It’s Official: Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong High Scores Deleted
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Back in February, we wrote about the accusations that had been leveled against Donkey Kong record holder Billy Mitchell, famous as one of the faces of competitive old-school gaming. One of the stars of the well-remembered 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Mitchell is an enigmatic figure among high score hobbyists for both his personality and the mysterious quality to his high scores, which detractors have maintained he held on to thanks to a degree of clout over Twin Galaxies, the most prominent organization that tracks those units of videogame-related bragging rights.
Now, however, things have changed: Billy Mitchell is no longer the Donkey Kong king. As of Thursday, he has been officially stripped of his Donkey Kong and other videogame high scores, as well as being banned from submitting any future scores to Twin Galaxies. It’s a dramatic shake-up of the the official history of Donkey Kong, which almost seems to necessitate a new final chapter to the 2007 film. Unknown is whether the same record will continue to stand via the Guinness Book of World Records, or whether it will similarly be changed to reflect the Twin Galaxies decision.
“With this ruling, Twin Galaxies can no longer recognize Billy Mitchell as the first million point ‘Donkey Kong’ record holder,” said Twin Galaxies in a statement. “According to our findings, Steve Wiebe would be the official 1st million point record holder.”
The big decision came after months of investigation and research from Twin Galaxies, which was alerted to potential rule-breaking by Jeremy Young, the moderator of a popular Donkey Kong forum. Young had become suspicious of Mitchell’s seeming inability to recreate his more than 1 million point scores in public settings, and came to believe that Mitchell had instead passed off emulated rather than official arcade cabinet footage for the records.