The erasure of Billy Mitchell’s decades-long history in competitive gaming came swift and sudden. The Guinness Book of World Records, gaming historians Twin Galaxies, and the court of public opinion turned their backs on him last week after it was discovered that he was using an emulator, and not a physical arcade board for his world-record Donkey Kong runs.
To some, that may not seem like a huge deal, but in a competitive world in which a tenth of a pixel or a jump over a barrel is changed by even a nanosecond, that can make the difference between glory and being three random initials on the leaderboard.
We’ve heard from his King of Kong rival Steve Wiebe, who told Variety the whole situation was “surreal” but made sense after the questionable antics on the part of Mitchell in the 2007 documentary. Now Mitchell, a hot sauce aficionado and restauranteur, has spoken to Old School Gamer Magazine at the Midwest Gaming Classic, and he’s making it clear that he’s not going down without a fight. Supposedly, he has eyewitnesses, visual proof, and data that shows his records still stand.
Everything will be transparent, everything will be available, I wish I had it in my hands right now, I wish I could hand it to you. But its taken a considerable amount of time, witnesses, documents, everything, everything will be made available to you, nothing will be withheld.
Mitchell has proven to do just about anything to stay on top of the leaderboards over the years, so it’ll be interesting to see how this strange, nerdy saga plays out.
(Via Polygon)