be able to use my home computer for something more than JezzBall.  I was also afraid of my machine locking up and killing the game.  I would have liked to continue playing until I achieved a score that would have made the main top 20 list, but I just couldn't see myself playing anymore games.  It took me about 2 and 1/2 weeks to get this score, and  I was jaded.

I must say that it's frustrating that the JezzBall creators left the game open to practically infinite score.  If 50 has to be the limit on the number of balls, then I wish they would have started subtracting lives and time on succeeding levels.  This would put a cap on the highest score that could be achieved, and it would give the nuts like myself the incentive to try to achieve the highest score.  As it stands now, it all depends on how many weeks you want to spend playing the game.

I have included a zipped file of all the screen captures I took as well as a somewhat gregarious picture of myself.  I love your website, but I do have one suggestion.  Instead of having two separate high score areas, why not have one large one like the top 50 scores.  That would put everyone on same page and would make it easier to find a listing of all the nuts like myself who play the mindless game.

I would very much like to be listed on your site as a top scorer, so please let me know if you plan on posting it.  Thanks for your time.

Jarrett Herring

jherring@usabilitysciences.com