Shownotes Transcript
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple Podcasts. A heads up to our listeners, this story includes mention of suicide. Please listen with care. Sarah, I'm afraid to ask this because I already know the answer, but are you a gamer by chance? Oh, yeah.
You know I am. Yes, I am a gamer. I love, love video games. What kind of video games do you play? I don't play any that are multiplayer, like where you're playing with someone online. I find that too scary. But I really like adventure games. Like I like all those like kind of platform games like Mario, whatever. And then games that are very open world and take like 200 hours to complete because there's all these quests and you have like a whole life and everything. That's really fun. I
I have a Switch and I've been really plugged into this game where you just open boxes and unpack them in your house. That's it. That's the whole game. And you don't have a gun or a sword or like magic? You don't have any guns or swords or magic. And if you don't put the item in the right place, you can't move to the next house. That sounds actually kind of soothing. It's so soothing. It's called unpacking. Okay, I'll see. I'll see. This is an ad for this game now.
Well, I was asking about your gaming tendencies because today I have a story for you about a grown man so obsessed with being the best arcade gamer in the world that he's willing to do anything to hold on to his high score. It's June 2005 and Billy Mitchell is at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Billy is tall with brown hair down to his shoulders and he has a neatly trimmed beard.
He's wearing his regular uniform, a dark suit with a big, loud American flag tie. Billy's feeling a little anxious today, but not about flying. He's at the airport to make sure a very important package gets to its final destination, a video game tournament in New Hampshire. See, Billy is a bit of a celebrity in the gaming world.
About six years earlier, he accomplished the first so-called perfect game on the original Pac-Man. The accomplishment made the news, and he even traveled to Japan to meet some of the game's creators. Billy also excels at the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong and is currently the world champion. But for the past year, an upstart gamer from the Pacific Northwest has been working to challenge Billy's high score. And now, the guy is heading to the tournament to try to dethrone him. ♪
Billy can't just sit back and let that happen. But Billy isn't going to the tournament to meet his rival face-to-face. Instead, he's relying on help from one of his students who's going, a tiny 79-year-old woman named Doris. Here's a picture of them at the airport together. Sarah, can you describe it for me? Okay, okay.
Billy's look is astounding. This whole photo is insane. First of all, he is like a full foot and a half taller than this old lady. Yeah. He's wearing a suit with a tie. His hair, he has so much hair on his head. And it is like long hair, but it's not fully a mullet. It looks like a helmet of hair. It's so dense. I think it's because he's post-natal.
He's put a lot of mousse in it so it's feathered. Most men would kill for this hair, but not this style. And this is like a nerd's idea of looking fancy. Yes, very much so. And Doris is like a classic old lady. She's cute and small and has short white hair, bird cartoon style.
Two sweet nerds. Well, Billie has been coaching Doris on her favorite game, Q-Bert. Doris was once the world champion in Q-Bert, but someone else beat her score, and she's on her way to the tournament in New Hampshire to reclaim her title. But Billie isn't focused on Doris' quest right now. He needs her help with something more important. He reaches into his coat and hands Doris a package to bring to the tournament officials. Billie tells Doris that delivering the tape to the proper authorities is absolutely critical.
He tells her, quote, That tape is Billy's secret weapon to protect his position as Donkey Kong champion. It contains footage of him achieving over 1 million points in the game, something nobody's ever done before. It's his ace in the hole, to be deployed only in the event that the challenger manages to beat Billy's existing high score.
Doris seems to understand where Billy's priorities lie. Here's what she says about Billy in the documentary King of Kong. He's a very devious person. He works things out to his end very well.
Calling someone devious is usually not very complimentary, but it seems to be working in some way. Yeah, it is working. But Doris doesn't even know the half of it. Billy hopes the tape will be seen as a clever way to thwart his rival. And he knows this might be the only way he can defend his title. Because while his performance on tape sure looks impressive, Billy's in-person performances aren't so hot. He needs every advantage he can get.
But in two years' time, this tape will become the center of a huge scandal. And some gaming experts argue that Billy hit his high score on an illegitimate version of the game. Billy will deny these claims. But no matter whose story you believe, the controversy will bring his world record-breaking streak to a grinding halt. And when this happens, it might finally be game over. ♪
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Billy Mitchell was one of the first real gaming celebrities. He helped popularize competitive arcade gaming and achieved world records on classic games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, earning fame, money, and prestige in the process. His quest to regain his world record, featured in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong, should have been Billy's biggest mainstream platform yet. But instead, it highlighted his history of undercutting his competition and colluding with referees.
and it led a new generation of gamers to wonder, is Billy the best ever, or is he just totally full of shit? This is a story about how massive egos, sketchy videotapes, and a dash of xenophobia turned a subculture full of nostalgic nerds into a toxic mess. Let's call it Billy Mitchell, Truth or Kong Sequences. Legend.
It's the summer of 1982 in Hollywood, Florida. 17-year-old Billy Mitchell is leafing through a copy of Joystick magazine, reading about his favorite pastime, video games. Billy is a tall and athletic high schooler who plays baseball, basketball, and football. But his heart belongs to the arcade machines in Ricky's, the chicken wing restaurant-slash-sports bar owned by his parents. In fact, he's so focused that he later says he would spend nearly 40 hours a week playing these games.
Sarah, can you read what his dad later told Oxford American Magazine about young Billy? Yeah, he says,
Yeah, that's pretty remarkable. That's a true gamer. Yeah, he sounds pretty good at it. And Billy isn't just obsessed with playing these games. He's super competitive. He wants to be the best. And while he's probably the undisputed king of arcade games at his parents' restaurant, he wants more. Billy wants to be the best in the world.
That's why he's reading this magazine. Just a few months ago, Twin Galaxies, an arcade in Iowa, announced that they would start tracking world records, since no major video game companies are doing it themselves. The owner of Twin Galaxies, a man named Walter Day, has solicited scores from arcade gamers around the country. And they've listed the top scores in a huge spread in Joystick magazine, the first time the high score results have ever been published.
When Billy reads that another player claims to have scored 1.4 million points on Donkey Kong, he's indignant. He calls Walter at Twin Galaxies and tells him that the score must have been faked. Billy adds that he has only achieved around 887,000 points in Donkey Kong, and he doesn't believe anyone could possibly be better than him.
This is a game that's played all around the world by so many people. It's one of the most popular games that's ever existed. It's pretty crazy to be like, I'm the best. There can be no one better than me. It's like you live in a small world. How do you know? Yeah, all of these nerds are about to get really, really pedantic. But Walter doesn't seem to want to handle this dispute himself. So he gives Billy the phone number of the guy holding the Donkey Kong high score. And Billy calls him up.
He later says that when he talked to the guy about the game, something wasn't right. The guy, quote, just didn't have the right answers for two players on that level talking. Billy hangs up and calls Walter back. He says he's positive the guy is faking the score. And a few weeks later, the guy admits he lied. At least, that's how Billy tells it.
Now that Twin Galaxies is acting as an official scorekeeper, Billy feels like he can finally get real recognition for his gaming skills. But he's learned an important lesson. It isn't good enough to just be the best. You have to go to extremes to protect this title from going to anyone unworthy, which, to Billy, means anyone besides himself. ♪
A couple of months after his phone call with Billy, Walter does an interview with the local news in Iowa. Walter is a lanky 33-year-old with a 70s haircut, a thick brown mustache, and the patter of a born salesman. And he's still riding high from a recent Life magazine photoshoot, which featured his arcade, Twin Galaxies, and some VIP gamers. The photo is part of an upcoming spread calling Twin Galaxies the video game capital of the world.
Now, Walter tells a local news crew that there's a movie studio interested in making a documentary about the arcade's history. But it seems like none of this hype actually pays the bills. By 1984, business has gotten so bad that Walter shuts down Twin Galaxies and skips town.
He doesn't let the failure get to him, though. He's got plenty of wacky ideas and a talent for getting media attention for them. About five years after shutting down his arcade, Walter tells a Michigan newspaper that he wants to build a $4 million museum of celebrity yearbooks. A few years later, he tries to get money for his collection of business cards. This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Like, I... But pre-internet. This is pre-internet. Okay, pre-internet. $4 million goes a long way.
You don't need to create a museum of celebrity yearbooks. That's insane. Well, Sarah, as you could probably predict, none of Walter's other schemes are anywhere near as successful as Twin Galaxies. So in the mid-90s, he decides to take advantage of the growing popularity of the internet to bring back the Twin Galaxies scoreboard, this time as an online database.
He starts styling himself as an official scorekeeper, appearing in public in a black and white striped referee shirt. One day, Walter receives a phone call that sparks yet another idea. It's from two Canadian gamers who tell him they're close to cracking the perfect game of Pac-Man. Okay, Sarah, let me explain why it's possible to have a perfect score in Pac-Man.
Unlike a lot of modern video games, most classic arcade games don't have clearly defined endings. Instead, they loop their stages and become more and more difficult. In Pac-Man, this means that the enemy ghosts get faster and the power-ups become less powerful. And because early arcade games have relatively small reserves of computer memory, if you get far enough, the game will eventually break down.
In Pac-Man, this happens at the 256th stage. To get a perfect game, you have to reach this stage without dying, which enables you to get the maximum number of points possible. 3,333,360.
I mean, that makes total sense because these games aren't like games that you're saving on your personal PlayStation or whatever. They're very primitive. Even at the time, it's like you can only go so far. And also, they're not expecting people to go that far. So there's no real precedent for a certain number. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, people have been getting insane scores in Pac-Man for years. But as far as Walter knows, nobody has ever managed a perfect game. Or at least no one has ever documented one. Someone finally reaching this milestone could be huge for the world of Pac-Man enthusiasts and for Walter. If someone cracked the perfect game, he could use this achievement to bring renewed attention to the Twin Galaxy scoreboard database.
But Walter doesn't really know these Canadian gamers. He does, however, know someone who's been playing Pac-Man for years, Billy Mitchell.
Back in the early 80s, Billy told Walter that he had reached the final stage of Pac-Man and came close to achieving a perfect game. But every time Walter asked him about doing it publicly, Billy deflected. Achieving a perfect game means sitting for a marathon gaming session about six hours long, so it is a big ask. And by the late 90s, video games had been on the back burner for Billy for a few years. He's in his early 30s now, with a one-year-old daughter and a second child on the way.
Plus, he's running his parents' restaurant and selling a line of hot sauce.
But ever the hype man, Walter sees a big media opportunity if Billy sets out to beat the Canadians to the perfect game. So he urges Billy to come out of semi-retirement and give these Canadians a run for their money. He says the perfect chance for a showdown is just on the horizon: the classic video and pinball tournament that Twin Galaxies is co-sponsoring in New Hampshire. Walter sees this as his chance to reclaim the glory days when he was at the center of the video game universe.
But he'll need Billy to return to his glory days too and prove that he is still the greatest. And Walter is ready to do anything in his power to make this happen.
Billy arrives at the Fun Spot Family Entertainment Center in central New Hampshire in May 1999. It's a 60,000 square foot entertainment complex that has mini golf, a bowling alley, a driving range, and one of the biggest indoor arcades in the U.S. with more than 500 games. But Billy is only focused on one.
Pac-Man. He's actually here a few days early. The Canadians are breathing down his neck, and he won't settle for anything other than being the first person to achieve the perfect game. Billy plays Pac-Man all weekend, hardly leaving the machines to eat or even use the bathroom. He plays until his eyes are dry and his palm is raw from maneuvering Pac-Man around the 256 mazes that make up the game. But despite his best efforts, he fails to achieve the perfect game.
Instead, one of his Canadian rivals sets a new world record just 90 points shy of a perfect run, all while putting up huge scores on several other games. Adding insult to injury, this guy even wins the Donkey Kong competition. Billy comes in second place.
You know, knowing that this guy obviously has a very intense obsession with being first and proving that he's the best, I can only imagine being second stings more than if he came in last. Yeah, well, if you're second place, that's just first loser. And Billy has failed to make the most of his big return to competitive gaming. But at least none of his competitors pulled off the perfect game either.
As the tournament wraps up, he and his rivals make a gentleman's agreement. They'll hold off on chasing the perfect Pac-Man score until next year's tournament, both as a courtesy to one another and as a way to increase hype for the event. But Billy is no gentleman. Just a few weeks later, over the Fourth of July weekend, he comes back to Fun Spot and starts playing Pac-Man again. After a while, Billy knows he has to get the first perfect game, not just for himself, but for America.
When Billy finally gets a perfect run going, a kid accidentally unplugs the machine. So Sarah, can you read what Billy tells the Tampa Bay Times about that incident? Yeah, he says, I lost everything. The kid said it was an accident, and I know it was, but he sure sounded Canadian to me.
You know, it also is just so funny that he is so conspiratorial where he thinks like, oh yeah, the Canadians sent a little kid to accidentally unplug it. It's like things just happen. Also, you're at an arcade. Kids are there. Like, what do you think happens at an arcade? People are spilling stuff and tripping over things all the time. Yeah, I refuse to let Canada be a scapegoat here. But Billy isn't about to let this kid get in the way of his glory. Two days later, after hours and hours of playing Pac-Man, he finally does it.
Billy gets the perfect game. It's a huge deal. There are journalists, cameras, and fans mobbing him. Or, so he says...
There's actually only one photo of Billy's achievement ever published, and the guy who took it is a Fun Spot Arcade employee. Sarah, can you describe this photo for us? Yeah, this photo is very funny because he's wearing formal wear to play Pac-Man. He's like wearing an American flag tie. And the whole point of this is that we're supposed to see his score and
And you can't even really see the screen of the game. Like, you can't see anything. It's just him standing there beside the physical arcade game with his thumb up. Yeah, it's a really interesting look and an interesting pose to strike. But not only that, this wasn't even at an official event like the Fun Spot tournament. This is weeks later on his own. It would be like Michael Phelps saying he got a world swimming record in practice rather than at the Olympics.
Still, Walter and Twin Galaxies are happy to record his result. And between Billy's ego and Walter's nose for publicity, they're going to capitalize on this moment and make Billy a star. A month after getting his perfect score, Billy is on stage in Las Vegas at the August 1999 Classic Gaming Expo. He's beaming with pride as he accepts an award from Walter for his accomplishments.
Billy's once again gone above and beyond. He isn't just getting a Player of the Year award, which Twin Galaxies has been giving out for a while. He's the Player of the Century, a title Walter seems to have created just for him. After receiving his award, Billy gets to play presenter himself. He hands out the Game of the Century award to, you guessed it, Pac-Man. Billy claims that, quote, Pac-Man is the most recognizable figure in the world, even more well-known than Mickey Mouse and Coca-Cola. ♪
What universe does he live in? That is simply not true. I'm sorry. It's like, yeah, it's super recognizable, but like, it's not Mickey Mouse or Coca-Cola. It just isn't. Yeah, I think it's maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Billy's victory tour is just getting started. After the Classic Gaming Expo, he's flown to Japan to attend the Tokyo Game Show.
where he's presented with a commemorative plaque by the president of Namco, the company that developed Pac-Man. Sarah, I need to show you a photo of Billy on stage with his plaque. He is in a full suit and tie, and to his left and his right are like these beautiful women in short skirts and crop tops. And it's like expo women, you know what I mean? Like you'd see them at like a car show or whatever. Booth girls. Booth girls. Booth bait is what they call it.
why is he making this so serious? Like, it should be fun. And he's just, there's no, like, lightness to him. Well, Sarah, Billy later describes this as the, quote, climactic point in his illustrious gaming career. Oh, and Walter is there too. He tags along, trying to drum up more attention for himself and Twin Galaxies. When Billy describes his trip to Japan, he claims to have been treated like a triumphant hero. He says people were constantly walking up to him and giving him gifts. In fact,
In fact, Billy consistently claims that everyone he met in Japan saw him as basically a god of video games. Here's how he describes his meeting with Namco staff on a G4 TV segment. When I was there in Japan, I asked them various questions and they said to me, "Uh, Mr. Mitchell, you know more about Pac-Man than we know. We never thought a score like this possible."
I cannot believe he did that accent and they kept that in. Outside of that, you know more about Pac-Man than we know. I'm sorry, this isn't real life. He's being so humorless about anything to do with a game. Well, Billy's story of his trip to Japan might be entirely full of shit, but now he's established his image as the reigning king of retro gaming. With a little help from Walter, he's able to trade on this reputation for years.
He finally achieves what he wanted way back in the early 80s, public recognition for playing video games. Throughout the early 2000s, gaming goes mainstream. And thanks to his achievement, both he and Walter loom large in the subculture. Billy starts showing up more and more in game magazines and on video game television channels like G4.
He's invited to make appearances at gaming conventions. And we don't know exactly how much he makes from these, but in legal filings years later, Billy says that he was paid thousands of dollars for convention appearances that happened well after his heyday. And as the official scorekeeper and validator of Billy's records, Walter and Twin Galaxies stay in the conversation as important figures in gaming.
Walter is often quoted in video game articles and pictures of him wearing his referee outfit are everywhere. By the mid-2000s, Billy and Walter are basically talking as if Billy is Bradley Cooper in Limitless. Billy tells a writer at the Oxford American that he has superhuman senses that burden him in day-to-day life.
Sarah, can you read this quote from Billy? Yeah, he says,
What the hell are you talking about? First of all, no. And second of all, you're this genius with like otherworldly senses and this is how you're spending your life? Well, listen, he's pretending he's in a house episode, but this kind of talk serves two purposes. First, it makes being good at Pac-Man seem like the pinnacle of human achievement. And second, it makes Billy seem like a legend who's worth every penny of his appearance fees.
For now, the media is eating it up. But a new challenger is approaching, ready to turn Billy into the one thing he's always despised. The loser.
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In 2004, a few years after Billy's perfect Pac-Man game, Walter is sorting through piles of VHS tapes. Each one contains footage of a world record hopeful's high score —
Today, one of the tapes stops Walter in his tracks. It shows a man named Steve Wiebe achieving a score of over 1 million points in a marathon Donkey Kong session. This beats Billy's high score by over 72,000 points. Walter is suspicious. Remember that Donkey Kong score Billy debunked back in the 80s? Walter hasn't heard of anyone breaking a million points since then. And Steve beat the record at home, not in public at an arcade tournament. And taped scores can be doctored.
Walter has to be sure that Steve's score is legit before he claims a new King of Kong. So he sends two guys to check out the machine that Steve played at his house in Redmond, Washington. And when they report back, they tell Walter that Steve got part of his Donkey Kong machine from someone named Mr. Awesome. ♪
Walter hates Mr. Awesome. They have a longstanding beef related to the world record for the game Missile Command. This connection is pretty tenuous, but Walter decides it's enough to reject Steve's tape. He claims it's because there could have been modifications to Steve's Donkey Kong machine as a part of some kind of conspiracy to take down Billy.
You know, all of this is just so intense for something that should be joyous. This instant thing of being totally suspicious, to me, like the whole reason why you want to play games is because it's fun and light. And you're also literally talking about Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, right? Yeah, we are talking about Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.
At this point, Walter and Billy's reputations are totally intertwined. Any threat to Billy is a threat to his livelihood too.
But Walter doesn't dismiss Steve entirely. American arcades have been languishing. The gaming public has mostly moved on to home consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation 2. Walter sees the publicity potential in stoking another rivalry, just like he did when he encouraged Billy to challenge the Canadians at Pac-Man. In fact, it could be just the thing he needs to bring media attention back to Twin Galaxies. So he tells Steve that playing in a central, supervised location is key to recognition of his abilities.
somewhere like Fun Spot. Walter's plan will work better than he could have ever imagined. Maybe too well? Because soon, more people than ever will know about twin galaxies. But this will be the first major step in bringing Billy down.
In June 2005, Steve Weeby walks into Fun Spot Arcade ready to prove himself. He's traveled 3,000 miles to get here, and he's determined not to go home empty-handed. Steve is in his mid-30s, and in many ways, he's basically Billy's polar opposite. He's soft-spoken, clean-shaven, and boyish. And while Billy's been a competitive gamer since he was a teen, Steve threw himself into Donkey Kong after getting laid off from his engineering job at Boeing. And now, he's good enough to compete for major world records —
Steve's story is so compelling that a documentarian has been filming him for a movie that will eventually be called "The King of Kong." Steve has made a number of taped attempts as he tries to beat Billy's record. Sarah, listen to this clip from one of them that later makes it into the movie. "I don't believe this is happening, guys." "Wipe your bottom?"
I will in a second, bud. What? Okay, bring me some toilet paper, buddy. Derek, I'm going to get the world record, Derek. Derek, I'm going to get the world record. Don't wait, don't wait. Derek. Derek, you stop it. Stop.
Okay, so what I'm learning is that this guy is like Homer Simpson. And he's like laser focused on this one thing to the point where his kid's like, please wipe my ass. Yeah, this is like him and Maggie for sure. But remember, Sarah, Walter rejected this tape. And since Twin Galaxies is the authority on gaming scores, Steve has to try and break Billy's record in person. So now he's playing Donkey Kong in front of a crowd of onlookers.
Billy isn't here, but he has several friends present, including a guy who watches over Steve's shoulder and calls Billy with updates. Steve fails to reproduce his videotaped million-point score, but his new total still beats Billy's record.
This should be Steve's triumphant moment. But his victory is short-lived. Later that night, he gets some bad news. Remember the tape that Billy gave his friend Doris back in the beginning of the episode? She's delivered it, and it shows Billy's new high score, breaking a million points. Sure, there may have been some visual glitches on the tape, and sure, Walter and Twin Galaxies refused to accept Steve's tape.
But they've decided that this one is totally above board, which means Billy is once again the reigning champ. When Steve asks if he can watch the tape, one of Billy's friends says, "No." And yes, this is just like middle school.
I think it's pretty weird that Billy and Walter are in cahoots in this way when if you're going to take something like this, this seriously, like, won't you be fair about it and not collude so that the only direct competition isn't out of the running in some way? Like, it just seems like weird and mean. Yeah, it is mean. Well, Steve is frustrated. And that's before he finds out that there may be more to the story.
Later, he'll learn that some critics claim that Billy didn't play his record-breaking game on an authentic Donkey Kong arcade machine. They claim that Billy played on software that emulated the classic Donkey Kong instead.
Sarah, here's where we have to get into the weeds for a second. There are actually a few differences between emulation and a real arcade machine. For example, arcade games are usually pretty high stress because if you mess up, the game ends and you have to start over from the beginning. But with an emulator, you can save wherever you want and redo any mistakes.
Yeah, I mean, that makes using an emulator very fun because there are older games where you want to have a place to save your game so you don't have to restart. But I do feel like for the purpose of playing Donkey Kong and getting the highest score, you shouldn't have an ability to save because then what's really the big challenge, right? Well, Billy denies that he broke the record on an emulator, but doubt about his win spreads.
For now, all Steve can do is accept defeat. He heads home to his current gig, teaching junior high, but he doesn't give up on Donkey Kong. The next summer, Steve dedicates himself to beating the new score. And finally, in August 2006, on the last day of summer break, he does it. He once again cracks a million points on a machine that Walter has already certified, which means Steve officially becomes the new world record holder.
He must be over the moon. His years of fighting against Billy, Walter, and the established video game elite have paid off. He is the best in the world. But Steve won't hold that title for long because Billy is about to take his cheating to one of the sleaziest places imaginable, his home state of Florida. ♪
2007 gets off to a rough start for Billy. The King of Kong, the documentary about his rivalry with Steve, premieres at the Slamdance Film Festival in January. The movie is compelling and critics rave about it. The King of Kong gives Billy a huge boost to his profile, but it also creates a narrative that doesn't exactly work in his favor. The movie portrays Steve as an underdog and Billy as a villain standing in his way.
You know, I feel like Billy sees himself as like this underdog who achieved so much against all odds. Like he really sees himself as the hero of his own story. So I imagine him being portrayed as the villain in a documentary that got quite popular will not bode very well for the rest of the story. ♪
Well, Billy has spent years promoting himself as the gaming world's benevolent legend, and he can't just sit back and let his reputation take this kind of a hit. So a few months after the premiere, Billy tells his side of the story to MTV. Billy says he hasn't seen the movie, but he's upset that it depicts him as, quote, a son of a gun. One of his friends compares The King of Kong to Swiss cheese because it is so full of holes.
Billy hasn't given up on being the greatest gamer of all time. So about a month later, he makes his big move at the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers annual convention in Orlando. The convention is 80s themed, and the brokers asked Billy to come sign autographs and play some classic games. He later says that he agreed to make the appearance as long as the mortgage brokers made a donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. But he's also here to play Donkey Kong and try to reclaim the world record.
the odd venue offers some key advantages. There are lots of people around who can confirm that he was present and playing, but not many who know the ins and outs of high-level arcade play. Later, Billy claims to have gone to great lengths to make sure his score is legit. In fact, he says he sent the hardware to Nintendo of America to get it authenticated. But at the convention, the only person on site who knows about video games is a Twin Galaxies referee, whose own game-high scores are later exposed as fraudulent.
It's not too different from the circumstances under which Billy achieved his perfect game of Pac-Man. Still, Billy gains about 1,000 points on Steve, and he does it. He beats Steve's record. We can only imagine how thrilled the mortgage brokers were for him.
However, Twin Galaxies doesn't publish any photos of Billy's record-setting game, despite talking up his achievement. When photos of the game play are discovered much later, they show Billy using a non-standard joystick on the machine. This joystick allows for eight directional movement rather than the standard four, a modification that makes the game much easier. And under Twin Galaxies rules, that should disqualify Billy from the scoreboards.
I mean, I do see this as Billy getting a little desperate. I feel like this could be a response to him really spinning out for being, again, portrayed as a villain in the documentary. And this just kind of reeks of desperation. Like, just play normally. Why are you still being so controversial? Well, this time, Billy is better prepared to defend himself. He might not have a photo of the score, but he does have a videotape recording of the game.
Later, critics will claim that the tape shows Billy using an emulator to achieve this record, a claim that Billy denies. But Walter and Twin Galaxies accept his score. At this point, they're either unaware of or uninterested in the bubbling controversy. Now that Billy has the record again, he's determined to hang on to it. And he has one last tactic for staying on top. Billy is about to start complaining to a new referee, a federal judge. ♪
In February 2010, more than two years after Billy's new world record, he hears news that probably makes him furious. His Donkey Kong record has been bested, again, this time by a plastic surgeon. In July, Billy sets out to regain his record at an arcade just outside Fort Lauderdale. He supposedly achieves a new record high score and then goes on to break the world record score in Donkey Kong Jr. as well. Billy claims that big crowds gather to watch him play.
But even though it's 2010 and plenty of people have smartphones and digital cameras, there is no footage or photos of him playing. And once again, the tape Billy provides as evidence causes critics to question the veracity of the video and whether it's been tampered with. The gap between Billy's public performances and his recorded scores is becoming more and more obvious to anyone who's paying attention. ♪
In March 2011, at the first annual Kong-Off at an arcade in New Jersey, Billy places seventh, far behind competitors like Steve. He does, however, take the time to snap some promotional pictures with the staff of the hotel where the competitors are staying.
Sarah, please take a look at this. I don't want to see any more photos. I'm sick of this. Okay, first of all, it's taken on like an old cell phone quality. Yeah, the screen has been dipped in Vaseline. It's Billy looking more animated than we've ever seen him because...
because to his right and his left are two women kissing him on the cheek, and he is wearing his American flag tie. He's doing a Kubrick stare, direct eye contact with the camera, and it's making me sick. Like, no, like, this isn't right.
Yeah, he looks like the Babadook. That same year, Billy finds a new enemy, a cartoon. Sarah, I'm going to show you a clip from the Cartoon Network series, Regular Show. You're not mad at us for breaking your world record, are you? It's no big deal. Not like it's the universe record or anything important. The universe record?
The universe record? It's the highest score in the whole universe. 1,279,001. Now who holds that record again? Oh yeah, me!
You know, most people would see something like this and think it's like flattering. It's like being parodied on South Park. You know what I mean? Like, hey, at least you're being acknowledged. Like, he shouldn't be in the public consciousness, yet he is. And he should be happy that people know who he is, period, because he shouldn't be known. Well, it's clearly a bit of a joke at his expense. GBF, the character who claims to own the universe record, does look a lot like Billy.
But Billy decides that this is actually a huge insult. A few years later, he sues Cartoon Network, claiming that GBF infringes on his likeness.
But the New Jersey federal judge throws the case out on the grounds that the character is a parody protected under First Amendment rights. She says, quote, "GBF appears as a non-human creature, a giant floating head with no body from outer space, while Plaintiff is a human being. And when GBF loses his title, the character literally explodes, unlike Plaintiff." But while it's true that Billy doesn't literally explode when he loses, his myth is about to be blown into pieces.
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In August 2017, a man named Jeremy Young starts looking into Billy's scores. Jeremy is a pretty private person, so we don't know a lot about him, but we do know that he's a longtime moderator of the Donkey Kong Forum and a statistics junkie. He's interested in retro games and part of a community that is scrutinizing the historical performance of players, including Billy. Jeremy is a long-time moderator of the Donkey Kong Forum
Jeremy obsessively researches the differences between authentic Donkey Kong Arcade graphics and those generated by an emulator. He says he's identified a few ways that you can tell if someone is using an emulator, and Billy's tapes have all of them. A key piece of evidence in Jeremy's findings is the footage on Billy's secret weapon tape, the one that he had Doris deliver for him. Some of the footage was included in King of Kong, so every video game obsessive can now see it for themselves.
When Jeremy presents the results of his research on the Donkey Kong forum, it shakes the community. Billy says these tapes aren't an accurate representation of his performance. He says the tapes were out of his hands for a decade and alleges that during that time, someone edited them to make him look bad.
I feel like that's highly unlikely. I mean, it is so crazy that there are tapes involved in this that it's like we're looking at the footage and we're assessing how real it is. Yeah, it's like the JFK assassination. Oh my God. Well, Jeremy's research leads Twin Galaxies to launch an investigation into Billie's scores. And this time, they're actually in a position to be a more objective authority.
Walter sold Twin Galaxies, and the new owner does not have the same affection for Billy. Eventually, Twin Galaxies agrees with Jeremy. There's no way Billy was using an authentic Donkey Kong machine. In April 2018, they remove Billy's scores from their records, including his perfect Pac-Man score, and ban him indefinitely from submitting future scores. Guinness World Records also strips his scores.
I mean, the fallout for this, as silly as it all is, is pretty intense and real. This is what Billy had been working towards for so long. And now these titles are stripped from his name. Yeah, it's his dream and it's also his livelihood. ♪
So Billy doesn't take this news lightly. He sues Twin Galaxies for defamation. In public statements, Billy claims that Twin Galaxies was defaming him for attention in order to drive traffic and ad revenue to the scoreboard's website, even though Twin Galaxies doesn't seem to be running ads on their site at this time.
In his quest for honesty in Donkey Kong scorekeeping, Jeremy has helped light a powder keg and pushed Billy to a point of desperation. And he and the gaming world are about to see Billy complete his transformation from a gamer into a boss. Nearly a year later, Billy sits behind a microphone in a conference room at the Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta. Billy is wearing a pristine white suit with his American flag tie, of course, but he's going the extra mile today with a USA pocket square.
He addresses the small crowd saying, quote, His presentation is titled The Road to Redemption. Billy has set out to rebuild his reputation and defend his legacy. But his tactics have become increasingly aggressive against the very community he helped build.
Throughout all of his legal actions, Billy maintains that he never cheated. He argues that he has eyewitness testimony that supersedes Jeremy's evidence. He claims that the allegations have caused him financial loss and emotional distress, as well as health problems such as a hernia and atrial fibrillation. He also says that his doctor of 30 years now refuses to see him after having read the allegations.
I feel like the more I get to know Billy, the more I understand there's only one thing he cares about in the world and it's this. So I do believe that maybe he did actually feel these things. And a part of me feels weirdly bad for how seriously he's taking this because it shows that he has nothing really else going on in his life. However, I think his doctor probably was like, hey,
Hey, I'm dropping you because your vibes are bad. Yeah. In Billy's delusional world, his doctor really cares about his stupid record. But Billy's persistence eventually pays off. Sort of. In 2020, Guinness reverses course. They make an announcement saying that after reviewing all the evidence, they determine there's no concrete evidence either way. So they decided to revert back to the original records. Notably, making this choice also allows them to avoid a court battle with Billy.
And then, in January of 2024, Twin Galaxies and Billy finally settle for undisclosed terms. Twin Galaxies agrees to repost Billy's record to a historical database of scores and removes their forum posts accusing him of cheating. But they continue to ban Billy from submitting future scores.
Between the Guinness and Twin Galaxies outcomes, Billy has, in a sense, won. But his reputation lies in tatters. His vindictive lawsuits aren't winning him any new fans. And he still isn't done.
In fall 2024, Billy is once again in court. He's traveled all the way to Brisbane, Australia for yet another case. He's filed several defamation lawsuits against Australian YouTuber and video game speedrunner Carl Yopes, who has made several videos covering the case against Billy. At this point, Billy is suing people for doing so much as jokingly implying that he might have cheated.
Billy argues that Carl defamed him in his videos, but not by calling him a cheater. In his videos, Carl accuses Billy of hounding another YouTuber, one who did accuse Billy of cheating, so intensely that it contributed to his eventual death by suicide. ♪
Billy is now pushing 60. He sits as his son, Billy Jr., an army officer who helps run his social media accounts, takes the stand to defend him. He watches as the defense calls high-profile YouTubers to explain things like Twitch and give their opinion of Billy's character.
Sarah, can you imagine being a lawyer or a jury member hearing the testimony of someone named Moist Critical in a lawsuit about video games? You know, if I was a jury member in this, I would do like anything to disqualify myself.
I would be like, how do I get myself out of jury duty? Put me on anything but this. Well, Billy listens as Walter calls in from Iowa to testify about their relationship. Walter acknowledges that he profited from Billy's fame and says that he still considers him a close friend. But when asked by the defense if he and Billy are a package deal, Walter replies, not lately. It's a sad end to a long relationship. But the whole lawsuit is worse.
It's been six years since Billy was first accused of cheating. And aside from a few dedicated observers, most people have moved on.
it seems like the public just doesn't care anymore. Sitting in a Brisbane courthouse, Billy no longer appears to be an embattled minor celebrity, but a vengeful has-been, fighting legal battles with a YouTuber 20 years his junior. We don't know the outcome of this lawsuit yet, but what we do know is that a quarter of a century after that perfect game of Pac-Man, Billy Mitchell has successfully written himself into the video game history books, just maybe not for the reasons he wanted.
Well, Sarah, as a resident gamer, you must have loved this one. Shut up.
How many points do you think you could get on an old four directional Pac-Man machine? Here's the thing. I really like games. Am I that good at them? Not really. I'm having a good time. So that's why this is so gross to me. Conceptually alone, this isn't so crazy to be like, I'm really good at Donkey Kong and I've, you know, I'm kind of like the best in the world. But like, none of this is fun. I'm always impressed by the ways that
Some people, not all people, but mostly men, take something that should be fun and that we should be having a nice time with and then they ruin it by making it competitive and boring. It is so crazy because also the parameters of all this seem so vague. Like you can doctor a tape. Shouldn't there be a more official way for all this to go down? Like one way of this ever working? I mean, I guess when...
Twin Galaxies started trying to keep records. They were trying to be that official body. What I find so odd about this is that there's a great business opportunity in setting Billy up to eventually fall, kind of. Like, wouldn't you want there to be a young, scrappy upstart who does eventually win and takes a record from him? And then you get to be like, and I found him too. Like, it's just bad timing.
It's like lazy marketing from these guys. Even like for wrestling, someone's not on top forever. Why be so obsessed with this guy being the best to ever do it? Yeah. I also think this highlights something for me that I find so annoying, which is everything has to turn into something serious or something to monetize, become a thing. Like,
Is it not enough to just be like really, really good at something? You got to turn it into a whole thing. You are advocating for more hobbies, fewer competitions. More hobbies, fewer competitions, fewer monetization of hobbies. Yeah. I think today's lesson is that it's good to have a hobby that you don't immediately turn into something that is commodified. And that is a lesson that I have been trying to learn for 35 years.
And I think this is the year I really get it, Sarah. I think also it's like you don't need to be the best at everything. Yeah, just be okay at stuff. Yeah, you could just, it's okay if you're not the best. Just be okay. If you're having fun, that's great.
If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
This is Billy Mitchell, Truth or Kongsequences. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamfluencersatwondery.com.
We used many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were The King of Kong, A Fistful of Quarters, directed by Seth Gordon, The Perfect Man by David Ramsey for the Oxford American, and the collected research at perfectpacman.com. Merrick Kay wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Hackey.
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