Billy Mitchell is back.
More than twenty years ago, Twin Galaxies, the organization that collects gaming data for the Guinness Book of World Records, named him “Videogamer of the Century.” He accomplished something unimaginable at the time: in July 1999, he became the first person in the world to achieve a “perfect score” of 3,333,360 points in Pac-Man. To do this, you have to never die and get every possible score in the game. Billy Mitchell was a celebrity then. But as the years passed, accusations of lying and cheating began to mount, and the once-beloved arcade gamer found himself in a spiral of self-fueled lawsuits. One of the disputes, with Twin Galaxies, is now over.
You might recognize Mitchell’s face, or even his name, not only from his Pac-Man and Donkey Kong entries, but also from the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Blocks. It was filmed in 2007 by Seth Gordon, the director who would go on to make, for example, the comedy Bosses to Kill a few years later. Mitchell, with his long black hair and piercing gaze, is a villain of sorts. He competes with timid math teacher Steve Wiebe for the best time in the famous gorilla jump.
Two Americans have beaten each other in their results on slot machines here, and even if this is a documentary, one of them simply evokes more sympathy from the viewer, and the other significantly less. The second, of course, is Mitchell.
Immediately after the film’s release, he complained that the way it was edited had ruined the career of a successful player at the time. He was said to have received hate messages and received phone calls from unknown people. Even then, there were initial speculations about whether Mitchell had won his results fairly. In the film, for example, he attempted to achieve success in Donkey Kong with a score of 1,047,200 points, but only recorded his performance on video – although up until that point he had been a supporter of the game in person.
In April 2018, the aforementioned Twin Galaxies organization appeared on the scene. Its officials said they had reviewed various records and evidence regarding Mitchell’s gaming performances and concluded that he had cheated on at least two points. He said he had used the MAME emulator rather than the original version of Donkey Kong, which should give him an advantage over others. Using an emulator is not illegal per se. But Twin Galaxies only recognizes results from the original game for this record.
The man who was once called the “player of the century” thus lost all his positions, whether in Twin Galaxies or in the Guinness Book of World Records. He was not allowed to report his results in the future, even if by pure chance he managed to beat the current record holders and their even better results. But now, almost six years later, Mitchell’s name is back in the charts. How so?
The fight ended in an agreement
The drawn-out court hearing was set to begin in just three months, but in January, a surprise announcement came: Mitchell and Twin Galaxies announced that they had settled out of court and reached an agreement. Details are still unclear, but all of Mitchell’s records have reappeared on the organization’s website—in a historical database, not in the current rankings. Twin Galaxies cited a forensic expert and somewhat awkwardly stated that the organization’s job is “to verify whether deposits submitted meet the criteria for verification, not to investigate how they are created.”
Billy Mitchell appeared in court in his signature black suit, tie and flag-colored handkerchief. When asked for comment by reporters, he simply said, in his unorthodox style, “Sorry, I don’t know you.” Opposing lawyers were no more forthcoming.
Mitchell began complaining that he was losing money because various gaming conferences and shows considered him a fraud.
Arkadist sued the organization in early 2019 and threatened to sue Guinness World Records, which de facto copies Twin Galaxies’ data. But they eventually made an exception and recognized Mitchell’s results years ago, including a perfect three million points for Pac-Man. But Twin Galaxies was more adamant. And they sued him themselves.
Mitchell then began to complain that he was losing money because various gaming conferences and shows considered him a fraud and wanted nothing to do with him. Specifically, he claimed to have lost $900,000, or almost 20 million crowns. At the same time, the erasure of the recordings is said to have damaged his health: he suffered from stress and a hernia due to the alleged slander. So was he a victim, as he described himself? Even after the dispute was over, it is unclear. But the evidence is not without its own and speaks little in his favor.
Platforms and blue barrel
Mitchell claims that at least 25 witnesses saw him set various records. Meanwhile, last year, his former opponent David Reiss posted photos on Facebook from a mortgage brokers’ conference, which may seem odd at first glance, but is where one of the two disputed “records” comes from. In the photo, Mitchell is standing in front of what looks like a regular Donkey Kong arcade machine. But if you’re an expert on the ’80s game, you’ll notice the tall red stick, which makes no sense at all — it was originally a short, pointed black controller.
It only takes a few frames, but these moments cannot be the same on an arcade machine and on an emulator.
The two results that have been a thorn in the side of Twin Galaxies (and with one of them Mitchell bested Steve Wiebe in 2005) have also been analyzed by many experts. A year and a half ago, forensic scientist Tanner Fokkens published an extensive analysis that found that Mitchell was indeed using an emulator in both cases. According to Fokkens, the video of one of the games mainly shows a suspicious “loading” sequence before the levels. It only takes a few frames, but Fokkens argues that these moments cannot be the same on the arcade machine and on the emulator.
PerfectPackman.com also offers a comparison of the arcade version of Donkey Kong, the emulator version, and what the once-defunct champion showed in videos. This includes, for example, the different lengths of some platforms or the blue barrel in the frame that should not be on the original machine.
And even now, after the out-of-court settlement, Fokkens is not giving up. A few days ago, he published a detailed post in which he mainly blames the forensic expert who was now supposed to make a big contribution to returning the deleted entries to the hall of fame. According to him, Mitchell paid him, and his analysis, full of theories, was simply sloppy. We will probably never know the truth. But it is certain that even if for many this is a completely strange dispute, others are taking it very seriously, and the website PerfectPackman.com promises that more details will be added to the disputed entries soon. The funniest thing about all this is that this domain originally belonged to Billy Mitchell. And his results in Donkey Kong have already been surpassed many times.
Source :Indian TV
