Quoted from o-din:Who is Billy Mitchell and what is Donkey Kong?
And why did they ruin my pinball experience?
King of Kong is a great watch. Billy is the best part of that documentary. He comes across as a total dick full of himself. "USA" high score initials and the mullet to back it up. Thanks for posting article.
He’s actually a very nice guy. Took the time to talk to my boys and show them stuff on pac man. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. It’s literally a “say it’s not so joe” moment for me. He earned his place on pac man. He has proven himself on that game many times over, live. Why he would need to cheat on other games is beyond me. I understand many don’t like him, and many more now really don’t. Just disappointed.
All for publicity. He is indeed a top player, maybe not the best but unfortunately his ego got in the way. A terribly unfortunate situation because I always liked the guy myself. Some people need to see their name in lights.
Quoted from Frippertron:Some people need to see their name in lights.
Doesn't that describe most of the trolls on pinside?
Quoted from ImNotNorm:At least nobody can take away his hot sauce
Itsd franks mixed with chalula as stated on the other thread
What a douchebag. Tired of this dude already. Wished I had unlimited free access to arcade games back in the day and all the weed I wanted............
Quoted from ASOA:I hear Billy Mitchell plays pinball without the glass on!!!!!!
I heard that too, in the other thread, yesterday...
I've never met anyone who can be super arrogant AND be a nice guy at the same time. There's always a selfish motivation for being nice, IMO. Big egos are usually very delicate.
He was such a jerk in King of Kong...
He didn't play by Twin Galaxies rules... ok, fine, strip him of the title.
But, it's not as though he didn't earn the score. Given that there are ever-so-slight differences from original board to original board, I don't see why they consider MAME to be different... but hey, it's their record, and their rules.
I am surprised that Twin Galaxies really did it.
The article says they are stripping him of all titles, I guess that'd include Pac Man. He should be banned in all future competitions as punishment. Any score that is even remotely questionable, should be deleted.
However, I think stripping him of accomplishments that he did fairly, and observed publicly on legitimate hardware (in tournaments and such, he is great player) should stand. He just isn't allowed to participate going forward.
Edit-- Mame is different because there's a straightforward way to cheat, that simply does not exist on an unmodified original hardware. And it could be hard/impossible to tell if someone is cheating with an emulator. He might have earned the score, he might not have. Therefore to avoid all questions, they created the rule that you can't submit a score using an emulator. He used an emulator and lied.
Quoted from drsfmd:He didn't play by Twin Galaxies rules... ok, fine, strip him of the title.
But, it's not as though he didn't earn the score. Given that there are ever-so-slight differences from original board to original board, I don't see why they consider MAME to be different... but hey, it's their record, and their rules.
Using MAME means that there's a good chance he didn't actually earn it...
According to Jace Hall, the owner of Twin Galaxies, being able to watch the documentary’s footage of Mitchell’s 1,047,200 score performance VHS source tape was “helpful” in determining that the gamer had cheated by using a MAME emulator instead of an arcade cabinet circuit board. Using emulated software, and not the original circuit board version of the game, means a player could cheat in any number of potentially undetectable ways. That’s why all submitted high scores must be from playing on original, unmodified arcade machine.
From: http://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/steve-wiebe-interview-1202752495/
Quoted from kirkgun:I am surprised that Twin Galaxies really did it.
The article says they are stripping him of all titles, I guess that'd include Pac Man. He should be banned in all future competitions as punishment. Any score that is even remotely questionable, should be deleted.
However, I think stripping him of accomplishments that he did fairly, and observed publicly on legitimate hardware (in tournaments and such, he is great player) should stand. He just isn't allowed to participate going forward.
Edit-- Mame is different because there's a straightforward way to cheat, that simply does not exist on an unmodified original hardware. And it could be hard/impossible to tell if someone is cheating with an emulator. He might have earned the score, he might not have. Therefore to avoid all questions, they created the rule that you can't submit a score using an emulator. He used an emulator and lied.
...and TG's rules fairly clearly state that anyone caught cheating this way can be banned for life, with _all_ scores removed from the database. Perhaps some of those removed scores were legit, but that's the known punishment for doing what he did. I for one agree with (and voted for) it.
As someone who enjoyed watching FFOQ and was already familiar with DK controversy, I agree with the summary and the points made by @kirkgun, Raincity and @jwjr. Good job putting things into perspective.
Can someone provide rough timeline of years when Billy had these scores, when he submitted them to TG and when he was ruled to have the records?
JWJr I think it's fine to remove all scores and ban. It's the clearly stated punitive judgement. He deserves it. I have no sympathy.
But I do think that scores that were --truly legitimate, verified by others-- should not be removed. They could remove the name, but leave the score. Not having those scores in the database de-legitimizes the database as an accurate record of the greatest games ever played. The database only becomes a record of some of the best scores. What value is an intentionally incomplete database? To me, it would not be for the sake Mitchell, but for the sake of database accuracy. That's just my own little opinion.
His perfect (cough cough) Pac Man game was about the year 2000. His DK "highscores" were about 10 years ago? I don't really know exactly. It's not really my thing. I think he held those records until yesterday.
I do know he was an elite player/world-record-holder going back to the early 80s, when it was impossible for him to cheat to set some of his records. I remember him on TV as a kid. I have read more about him and TG and the beginnings of competitive video gaming recently (and how it was the inspiration for the book "Ready Player One"). And in reading about this, I found myself reading about about the recent allegations of Mitchell cheating.
And also...My wife grew up in Ottumwa, Ia. I have been there many times to visit her parents. I do not recommend anybody visit Ottumwa, unless to sell some low-grade biker crank.
Quoted from kirkgun:And also...My wife grew up in Ottumwa, Ia. I have been there many times to visit her parents. I do not recommend anybody visit Ottumwa, unless to sell some low-grade biker crank.
Or to pay homage to Radar O'Reilly... although I have read that he left Ottumwa also.
The funny thing is that they say he is banned. But you can't really ban someone from a video game, lol. They can not include him in the record books, but if he goes out and does a super high score in front of people, are they just going to pretend it doesn't exist? Like I'm pretty sure if he just beat the official record legitimately people would still try and beat him as if that was the new record.
Quoted from taylor34:The funny thing is that they say he is banned. But you can't really ban someone from a video game, lol. They can not include him in the record books, but if he goes out and does a super high score in front of people, are they just going to pretend it doesn't exist? Like I'm pretty sure if he just beat the official record legitimately people would still try and beat him as if that was the new record.
It’s all about the money...going to some arcade and putting up a super high score is cool...but that doesn’t pay the bills. Again, it’s all about the money, sponsorships, contracts, whatever.
Quoted from taylor34:The funny thing is that they say he is banned. But you can't really ban someone from a video game, lol. They can not include him in the record books, but if he goes out and does a super high score in front of people, are they just going to pretend it doesn't exist?
Essentially, yes - he will not be allowed to submit that score for official recognition.
I was never that good at Donkey Kong or have I watched King of Kong, but how long does it take to get 1 million points?
Quoted from crlush:I was never that good at Donkey Kong or have I watched King of Kong, but how long does it take to get 1 million points?
I think about 3 hours or so
Quoted from kirkgun:I do know he was an elite player/world-record-holder going back to the early 80s, when it was impossible for him to cheat to set some of his records.
You could cheat back then.
There were ROMs that had altered code, and of course there were people who would mess with the clock speeds.
Remember the Popeye version of Pac-Man or Krazy Kong ?
Those was a commercially made, yet illegal, ROM hack jobs.
Quoted from vid1900:Remember the Popeye version of Pac-Man or Krazy Kong ?
Those was a commercially made, yet illegal, ROM hack jobs.
I had a machine with the Yankee Do hack of Mr. Do. I wish I still had it these days.
Quoted from Blacksun:Billy's statement from MGC
» YouTube video
Blah blah blah, if he would just man up to using MAME in a desperate attempt to keep his record and apologize...
Quoted from swillie:Blah blah blah, if he would just man up to using MAME in a desperate attempt to keep his record and apologize...
I don't think his ego will let him do that... ha. I would actually maybe have a little more respect for him if he did.
I guess if you really want to enter this arena, you would need to play donkey kong.
I last like 1 minute.
My favorite was robotron.
Watch "Billy Mitchell takes on Namco engineers at IAAPA show on new pacman arcade party" on YouTube
I have found the proof!!!
Go to 2:10 and you will see for yourself.
He's got really weird hair. Also, King of Kong made it pretty clear that he was cheating, but a lot of the Twin Galaxies guys worshipped him. Funny how he didn't get banned until new owners came in...
So this must be all scripted and staged for a making of King of Kong 2 the return of the Real champ. ???
Or he is a combo of Kulek and special K with head in clouds.
Remember you are pretty well busted so just continuing to act as though you didn't is just silly. Do we need to unleash Mr Heck on you?
I bet Masaya Nakamura turning over in his grave.
Billy Mitchell did a phone interview with one of my friends for a website he owned. My friend wasn't the greatest interviewer and his questions weren't all that unique, but Billy stayed on the call, was never rude and even helped him out by sharing interesting stories to keep the interview alive. I remember at the time thinking that we were going to get this alpha-male-attitude type of guy, but Billy was super cool. So to see this in the news does suck, and I wish him all the best. He broke the rules and will have to live with it, but doesn't mean he needs to be crucified. He is the king of pacman
Quoted from nintendo:Billy Mitchell did a phone interview with one of my friends for a website he owned. My friend wasn't the greatest interviewer and his questions weren't all that unique, but Billy stayed on the call, was never rude and even helped him out by sharing interesting stories to keep the interview alive. I remember at the time thinking that we were going to get this alpha-male-attitude type of guy, but Billy was super cool. So to see this in the news does suck, and I wish him all the best. He broke the rules and will have to live with it, but doesn't mean he needs to be crucified. He is the king of pacman
I watched people and kids were coming up to him all weekend at the MGC and he looked very engaged and was taking a lot of pictures. Sucks about this news, but the guy is one of the better personalities I have come across.
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