Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Billy Mitchell, Donkey Kong, Hank Chien, king of kong, nintendo, Robbie Lakeman, Steve Wiebe, Tim Scerby, Wes Copeland

King of Kong Might Be Stripped of His Title, Despite Not Being the Current Champ

Published Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:20:33 -0600

by Madeline Ricchiuto

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Billy Mitchell may not be the current reigning champion of Donkey Kong, but he's still in danger of losing his high score. Mitchell's 2010 high score for Donkey Kong has been called into question on a Twin Galaxies dispute forum by Jeremy Young, the moderator of Donkey Kong Forum (DKF). Young has presented a wealth of evidence to show that Mitchell's performance was likely faked, and has thus removed the high score from DKF's leaderboard. Young is now attempting to get the score taken down from Twin Galaxies' leaderboard.

Mitchell is known as the King of Kong, a title made famous by the 2007 documentary that documented the race for the Donkey Kong world record. Mitchell had held the highest score in the game from 1982 through August of 2000 when Tim Sczerby surpassed Mitchell's score of 874,300. Mitchell took his title back in 2004, and then Steve Wiebe took over as reigning King in 2005. Mitchell was the first player to break 1,000,000 in his attempt to recapture his title. The title has changed hands numerous times since then with attempts by Hank Chien, Mitchell, Wiebe, and Wes Copeland. The current reigning champ is Robbie Lakeman with a score of 1,230,100.

Despite not being the reigning champ, Mitchell is still the go-to King of Kong in the minds of most fans. And while DKF has removed Mitchell's highest score, leaving him at rank 47 on the leaderboard, DKF is not the place most people look for high scores. That need is mostly filled by Twin Galaxies which has been the arbiter of video game leaderboards since 1981. Twin Galaxies manages forums dedicated to fairly judging the veracity of scores as they're submitted by various parties. Other organizations, like the Guinness Book of World Records, rely on the leaderboards to award their own titles. When Twin Galaxies stripped the top 'Dragster' title (and all the rest of his high scores) from Todd Rogers just last week, Guinness soon followed suit.

Young's incredibly detailed thesis on why Mitchell's best performance in-game was faked is a masterwork in its strategic use of GIFs. But essentially Young's claim boils down to this: Mitchell's footage comes from MAME, the open-source software that emulates arcade boards, and while playing on MAME isn't a problem, Mitchell did not comply with a series of checks that are routinely used to verify that the run was completed in one continuous playthrough. If Young is correct, then Mitchell not only didn't go through these checks, he also hid the fact that he wasn't playing on official hardware.

This could see him stripped of his most recent attempt at the title.

Engadget initially reported the situation. Their coverage includes the following statement from Twin Galaxies.

Twin Galaxies is in the process of fully-reviewing the compelling evidence provided by Jeremy Young to support his current score dispute case against Bily Mitchell's Donkey Kong score. We will do this thoroughly and impartially. In the meantime we will continue to observe this discussion by experts in the community and will also examine any further evidence that may be provided during this review period.

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