Update: Billy Mitchell has issued a video statement in response to the controversy surrounding his now-revoked hi-score for the arcade video game Donkey Kong.
Speaking with OldSchoolGamerMagazine, Mitchell issued a response stating that “there is now a professional due diligence being done to investigate things that happened,” with the his original score.
You can watch the full statement below:
*Original story follows*
If you’ve not seen King of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters, the masterfully-crafted documentary film about the battle for the Donkey Kong world record, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.
The film charts the epic back and forth duel between Billy Mitchell and Steve Weibe over the all-time high score on the 1981 arcade machine.
It has drama, controversy, heartache, good guys, bad guys, unruly egos, a bitter rivalry, and everything in between. Basically it makes the Rocky franchise look like a casual game of Wii Boxing.
The film ended with Mitchell reclaiming the record in dubious circumstances (which was parodied tremendously by South Park) and now we know longstanding score wasn’t achieved legitimately.
More than ten years on from the film’s release, the drama and controversy has been reprised with the news Mitchell has been stripped of his record score for allegedly cheating.
The Twin Galaxies database, which keeps track of all gaming records, now believes the record 1,047,200 score was achieved using an emulator, rather than an original machine. Scandalous!
Twin Galaxies was presented with images from a Donkey Kong forum member who claimed they proved the score couldn’t have been achieved on the arcade model.
In a post on its findings, Twin Galaxies said (via BBC): “Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Billy Mitchell’s scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards. We have notified Guinness World Records of our decision.”
‘Starts to make more sense…’
That also means Mitchell has lost the distinction of being the first player to achieve a million points in the game. As a result Guinness World Records have also removed Mitchell’s scores from the record book.
Weibe, the film’s loveable, everyman protagonist, is now recognised rightful record holder once again and was reached for comment by Variety.
“The more I thought about it from the ‘King of Kong’ days, it all seemed to make sense now,” he said.
“All the things that were happening at the time… like why he didn’t come out and play me, and why he was inciting whose records were going to be authenticated and who’s were going to be dropped. ‘King of Kong’ referenced that that he was a referee and on the board of directors. When that leaked out, it started to make more sense.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
