Billy Mitchell, the Most Feared Arcade Game Champion of All Time, Has Had All His Records Reinstated
If there's been one constant in American culture since our once great nation was founded, it's that we love our heroes, but the ones we really respect and admire our anti-heroes. Jesse James. Billy the Kid. Bonnie and Clyde. Al Capone.
In fiction, it's been Cool Hand Luke. Butch and Sundance. The Joker. The Corleones. Tony Soprano. Walter White. We're interested in Luke Skywalker. But fascinated by Darth Vader. Given the choice between people with notoriety and the truly notorious, and we're gravitating to the latter every time.
Which brings me to the antagonist of one of the great stories of Good vs. Evil in the 21st century, Billy Mitchell of King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Old Stoolies will remember Manzo discovering this four-star documentary back in Barstool's early days, when we were still wearing animal hides and posting with bronze laptops. He was like a villain straight out of central casting. With his signature look, perfectly coiffed hair and beard, ubiquitous dark shirts and ties, and his ever-present confidence bordering on cocky arrogance, there was no turning away from this compelling and ruthless character.
But by no means has Billy Mitchell's fame faded in the years since. If anything, he's merely become more infamous as all his arcade game records have been called into question. This was posted by Clem nearly six years ago:
Billy Mitchell is known to video game fans as the King of Kong, a title made world-famous by the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters about the race for the Donkey Kong world record. Mitchell’s 1982 score of 874,300 points reigned for 18 years until Tim Sczerby passed it by with 879,200 points in August of 2000. Mitchell retaliated in 2004 with a total 933,900 points, while Steve Wiebe (also in The King of Kong) surpassed that in June of 2005 with 985,600.
Twin Galaxies has been the arbiter of video game leaderboards since 1981. It 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. At press time, Twin Galaxies has not removed Billy Mitchell’s 2010 achievement from its main Donkey Kong leaderboards.
And as is so often the case in American life, controversy has been good for Mitchell's career. As legendary villain and center of attention Reggie Jackson famously put it, "They don't boo nobodies."
Obviously they often do take the somebodies and turn them into nobodies by discrediting all their accomplishments. Such was the case with Mitchell. But this was one somebody who was not willing to go quietly into that good night. Mitchell has done what the greats do:
He fought back. To the surprise of no one who's ever seen him operate a joystick, Mitchell showed no quit. He kept climbing up the mountain like a lovable Italian plumber with a giant homicidal primate rolling barrels down a scaffolding at him.
And as of today, at long last, Mitchell's redemption arc is complete:
Source - It has been confirmed that Twin Galaxies has reinstated Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores.
Twin Galaxies has issued the following statement on the matter:
In fair consideration of the expert opinion provided by Dr. Zyda on behalf of Mr. Mitchell, and consistent with Twin Galaxies' dedication to the meticulous documentation and preservation of video game score history, Twin Galaxies shall heretofore reinstate all of Mr. Mitchell’s scores as part of the official historical database on Twin Galaxies’ website.
Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong score performances of 1,047,200 (the 'King of Kong' Score), 1,050,200 (the 'Mortgage Brokers' score) and 1,062,800 (the 'Boomers' Score) are the scores which have been reinstated.
They couldn't beat Billy Mitchell on the screen, so they tried to erase him from the history books. They took him to court and he's put his initials at the top of the High Score rankings there, too. He's champion of the past, present and future. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Bend the knee to our once and future king. And hail the GOAT of pressing a button in order to carefully time a cartoon character's jump. More importantly, he reestablishes himself as one of the best antagonists of our time. Which is a position no one should've ever tried to take away from him in the first place. Never surrender, indeed, Mr. Mitchell.