Following this topic earlier in the week:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/atari-dragster-cheating-player-to-lose-decades-old-guinness-world-rec

We are now officially in the steroid-era equivalent for video games.

it's going to come down to in person attempts to break records or nothing... that solves the problem . I would say it sucks for introverts but hey.. out might get them out of the house!

Meh? That Dragster record has been contested for a VERY long time.

Does Weibe or honestly most of these guys come off as extroverts? I didn't think so. Mitchell is an exception, not the rule. I think them making attempts for WR's be done in a public location is great. Can remove a lot of the questions about people dicking with hardware or using emulators, and I say that as someone that would MASSIVELY prefer to not be in a crowd of people 99.9% of the time.

Just old guys trying to recapture their glory when they were cool. Kinda sad. 4 touchdowns in one game at Polk high kinda stuff

Watch movie ‘nibbler’ for more.

Our local Free Play barcade has a beautiful Nibbler. That game is exceedingly frustrating to play without a perfectly maintained joystick, but I really appreciated a chance to play it after I watched that. Seriously fun game.

I never understood the idea of sending in tapes for world records.

If you want to be the 100 meter record holder you must set the record at a sanctioned event, like the Olympics. You don’t send in a tape from your practices.

This would likely encourage and promote more events and public play, which I think most people would agree would be great for business.

They do compete in public forums. I have met and seen Steve play in a number of events and came VERY close a few times. He did a tour shortly after the movie took off. He even played attempting to beat the WR at E3 several years ago in front of thousands of people walking by. Talk about a distraction...

While Steve may seem meek in the movie he is actually a really nice guy and I thought very social. I have met Bill a few times also and honestly he was a regular guy... The rest of those guys I dunno. Guess what I'm saying is don't believe what you see on TV or a Movie until you actually have the chance to interact with these guys...

Billy was at Pinburg a few years ago and was really cool.

I've often wondered about the "world record" for Race Drivin'. When I was 15 (and had never driven a car) I put up just over 5 million; it took 4 and a half hours of sitting on that rather rigid bench thing. I doubt it's a WR but it's probably in the vicinity.

That’s a good idea regardless.

The editing room can make anyone look as good/bad as they want.

I’ve been on the TV a few times, both for business and pinball. Usually they cut out what I thought was good stuff and left in stuff that supported whatever direction they were pushing in the story.

Last time I did a pinball feature, I made a funny joke and they edited out the first sentence, which qualified the second sentence. By itself, the second sentence made me sound like a bit of a dick (maybe fitting ...)

So last week they wanted to do another TV story on the pinballs ... I told them no. They can go find someone else to fill 3 minutes.

rd

Billy Mitchell primo ass hole dude amazing in the mame he ain't gonna lose donkey kong in the corridor singing the blues a high score goes down, Billy's cheating ass sings the blues

As a show organizer for the MGC where Billy set his last "live" record for Donkey Kong (the one that is being kept in without a challenge putting him in spot 47 now or something), the problem is with extremely few exceptions, barely anyone cares.

It would cost me a whole bunch of money to have a spot dedicated to score chasing at the show. The people who were legitimately score chasing are doing so in a fashion that is nearly impossible to have others spectate, so you see some person's back as they lean over a machine. A lot of these attempts take hours and hours and hours.

Donkey Kong sort of works because a whole documentary was made about it, and from the start to kill screen is only like four hours, but even that...

I can't justify the cost to opportunity ratio to justify something like that. It's the big problem with all the score chasing. There is no way to monetize it. When Walter started it more or less by accident, it brought his arcade (where people paid to play) a lot of national attention. The amount of games that can bring that national attention is incredibly limited today, and almost all completely driven by the King of Kong documentary.

Very insightful post, thanks for sharing.

I think newer cyber forensics is going to retire a lot of the older video game records, but who has time and the CPU resources for that? There are bitcoins to be mined and deepfakes to be made. Put those computers to good use.

I'm guessing this guy might have just sent in a snap shot.

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No problem. I'll actually expand slightly now

I was explaining this somewhere else, but the whole problem with it is because there is no way for it to be worth money, it's a hugely insular world. You essentially have a core group of maybe a couple dozen people who really care and try to be the ones to verify record runs...

But those same people are generally also interested in competing, and many do, which leads to issues where if anyone is going or get special favors, it's the ones who care about it enough to know each other and ask.

Additionally, those people are the ones who feel the most pressure to keep living up to their reputation, which is why I think the system was altogether far too easy to abuse.

...but, I also don't see a fix for it. The scope of what they want to do is so incredibly wide and the available people aren't there to judge it. By its nature, most scorechasing means super long games, which is a terrible spectator sport and takes up a ton of time to watch and verify.

Its a fun idea, but it needs to have some company find value in it to support it financially, and the majority of what they cover isn't making anyone money anymore.

Met Billy Mitchell and was a real nice guy....King of Kong makes him seem like an arrogant dick but he was not. What the movie did to Steve was a dick move or just movie drama for not wanting to accept his scores, inspect his boards etc. was pretty stupid. The dude has skills as does anyone else putting up ridiculous scores and getting to the kill screen at live events. I personally have put up over 450K on DK and if I tried hard enough and played long enough would eventually get to a kill screen. I see what it takes to get to their skill level and it’s a lot of work. I have played 3 perfect games of Pac-Man at home running original boards....no MAME but I used a combination of patterns and on the fly stuff each time. I can do it without patterns if I wanted to but I learned the game well enough to do so. I give props to all who figured out methods/patterns to all the classic games. Even patterns can be tough because you have to be exact with little to no forgiveness. Pac-Man is an example that patterns work until you make a mistake or your timing is just a little off so you have to be able to react in those situations to get the perfect game. Donkey King has more strategy for each board but is very random so requires extreme concentration and recognition from experience on what to do.

Bottom line is movies/TV have their own agendas so don’t read a lot into what they make people out to be in general.....

I just hope Billy gets a new suit.

But he has to keep the signature tie LOL!!! Really like the tie to JR honest...he wears it likes he owns it.

And the hot sauce.

Haha, nice Al Bundy reference.

Did you have a stroke in the middle of composing this?

You know these would sell like hotcakes at any pinball show.

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I'm personal friends with all the king of Kong guys like Billy, Steve, Walter, Steve Sanders, etc. I've spent plenty of time at private parties, bars, twin Galaxy events, and the kongoffs with them all. I can honestly say that first off, Steve wiebe is an awesome guy. A bit quieter than most, but holds true to his image in the movie. He said the events in the movie really happened the way it was portrayed. Billy now, is actually a really nice guy. I really like Billy. He does however show a level of arrogance and a look at me attitude. He's been in the video game spotlight for nearly 30 years or so. While his camp will always say the movie wasn't real, and edited to make him look bad, I would have to argue that statement based off of what I know. Yes, some clever editing probably took place, but he still made the questionable comments. I think the movie is more realistically portrayed than what they say. Again, he is a great guy, but I think his image has given him a reputation that he feels he needs to live up to in public. I also feel that he really doesn't have a strong sense of self and confidence for some reason, and he covers it up with his apparent image and arrogant persona.

I was honestly shocked when I heard this news of cheating a few days ago, however I'm in no way surprised. It all happened back nearly 10 years ago when it mattered greatly. These were at the time world record scores. These scores further offer proof that the events and personalities in king of Kong are accurate like wiebe told me. I have no doubt that Billy is capable of the accused scores, but that's not the point. I'm one of the top 10 Kong players in the world and surpassed Billy and Steve long ago. I know the work entailed and the pressure to get a score. At one point I was in the middle of the record chase myself. I've played in the kongoffs with these guys. Billy doesn't want to lose, or at the very least look like he's not even competitive. He hasn't been competitive with us for years now, but again his reputation is important to him, so he acts like he's not even trying, again to cover up his short comings.

I feel bad for Billy in the sense that for some reason he felt the need to prove himself and keep an image of a champion, that he cheated and lied to do so. I don't feel bad that he got caught. I'll be way more disappointed if we find out that Walter knew anything about this and let it go. I doubt he did, but the whole group is so closely supporting each other, it's not impossible.

I guess my entire point of chiming in is to help people understand that while cheating and lying are unacceptable, this is still a guy that has many good qualities and probably more self related issues than he let's on. It's truly saddening to me, but if it's true, then it had to be corrected. The world of competitive arcade playing can get really nasty at times. It's crazy what some will do for a silly score.

PS- His hot sauce however is still truly amazing.

I wouldn't consider myself in any particular "camp", but the editing of the movie was definitely done to heighten the drama. Just offhand...

Some other guy that wasn't Steve or Billy had got a record in the game around 2000. This is never mentioned in the movie, which makes it appear that Michell's old record was what he was trying to protect. It wasn't, it was already gone.

Wiebe, not Mitchell, broke the record of that other guy. I know this because I had never met Mitchell until he showed up at the Midwest Gaming Classic in 2004. I had only heard of him a few weeks earlier when I was asked to source a Pac-Man game for him. At some point, he decided to play Donkey Kong and, with the film crew filming, set a high score. I remember hearing that it was a big deal because he had just broke the public world record, and that while it wasn't the highest score ever, it was the highest score in a live setting. I later found out that person that he hadn't beaten was Wiebe. I remember Walter Day specifically telling me that it was exciting because he had the high score on Donkey Kong "in the 80s" and it was a surprise that he was still that good to everyone.

He did this by the way in a packed arcade room with probably 25 games while people were moving around him. People had stopped to watch, but no one for a period, and it wasn't promoted by us as a big deal or anything. The perfect game of Pac-Man was the thing that was the bigger deal, and I remember the documentary crew doing an interview with him at night (which I was at as well as about five others) and he described and showed how you could control the ghosts in Pac-Man. In fact, the majority of that interview was about Pac-Man.

So, sure, he made comments that could be made to look questionable, but the entire movie was premised on the facts that Mitchell had clung onto this record since 1982, refused to play in public about it, and would stop at nothing to keep it. The footage by whomever filmed it in 2004 I have never seen again.

And, quite frankly, Mitchell was a perfect gentleman the whole time, and even after that created posters for the MGC for many years afterward as a "thanks" for having him out. I heard from almost everyone what he was like that, and had heard that he would call people who had beaten his old scores to congratulate them. It just doesn't match what the movie showed, most of which you could cut more innocent statements into, and that conflict would make it more interesting.

...and this to me is the end of this. Ultimately, I feel like the movie in many ways pushed Mitchell to perform a feat that he couldn't do, and I'm sure led to the pressure to be the champion and uphold that part of his image. I don't think that cheating to do it was the way to do it.

Having said all of that, while what he (and Rogers) did was wrong, the reason that it was a thing at all is that Twin Galaxies accepted the scores in ways that they had said that they wouldn't for both of them. When you have pressure to perform, you can't open the door for someone else sneaking something in. If Mitchell's first video was received, played and they said hey, this is great and we're going to put it out there to show, but we can't accept it because you didn't follow the standard procedure to submit this, all would be well. Similar to if TG didn't accept Todd Rogers Activision scores from the 80s while not putting in anyone else, those would have been more valid. But, but giving Todd and Billy special treatment while disregarding the other people who were involved, it leads to potential issues. And now, here we are.

While Todd and Billy are both definitely at fault for doing it to begin with, to me, TG is equally at fault for allowing it.

This seems to be a case of life imitates art.
See pixels for reference.

I will echo what some others have said, the hot sauce is pretty legit.

I was made familiar with this little factoid, and once you realize it, it then makes the ENTIRE King of Kong movie a complete piece of fiction. Every other debatable bit in the movie is moot, because the entire premise was false.

Can't speak to the other claims of this thread with MAME and stuff.

But in the end, as far as I'm concerned, Billy set that original record in '82 in front of everyone. He got to the kill screen first, and that will always be his accomplishment.

The update at Ars Technica is pretty damning....

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/donkey-kong-scoreboard-strips-billy-mitchells-high-score-claims/

The other guy you are referring to is Tim scerzby. Yes, you are correct in everything you said. I agree the movie was cleverly edited, but it wasn't far off from the truth. The events in the movie did happen, and so did the comments. I really like all parties in kok, but it was a matter of time before something like this surfaced. It's sad for many reasons. You're correct to when you say Billy had to live up to expectations that were unreal for him. He became more concerned about his image than actually being a champion.

The key parts of the movie though were that Mitchell would stop at nothing to defend his Donkey Kong title, but he was secretive and elusive about it.

Which, both of those parts weren't true until the movie happened, making the framing of it as far from the truth as I can imagine it being. It would be like me making a big dramatic movie about the last game in the Brewers season last year, talking about how it had been so long since they had last made the playoffs, and would this last game get them there, or would it be the end of their season... you watch this dramatic game unfold, and they lose and you're sad because of how it was framed...

Only to find out that the Brewers got knocked out of the playoffs a month earlier, and that last game meant nothing, and the playoffs weren't on the line.

I heard someone suggest that Mitchell may have been pressured to get a high score for the movie from the filmmakers, and then when he couldn't repeat his earlier score, he resorted to what happened to try to live up to the pressure the movie was creating, and the filmmakers were the ones who pressed to have it included, since without that the entire thread of the movie would have been missing. The movie could have been shot than the other way, but Mitchell made a better bad guy than mild mannered Wiebe, so it was better for the filmmakers for things to come up the way they did.

If you change it to what actually happened and had Twin Galaxies enforce their own rules, you would have Wiebe being scrutinized (but recognized) for his high score, Mitchell playing the game once in Milwaukee and doing better than he had before, but not good enough to retake the crown, and then Mitchell being scrutinized and unrecognized for games that were filmed improperly, while Wiebe would be recognized the winner.

Not really as good of a story when there is no bad guy. And if Twin Galaxies had been doing the right thing and scrutinizing everyone equally, you couldn't cast them as a bad guy either.

The thing I found odd in the "King of Kong" is that you NEVER see Billy Mitchell play one single game.

I got to the pie board once.

I don't think so either...i was making a joke.. but hey they won't come out and fight me so does it matter?ha ha.. that was a joke also. I agree though, I'm not a fan of crowds myself. I think it is a great movie though and I'd say mostly accurate as i don't think they are totally acting...

Right, which may have been legit since the movie, but as I pointed out, in 2004 he played at the MGC live. The movie took place between 2003 - 2006. I don't know if he played other places, but that was directly in the middle of the movie and was omitted to make him look worse.

...and, just in case I'm not clear on this...

I'm not defending Mitchell. I followed the DK scores every once in a while just because of the history with the show that I run. To my way of thinking...

- Billy Mitchell is partially to blame
- Twin Galaxies is partially to blame

Both of the above could have took actions to stop this from happening, Mitchell obviously by not cheating to begin with, and Twin Galaxies could have denied the entries because they were not submitted in the approved fashion. Both groups look stupid today and both could have avoided this with a simple change earlier on. And quite frankly, other than the King of Kong not having a decent plot if they did it right, I don't think that it would have overshadowed any of Billy's earlier accomplishments if he didn't have those today. He scored better than anyone for nearly 20 years, that's incredible. And now, because of stupid actions all around, that all might be wiped from the record books.

Last I checked, a "real" arcade game record score (versus a MAME or other emulation record score) had to be videotaped, and before the game even started, had to include video of the game's boards and ROMS, so the judges could ascertain that the correct version of the game was being played. When did a mere gameplay video become sufficient for submission for a world record? Or are Twin Galaxies making allowances for record submissions by certain people, depending on their status in the arcade community?

I have an original low production number red donkey kong machine live in my new arcade located in Klamath falls,Oregon and I invite anyone interested in doing a high score attempt to contact me and we can go through the whole process of opening the back and video verifying everything to make it 100% legit.I am an aspiring dk player myself and would love to see a big score put up on mine someday!

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...speaking of which, I just found out that there was a new Donkey Kong record set on February 2nd.

Dude it was mostly scripted except Cappy Awesomness...I still wanted to find that comic book one day! lol

Don't tempt me
My personal high is 624k