Billy Mitchell finally speaks up about his Donkey Kong and Pac-Man records' disqualification from Guinness World Records and the Twin Galaxies leaderboards.
Mitchell spoke to Old School Gamer Magazine, of which he is a member of the advisory board, addressing the issue at the Midwest Gaming Classic. He defends the legitimacy of his high scores for both games and promises to bring forward documents, witnesses, and more that prove that everything he did was fair.
"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," he said in the video.
"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."
Billy Mitchell Stripped Of 'Donkey Kong' Title
Mitchell considers himself as the top Donkey Kong player in the world, having three runs with 1 million points and more. However, the community believes that these scores were not achieved fairly.
According to the high score guidelines of Twin Galaxies, an organization that has tracked records and high scores since 1981, the high score should have been achieved on an original arcade cabinet motherboard with unaltered settings.
A formal dispute was filed in February against Mitchell's high score. After the investigation and the evidence presented by user Jeremy "Xelnia" Young, Twin Galaxies found that Mitchell was using the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.
The administrative staff unanimously voted to remove Mitchell's Donkey Kong records, including the controversial back-to-back scores of 1,062,800 in Donkey Kong and 1,270,900 in Donkey Kong Jr. at the Boomers Arcade in July 2010. The 1,047,200 score from the documentary "King of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters" was also voided.
Apart from removing all of Mitchell's records, Twin Galaxies also banned him from participating again.
Guinness World Records Follows Suit
Following this decision, Guinness World Records has also disqualified Mitchell as the holder of two Pac-Man records: highest score and first perfect score. According to a spokesperson, this was in line with the erasure of Mitchell's records as Twin Galaxies was their source of verification for these titles.
Mitchell supposedly had a perfect run of Pac-Man at the Family Fun Center in New Hampshire in 1999, also earning him the title for the highest score in the game. He was named as the "Video Game Player of the Century" that year at the Tokyo Game Show.
