Post Verdict Dispute Discussion: Jeremy Young - Arcade - Donkey Kong - Points [Hammer Allowed] - Player: Billy L Mitchell - Score: 1,062,800

[The Evener]

Why would Billy get Carlos to try and reproduce a girder finger on original arcade hardware if he really understood why the finger girder appeared in the first place?

Did he just not know, and hold out some small hope that it was possible? Was he stalling for time to create the 'evidence package'? Was he trying to create doubt and uncertainty?

I ask because ultimately it was a very bad idea that truly helped seal his fate. It really looks like the charge of the light brigade.

And then to try and get Carlos to lie in a written statement? yeesh. How do we make sense of it all when there's so much lying.

This is wandering into human psychology, but I suspect it boils down to two possible reactions any of us have had when caught up in a lie - continue down the path of the lie and justify its rationale by any means necessary, or provide a full disclosure/confession. I mean, why did Lance Armstrong deny doping from the moment he was first suspected back in 1999 but wait until 2013 by finally offering a confession following the results of the 2012 US Anti-doping agency investigation, all the while denying, suing, and attacking critics along the way?

[NickWalker]

I think it's because at the end of the day he really doesn't understand how the hardware works, that there is no way to get a 180 degree rotated screen orientation and girder finger without introducing a frame buffer at some point in the process.

To me that is one of the most ridiculous aspects to his evidence package, yeah we used this direct feed setup from 2003 to 2010 but no one can remember the equipment involved. I also like that the girder finger is evidence that Dwayne edited the tapes but then near the end they claim it can appear on original hardware... so which is it? If you're telling me the game can do that already how do you know anything has been edited?

[The Evener]

Well said. It doesn't compute when someone has to offer several different explanations to explain a singular act - the simple task of recording DK gameplay. We went from the original explanation - "Billy used a RGB to NTSC Video Converter Board to record his footage...The TRANSLATION of RGB to NTSC changes the video’s appearance and characteristics of the signal (as in a CGA monitor) to a "more MAME looking signal output"" to a completely unrelated out-there "new" explanation - accusations that a well-known arcade game player decided to "frame" Mitchell by seeding the Internet with copies of expertly-edited copies of Mitchell's actual gameplay footage to include MAME transitions and then wait many years for a third party to discover these transitions and a new TG ownership structure to introduce a dispute review system to finally take up said footage in a dispute. All of this work in explaining the presence of MAME transitions on Mitchell's tapes was then compounded by fading memories of the set-up and the degree of people's involvement at the heart of the original explanation when only a year earlier memories were clear, emphatic, and declarative.

To return to your earlier question Benasselstine, "How do we make sense of it all when there's so much lying," all we can do is discard these "explanations" since they don't add up, and we're left with Mitchell's DK tapes that have MAME artifacts for performances that were submitted and claimed as performed on original non-modified arcade hardware.

[The Evener]

Shout out to @robertsantellan for sharing this on Twitter; he received a link to the TG web archive that outlined the rules surrounding score submissions. While his specific interest on Twitter was to discuss the false use of copyright strikes against Dwayne Richard and his documentaries, I wanted to include it here as well for reference.

A common refrain in Mitchell's past rejoinders to the dispute review evidence was that the "real videos" that proved he didn't play MAME were sent to TG, but were lost by the organization. You can see the attempt to put TG in a bind despite the fact that it obtained copies of the 1.047 million and 1.052 million submission tapes.

At the time Mitchell submitted his 1.047 million tape to TG for verification, these were the rules in force.

https://web.archive.org/web/20051110...ndex.aspx?c=47

The most pertinent section for this discussion relates to videos:

"What happens to my video tape that I send you?
Make a copy of your videotape to send to Twin Galaxies. Do not send Twin Galaxies your only original copy. All videotapes submitted to Twin Galaxies become the property of Twin Galaxies and will not be returned. Since Twin Galaxies is a free service, expenses are minimized by avoiding the "return-postage" charges incurred by returning submission packages."

We already saw that Mitchell brought a copy of the 1.047 million score to London for CGEUK in August 2005 despite an Evidence Package statement that RTM took the only copy directly from Funspot when it was shown there earlier in the summer. Given that these submission rules were in force since at least 2001, perhaps a second look through the Mitchell household video collection is in order to compare his personal copy with the TG submission copy for the sake of thoroughness.

[grinder2112]

Perhaps I'm going insane, but I have a recollection of an interview snippet, with Billy Mitchell, where he's explaining that he never lies. I've been trying to find that clip, but I don't think its in King of Kong. Does anyone recognize what I'm talking about, and can direct me to a source?

[RTM]

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.

RTM REPLY - I was there for that event. Darren Harris (aka "Ghost" on the old TG forums) showed up and was playing side-by-side with Chris Ayra on "Ms Pac". It was amazing to see.

Back in those early events the "format" was that on the very last day the event winners were typically announced once the organizer was satisfied with the calculations. Walter then, typically, was given an opportunity to give some announcement which often included some accolades for one or more games.

I wish I could speak more as to the specifics of the Sunday announcements, though. In that era the gaming stopped at some point between 2-5pm (I forget when) and then the announcements typically took place but I personally would start the drive back to NYC with my friends and often missed these announcements either partially or entirely.

Gamer Pat Laffaye typically attended these post-event announcements in full and likely would be the best person to ask for a recollection. David Nelson as well as I believe that those two attended each of the early events.

[Damien Thorn]

tg copy of dk video perfect match to 2005 dk images

[lexmark]

Just for fun....

What would the odds of two different replays showing a perfect match as above?

There is a formula for working the odds out. But when the odds are obviously over a TRILLION to ONE, you don't have to bother doing sums.

Mitchells been busted again!


john

.

[The Evener]

I wanted to provide an update on a line of inquiry that was first aired in the re-opened (now closed) formal Jeremy Young dispute review thread. Following my post about CGEUK 2005 and the playback of Mitchell’s 1.047 million Donkey Kong tape here, TG member Oxfnord shared in this post that there was discussion at rllmukforum.com about a CGEUK 2005 DVD that contained photos and video content about the event. I followed up with members of the forum and was able to obtain a copy of some footage that was shared publicly back in 2006-2007 but wasn’t subsequently posted on YouTube or another video platform.

The footage is from the TG panel interview at CGEUK 2005 featuring Walter Day, Steve Sanders, Tony Temple, Billy Mitchell, Doris Self, Brian Kuh, Donald Hayes, Perry Rodgers, Shawn Cram. This interview is also captured in an existing YouTube video that was uploaded by gtwportal entitled “CGEUK 2005 - Part 1.” However, the footage I reviewed is from another camera and it includes the entire panel discussion, which wasn’t the case with the aforementioned YouTube video. The panel discussion is a point of historical interest, both for the commentary from top TG members but also when you consider that this appearance occurred roughly 16 months before the debut of the King of Kong, which provided a new inflection point for TG’s public image and controversy within the TG community.

The segment that I highlighted below begins with Steve Sanders who interjects as Walter winds up (ironically?) a discussion about the tracking and submission of MAME performances to TG:

[If the video starts at the beginning, please move forward to (32:56). Click image to start video]

Sanders: Walter, I know we're just about out of time, but you were to make an announcement about a video that we've got with us. To show.

Day: Do we have the ability to show it?

Sanders: [nods]

Day: Okay, so it turns out - [turns to Mitchell] what's your name? Oh, Billy. [quiet laughter] It turns out that Billy Mitchell has supplied us with a video tape - that's the one we're talking about? - and the video tape is of a performance on Donkey Kong. So --

Sanders: Worth the watch. It's worth the watch.

Day: Worth the watch. Yup. So essentially, you know, you hear them talking about championship level play, but you actually have to see this being done to believe it, because the level of play, the level of difficulty, is so profound, and so demanding, and so absolutely confronting and bewildering that you have to see Donkey Kong, which is the tape, being played on the level that Billy's playing it on this tape, which reaches the score --

[Unidentified]: Shhhh.

Day: Have to watch it. You have to watch it.


In summary, the video provides useful additional context where we see that Mitchell himself orchestrated the playback of the 1.047 million performance, which in turn was afforded special attention during the panel discussion and presented as a unique opportunity for audience members to witness "championship level play" for themselves.

I'm currently following up on a couple of more questions about additional video, so I may post again on this subject but at this juncture I think we've probably identified and reviewed all of the existing video related to the playback of Mitchell's 1.047 million tape at the CGEUK 2005.

[RTM]

Saturday 10/19/19, Billy Mitchell will be making two kill screen attempts: one for Pac-Man and one for Donkey Kong. Both of these runs will be done on Free Play machines, Pac-Man being at Retropalooza and Donkey Kong being at Free Play Arlington.

This is no news at all. For a player capable of a 1.05M+ score on DK and a "Perfect" score on "Pacman", a kill screen "attempt" at either game is like Tiger Woods "attempting" to make par at a masters tournament. He's done a "kill screen" so many times at each title that doing so yet again is no big deal whatsoever.

Now, if he "attempted" to beat his personal best of 1.05M+ on DK or "attempted" to do a "perfect Pacman" in under 5 hours, THAT would be a big deal. Otherwise he's just doing this, and likely additional future performances at different venues, to generate build-up for some already-planned future event where he gathers all the media to announce "something big"...not unlike what he promised on MTV back in 2000.

This set of "kill screen attempts"...and likely the future ones that no doubt will take place over time...are also intended to obfuscate public opinion from "did he cheat" to "can he score that high". Once public opinion is swayed towards the latter, the former drops off into obscurity.

With the 40th anniversaries of both "Pacman" and "Donkey Kong" coming up over then next 2 years, mark my words that Billy at some point will announce a "big event" which builds on the accumulated media pop from events such as the one today, all to score the big media payday down the line...and I'm sure with Walter in tow.