On a related note, I wanted to see if @RTM or others recall the second
arcade tournament at Funspot in 2000 and the account contained in the following magazine
Tips & Tricks magazine (August 2000) no. 66
"Fun spot 2000 Classic Video Game Championship
The second annual Funspot Classic Video
Games Championship was once again the site where players could show-case their skills and set new world records in 100 different classic video and pinball titles. The tournament took place June 1 to 4 in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. For the first time in
history, three Ms. Pac- Man players scored over 800,000 within minutes on three separate machines: Rick Fothergill of Canada, Chris Ayra (the current Ms. Pac-Man World Record holder from Miami) and relative unknown Darren Harris from Long Island. Harris surprised everyone by picking up the Ms. Pac-Man Funspot tournament title. "Player of the Century" Billy Mitchell was praised by Walter Day, the head of the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard, in an awards ceremony following the tournament. Mitchell was honored once again for becoming the first person to play a perfect game of Pac-Man and for breaking his own
Donkey Kong world record of 874,200 (set back in 1982!)."
There's a typo with the 1982 score (should be 874,300), but does anyone recall the score that Mitchell apparently achieved? It doesn't appear on the donkeykong blogspot timeline, sounds like it was overlooked. On the blogspot timeline, Tim Sczerby is credited with achieving a score of 879,200 on 17 August 2000, verified by video on 23 April 2001 by TG. It would be interesting to confirm if Mitchell presented a "new" score that just squeaked past Sczerby at the 2000 Funspot tournament, although I should point out that the tournament took place in June so it wouldn't be a "direct response" unless there was word a "new guy" was closing in on his old score . According to the blogspot timeline, Mitchell surpassed his 1982 record in 2004 at the Midwest Gaming Classic with a score of 933,900. The final caveat - I was pointed to a 2009 thread at CAGDC about this question, where PL suggested that the report about the new high score didn't occur at Funspot, that the reporting might have been wrong, but "perhaps a video tape was brought to the tourney." (tongue in cheek). No one who was there chimed in to clarify, I'm hoping someone might remember here.