Video game champion stripped of title

[pendell]

Variety has the story

Famed high-score gamer Billy Mitchell, best known for his role in “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” documentary, was officially stripped of his “Donkey Kong” and other video game high scores and banned from submitting scores to the world’s largest tracker of video game world records following a decision that he cheated, Twin Galaxies announced today.

“With this ruling, Twin Galaxies can no longer recognize Billy Mitchell as the first million point ‘Donkey Kong’ record holder,” the group wrote in its announcement. “According to our findings, Steve Wiebe would be the official 1st million point record holder.”

Evidently the high scores he submitted were rolled up on MAME , not on the original hardware, and of course with Mame you can do all sorts of things like save and load game states to prevent yourself from dying. I never made a few tens of thousands of points on Donkey Kong myself ; it was an old-school quarter eater, designed to take your money, give you a few minutes of play, then ruthlessly kill you so someone else could donate their money to the cause

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[An Enemy Spy]

What's the point of winning if you have to cheat to do it? If you aren't playing by the same rules as everyone else then you aren't playing the same game, therefore you didn't win.

[Keltest]

What's the point of winning if you have to cheat to do it? If you aren't playing by the same rules as everyone else then you aren't playing the same game, therefore you didn't win.

In fairness, they don't actually know that he outright cheated, its just that they cant confirm it was legitimate.

[truemane]

In fairness, they don't actually know that he outright cheated, its just that they cant confirm it was legitimate.

This is true, but man, if you watch the documentary it's basically as obvious as it can be without being said out loud. And Billy Mitchell absolutely comes across as the kind of person who would cheat at video games, at anything, at solitaire.

The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters

It's amazing.

[JoshL]

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Seriously, he shows up in just about EVERY arcade documentary ever, and he always comes across as smug and slimey. It's as if he decided at one point the video game scene needed a villain, and it was going to be him. I have never been able to tell if he's just playing a character, or if he's just really a terrible person. I'm not one to delight in the misfortunes of others, but sometimes someone getting caught feels pretty satisfying.

[factotum]

In fairness, they don't actually know that he outright cheated, its just that they cant confirm it was legitimate.

Running the game under emulation means it's not running exactly the same as the original hardware would, even without any tweaks he may have made. Ergo, it's an illegitimate score no matter how you slice it. It would be like someone claiming the hundred metres world record, and then photographic evidence comes along that the track they did it on is only 99.75m long--it's not much of a difference, but enough of one to make the record invalid.

[Leewei]

NPR ran an article on this: Game of Thrown Barrels.

[zimmerwald1915]

People named "Billy Mitchell" are always treated such in their own lifetime. But soon enough, this one will probably have an arcade cabinet named after him.