King of Kong star says “original tape” will prove his disputed scores [Updated]
Over the weekend, Donkey Kong Forum moderator Jeremy Young removed competitive video gamer Billy Mitchell’s highest claimed Donkey Kong scores from the forum after presenting credible evidence that these scores were achieved via MAME emulation rather than on actual arcade hardware. Mitchell addressed those accusations publicly for the first time on an episode of The East Side Dave show recorded Tuesday (subscription required).
After a long and meandering conversation about his career both before and after The King of Kong documentary helped raise his media profile, Mitchell did acknowledge that “the film footage that [Young] has… shows MAME play,” referring to the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Such footage would be potentially susceptible to manipulation via stitched-together recording of game inputs, and it would go against Mitchell’s claims that his scores were recorded on actual arcade hardware.
In practically the same breath, though, Mitchell tried to cast some doubt on the provenance of the footage Young used in his analysis. “I contend that if he gets the original tape or he gets the original room shot, he will see that what I say is true,” he said. “I’m not disputing what he says is true, what I’m disputing is that I want him to have the original tape.”
It’s something of an odd argument considering that Young’s source for Mitchell’s single highest score claim (a 1.062 million point game he says was achieved at Florida’s Boomers Arcade in 2010) is a tape shown at a press conference Mitchell himself helped set up to announce the new high score. If the tape shown at that press conference is MAME footage, its provenance would seem hard for Mitchell to question.
Mitchell doesn’t directly suggest Young is working from doctored or staged footage, but he does note that “original footage was given to [high score authority] Twin Galaxies. Twin Galaxies has it, or should have it, and if it’s anywhere other than Twin Galaxies, then that’s a real problem.” Mitchell added that “I’ve never even played MAME, I don’t have MAME loaded in my home…”
Interviewer Dave McDonald—who calls Mitchell a friend and “truth-teller” multiple times throughout the interview—took the argument further than Mitchell was willing to directly: “There is a tape, that is MAME, that people claim is Billy Mitchell. Everyone says the tape is MAME, the tape is MAME. Blah, blah, blah. It’s possible that it’s not even Billy’s MAME tape, that they’re trying to pass off a MAME’d tape and say it’s Billy when he had nothing to do with it.”
Twin Galaxies says it is currently investigating Young’s claims. Mitchell has not responded to a request for comment from Ars. Young was not immediately available either to respond to an emailed request for comment about Mitchell’s claims. [Update: Young has now responded, and his full defense of his sourcing is included at the bottom of this post.]
Who was there?
Mitchell also claims that extant “crowd shot” footage of his 1.06 million point game will show that former Twin Galaxies owner Pete Bouvier was with him at Boomers Arcade when the score was achieved, and thus Bouvier would have been able to provide trusted confirmation of the score. But that directly contradicts what Mitchell said at the time about Bouvier hearing about the claimed record “on the phone” and heading over after the fact.
Bouvier passed away late last year, so any video evidence of him directly witnessing Mitchell’s attempt would be highly relevant. The other primary human witness Mitchell claims for the “Boomers score,” Todd Rogers, has been largely discredited since Twin Galaxies banned him for life when they discovered his claimed Dragster time on the Atari 2600 was seemingly impossible.
But Mitchell also defended Rogers in his interview, blaming “so-called experts” and a “lynch mob mentality” for taking his records away. Mitchell also made gestures toward evidence that others have actually been able to beat Rogers’ supposedly “impossible” score, though he did not have a chance to go into much detail on that point.
Though Mitchell says he has “never had a bad interaction” with Young, he refers to some others attacking his credibility as members of a “Lonely Losers Club” that come at him out of jealousy over his prominence. “I think it’s very, very few people that fall into that category,” he added. “Most people are good people and simply have questions.”
Despite the controversy, Mitchell says he “hasn’t had this much media attention in a while,” and he appears to be reveling in the renewed spotlight, however infamous it may be.
“I go to these shows, I participate, I have my place in video game history, I have the fun I have, I spread the goodwill, and that’s what I enjoy doing,” he said. “With or without this tape I would have had that position. With or without this now I will have that position. If anybody has a problem with that, I’ll still get weekly offerings to get booked at all these shows and still have the fun I have.”
Mitchell went on to briefly contemplate what his life would be like if Twin Galaxies ends up overturning his Donkey Kong scores, and he didn’t appear too concerned. “It doesn’t matter what it is they decide because I can simply continue what I’m doing and resubmit more scores, only this time I guess I would do it in front of people when the time comes. Then we might have another group of people who might complain about it. And if they do, we’ll simply get this much more media coverage again.”
Update: Jeremy Young has responded to Ars’ request for comment with a lengthy discussion of the sourcing for his video footage of Mitchell’s games, and why he finds it reliable. We present it here in full as a response to the claims made on The East Side Dave show:
In short, the 1,047,200 tape (from King of Kong) and the 1,050,200 (the Mortgage Brokers convention) tape are sourced from Dwayne Richard. Dwayne claims these were given to him directly by Todd Rogers, by request of Billy Mitchell. The clip of 1,062,800 was recorded by Michael Sroka, who [was] working with Twin Galaxies in an official capacity at the time of that press conference.
Some more detail:
1.047M: Dwayne uploaded a copy of this to YouTube a couple years ago (~January 2016). I’m sure you’re aware that upload dates can differ from “published” dates on YouTube, so I can’t say for sure when exactly it was originally uploaded… but that it was at least publicly “published” at the above time. He played the tape on a TV and pointed a camera at it, then uploaded it in three segments. All of this uploaded footage directly matches segments shown in both the theatrical release of King of Kong and a “screener” version that has circulated over the years (and, to my knowledge, isn’t publicly or widely available).
1.05M: Dwayne uploaded this in similar fashion as the above score. He also distributed a digital copy (VHS-to-DVD rip) to various players nearly 10 years ago. This footage also matches the only known public footage of this game: a clip of the last 9:45 or so posted in 2009 by what was then a Twin Galaxies YouTube channel and is now known as “Settle It On The Screen” and managed by Michael Sroka. Sroka claims he did not have control of the channel at the time and does not know who uploaded that footage.
1:062M: There are only two known sources for this footage. The best is Michael Sroka’s, which he posted himself in the TG dispute thread. His original post occurred before there were any posts made about the MAME vs. PCB screen draw anomaly. After I made my MAME vs. PCB post, he uploaded a video of him showing the original video file on his computer and stepping through it frame-by-frame. Another person in the audience at that press conference (Dan Phillips) took a cell phone video of the proceedings and captures some of the game footage being shown. This footage is lower quality, but allows the same conclusions to be drawn regarding MAME vs. PCB.
So, in regards to video sources and their potential fabrication: I would label it so unlikely as to be impossible. The amount of foresight, patience, and technical knowledge required would be staggering. By my reckoning, Dwayne would have to:
1) Know, for over a decade, this bug existed in MAME, and not tell anyone
2) Know every potential independent source that would, in the future, publish clips of Billy’s gameplay, know exactly what that footage would contain, and whether that footage would contain the MAME signature
3) Either a) know that the press conference video is also MAME, or b) organize a conspiracy to swap the tapes being shown that day.
4) In the case of 3a…why wait this long?
5) In the case of 3b…he would have had only a few days to craft a full performance of TWO games (DK and DKJR) faithful enough to fool Billy himself AND convince someone to swap the tapes at the event.
6) Apart from 3a, he would need to craft at least 2 full-length (~2.5 hours) games to match the independent footage. These would have to match Billy’s original gameplay, pixel-for-pixel, frame-for-frame.
7) Wait, for years, for the right amount of general skepticism and technical knowledge to coalesce.I leave it to you to work all that out.
Regarding the podcast appearance, I did see it. The format of the show probably made it difficult for people to parse what was going on, but the most telling quote from Billy is probably:
“And the film footage that he has, that Jeremy has, shows MAME play. Now, I contend, that if he gets the original tape, or he gets the original room shot, he will see that what I say is true. I’m not disputing what he says. What I’m disputing is the fact that I want him to have the original tape.”
Anything else said that doesn’t directly relate to the evidence presented on DKF and TG is irrelevant. And Billy’s claim to never visit DKF or TG is interesting considering that he declares the evidence shows MAME play.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1256955