Mitchell, above.
Controversial arcade game player Billy Mitchell released a statement today, responding to the recent disqualification of his records from both the Twin Galaxies leaderboards and Guinness World Records.
Several of Mitchell’s high scores were disputed earlier this year by a forum poster claiming he used an emulator to record his scores, rather than a standard arcade cabinet.
His scores for Donkey Kong, as well as games like Donkey Kong Jr and Pac-Man, have since been scrubbed from the Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies leaderboards.
Speaking to Old School Gamer Magazine at the Midwest Gaming Classic, Mitchell states he is working on bringing forward his own case for why his records should still stand.
“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.”
Mitchell is on the advisory board of Old School Gamer Magazine.
Comments
13 responses to “Billy Mitchell Releases Statement On His Disqualified Records”
Seems there was pretty clear cut evidence he was using an emulator. The saga continues…
I think he is saying that the use of an emulator was ok back then, and only the post 2014 regime see. To mind.
Nah in the documentary they were all hardcore about OG cabinets.
I don’t see how he can exonerate himself. Witness testimony and documents (whatever could possibly be in them) can’t counter the hard visual evidence showing the rendering difference, I imagine the only way would be to show that some cabinets did render to the screen in blocks instead of lines.
Any word on what emulator he used?
Not just the visualcdiferences but differences in input lag could make a huge difference.
The main question with an emulator is whether he was playing the same game as everyone else. Many of these games have a random element, and that could be tweaked by changing a few bytes in the ROM.
If there is a randomised reward, you could change the odds so it is more likely you get the high value rewards compared to normal. If people don’t know you’re using a modified ROM, it’ll just look like you got extremely lucky.
Actually, that sort of thing could be identified pretty quick, and we know that the RNG of Billy’s runs was pretty standard. What’s a bigger concern is save-state scumming, ie, replaying levels to get the best score possible. Though Billy claims to have witnesses watching him play these scores, these claims are always a bit he-said-she-said, and even then there’s theories that he could play a replay through a cabinet monitor with the right setup, or other technically possible but convoluted possibilities. I spent an hour or 2 reading through the DK high score forums the other day, there’s a lot of tech talk flying around about it at the moment. It’s all a bit bananas.
Upvote for bananas.
Karma
His argument is retarded. He is basically saying what he did is okay because it was fine at the time. Which is like saying a distant relative of yours owning slaves is okay because it was fine during that period of time.
The major issue is he lied, even if he didn’t do any tom foolery, he was asked if it was emulated, and said no it was original…
“Donkey Kong” Pfft.. Just an inferior clone of Red Menace and anyone who disagrees with me clearly has communist sympathies and will be reported!
Not really much of a statement though. Busted cheating and, very much in character, refuses to acknowledge it.
Video evidence is very clear: used MAME, most likely to take advantage of save states and play levels over and over for the best possible result, then stitch the video together.
Such a dick. Still, the video gaming world is arguably a better place for his part in it. Strange paradox. Not as black and white, say, as Lance Armstrong in cycling – for some reason I’m still happy that Billy Mitchell exists and his ridiculous story is part of all this.
Douche-bag.