A deal is made after a long argument. Above Donkey Kong.
In the 1980s, it seemed like everyone with an extra quarter was playing the arcade game Donkey Kong, which involved ramping up ramps and climbing ladders while dodging barrels hurled by a giant monkey.
For most players, the video game provided a few minutes of excitement before the inevitable defeat. But a handful of top players had the superhuman ability to save Pauline, the damsel in distress, time and time again, achieving one of the highest scores not only in their own arcade, but in the entire world.
Now a settlement has been reached in a long-running dispute over arcade gamer Billy Mitchell's disputed world records.
As the arcade boom of the 1980s faded, some gamers continued to pursue high scores, often playing on their own machines in basements and garages, long after most gamers had moved on to personal computers and home consoles.
People not immersed in that world first had a chance to hear about Mr. Mitchell in the critically acclaimed 2007 documentary, “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” It told the story of Steve Wiebe and his quest to be recognized as the first person to reach a million points in the game, beating a record set by Mr. Mitchell years earlier.
Mr. Mitchell wore the black hat in that film, which, according to The New York Times review, portrayed him as “a pretentious, manipulative swine.”
He successfully challenged Wiebe's high score and set a new one himself, but that performance remained under a cloud in the film. The battle for the records didn't stop there, with Mr. Mitchell eventually achieving even higher scores from 2007 to 2010. But Twin Galaxies, which tracks and records video game performance, invalidated Mr. Mitchell's scores in 2018 after an investigation .
According to the group's rules, record setters must play their games using an original circuit board from a Donkey Kong machine. Twin Galaxies' investigation revealed that two of Mr Mitchell's record scores had been used using a modified machine.
Mr Mitchell vowed at the time that the fight was not over and filed a defamation suit. That lawsuit was finally settled last week.
“I am relieved and satisfied to have reached this resolution after an ordeal of almost six years and I look forward to pursuing my unfinished business elsewhere,” said Mr Mitchell. said on social media. He referred to his data as being “restored.”
Still, Twin Galaxies said Mr. Mitchell scores would not be added again to the main rankings that keep running records and that he was still banned from the Twin Galaxies competition. Instead, it said they would be placed in a “historical database.” It also said it would remove from online display a thread on the site discussing the dispute and “all related statements and articles.”
Twin Galaxies says this historical database is “literally copied from the system acquired during the 2014 acquisition of Twin Galaxies. It serves as an unaltered, historical snapshot that preserves achievements and achievements that predate current TG ownership and modern assessment protocols.”
It said the historical database “remains static and closed off. No new entries or changes can be made.”
David Tashroudian, an attorney for Twin Galaxies, told technology news site Ars Technica“There would be excessive costs involved, and both sides faced a lot of uncertainty during the trial, and they wanted to settle the case on their own terms without putting it before a jury.”
Mr. Mitchell's recovered scores are between 1,040,000 and 1,060,000. But time goes on and players get better.
The intense, lengthy and sometimes bitter dispute centered on figures that have long since been surpassed. The current record, as reported by Twin Galaxies, belongs to Robbie Lakeman. It's 1,272,800.