Author: Heather Alexandra / Source: Kotaku
Controversial arcade game player Billy Mitchell’s record scores have been removed from the Twin Galaxies leaderboards following a dispute earlier this year that many were performed using an arcade emulator. The ruling, which comes after a lengthy arbitration process, also bans Mitchell from further participation on the leaderboards, bringing an end to the King of Kong star’s high-score glory.
All of Mitchell’s records on Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks video game records and high scores, have been scrubbed. These marks included a 1,062,800-point score for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, as well as scores set between 2005 and 2007.
The news was announced in a statement earlier this morning noting that Mitchell’s scores would be removed in light of evidence provided by forum poster Jeremy “Xelnia” Young that Mitchell had used the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) to record his scores instead of original arcade cabinets as was previously claimed.
Using an emulator is explicitly against the rules for Donkey Kong arcade scores, which require proof the player was using a legitimate arcade cabinet as well as show footage of the player using the cab during play. The recording must also show the cabinet settings have not been altered to give advantages, something which can be done easily with emulated gameplay.
“Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Billy Mitchell’s scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards,” the staff said in a forum post.
Mitchell, who has maintained his scores are legitimate, has not yet commented on the removal of his records.
At the heart of the controversy were scores Mitchell allegedly achieved on July 31, 2010 at Boomers Arcade in Dania, Florida. Mitchell supposedly achieved back-to-back scores of 1,062,800 points in Donkey Kong and 1,270,900 in Donkey Kong Jr. The only Twin Galaxies referee to supposedly witness the score was Todd Rogers, who also recently had his scores removed from Twin Galaxies’ leaderboards after evidence indicated that his scores in the Atari 2600 game Dragster were likely to have been impossible.
In Young’s dispute, he claimed that direct-feed footage from scores, as well as other submissions from Mitchell, showed that Mitchell had used MAME. Young’s claim centered on the fact that arcade cabinets load Donkey Kong levels from one side of the screen to the other while MAME loads them in large chunks. Looking at level transitions, he concluded that Mitchell’s level transitions were consistent with those occurring in MAME.
Using this evidence, Twin Galaxies has determined that at least two of Mitchell’s scores were achieved via emulation. Among these scores are the infamous “King of Kong” score of 1,047,200. In 2005, Mitchell sent a low-quality VHS tape with that score to Funspot Arcade in Laconia, New Hampshire shortly after another player, Steve Wiebe, had surpassed Mitchell’s earlier first-place score. The events were…
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