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Justice For Wiebe! Over A Decade After 'The King Of Kong', Billy Mitchell Finally Stripped Of His Donkey Kong Records

By Tori Preston | Miscellaneous | April 12, 2018 |

By Tori Preston | Miscellaneous | April 12, 2018 |


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Boy, what a time to be alive! In 2007, the world witnessed what might possibly be the greatest documentary film ever made: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a true underdog tale set in the world of competitive arcade gaming. Steve Wiebe buys a vintage Donkey Kong console and sets out to master it, eventually scoring over a million in his garage — the first person to reach that high a score. But when he submits his score to Twin Galaxies (the governing body of arcade game records, and the ones who submit records directly to Guinness Book of World Records), he steps into a quagmire of bias, bureaucracy, and outright lies. You see, there is another player with a lot of pull in Twin Galaxies who has held the Donkey Kong high score for decades: Billy Mitchell, a bombastic hot sauce magnate with a lot of high score records under his belt. And he doesn’t want to lose one to the new guy.

The story that unfolds is gripping and weirdly emotional, with narrative twists and fascinating characters. It put director Seth Gordon on the map, and even inspired an episode-length South Park parody (you remember the one where Randy competes to produce the largest turd in the world? Beat for beat, it follows the plot of The King of Kong). But even though the filmmakers capture some pretty suspicious footage, and it seems clear that Mitchell is manipulating matters to his advantage, there isn’t much in the way of justice by the end of the film. The only resolution is that Twin Galaxies recognizes Wiebe’s integrity, and some of the luster has worn off their golden boy Mitchell.

UNTIL NOW.

Because y’all, Twin Galaxies just released an epic statement, saying they found evidence that Mitchell was playing on a modified Donkey Kong console, not on an original console, in the pivotal VHS tape he submitted of a high score back during the filming of The King of Kong. That footage, along with DVD extras from the documentary, helped them with their findings. And as I’m sure allllll of you are aware, official records can only be set on unmodified game consoles, rather than mods or emulators. Duh.

So what does this mean?


Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Billy Mitchell’s’ scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards.


BUT THAT’s NOT ALL! Their official statement concludes:

With this ruling Twin Galaxies can no longer recognize Billy Mitchell as the 1st million point “Donkey Kong” record holder. According to our findings, Steve Wiebe would be the official 1st million point record holder.


JUSTICE FOR WIEBE!