Polarizing arcade video game player Billy Mitchell was stripped of his Donkey Kong titles last week after he was found guilty of cheating by Twin Galaxies, an organization that recognizes world records in gaming. Mitchell is the star of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a 2007 documentary about the world of competitive gaming. Now Mitchell has responded to the cheating allegations and having his arcade video game titles stripped with a statement that promises an investigation of his own.
Mitchell, dubbed the “video game player of the century,” had his video game records from both the Twin Galaxies leaderboards and Guinness World Records disqualified. There were allegations that Mitchell used MAME, a popular arcade cabinet emulator, in order to achieve the incredible scores. The high scores were said to not be “produced by the direct feed output of an original unmodified Donkey Kong Arcade PCB.” The controversial and always opinionated Mitchell issued a statement on his disqualifications and talked to Old School Gamer Magazine (a publication where Mitchell is on the advisory board) at the Midwest Gaming Classic.
“I’ve been asked to address things that are recently in the media. The fact of the matter is, now there’s a true professional due diligence being done to investigate things that happened as far as 35 years ago. In a professional manner, not in a shock-jock mentality designed to create hits. We will show that everything that has been done, everything was done professionally.
According to the rules, according to the scoreboard, the integrity that was set up. Not 2014-forward by the current regime, who wants to reach back 35 years. Everything will be transparent. Everything will be available.
I wish I had it in my hands right now, I wish I could hand it to you. But it’s taken a considerable amount of time. Witnesses, documents, everything will be made available to you. Nothing will be withheld. You absolutely have my commitment to that. We’ve been at this since 1982, and it’s not gonna stop now.”
One of the problems that Mitchell has regarding validating his high scores will be the witnesses. The only witness to see Mitchell accomplish his three world record scores was Todd Rogers. Coincidently, Rogers had his title for the classic Atari game Dragster stripped because it was calculated that it was technically impossible to have the record time of 5.51 seconds that Rogers alleges. It is believed that Rogers used an emulator to set the record.
Instead of documents, why doesn’t Billy boy go down to Fun Spot and set the record live? But it is good to see Billy rocking an American flag tie.