A prominent Donkey Kong forum has removed some scores supposedly earned by legendary arcade game player Billy Mitchell after evidence that there was possible foul play. Mitchells scores, which had set world records in Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., had been recognized by the forum for eight years.
Sorting out what happened the day he set his record leaves numerous questions.
On July 31, 2010 Mitchell recorded world record scores for Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. after a session at Boomers Arcade in Dania, Florida. He supposedly logged a score of 1,062,800 points in Donkey Kong and 1,270,900 in Donkey Kong Jr. Last week a dispute over Mitchells scores came to a boil on the forums for Twin Galaxies,, an organization that tracks world records and where Mitchell long ago served as a referee. On the forum poster Jeremy Xelnia Young accused Mitchell of using the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) to record his scores instead of an arcade cabinet. Young announced that he was removing Mitchells scores from the Donkey Kong Forum, a long standing community site dedicated to the arcade games.
Short of live, time-stamped, complete footage (including full views of cab hardware) of the games in question, I will not be reinstating any of Billys scores in question, Young said. If this community (and others like it) are built on the idea of friendship through competition, camaraderie through our shared pains in pushing ourselves, our friends, and these games to their limits, then we must strive for honesty and legitimacy.
Twin Galaxies does accept scores achieved in a special version of MAME called WolfMame. Mitchells scores, accepted as authentically occuring on an arcade cabinet, would not have gone under the proper verification process for emulated gameplay. If it was determined that the gameplay was emulated, it would not align with claims that the score was performed at an arcade.
Youngs argument centers upon the way original arcade cabinets and MAME draw images to the screen when loading the game. While the original hardware loads levels from one side of the screen to the other, MAME loads levels in large chunks. Comparing the loading screens on Mitchells scores and comparing them to footage of arcade machines, Young concluded that Mitchells 2010 scores were actually performed through emulation.
Video for Mitchells scores were directly captured from the games screen and do not show him playing on a cabinet. Twin Galaxies submissions require players to show video proof that they were playing the game at the time. At the time of Mitchells score, a referee also needed to be present to validate the scores. The referee for Mitchells 2010 scores was infamous Atari score-setter Todd Rogers who has been in the middle of a score dispute of his own. Last week, following a case built against his alleged score in the Atari 2600 game Dragster, Twin Galaxies concluded the score was impossible and removed all of Rogers scores from their records, banning him from further participation. When asked by Kotaku to discuss witnessing Mitchells record, Rogers did not reply.
According to former Twin Galaxies employee David Nelson, Twin Galaxies representatives met with Mitchell at the Big Bang event in Ottumwa, Iowa to discuss further verification of the score before adding it to their leaderboards. Mitchell planed to announce his records to the public during the event on August 6. According to former Twin Galaxies employee Patrick Scott Patterson, Rogers presented Twin Galaxies with VCR recordings of the scores but said, to his knowledge, the tapes could not be viewed or verified at the time.
