Yes but its worth noting hes a legit world class player, who then cheated.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Billy Mitchell's >1m scores in Donkey Kong were done on emulator, not standard hardware, maybe faked
- Thread starter ItWasMeantToBe19
- Start date
Yes but its worth noting hes a legit world class player, who then cheated.
My man! I feel that an extended epilogue with this whole bit would help that documentary stay relevant over time. Since it can pivot from the WR to the 1st Million point score.
He could lather his hot sauce on me and wipe it around with his mullet any day.
That'll be when he moves into porn to pay the bills. King of Dong.
I'll say that you'll have a greater uphill battle getting people to remember him as anything other than a disgraceful asshole con-artist than the people who spent close to a decade finding proof to delegitimize his scores.
Billy's made quite a bit off of all of this fame, mostly because of his appearance in the movie, but he does (or did) make anywhere from a few hundred bucks to a few thousand depending on the event scope.
A lot of these guys just get free travel and accommodations.
There appears to be some serious contention over his perfect Pac-Man score being the first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHeMUSo4SDg&t=3706s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3JOgbxI8x0&t=7895s
Dwayne Richards did both of these and he clearly has an ax to grind but these low-budget docs also contain a lot of people on the record taking issue with Billy's bullshit.
Being a world class player is irrelevant if the scores submitted are both an inaccurate measurement of his skill level and an inaccurate account of what he accomplished.
Cheating also takes away recognition from other players that submitted legitimate high scores/times, and hurts competition by making it artificially more difficult for other players to take the top spot.
Billy Mitchell valued fame over just being good at the game, and now that had cost him.
His perfect Pac Man game was also heavily tainted.
He suggested a competition to compete for the recently-made-possible "perfect Pac Man". Other contenders in this field agreed, and halted their attempts so they could compete together onstage. Billy Mitchell then jumped the gun and did it without them, stealing the prize.
And then when someone else accomplished the same feat almost immediately, Billy Mitchell had the news of a "second perfect Pac Man game" suppressed until he finished his award ceremony tour, to try to make his accomplishment seem larger than it really was.
well he had a nice side hustle selling his hot sauce. any media attention he gets he used to promote himself and whatever he was selling. as much as king of kong made him look bad it helped him become a much bigger name and he used it to his advantage. i don't think this kinda media attention is gonna do as well for him.
It never ended up coming to Bluray, did it? Maybe now's the time for a special edition with new "where are they now" special features :)
Literally guffawed.
Not sure if anyone still cares about this, but considering many people were doubting he had any skills to begin with, I'll post this here.
Billy has recently been playing live at some arcade events, and/or livestreaming his games on Twitch.
Last night, he reached 1 million again:
Billy has recently been playing live at some arcade events, and/or livestreaming his games on Twitch.
Last night, he reached 1 million again:
Interesting.... at least he's trying to redeem himself. Maybe this gives some credence to his claims (not to say I believe/disbelieve). Very interesting...
I dont think anyone doubted he has skill its just everyone could tell he exaggerated them and embellished them by cheating and undermined other talented players while doing so.
Is there anyway to even know if whats seen in that video is legit though? I can't watch right now but was it done on a machine he doesn't own, etc?
You may be responding to comments I've overlooked, but there's a difference between criticizing someone for needing to cheat to maintain relevance, and thinking they don't have any skill at all. Plenty of cheaters have good baseline skill, but the issue is their ego mattering more to them than the spirit of actual competition. He poisoned the competitive well for better players out there, and he's still actively lying (at minimum, prevaricating) about circumstances around his "achievements." There's no reason to trust/care about what he does unless you're some pathetic sycophant emotionally invested in his success.
Even past the direct cheating, we've seen how he's used influence in the scene when given the chance, and his relationship with the truth when accused.
if legit, good on him for going out there and doing it. not sure why it took him so long. it's clear from his play over the years that he's skilled.
we need a king of kong 2 sooooo bad
"Because I'm Billy Mitchell."
A King of Kong 2 would be nice, or even just an updated thing or addendum, but would it be more or less interesting when it's not just about those two and there are dudes I think who got scores way higher and are the real "Kings of Kong" now?
I never doubted Billy Mitchell was good at Donkey Kong. I don't know I believe that he was "the best," but I always thought that he had a good amount of skill in classic games like DK and Pacman. He has to, right?
Good for him. I'm not familiar enough with the specifics of DK, anyone know why he dropped it at 1mil? Was it basically game over anyway or was the established goal just to break a million from the start?
He wanted to prove he could do it live, which is undermined by the fact he used an emulator for his submissions in the first place.
If I remember correct it's because thats where the killscreen starts to show up randomly.
There's absolutely nothing wrong on using a emulator to submit a highscore. It's in fact allowed and the Twin Galaxies leaderboards has many of the top scores being submitted from emulators.
The issue here specifically isn't the use of a emulator, but the failure to disclose that fact and actively lying about it.
He's making a point that he has skill but he's also banned from twin galaxies so going for a high score is pointless.
The video by Summoning Salt, which I prefer on a factual basis anyway. Is the closest you're going to get because the competition for the DK high score is just a small part of Mitchell and Wiebe's story.
The only thing that really needs to be amended is that Wiebe is now the recognized as the first person to reach a million in Donkey Kong, not Mitchell.
Yep, summoning salt breaks it down in the video above. You can see he was on L-22. Timestamp: https://youtu.be/LAQ2vEHq2N4?t=291
This was done in public, at a bar, with multiple cameras (one showing the game, others show him playing, you can even see a bit of the surroundings).
He apparently streamed it live, and the last 4+ hours of this session can still be watched here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/290847896
I'm impressed he still has the skills after all this time.
Awesome - thanks for the summary. This is pretty crazy that he can still get a million.
