One of the best documentaries in the history of forever was King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. What began life as a way of documenting competitive gaming quickly turned into a battle between two men for the Donkey Kong high score: the unknown every-man, Steve Wiebe, and the video gaming icon, Billy Mitchell.
Becoming The Villain…
Billy Mitchell popped onto the scene during the golden age of arcades and has obtained numerous accolades, such as being the first player to reach the Donkey Kong kill-screen and playing a perfect game of Pac-Man. This past week, though, he was stripped of his records on the Twin Galaxies website due to their questionable validity, and it appears that Guinness is following suit.
As Twin Galaxies reports:
“The Guinness World Records titles relating to Mr. Mitchell’s highest scores on Donkey Kong have all been disqualified due to Twin Galaxies being our soruce of verification for these achievements,” stated a representative of Guinness to Kotaku, “We also recognize records for First perfect score on Pac-man and Highest score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies was the original source of verification for these record titles and in line with their decision to remove all of Mr. Mitchell’s records from their system, we have disqualified Mr. Mitchell as the holder of these two records. Guinness World Records will look to update and find the appropriate holder of these records in the next few days.”
In other words…
While this may seem like poetic justice for the people who have seen King of Kong and how dickish he came off, part of that was to shape the narrative being told by the filmmakers and even at the request of Mitchell himself. In what can be seen as a spiritual sequel, Man vs Snake, Mitchell came off a bit more human, albeit still a bit self-serving.
Look On My Works Ye Mighty And Despair
Because of this update to the Twin Galaxies scoring system, Steve Wiebe is now recognized as the first person to achieve a million point Donkey Kong score. While I’m sure he’s ecstatic about this, he was already a winner for having a milf-tastic wife, whereas Mitchell’s looks like a used up hooker off the Vegas strip.
I’m sure the five people who give a shit about the Donkey Kong world record have strong opinions emanating from their parents’ basements; I’m more content knowing what a boob feels like. Ironically, what could be considered as an attempt to legitimize the video game scoring system, just casts more doubt onto the whole scene.
There’s no doubt eSports is a rising past-time for which this will be a huge black eye. While it won’t impact Fortnite and PUBG audiences, it could mean that once the original audiences for these classic arcade games die out, there will be no one to replace them, delineating these classics to the dumpster behind the Chili’s where I discard my used porno.
