Famous video game player Billy Mitchell is perhaps best known for having been the first Donkey Kong player in the world to score a million points and achieved world record high scores of several arcade games since the 1980s. However, Twin Galaxies announced earlier today that Mitchell will officially be stripped of all his previous high score records and banned from submitting his scores in any competitive leaderboards.
After a few months of investigations and gathering evidence, Twin Galaxies has finally reached a verdict in the allegations against Billy Mitchell. The organization, which tracks video game world records and an official supplier of verified video game records for the Guinness World Records, announced the following:
“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. Thanks again to all who contributed time, effort and expertise to this case. This dispute is ACCEPTED.”
The organization discovered that Billy Mitchell’s famous taped Donkey Kong score performances of 1,047,200 from the King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and 1,050,200 (the Mortgage Brokers score) were “not produced by the direct feed output of an original unmodified Donkey Kong Arcade PCB.” What this means is that the high scores were not achieved on an arcade machine, which is an official requirement. It turns out that Mitchell achieved those high scores through the use of emulation software (MAME).
Twin Galaxies clarifies its stand on the subject by stating: “The rules for submitting scores for the original arcade Donkey Kong competitive leaderboards requires the use of original arcade hardware only. The use of MAME or any other emulation software for submission to these leaderboards is strictly forbidden.”
In other news, the current world record holder for the highest score in Donkey Kong is held by Robbie Lakeman. He managed to score 1,247,700 points back in February 2018. Check out the full official statement by Twin Galaxies on the Billy Mitchell case here.
