Billy Mitchell "The King of Kong" caught cheating

[gbpxl]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=234Y76_3YPE

Walter Day questioned his score but essentially since Mitchell is a major shareholder in Twins Galaxies, he accepted the score. Watch the whole video. You decide.

[Ryudo]

Everyone from that era f TG is a piece of shit.

[AdamAnt316]

..........Aaaaaaaaaaand then this happened..........

'King of Kong' stripped of title

"If anybody wants to see, there's a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up.........."

Chumpatized!

[jperryss]

Everyone from that era f TG is a piece of shit.

Pretty much this.

[Greg2600]

Having met several of them "from that era," I personally found them to be quite friendly. But I understand it's fun to hate on them.

[Peonpiate]

I remember Billy from being the main "top scores" guy in the back of EGM magazine and a few others during the 1990s, im pretty sure its the same person. I dont know about him personally other than what is said online, but i will say that more and more cheaters will be found as time goes on, simply due to how easy it is to watch a frame-by-frame play now via emulators or video software. The smoking gun for Billy was how Donkey Kong builds its levels at the start in MAME vs the original...seeing the difference and seeing what Billy's own video shows in a frame-by-frame, its clear he used MAME and that he is a cheater.

[AdamAnt316]

..........Aaaaaaaaaaand here comes the inevitable lawsuit..........

Guessing being stripped of his title has been eating into his hot sauce profits..........

More info here. Apparently, he filed the suit over a year ago, but it's only being reported now for some reason.

[Greg2600]

So Mitchell (technically) has a point in that Twin Galaxies arbitrarily removed ALL his records, many being decades old. They did the same with Todd Rogers, although in his case that was done when people presented "scientific evidence" that his scores were impossible. I think this retconning of the 1980's era records is sad, and don't people have anything better to do? Perhaps these old school guys didn't get those scores exactly, but they were tremendous players and personalities, and people have enjoyed meeting and playing against them over the years. I understand Jace Hall wanting to be authentic, and throwing out Billy's emulation crap was spot on. However, for the old old stuff, which Walter Day was sending to Guiness with zero evidence to back them up, why not just have a pre-2000 or pre-1990, etc., "wing" of Twin Galaxies that people could look at, rather than just erasing history?

[Aussie2B]

There's so much silly drama in the pre-crash world records scene.

I don't see how Mitchell would have a legal case. Twin Galaxies is a private organization, and they can recognize or not recognize any scores they want. If people then lose interest in Twin Galaxies because they think they're biased or not comprehensive, that's for Twin Galaxies to deal with. I don't get what Mitchell would be "owed" here.

[gbpxl]

Milly Bitchell the scumbag

[AdamAnt316]

Yet another update:

Guinness World Records Reinstates Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong High Scores

Statement from Guinness can be found here

I wonder if they truly did any actual research into those cheating allegations before they did this, or if they just caved to get his lawsuit off their backs..........

EDIT: According to Ars Technica, a representative from Twin Galaxies had this to say:

(I am not making this up.......... )

[jb143]

There has never and will never be an emulsion [sic] board that plugs into a Donkey Kong machine. It is simply impossible for anything but legitimate hardware to have been inside Billy Mitchell’s machine."

Glad to see the experts know what they're talking about.

[Tupin]

It's amazing what threatening to sue people who have very little money will do.

[Greg2600]

Well that was Dr. Walter Day, physicist making that claim! In terms of Guinness themselves, no question they want nothing to do with lawsuits. Personally, I never doubted his perfect Pac-Man ability nor his capacity to achieve ultra-high Donkey Kong games. Whether he cheated for the ones that were covered in King of Kong, well, I guess there was something up? I think the whole thing is blown out of proportion, and at the end of the day, Billy is about the only high scorer who's EVER broken into the main stream if you will. Jace Hall might have "cleaned up" the TG scoreboard, although frankly there's not enough integrity from the Walter days for ANY of the records posted for decades. It is what it is. Billy Mitchell has been streaming his games on Twitch for awhile now, FWIW.

[YoshiM]

Well, I don't think he should have lost ALL his scores-just the ones had proposed evidence of cheating. You can't go by "well, he cheated here, he might have cheated on the other ones" unless you have evidence that proves that mentality.

[Greg2600]

He's also "re-achieved" those scores since the whole TG thing blew up. According to him, Guinness went through it all again, the evidence and whatnot, and were satisfied. Again, I'm just the messenger.

I've seen the guy play those games, he's one of the best there's ever been. There's also a ton of misinformation floating around, whereby people jumped on the cancel bandwagon and didn't even bother to examine the evidence from either side. They saw the "villain" of King of Kong go down and cheered.

The extent that complete lunatics (yes that's what they are) like Jeremy Young of DK Forum, Jace Hall of the new TG, and of course supreme nutso Dwayne Richard have gone is just ridiculous. Over video games. The DK forum guys and Dwayne HATE Mitchell and Walter because they've become mini-celebrities. Nobody else has done that from the world of arcade record holding. Mainly just them. In fact, Jace Hall would never have cared enough to buy TG if not for Billy, Walter, et al. It's truly comical, because at the end of the day, hardly anyone outside that tiny world of theirs cares who sets what records. The characters they've seen in these films are the ones anybody knows. The much much bigger joke is Twin Galaxies itself, for which Walter surely deserves blame. 99.9% of the records go "undisputed," but that is meaningless. All that means is nobody cared to challenge them, primarily because, again, nobody cares period. I just laugh at the whole thing.

[Greg2600]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/...-before-trial/

The most frivolous trial in American History [sic] has finally been settled. Twin Galaxies is accepting the testimony of expert that Mitchell's submission "could in fact depict play on original unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware if the hardware involved was malfunctioning, likely due to degradation of components." Expert being Michael Zyda, Emeritus Professor of Engineering Practice and the Founding Director of USC's Games Program.

The restoration is to "The Original TG Historical Database," newly created and "copied verbatim from the system obtained during Twin Galaxies' acquisition in 2014" with "achievements predating the current TG ownership and modern adjudication protocols." His scores do NOT appear on the primary TG Donkey Kong database. This is literally what I suggested they did years ago, before the lawsuit!!!!

Mitchell statement read, "I am relieved and satisfied to reach this resolution after an almost six-year ordeal and look forward to pursuing my unfinished business elsewhere. Never Surrender."

[YoshiM]

Dang, the Covid Years really messed with my sense of time. This feels like it wasn't that long ago but low and behold, six years.

This reminds me, I really should find an outlet (probably Amazon) to get hot sauce from his company. Years back at Midwest Gaming Classic someone from the company (and I can't remember who the guy was, older gent) who was serving up samples. I tried some (and I was NOT a hot sauce person then) and I really enjoyed it.

[Gameguy]

Twin Galaxies' lawyers apparently screwed up and were found to have intimidated some of Billy's witnesses by contacting them directly, that's why Twin Galaxies was more open to a settlement. A shame they screwed up as Billy deserved worse.

[retroman]

I can not stand the guy. End of the day if this is settled and the prick still can not enter any of his scores as well as his old score being shoved off into the corner of a closet. Then good. My opinion is all this money wasted for a stupid game score. Who cares.