This post is part of a series, examining various myths and stories around Billy Mitchell’s claimed performance of Pac-Man in 1999 and his subsequent trip to the Tokyo Game Show. The first post in this series can be found here:
https://perfectpacman.com/2021/09/02/dot-one/
The supplemental material for “Dot Three” can be found here:
https://perfectpacman.com/dot-three-supplemental/
BACK IN BUSINESS
By the end of 1983, the writing seemed to be on the wall for Walter Day’s arcade. A November feature in the Gazette in Cedar Rapids declared that Day and his “Video Game Capital of the World” were on the verge of insolvency:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/548438416/
The closure of the Twin Galaxies arcade the following year heralded even tougher times for Mr. Day. On April 6, 1984, the Gazette described the arcade and scoreboard as a financial failure, adding that Day appeared to have skipped town on Ottumwa entirely:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/548023014/
The following day, as seen in the Muscatine Journal, Day had made contact with local papers, clarifying that he was out of state looking for new opportunities to settle significant debts related to the arcade:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/543440998/
While Ottumwa newspapers were reporting the sad farewell of their financially insolvent gaming center, that same month, Walter Day was back in the newspapers in Florida, pitching his idea for a massive arcade and museum in Orlando, remarking that his ideas were “too big for a one-McDonald’s town” [S1]:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980212152328/http://twingalaxies.com/4ftlaud84.html
The article, printed in Florida’s Hollywood Sun-Tattler, outlined Day’s partnership with the Mitchell family in planning this new mega-arcade, which would include a new location for Rickey’s (the Mitchell family’s restaurant chain), and an additional museum for Day’s collection of historical newspapers and yearbooks (as seen here via microfilm):
Apparently, it didn’t work out in Orlando. The following year, the Twin Galaxies arcade was reopened in Ottumwa, this time under the ownership of a young Billy Mitchell (as seen in the Ottumwa Courier):
https://newspaperarchive.com/ottumwa-courier-dec-05-1985-p-3/
We did give some consideration to the notion that the “Bill Mitchell of Fort Lauderdale” was actually the Donkey Kong cheater’s father of the same name. Obviously, it was family money either way. But further newspaper coverage indicates the stated owner was indeed the younger Billy, fresh out of high school, who in the words of the Des Moines Register “bought the arcade after competing in Ottumwa in video game ‘world championships’” [S2]:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/129397249/
In a 2017 interview with the Retro Hour, Walter Day also recalled this transfer of the TG brand to the Billy Mitchell we are all familiar with (at about 1:02:20):
I just got very tired of it, and in January of 1986, I just walked away from Twin Galaxies. The arcade continued… The arcade closed for a while, then it reopened under Billy Mitchell. Billy Mitchell personally owned the arcade for years.
https://theretrohour.com/twin-galaxies-and-classic-arcades-with-walter-day-the-retro-hour-ep91/
Going back to a subject from “Dot Two”, if Billy Mitchell and Chris Ayra really did have perfect scores on Pac-Man as Chris has claimed, it seems odd that this wouldn’t have been trotted out for publicity’s sake at the time, especially during the critical late ’83 / early ’84 window as Walter’s arcade was going under. Did Walter know of these supposed perfect scores and decide he preferred living soda can to soda can? Or did Billy decide to keep these scores secret from Walter at a time when the attention of a perfect score on Pac-Man would have helped? It’s not as if Billy saved the big reveal for when the arcade was reopened under his ownership, either. Amidst all their desperate attempts to stay relevant, somehow it just never came up.
At any rate, under the direction of Billy Mitchell, the new Twin Galaxies delved back into the realm of multi-city gaming tournaments that summer. [S3] When this didn’t pan out, Billy reinvented the location as primarily a laser tag venue, as seen in this August 1987 issue of the Ottumwa Courier [S4]:
As expected, Walter Day had high hopes for this new enterprise, as seen in the Des Moines Register:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/129397249/
The Register article makes clear that Billy was the sole new owner of Twin Galaxies, reporting that he was considering opening more sites in Iowa. And yet Walter Day, who clearly didn’t walk away for long, was only too happy to work with Billy in promoting TG’s new angle.
Interestingly, Billy seems a bit shy about this chapter in his life. (Or maybe he wants to downplay his financial connections with Twin Galaxies, or that he had jettisoned most of his classic games in favor of laser tag.) In an interview with Launch the Ball Podcast in 2016, at 48:10, the eager host asked the question:
Since you’re so successful at everything you do because of your drive, why did you never pursue maybe opening up an arcade yourself?
Billy gives a long answer about dedication to family time and such. But somehow, he totally forgets to mention that he did exactly the thing being asked, for several years of his life:
Back in the ’80s, when you’re younger, you don’t necessarily have the ability to do it. And I probably wanted to do it then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SozsWknbwVc
https://www.launchtheball.com/007-billy-mitchell-hes-hotter-than-his-sauce/
As for the scoreboard, Walter Day sold that to gamers Jeff Peters and Steve Harris, who together would eventually found the magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. However, Day wasn’t ready to fully relinquish control of his former enterprise, as he would later insist that Harris, Peters, and the U.S. National Video Game Team were required to pay himself and Billy thousands of dollars for the “rights” to submit their scores to The Guinness Book of World Records. This situation was reflected in Steve Harris’ letter to Guinness in 1986 [S5]:
Seems a little weird for Billy to be a “10% shareholder” but still be entitled to an equal cut of whatever they would call this fee. But hey, I’m sure everything was legit.
Meanwhile, Walter Day fell back to his other business ventures, of which he had no shortage. First up was his collection of celebrity yearbooks. In March 1989, the Battle Creek Enquirer conveyed Day’s high hopes for a yearbook museum:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/204692063/
On August 19, 1993, Day was featured in the local paper again, the Ottumwa Courier, showing off his collection of business cards, for which he was actively looking for investors:
https://ottumwacourier.newspaperarchive.com/ottumwa-courier/1993-08-19/page-25/
And of course, back in the Des Moines Register, a story no newspaper could turn down – Walter Day’s collection of vintage newspapers, which he hoped to sell to a museum:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/132548169/
The important takeaway here, other than Walter Day’s penchant for running with whatever assortment of business ventures might gain traction, was his talent for getting consistent press coverage for these projects. Whether this was on account of the oddity of these ventures, or Day’s ability to sell the significance of his work, or his willingness to exaggerate, or downright sheer persistence, Day left a long and lasting trail through those very newspapers he enjoyed collecting. But you needn’t take our word for this. In 1998, The Business Card Book by Lynella Grant featured a clean-shaven Mr. Day, along with the following biographical note:
https://archive.org/details/businesscardbook00gran/page/424/mode/2up
However, much like his music career, none of those other ventures panned out quite like video games. In spring of 1995, Day posted a series of messages to early Internet forums on Usenet, expressing his interest in collecting arcade games at auction for a new museum. [S6] And in July of 1995, the Twin Galaxies arcade was opened once again, under the ownership of Walter Day and unnamed “private investors”, this time in nearby Fairfield. In a feature in the Ottumwa Courier, Day called the new TG arcade the “capital of the universe”, adding that he was unaware of any other location with “such a large facility for arcade, video and computer games”. [S7]
https://ottumwacourier.newspaperarchive.com/ottumwa-courier/1995-07-12/page-3/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010216081218/http://www.twingalaxies.com/fwr1.html
The new arcade only lasted about a year, but during that time, Walter Day brought the old Twin Galaxies scoreboard back out of mothballs. Using his official email at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield (while the TG website was still under construction), Day began soliciting new high score submissions on the Usenet forums.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/qhcZojByDp4/m/jm0WmSUYQdwJ
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.nintendo/c/ip_PQe3qkx4/m/ooWSK12q35kJ
Day even felt inspired to dust off some old digs (at 1:00:40):
Well, I wore it in ‘8… ’83 originally, when we had the… what some people consider history’s first video game world championship which was on That’s Incredible. So I wore the referee shirt then. But then I really started wearing it in 1996, all the time. All the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDhFEhMezMc
Walter was not the only person turning their love for video games into a new enterprise in the late ’90s. In 1996, a company called North American Amusement Auction LLC was founded in Iowa. The signed organizers were auctioneer Dennis Lynch, Jerry Byrum (the same Jerry Byrum who managed Billy’s arcade and who today sits on the Board of Directors for Walter’s Video Game Hall of Fame), and Billy Mitchell himself. [S8]
Meanwhile, Twin Galaxies launched its brand new presence on the World Wide Web in 1997. Always the promoter of things, Day hit the ground running, organizing a multi-city event under the title “Video Game & Pinball Masters Tournament” in April of 1997:
https://web.archive.org/web/19970711095547/http://twingalaxies.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818050723/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-1997vgmt.html
And this was just for starters. In early 1998, after a few apparent delays, Twin Galaxies published its reconstructed scoreboard in the form of a book. This book filled in TG’s missing years with scores from sources like Nintendo Power, and also included over a hundred pages devoted to Walter’s personal retelling of Twin Galaxies’ history (at least the version of it he wished to tell):
https://web.archive.org/web/19980212140305/http://twingalaxies.com:80/book.htm
This book appeared to be another shoestring venture, printed by a local Fairfield outfit named Sunstar. In TG’s publicity for the book, a Deborah Roberts is identified as a “publicist for Sunstar Publishing”, while the book itself identifies Ms. Roberts as a Twin Galaxies referee [S9]:
Nevertheless, this new book led to another round of media mentions, as seen in the Akron Beacon Journal in July 1998:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/152250915/
Walter had high hopes for the book, at least according to Billy, who talks about it in Exhibit E (at 14:20):
He’s writing the book, and he says “This is unbelievable.” He says “I can’t realize all this history I’m putting in here.” He says “Do you realize this has never been done?” He says “Do you realize, when I’m done writing this book,” he says “I will”… “I”, meaning Walter Day, he says “I will be the most famous person in gaming history,” he says, “and… and you’ll be the second most famous. That’ll be cool.” And I says “Yeah, that’ll be cool.” It didn’t work that way. You know. He’s number two, and he’s a distant number two.
By this point, it was full speed ahead. The rest of 1998 saw another “Masters Tournament”, a “Coronation Day” (to declare a “Player of the Year”), a city-versus-city team tournament, and a Twin Galaxies presence at that year’s “World of Atari” convention in Las Vegas:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991105224735/http://www.gamingplanet.com/news/stories/1998/819n1.html
https://www.twingalaxies.com/the-evener/wall/9216/tg-at-40-city-vs-city-team-tournament-april-1998
https://web.archive.org/web/19980110125243/http://twingalaxies.com/calendar.html
But of course, in the late ’90s, the revived Twin Galaxies was neither the only fish in the sea, nor the biggest. By 1998, the AMD-sponsored Professional Gamers’ League was paying out significant prizes in tournaments for new games like Quake II and Starcraft, with even fourth place in each game netting over $5,000:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990922151952/http://www.pgl.com/press/981117.asp
The revived Twin Galaxies certainly had the enthusiasm and the history. What they lacked was money.
ENTER THE CANADIANS
As Walter Day went about his business, piloting Twin Galaxies into a new era, he came into contact with a group of Pac-Man players from Canada, led by soon-to-be Pac-Man champion Rick Fothergill. Rick grew up attending the arcades in Ontario, studying under (among others) the great Randy Tufts himself. In a recently published 2016 interview with current Pac-Man champion David Race, Fothergill recalled how he got his start in video games [S10]:
I started off getting interested in video games back in the early ’80s, playing Ms. Pac-Man. And it was well-respected within the city I was from, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, as being a very challenging game. The Pac-Man arcade machines were disappearing rapidly, and I liked playing that game but they were, like gone by the time I came onto the scene. So I had no choice, I had to play Ms. Pac-Man, which was a much more difficult game. I’m sure many recognize that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfQLgy5Ijts
Rick’s Canadian colleague, Neil Chapman, said of Rick’s ability on Ms. Pac-Man [S11]:
I always loved the game. But I never really understood it until I met Rick. […] When I saw what he could do, I became obsessed.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/36815113/rick-fothergill-and-neil-chapman/
In a 2005 forum post, Neil Chapman recalled Rick acquiring fast patterns for Pac-Man from a player in Tennessee. [S12] Their skill at Ms. Pac-Man is also said to have benefited from collaboration with another local player named John Ning (referenced in the above linked newspaper clip).
In a 2017 interview, Rick recalls playing against Randy Tufts in 1991, using his knowledge of eight of the hidden dots to achieve a winning score of 3,333,050. Rick goes into more detail at about 3:00:
I got there on my first man. I remember that. And I knew there was dots that regenerated on the right side. I just didn’t know exactly how many of them, right? So… on each man, I was exploring as much of the right side as I possibly could. And I’m not saying on all four men I got eight dots, cuz obviously I would’ve had a higher score than that. But I do remember specifically, on one of those four men, I did get eight dots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KhIq8akUrQ
In the 2016 interview, at 16:30, Rick recalls being aware of Chris Ayra’s 1985 score of 874,530 on Ms. Pac-Man via the Guinness Book of World Records, but not believing such a score was possible on the original game. But it didn’t matter either way for Rick, because in 1996, he crushed it with 910,350, which he video-taped for posterity:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818044733/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-MS-PAcManChampion.html
Soon afterward, Rick and Neil discovered a new arcade emulator called MAME, leading to an official submission from Neil to Twin Galaxies. Rick describes how this started the chain of events here, at 21:40:
Neil Chapman got 300 and… I don’t know, something thousand on Ms. Pac-Man. And Walter Day sent Neil an email congratulating him. And then Neil… sent an email back and said “Oh, my friend Rick can get over 900 thousand,” and… and then I ended up contacting Walter and said, “I have a video tape of 910 thousand.” And… it got sent in.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/29.ThePerfectFraudmanPart5Eye-candyCut.webm
That led to the arrangement of a conference call, a meeting of these various Pac-Man masters. This is a story that Billy loves to tell often, usually skipping to the part that is all about himself, as in Exhibit B at about 9:00:
It was always said that a perfect score on Pac-Man cannot be done… Me and a friend, we knew what the perfect score was. We had shared it with Walter Day, and we hadn’t shared it with anyone else. And as the years went on, we never bothered to do it, because there wasn’t anybody else who had the knowledge to be able to do it. Until finally a couple guys came along, who had the knowledge, and after a phone call with me… Walter set up a phone call, where me and my friend talked to these two guys. This had happened over the years. I’d get on the phone with ’em… Basically, I’d ask ’em a handful of questions, and just blow ’em away. They don’t know the answers to these questions. Nobody knows. Nobody knows except us.
Of course, there’s no way of knowing how many people called Billy over the years for the opportunity of being grilled about score splits or whatever, or if this even happened literally once ever prior to Fothergill. It seems more players were interested in stitching scores together, and (at least for a while) getting TG recognition in doing so. It’s also not clear why they would be grilling Fothergill about Pac-Man in this manner when he and Neil had already shown themselves to be Ms. Pac-Man masters.
Billy tells a slight variation in Exhibit D, at about 49:10:
And I actually got my friend Chris on the phone, and I… again, I’ve got a vivid memory. “Yeah Chris, Walter’s got a couple guys on the phone here so if you’ve got a minute… we’ll call ’em and… just blow ’em out of the water.” That was my words. “Blow ’em out of the water.”
It’s a little strange that Billy cites those as being his exacts words, along with his supposedly vivid memory for those words, as they don’t come up often in his many retellings. Usually he says something similar but different, like “blow ’em away” (as seen above). He’ll also say “get rid of ’em”, or “I’ll get rid of this guy”, or “I’ll take care of this”. [S13] Why not just say the thing that you are apparently so sure is the exact thing you said?
But maybe he’s not so sure, after all. Here’s his version from Exhibit E, at about 2:00:
And then, one day, around 1999, once again Walter called. And he said “Hey”. He said “I’ve got a guy on here from Canada.” He said, a couple of guys who say that they can do a perfect score, and that they’re gonna do it. And I says “Yeah, sure.” So I says “Okay, put ’em on the phone, and I’ll get rid of ’em.” Just like that I said it, too.
Gosh, I hope he’s not just making stuff up as he goes along!
Going back to Exhibit D, Billy continues [S14]:
I go “Let me ask you a few questions.” And I ask them a half a dozen questions that nobody in the world knows the answers to. Nobody. It’s not in any book, or anywhere. And there are no websites to speak of yet. And I fired a half a dozen questions at ’em, and they fired the answers back at me, exactly as I would have answered them. Yeah. For a moment of silence, I said to Walter, I said “Yeah, okay, these guys are for real.”
Rick remembers this sequence slightly differently, citing only one such question in the 2016 interview with David (at around 28:20):
He says “How many dots are on the right half of the screen?” And I said “Nine.” And he says “You are the first person ever to answer that correctly.” And he says “Now I know you’re for real.”
Rick’s portion of the interview cuts out prior to that quote, leaving it unclear who “he” refers to. While one might assume it was Billy to ask the question, further correspondence with David Race confirmed it was actually Chris Ayra to ask Rick about the nine dots.
It should be noted, it’s not clear why the number of these hidden dots would be considered such a secret at that time, given that the TG record book printed earlier that year already gave away that the highest possible score is 3,333,180 (under official settings).
Certain details change in Billy’s various retellings. First, it’s widely known that this phone meeting happened in 1998 [S15], but Billy often places it in 1999. Lest you think this is just a storytelling shorthand, his signed declaration with his litigation threat – the one place you would expect such details to be accurate – gives the year for this phone call as 1999:
The number of participants on this phone call also seems to fluctuate in Billy’s retellings. Most commonly, he only references the presence of himself, Walter Day, and Rick. Occasionally, he does reference the presence of Chris Ayra and Neil Chapman as well, but he has also referred to the call as a “three-way”. [S16] However, in the aforementioned Fothergill interview from 2016, at 26:30, Rick lists a total of seven people present on the call, including the noted five as well as John Ning and Mark Longridge. In fact, it would be impossible for the phone call to have taken place in 1999 as Billy says, given that one of the participants, John Ning, was sadly deceased by the end of July 1998:
https://thewalterdaycollection.com/collection/gallery/item/0745-john-ning-legendary-gamer
Around this time, Fothergill sent in a copy of his 1996 Ms. Pac-Man score, and for a time he was recognized as the world record holder. However, Rick soon got his first taste of dealing with the Twin Galaxies / Billy Mitchell team. For the full story, check out today’s supplemental material [S17], but in short, Billy soon started privately bragging that Ayra had beaten Rick’s score, but that they would sandbag it, waiting for the next printed TG book. A few months afterward, with no new book in sight, Ayra did end up submitting it after all, with the score announced by TG on April 16, 1999. Ayra’s score was then officially backdated to August 16, 1998 (the day Billy claimed Ayra achieved it), while Fothergill’s 1996 score was for some reason postdated to August 17, 1998, giving the casual observer the impression that Fothergill never actually held the record at all:
As far as original Pac-Man, gone was the story of Billy having collected “every conceivable point available in the game”. Now Billy had reverted to his claimed 1986 score of 3,312,100 (the one that was never reported anywhere until the TG book in 1998). Indeed, leading up to his first meeting with Fothergill, Billy related to the Concord Monitor that he was on a quest to “beat himself” and surpass that mark:
As to why Billy claims to have not done a perfect score while retaining the knowledge for sixteen years, in Exhibit D at 51:00, Billy attributes both laziness, and the desire to not do the score unless it could be made into a grand spectacle:
Walter brought it up a couple times, and I said to him, I go “Walter, I’m not just going to go up there and play a perfect game, for the heck of it.” I says… I specifically remember saying to him, I go “Why don’t you set something up, like in the Hard Rock Cafe in London, or something? I’ll do it there.”
Regardless, Rick Fothergill was now on the scene. Billy cites the arrival of the Canadians as the impetus for his perfect score attempts in 1999 (as heard in Exhibit D, at 50:20):
And so, me and my friend Chris, I said to him “We sat on our hands all this time – We’ve got a secret, we’ve got a secret – and we never went in any manner, in any public place and executed it. And now, Johnny-come-latelies are gonna come along and beat us to the punch.”
This supposed interaction between Billy and Chris Ayra carries some interesting subtext. The scenario we are asked to believe, that the two of them privately sat on the knowledge of Pac-Man’s maximum score for 15 years without ever achieving it, seems difficult to reconcile with Ayra so casually letting their discovery of extra points slip to Bill Bastable (and possibly others). Indeed, given reports of earlier perfect scores by both of them, it’s possible their actual conversation went more along the lines of “You realize, when Rick does his score, they’re going to say he was the first to ever do it, right?”
Interestingly, this story of being motivated by the emerging Canadians seems to stand in contrast to the recollection of Billy’s Donkey Kong friend Steve Sanders, who recalled the following at a panel at CGE UK in 2005 (starting at 20:50) :
Bill called me in ’97 or ’98 and he said, you know, “What will make me world famous is becoming”, you know, “perfect on Pac-Man.” And it did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fcJYFw4bmE
THE RULE CHANGE
Regardless of Billy’s intentions, this set the stage for a Pac-Man showdown for the ages. But before this could happen, something important had to be resolved. Up to this point, Twin Galaxies still adjudicated Pac-Man under “tournament” settings known as “3+1” (as seen in the 1998 record book). This meant players were required to use the default factory settings, granting the player three lives to start, plus a bonus life at 10,000 points. [S18] As we’ve discussed, this leaves you 180 points shy of the true maximum, since each life squandered equals nine dots uneaten.
A push was made to change TG’s official rules to allow for the true maximum possible score to be official. [S19] It has not been made clear exactly which party pushed for this change. Rick Fothergill described the change in Dwayne Richard’s documentary The Perfect Fraudman, as follows (at 54:50):
The original settings of the game were three men and one free man at 10,000. And because you can do dip switches and set it for five men, they decided to make the settings for five men, so no one in the future can ever claim they had a higher score. And the perfect score became 3,333,360.
Since we are dealing with a strict maximum score (one that isn’t all “9”s), it would be hard to say there isn’t some logic to adjusting that game’s settings to push that maximum boundary as high as possible, especially if your intention was to market this maximum score under a catchy name like “The Perfect Game”. It makes sense that players inevitably explored the garbled half of the split screen for extra points, and once regenerating points were found, it makes sense that one would desire to play a complete game with an increased number of lives in order to fully capitalize on those points, to arrive at the actual highest possible score the game will allow on a single quarter. [S20]
The problem is, regardless of the rationalization, this change away from factory settings went contrary to Twin Galaxies precedent, effectively disqualifying anyone who came before. Nibbler champion and Iowa native Tim McVey, who spent many of his teenage days in Walter Day’s original Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, recalls in this interview being perplexed by this change, starting at about 26:40 [S21]:
I don’t like it. I’ve questioned that for the longest time, and I’ll tell you why. Okay, so when Walter started tracking scores, he used the factory’s default settings. As kids, we weren’t allowed to open those machines. He didn’t open them for us. Walter didn’t own his machines. That was a third-party partnership. Those were owned by somebody else. He split the money with the machines with the owner of the machines and himself being the arcade. So they didn’t open the machines, they didn’t mess with them. Factory settings were what were used. Factory settings on Pac-Man was 3+1 lives, so that’s what the record should be. So when Billy becomes, you know, the [emphasis] first to do a perfect Pac-Man, and I see all this, and I start questioning it, I said “Why… Why did we change to 5+1?” […] And the answer I got told was “Well, it’s so that nobody could score a higher score than Billy later.” And I said “Well, wait a minute. If you’re the authority, and you’re saying 3+1 is the settings, and that’s the factory settings, and that’s the records that you’re accepting, nobody can score a higher score, right? Because you’re not going to accept it. You’re not going to allow it because you’re the authority. So why the change?” [shakes head] That’s all I ever got. So nobody can score higher. Well, it’s a theory, I don’t have any proof, but I’ve gotta believe that somebody did a 3+1, and I’m pretty sure Billy or Walter or, you know, somebody knew about it, somebody did it, somebody knew about it, and it’s hard to proclaim you did it first when there’s somebody that can come back and go “Look, I got a VHS tape, I did it a year earlier or…” you know, whatever, where somebody could argue the point. So… change the settings. You did it first because nobody’s ever done it at those settings. I don’t like it. I think it should be factory default.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPsIrzKDlZE
Robert Mruczek, who would later go on to be TG’s head referee, was similarly unimpressed with the rule change and the process behind it, comparing it to a player submitting a Donkey Kong score on 6+1 settings:
It’s also impossible to avoid the fact that this change was granted to the benefit of Billy Mitchell, Walter’s longtime business partner. Today, at Jace Hall’s Twin Galaxies and at Speedrun.com, it’s a simple matter to create a new score track with whatever rule variant you and enough colleagues agree on. But at the time, non-marathon games had one single set of rules, dictated from the scorekeeper, which everyone was expected to abide by. It’s hard to imagine Walter Day would have changed the long-standing rules on an iconic game for some random bloke just so he could score higher than the competition had ever been allowed to achieve before. In fact, it’s quite possible Billy knew full well of his intention to one day lobby for a rule change and to one day play for a maximum score, but chose instead to keep this private and allow TG’s official settings to stay at 3+1, secure in the knowledge that any unexpected challengers would be forced to play at those lower settings if they wanted to be official. [S22]
To make matters worse, this rule change wasn’t officially announced, even after Billy’s and Rick’s first meeting under the new rules in May. [S23] The Twin Galaxies site still reflected the old 3+1 rules on the website as late as 2000. The rules page even specifically says those rules were updated as of August 2, 1999 [S24]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001208012000/http://twingalaxies.com/Arcadedifficultysettings.html
And even when it was officially changed on the website, this led to less-than-maximum scores done under traditional 3+1 settings, including all scores of the “golden age”, being commingled with new scores done on more advantageous 5+1 settings [S25]:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,4877.msg61352.html#msg61352
As if the rule change wasn’t already contrived enough, it led to a circumstance where submissions for Pac-Man had to be on 3+1 settings, unless the player reached the final screen (i.e., if they were going for a perfect score); then and only then were the 5+1 settings allowed. These settings were active as late as the third edition of the TG book, printed in 2009 (as seen here on page 451) [S26]:
For these split settings (pun always intended), we were only able to find documentation confirming they were in place for the MAME platform. Note that TG’s game settings were not captured on Internet Archive for a few of these years in question. However, in asking Robert Mruczek about these settings, he confirmed that these same split settings were in effect for the original arcade platform as well, noting that it would have been especially odd for TG to implement such rules for Pac-Man only for MAME in 1999, at a time when the emulator was in its infancy.
THE “SHOWDOWN”
With renewed interest and nostalgia in classic arcade gaming, and a new series of TG-sanctioned tournaments, the staff at Funspot in New Hampshire took an interest in setting up events of their own. [S27] They soon got in touch with Walter Day, and their May 1999 tournament became an official Twin Galaxies event (the first in an annual series) [S28]:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990829171349/http://www.fosters.com/news99b/may/09/do0509e.htm
By March 10, a Twin Galaxies press release was issued, announcing the Funspot International Classic Video and Pinball Tournament, to be held on May 7-9. [S29] This event would appear to have been a late addition, based on an archived event calendar from February which did not include it but did include an “Electronicon” in June:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818050714/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Funspot.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19990221204139/http://www.twingalaxies.com:80/calendar.html
In Exhibit A, starting at 5:20, Billy describes what happened next, while characteristically talking up his competitor’s advantages and downplaying his own:
So essentially it became a race for the perfect score, mainly between me and Rick, because I was the dominant, or more active of the American players and he was of the Canadian players. And so… It’s the month of May, and I travel to Funspot, and I haven’t played Pac-Man for 12 years. [grimaces] He’s played every day. [laughs] So there’s a lot of pressure there.
In Exhibit C, at 38:00, Billy said of his arrival at the May tournament, “I hadn’t played Pac-Man in 13 years,” while emphasizing that Rick had “played continuously”. Similarly, at a Minnesota event, Billy claimed that after arcade competitions tapered off in 1986, he “literally didn’t play” for 13 years (at about 2:40):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbacFcdqw5k
For whatever it’s worth, the 1998 TG record book spoke a little differently of Billy’s gaming habits:
In hearing Billy speak about this head-to-head competition in May, one might be led to believe this was some sort of prearranged showdown. However, in Dwayne Richard’s documentary footage, Rick Fothergill talked through his own laughter over the situation, recalling their “showdown” quite differently (at 0:30):
Me, stupidly, I went and said to Bill, and Chris, “I’m going to go for the perfect Pac-Man score at that tournament, because it’s never been done.” Now, I shouldn’t have said that. I should’ve just kept the lid on.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/27.ThePerfectFraudmanPart3eye-candyCut.webm
Rick continued, describing his and Neil’s plan to be the first two to hit the perfect score – two Canadians, back-to-back. Instead, Rick arrived at Funspot, only to find a surprise waiting for him:
So as soon as we show up there, the first day of the tournament, there’s Bill Mitchell, sitting at the Pac-Man machine… saying “I don’t remember any of these patterns” and blah blah blah.
So this big Pac-Man “showdown” that Billy has spent the last 20 years talking about was a total surprise to Fothergill. You don’t even need to take Rick’s word for it. Here’s Billy, in his own words from Exhibit E, starting at 3:20:
When we actually first met in New Hampshire, he didn’t know that I was gonna be at an event he was at. And he… he arrived, and the day he arrived, he read the newspaper that said that I had arrived the evening before, or I was scheduled to arrive.
And from the sound of things, Billy did indeed give himself the benefit of a head start, beginning attempts early. Here’s a piece from the Concord Monitor, dated Friday May 7, reporting that Billy flew in from Florida “yesterday”:
Gosh, you don’t suppose Billy was hoping to snag a perfect score before Rick even set foot in the arcade, do you? Billy of course spins any failed attempts as “practice”, but given how the rest of this story plays out, it’s hard to believe Billy would have tossed away a perfect score in progress had one materialized.
It would seem Billy was given the red carpet treatment by TG’s partners at Funspot. Ken Sweet, a manager at Funspot, was even nice enough to personally pick Billy up from the airport:
Oh, but this gets even better. By the above reporting, published on Friday, stating that Billy arrived “yesterday”, one might infer that Billy arrived on Thursday. But check out this other reporting from the Associated Press (via Foster’s Daily Democrat), dated Thursday, May 6 [S30]:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990829164315/http://www.fosters.com/news99b/may/06/nh0506p.htm
So not only had Billy arrived by Wednesday, he was already there spending all afternoon playing Pac-Man. We’ve gone from the start of the event on Friday, back to Thursday, now back to at least midday Wednesday. The article doesn’t even say when Billy arrived, just that Walter Day arrived Tuesday from Iowa.
As my research colleague put it:
Interesting how the Monitor article describes Mitchell playing pre-tournament games in what would’ve been a relatively quiet Funspot during the midweek. You have to wonder how acquainted Sweet, Sawyer and Randy Lawton became with him considering all 3 were also floating around at the same time. Seems innocent enough until you learn that all 3 were “independent” witnesses for his Perfect Pac Man game less than 2 months later. They certainly weren’t 3 people who just happened to be watching some stranger play Pac Man. Sweet is described as feeling honored to pick Mitchell up at the airport – he sounds starstruck!
Another colleague wondered how well it would have gone down had Billy achieved the score prior to the start of the tournament:
I find it really surprising that Mitchell showed up two days before Fothergill set foot into Funspot to get a “head start” on their head-to-head battle before the tournament officially began. Sure, “all is fair in love and war,” but I do recall some TG players back in 1984 giving Walter Day a stink because he permitted Roy Shildt to continue playing for his Missile Command record after the tournament officially ended (in Shildt’s case, his time was extended because his machine was out of order for an extended time during the tournament). It’s food for thought: What was Mitchell going to do if he pulled off a Perfect score without any refs around?
As if this wasn’t bad enough, we have this bit from the Boston Globe coverage of this event:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/441811179/
So not only did Billy ambush the event multiple days in advance, in a possible attempt to snag the perfect score before Rick arrived, it seems he was staying up extra late, squeezing in as much Pac-Man practice as he could.
Eventually, Rick Fothergill did show up for Funspot, along with his friend Neil Chapman, and the “showdown” could begin:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Funspot1999/index.htm
There isn’t an abundance of photos from the event, but there are a few. In this photo by Roger Amsden, we see Walter Day watching one of Billy’s many Pac-Man attempts that weekend:
And here’s Billy taking a break to hang out by Ms. Pac-Man:
(Note: In that photo it looks like there are two Pac-Man cabinets, but the one on the left is actually Pac-Man Plus. There was only one actual Pac-Man cabinet for both Billy and Rick to play on at the event.) [S31]
The official event began that Friday. Pat Laffaye, who was in attendance, recalls Rick and Billy taking turns at the Pac-Man machine at the start of the event (at 3:10) [S32]:
Rick and Billy, you know, they were alternating back and forth on the Pac-Man machine, and… and they were both, I’d say within striking distance of getting the perfect Pac-Man. Each of them knew that the other could do it.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/81.PatLaffayeAndDwayneRichardChatting.webm
For whatever Billy’s account is worth, here’s what he has to say about Friday evening (from Exhibit A, starting at 6:00) [S33]:
I get past board 21, which is where it reaches maximum difficulty, and I gotta do 235 repetitive boards, which is not easy, the same thing, and that’s harder than the first 21. But I… You get past that point about 350,000. Now, I’m at 1.7 million, and I’m goin’, and I’m so happy, because I’m just gonna cruise to the split screen. And suddenly, I die in a manner I never died before. Everybody’s standing around me, and I jump up. And I got my teeth grit for the reason that I don’t want to speak. I said “I gotta go to the bathroom.” I didn’t have to go to the bathroom. I had to get out of that spot.
Now Rick sits down to play. And Rick’s playing, and he gets past board 21. Rick has played every day for 10 years. He gets past board 21, and I’m hanging around. […] He’s at two million points, and I… finally I walked away, and I went around the row of games, and I’m at the games back behind here. And when I’m back there, I’m doing… I’m playing something stupid like Bagman or something to occupy the time. […] Suddenly I’m sitting here, and I hear the [mimics Pac-Man death noise]. Nobody saw me jump.
Before we continue, Billy has said multiple times that he spent his break, during Fothergill’s game, playing Bagman. In Exhibit C, at 40:00, Billy starts to say “Burgertime”, then corrects himself to say “Bagman”. And in Exhibit D, at about 54:10, he says “I remember specifically I was playing the game Bagman.” However, in our research, we found no scores were submitted for Bagman that weekend. In fact, the results pages at CAGDC and the Funspot site both listed the Bagman machine as non-operational:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000522131708/http://www.funspotnh.com/tourny.htm
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Funspot1999/index.htm#tr
(Somewhere out there is an alternate universe where Billy Mitchell is bragging about getting the first perfect score on Bagman.)
At any rate, Rick did indeed begin a game Friday evening, which was reported to have lasted over six hours, finishing early Saturday morning at 12:15 a.m. [S34] He completed all the “blue time” boards with maximum points and without dying, but during the long ninth key stretch, he died once. This meant Rick ended nine dots short of the maximum score:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990829171349/http://www.fosters.com/news99b/may/09/do0509e.htm
The Sunday edition of the Boston Globe (linked earlier) led off their coverage of the tournament with Fothergill’s new world record on Pac-Man, noting that as many as twenty spectators had witnessed the feat:
A picture was taken of Fothergill’s new world record. Despite the camera flash, if you look very closely, you can see the “333270” (minus the millions digit):
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Funspot1999/index.htm
The tournament lasted for two more days. Billy’s close friend Stephen Krogman recalls being present, and spending “several hours throughout the weekend” coaching Billy through his “numerous” perfect score attempts that weekend:
I spent several hours throughout the weekend helping Billy Mitchell keep ‘focused’ while he make numerous attempts to get the “perfect game” on Pacman. Then in between we jumped on Burger Time where we worked on racking up 80 peppers for the almost unbeatable stage 28.
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=871
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000oZb
Boston Phoenix, a pop culture weekly, covered the event, noting specifically that Billy barely left the Pac-Man machine the entire weekend [S35]:
http://weeklywire.com/ww/05-24-99/boston_feature_1.html
It is not known whether Fothergill petitioned Billy or tournament organizers for another crack at Pac-Man, but it seems he was satisfied with his new world record, moving on to put up top scores on several other games in the spirit of the tournament.
When the event was over, Fothergill was the only player to have an officially submitted Pac-Man score from that weekend:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000226053240/http://www.twingalaxies.com/funspot_results.html
Man, Fothergill sure was killing it! A near-perfect game on Pac-Man, with time for scores on Pac-Man Plus, Outrun, Pole Position, and Turbo, while also coming within 9,000 points of breaking his own record on Ms. Pac-Man from three years prior.
There’s also this:
That was Billy’s only appearance on the weekend’s scoreboard. These scores do seem rather low, especially for Mr. “849k on my first guy”. Must be that ruthless Funspot DK machine I’ve heard about.
But more than just the scores was the glowing coverage. Reporters were on site from the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, and Foster’s Daily Democrat in Maine. And the coverage went beyond nearby print media. Gaming magazine Tips & Tricks printed coverage of the May tournament in their July issue, again giving Fothergill his own photo on page 99 along with the Pac-Man machine he had just broken the world record on:
https://archive.org/details/tips-tricks-issue-053/page/n97/mode/2up
The site Game Sages (a subsite of IGN) cast Fothergill as the star of the show, celebrating his new Pac-Man world record, and describing the excitement surrounding his Ms. Pac-Man score (without even a passing reference to Mr. Mitchell):
In fact, long lost in the depths of the Wayback Machine, we were able to find a photo of the ending of Fothergill’s Ms. Pac-Man game, courtesy of Game Sages [S36]:
The Associated Press published a piece on the tournament, which was picked up by several newspapers, including the Brattleboro Reformer, the Nashua Telegraph, and the Concord Monitor [S37]:
The previously linked Boston Globe coverage included a nice photo of Fothergill putting in time on a Ms. Pac-Man cocktail machine while Billy, a short distance away, kept trying for his Pac-Man score:
And lastly, the Boston Phoenix also lavished praise on Rick Fothergill, in his demonstration of the Ms. Pac-Man kill screen on Saturday [S38]:
http://weeklywire.com/ww/05-24-99/boston_feature_1.html
A GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT
What happened next is a topic of some contention, mostly it would seem because it casts you-know-who in a poor light.
Here is Rick Fothergill’s recollection, as told in Dwayne’s documentary King of Con, starting at about 40:10:
Me, Bill Mitchell, Neil Chapman, Chris Ayra, discussed it and decided that it’d be best if we all went head-to-head again. Be more exciting, and… give everyone like a fair chance of doing it. And… Bill Mitchell agreed… We all agreed to it. And then at the end of the tournament, on the third day, the last day, Walter Day was talking about who did what achievement, and blah blah blah, and he then announced that we had an agreement, that we were waiting until the next tournament in order to go for the perfect score on Pac-Man. And I thought, as well as Neil thought, that everything was kosher, and we would… practice, and like go for the perfect score the following year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0aqMDgEAG0
In our research, we reached out to arcade gamer and Frogger champion Pat Laffaye, who had attended this Funspot tournament, and who had a similar recollection of the “gentleman’s agreement”, as it has come to be called. Pat was not certain when the actual pact was made, deferring to the recollections of others that both the agreement and the announcement were on Sunday. [S39] But Pat did recall many other specifics about the agreement itself, and how it was announced to the crowd by Walter Day. (Note: “DR” is Dwayne Richard, “RTM” is Robert Mruczek, and “WD” is Walter Day.)
The Gentleman’s Agreement was a public “we need your attention” announcement. Now if DR says it happened on Sunday, I trust him on that. I do clearly recall I saw the speech and handshake, plus RTM was present as well, so it definitely happened Sat at 1am or Sun at 5pm IN FRONT OF THE PAC-MAN MACHINE. WD stood up on a chair and spoke of the agreement flanked by both players RF and BM. There was no mention of other Canadians or Americans such as Chris Ayra or Neil Chapman. It was specifically stated that no WR attempts were to take place until the following June, and that players agreed to refrain from playing (other than practice) until the time for the upcoming FS2 scheduled 13 months later, in June 2000.
Since we wanted to be crystal clear, we asked again if this “gentleman’s agreement” was a literal, physical handshake, which Pat was happy to confirm, adding:
The handshake occurred and the “Gentleman’s Agreement” may have been coined that way because it actually happened.
Fothergill declined our requests for a direct interview for this project, expressing a disinclination to discuss the matters of 1999 altogether. However, Rick did offer answers to a few of our questions via David Race as an intermediary, including confirmation that both the agreement and announcement happened on Sunday. [S40] Most notably, Rick clarified that it was he who first conceived of and proposed this agreement to withhold competition until the following year. Rick spoke with Neil about it before approaching Billy, who agreed on behalf of both himself and Chris Ayra, who was not present. (To be clear, despite his wording in King of Con, Rick did not hear from Ayra directly.)
As to Rick’s motivation behind proposing this agreement, he gave us permission to quote him as follows:
I was hoping to add hype to the second Funspot tournament, and we would all have a chance to compete together in a tournament setting for such an important historical achievement.
In our research, we found a March 1999 reference to a planned invitation-only Ms. Pac-Man kill screen tournament, which was to be held by Twin Galaxies at a secret location [S41]:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.marketplace/c/HeNKgDJO5_w/m/wB_6HYoNwmcJ
While Rick made no mention of this tournament to us, it does seem in line with Rick’s thinking in deferring the quest for a perfect score of Pac-Man to a prearranged competition. As my colleague put it:
Rick’s choice to promote some hype for the next Funspot tournament would have been right in Day’s wheelhouse. You have to wonder if Rick was partly inspired by Day’s plan for a head-to-head Ms. Pac tournament; it’s possible Day approached Rick about the Ms. Pac event before or shortly after his Usenet post. In any event, you could say that Rick’s proposal was in keeping with Day’s thinking around promotion, so it isn’t surprising that he would accept and promote such a proposal to the gathered Funspot crew in May 1999.
What’s interesting about this point is that Billy doesn’t particularly seem to dispute that this agreement existed, at least not publicly. [S42] In fact, it’s rare that he addresses it at all. (We will discuss one such example of him doing so in a later installment.) But what Billy does do is refer to himself and Rick “shaking hands”. In Exhibit A, at 7:50, Billy describes the end of Rick’s almost-perfect score saying “I was the first one there, I shook his hand.” In Exhibit D, at 55:20, Billy recalls “So we shook hands, and we said goodbye.”
It seems Billy has his own version of these events, which has not been publicly disclosed. He has evidently told this version to his son, also named Billy Mitchell, who Oxford American distinguished from his father with the moniker “Little Billy”. [S43] During a live Twitch stream on August 4, 2018, Little Billy brought up the topic of the “handshake agreement”, only to be promptly shushed by dear old dad. However, Little Billy did talk just long enough to say “That never even exis… happened”. (I would simply show you the clip, however Billy recently placed a copyright claim to have it taken down from YouTube. Like all serial liars, Billy Mitchell hates evidence.)
Every indication is that Rick Fothergill honored the publicly announced gentleman’s agreement. But that didn’t stop him from still putting up other scores in the meantime. Here’s Walter Day, in June 1999, announcing new high scores by Fothergill and fellow Canadian Peter Blake on Junior Pac-Man, achieved under the watchful eye of a Twin Galaxies referee at an arcade in Toronto:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010816101012/http://www.twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/breaking_news.pl
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/V5R_GAQVHlk/m/tXFfWfzmHMcJ
Billy, on the other hand, is a different story. He was back playing Pac-Man again within a month. And by a month, I mean a week. And by a week, I mean literally just a few hours later:
http://weeklywire.com/ww/05-24-99/boston_feature_1.html
Sure, this could have been just more practice. Pat Laffaye did specifically mention this reporter’s reference to us, noting his recollection that this was still within the agreed-upon realm of practice, and not actual perfect score attempts as the reporter characterized it. But again, knowing what we know now, one can only wonder if Billy would have so easily discarded a perfect score run in the ninth key stretch. [S44]
Meanwhile, in Exhibit A, at about 7:50, while making a reference to shaking Rick’s hand and giving a subtle nod to notion that he and Rick “would get together again”, Billy paints a picture as though Rick was the one returning to Funspot over and over to make more attempts:
He played up. He got to 270. I was the first one there. I shook his hand. I congratulated him. That was the world record to that point. So, that was awesome. That was the end of that time, and we left. And we would get together again, who knows when. He traveled to Funspot three times that summer. I traveled there once.
(Note: Rick did not return to Funspot “three times” that summer, but that’s a topic we’ll cover in a later installment.)
AN INVITATION
The fact of the gentleman’s agreement has been reported on many times over the years. At this point in the story, most of these retellings resume with Billy’s covert return to New Hampshire in the beginning of July, in violation of his aforementioned pledge to Rick. In our research, however, we were shocked to discover a particular wrinkle to this sequence of events we had never seen discussed. It relates to the following announcement of TG’s upcoming presence at the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, scheduled for that August [S45]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000127221138/http://www.twingalaxies.com/CLASSIC_GAMING_EXPO.html
In trying to learn the story behind this announcement, we were surprised to discover that Billy Mitchell had invited Rick Fothergill to come to CGE… and that Rick declined the offer.
Fothergill has chosen not to discuss this topic with us directly. However, David Race has previously consulted with both Rick and Billy, most notably in a conference call in 2010 where this matter was addressed. David shared with us what he knew of this invitation, providing a text message conversation between himself and Rick as corroboration. This message from David to Rick serves as an adequate peek into what was being discussed:
In short, Billy called Rick some time in June of 1999, asking him if he would be interested in going to CGE in Las Vegas in August. Rick asked if there would be a Pac-Man available to play, to which Billy replied one could be arranged. Rick did not feel particularly confident in this answer, and declined the invitation, as travel to Las Vegas would have been a considerable burden. Rick has made it clear to David that if he knew Pac-Man would be available at CGE, or if Billy had called back to confirm “Yes, we will definitely have Pac-Man there”, Rick would have agreed to attend the event, and that the two of them could then play head-to-head for the perfect score at that time. But Rick believed, having declined the ill-defined offer to attend CGE, that their original agreement still stood, and that attempts at a perfect score would wait until the following year’s Funspot tournament.
After their 2010 phone call with Billy, both David and Rick left with the impression that Billy had acknowledged that there had indeed been an initial agreement to withhold perfect score attempts until their next competition (regardless of what Billy has since told his son). Furthermore, on the call, Billy took the position that, in his eyes, Rick’s refusal to travel to CGE constituted an abrogation of that agreement, however unintended. Billy stated he thus believed he was subsequently free to attempt the perfect score at his leisure. As noted in the above text message, Billy was willing to apologize only for the “misunderstanding”.
This raises a number of questions, some of which we don’t have answers to, and some for which the answers should be obvious. Obviously, if Billy had wished to change the parameters of their agreement, this should have been made explicitly clear. But was the vaguery of Billy’s invitation perhaps by design? Was this a deliberate attempt to scuttle the publicly announced agreement, and to do so in a way that set up Fothergill as the party responsible for doing so? Also, if Rick’s failure to travel to a gaming convention in August was the justification for Billy’s breaking the agreement, then why did Billy break that agreement in July, a month before the convention Rick would ultimately fail to attend? Also, how did this turn into an announcement from Twin Galaxies that Rick would be playing Ms. Pac-Man at CGE, when it seems he hadn’t expressed any intention of attending?
Despite the theatrics and distractions, the situation can be summed up by a single line, delivered by Fothergill in Perfect Fraudman, at 1:05:30:
Chris Ayra said Bill Mitchell saw an opportunity, and he took it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFtDVuGxL8
IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY
Before we dig in to Billy’s July return to Funspot, let’s briefly touch on the question “Did Billy actually get a perfect score of Pac-Man on July 3, 1999?” (This is setting aside the various ways in which this score would have violated standing TG rules, which it seems Walter Day chose to ignore.) The long answer will be hashed out in “Dot Nine” of this series. For now, the short answer is that there is evidence for the score, and there is evidence against the score, but nothing is strictly proven either way. Rather than tackle that question right now, today’s installment will cover various details and circumstances around Billy’s July trip, many of which have fallen victim to Billy’s creative storytelling over the years.
In Exhibit C, at 40:50, Billy described his practice regimen [S46]:
I woke up every morning, thirty minutes before I had to wake up, and I played. When everyone went to bed, I stayed up thirty minutes later, and I played… a game at my house.
Billy gives a similar account in Exhibit E, at 5:30, and in Exhibit A, at 8:20, adding that his plan was to return to Funspot on the Fourth of July weekend.
Billy has a strange story about figuring out how to defeat the ghosts on the split screen shortly before his visit, or in some retellings, after he arrived at Funspot [S47]:
https://www.capitalgazette.com/ct-pacman-birthday-party-met-20150522-story.html
This is a reference to something called the “BC” park spot (something we’ll be hearing a lot more about later). This discovery is typically said to have been made just before Billy traveled to New Hampshire (such as in Exhibit A, at 57:50). But in Exhibit E, at 7:30, Billy claims this discovery was made, and I quote, “literally the night before the perfect game”.
Pat Laffaye, in a 2007 forum post, recalled speaking to Funspot manager Gary Vincent about the events leading up to Billy’s July visit, including specifically Billy’s request that his arrival and his high score attempts were to stay a secret:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=345.0
In our correspondence, Pat also provided us a quote (taken from a 2019 email to David Race), adding further elaboration:
Gary specifically mentioned to me that he got a phone call from Billy TWO WEEKS PRIOR, with one request being if Gary could provide him with a video camera and VCR for the sole purpose of submitting proof of a new WR on tape. Furthermore, that any knowledge of the WR attempt was to be a complete SECRET and that Gary was not to tell anyone. So this “event” was all setup by Billy, unbeknownst to Rick, to be a total surprise and grab the First Perfect WR spotlight just for himself.
After Billy’s visit, Funspot owner Bob Lawton proudly declared that his arcade provided Billy with a camcorder and other support:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000126182542/http://twingalaxies.com/PR-Players_Break_Records.html
Billy is reported to have arrived at Funspot on July 1 – Canada Day. While this has been characterized by others as an intentional dig at his Canadian rival, [S48] and while Billy himself often tells the story as though there were some meaning to his arrival on that day, he does say in Exhibit C at 41:00 that this timing was a coincidence.
According to Billy in his September 2019 legal threat, he began playing on Friday, July 2:
However, early coverage from Wired Magazine cites July 1 as Billy’s first day of game play:
https://www.wired.com/1999/07/gobbling-up-a-pac-man-record/
Regardless, Billy arrived to an eager welcome. In a 2018 interview with X-Cast (during the Donkey Kong dispute), Billy recalled how accommodating Funspot staff were to his clandestine visit (starting at about 6:40):
I got up there, and I arrived early, and everything was already prepared. In the case of Funspot, um, Gary had everything prepared. Quite honestly, he was terrific.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSzpjo8Oe0
On July 2, Billy claims to have had a perfect score going through somewhere in the ninth key stretch. As Billy tells the story (in Exhibit A, at about 9:00):
And I’m playing, and I get a game going, and I get it going, and I’m at 1.2 million, and this is it, place is roped off, there’s people all around, the game’s there, cameras, lights, and I’m going [mimics joystick movement]. And there’s a kid over there messing with a game. And he’s screwing with his game, and boy, you talk about somebody jumping out of their skin, he hit the plug and he knocked the game out. I’m like this. I’m fit to be tied.
Various language has been used to describe this incident. [S49] In Exhibit D, at 57:50, Billy says the kid “kicks a cord”. In Exhibit C, at 41:50, Billy says “He’s wandering around the games, he’s in the back, and he knocks the plug out.” Billy’s local Broward Palm Beach New Times would later describe the kid as “bumping the power strip”. And a later profile in the Tampa Bay Times described the kid going “under the machine” and “[jiggling] the wires”:
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1999/08/13/pac-maniac-finds-his-holy-grail/
https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/arcade-king-6320646
At the 2014 premiere of the film King of Arcades, Billy told the story as though the kid unplugged the machine on purpose (while also claiming this was his first attempt of his visit). [S50] Here he is, at 20:40:
So I go there, and I’m playin’, and on my first game I’m off and running. It’s about 1.2 million. You talk about bein’ cocky, it went through the roof, because I was beyond the difficult part. And I’m playin’ the game, and this little kid, just a wise guy, comes up and pulls the plug on the machine…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buwsWlDC9N8
Note that, while it’s possible this “kid unplugged the machine” story is more-or-less true, it’s also entirely possible that Billy had yet to get through the blue time boards as he claims, and chooses to tell the story in such a way as to say “Oh, I was so close!” Because of course the whole world works against him, and he just can’t catch a break, and any success he does get is attributable only to his determination to persevere through these most monumental of hardships.
According to Billy, this occurred right before Bob Lawton returned, who was shocked to find Billy in a livid state (as heard in Exhibit D, starting at 58:20):
What was funny was, the guy who owns the place, who’s the nicest guy you’d ever meet, he learned that I was there, and he came to say “Hi” to me. And I mean, I jumped up in the air, and I’m “Grraah!” I mean, I growled like a bear. And when I did, about seconds later, he comes around the corner, he says “Hey Billy! How ya doin’?”
Billy speaks of insistently restarting his game immediately following this alleged unplugging incident. Here are his words from Exhibit D, at 59:10:
Should I gather my breath? Should I gather my wits and try… “No. Right here. Right now.” I put another token in the machine. “I’m gonna do it right now.” And… of course, I failed. “Right now.” I mean, I wouldn’t go to the bathroom, I wouldn’t take a break, I wouldn’t get a glass of water. And so, it became a fight within myself for the entire day, and I never did it. I never finished.
He gives a similar account in Exhibit C at 42:20:
And I put the quarter in and I’m gonna do it right then. But I mean, I’m all flustered, so for the rest of the day I didn’t put it together.
It’s generally said that this “kid unplugged the machine” incident happened on July 2, but the previously linked Wired article said it happened on July 1. Additionally, a later profile in the Tampa Bay Times said Billy did not resume perfect score attempts until “two days later”, which would also be consistent with the kid story happening on July 1 (if it happened the way Billy describes at all). [S51]
Billy has an odd story he sometimes tells of going without food for days as he did his perfect score attempts. Sometimes this is attributed to some sort of dedication or perseverance, such as in the previously linked TG press release, which stated:
Mitchell, who refused to eat until he beat the Canadians for the world record, went hungry for nearly two full days.
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
However, often in his retellings, Billy attributes this to the circumstance that everything in the vicinity of Funspot was closed any time he went to get food (although this seems rather peculiar). [S52] And yet, in Exhibit D, at about 1:00:10, Billy also attributes his lack of eating to his emotional state:
The old story that I went two days without food in order to get the record, it’s true, but it’s not true for the reasons you would think. It’s true just cuz it winded up that way with me and my anger.
At any rate, Billy claims he resumed attempts the following day, still unfed. Furthermore, according to Billy, the Pac-Man machine was moved to a new, secure location, where passersby could not interfere with his game in progress (as heard in Exhibit D, at about 1:00:20) [S53]:
I go to the game, and I start playing. And they had taken the game, and they had put it in a more secure area. And they had it roped off. And nobody could get too close to the game, or too close to me, and nobody could get anywhere near the plug. And they had a floor walker, a good guy by the name of Tom, he’s like an ex-marine. And he was assigned to the area. And… he was there. I mean… they rolled out the red carpet for me.
(There is evidence which contradicts some of this story, but we’ll get to that in a later installment.)
Corey Sawyer, a friend of Billy’s, was present on July 3, describing it on a later episode of the eponymously named Kurt and Corey show as “quite a day”. [S54] Corey’s signed statement included in Billy’s 2019 legal threat seems to indicate (albeit vaguely) that Billy had made a few failed attempts on July 3:
This can be added to the failed attempts Billy made after his machine was allegedly unplugged a previous day. And yet, in 2001, Billy bragged about only dropping two quarters during his trip – one for the game the kid unplugged, and one on July 3 [S55]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011026233825/http://hub.ngenres.com/pacman_interview2.html
Later on July 3, Billy began the game in question. A brief clip of his play is seen in the Dwayne Richard documentary The Perfect Fraudman, starting at about 1:14:50. In it, we hear Billy talking to himself, hyping up what he intends to achieve:
Of all the records I’ve set… I set the world record on Donkey Kong… Donkey Kong Junior… Ms. Pac-Man world record… Pac-Man, Centipede… Burgertime… This is by far the most intense… It’s non-stop… For some reason the adrenaline is just higher… And I wouldn’t have expected that… Maybe because it’s the quest for perfection… not just a record… It’s the quest for a permanent record… One that would never be broken…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFtDVuGxL8
In a late 1999 interview, Billy recalled being in dire straits as early as the 16th board (the second-to-last “blue time” board):
There were numerous times that I had difficulties. On the 16th board I thought they had me pinned. However, I managed to get out of my problems. However, from the 21st board onward (345,000 points) I never made another bad turn until 1.9 million.
This early error is often left out of later retellings, where Billy focuses on the stretch of ninth key boards. In Exhibit A, at about 10:40, Billy recalls losing track of his ninth key pattern:
So I’m going, I’m running, I’m doing it, and I’m at a million 890 thousand, when I made my first bad turn. Just… dopey. Somehow I managed to survive, I get by, I go “Oh boy.” I go… I do it again. And again. And I’m talking to myself – luckily nobody can hear me, because they’re further back – and I says “Man, I’m losing this here.” And I’m… I did it for 200,000 points, about 20 boards, I just somehow managed to survive, continually making mistakes. And then I started to coach myself, as to what I would do. […] And I was just coaching myself a few seconds in advance, out loud, verbally, to maintain focus. And from that point all the way to the split screen, I didn’t die.
In Exhibit D, at 1:01:40, Billy tells this story as though his errors came on consecutive boards:
Somehow I survive the chaos, and I finish the board. I go “Oh, whew. Okay.” Next board, whoom, I come apart again. And there’s chaos. And somehow I survived it. Again, in the third board, I come apart, there’s chaos everywhere.
In this panel at Free Play Florida in 2014, Billy tells a story from, in his words, “When I did the first perfect Pac-Man,” explaining that the reason he went off-pattern was because a Boston reporter kept asking him questions (at about 4:00) [S56]:
So while I’m playing, they’re “Can we talk to you?”… “Yeah, what can I do for you?”… And then I’m playing, and he goes “What happened there?”… “Um, yeah, I went off-pattern. I almost died because I’m gettin’ distracted.” And I’m like… And so then, I had played so long, at one point I go… I’m playing longer than I wanted to, I go “Can you do me a favor?” “Yeah.” “Just stand here. Don’t let anyone come near this machine. I gotta go to the bathroom.” So then I go to the bathroom, then I come back, and he had guarded the machine, and I could keep playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US35ZSUPXv8
Billy often lists an assortment of reporters present for his score. In his 2018 interview with East Side Dave, he cites the Weirs Times and the Boston Herald (at about 9:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLxh9Yi5Dc
We’ll get to the Weirs Times in a bit. Of course, no such on-site coverage from the Boston Herald has ever surfaced. Also, are we to expect that these unnamed Boston reporters just hung around Funspot all day, day after day, waiting for Billy to finally get his big score?
The length of time Billy’s final game lasted is in dispute. The press release issued by Twin Galaxies within 24 hours of his score says Billy took “nearly six hours”:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
At about 16:50 in Exhibit A, Billy says it took “more than five hours”, suggesting the added time was due to distractions [S57]:
Now, everyone… we’re all trying to have fun seeing how fast we can do it. And it’s under four hours. But when I did it the first time, there was no hurry. Remember, there’s people all around. There’s reporters talking to me. There’s times when I stopped and I answered questions. So I… I took more than five hours. But… time was not a question.
The previously linked Wired article says Billy took “more than six hours”, as does this 2005 piece in the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/21/AR2005062101747_pf.html
In Exhibit E at about 6:00, Billy says “It took a little over four hours”. [S58] And yet the official entry listed it as five hours and thirty minutes, on the nose:
Of course, such an approximate time should be listed as unofficial (in regards to the time track), and of course, in Billy’s case it was not. Also, if Twin Galaxies had all three tapes, and if they were all complete (as videotape submissions should be), it’s curious that they could not simply decide on a time based on those tapes. Twin Galaxies had no problem noting specific times for other perfect scores on Pac-Man.
Billy’s stories of his game’s final stretch are even more peculiar. For starters, Billy always likes to describe large crowds witnessing his gaming feats. It seems such crowds are somehow always present any time Billy does anything so mundane as tying his shoe. In this case, Billy has put the number of people present for his claimed perfect score at “scores” (a single “score” being twenty), “a hundred”, and even as high as “a zillion”. [S59] In order to reconcile these crowds with the aforementioned story that the Pac-Man machine was placed in a secure location, it is claimed that a security rope was taken down, allowing the crowd to advance as he continued playing the final board. Again, hear Billy from Exhibit C, at about 45:10 [S60]:
So there’s a hundred people, trying to stare into a little screen, that’s ten yards away, and they’re all like this. Well, I felt bad, I’m watching, and I mean I got the joystick like this, and there’s two boards to go, and there’s this big dude in charge of security. And I look back, and I notice how many people there are there. And I pointed at him, and I went… to let the crowd forward. So they come forward for the last two boards. And now there’s people standing, and there’s some of this going on, and I mean they’re running against me.
As my research colleague remarked:
In one interview Mitchell claims “security rope” was taken down for last couple of levels??? Seriously!!!? He even goes so far as to mime the “huge crowd” surging forward and jostling him as he played the final levels? As if you would! I know I have mentioned this before – why didn’t the camera get knocked over??
Note also the Boston Globe coverage of Rick’s near-perfecto in May, citing a crowd of twenty gathering around him, trying not to disrupt his game. And that was from someone who was there (along with a Globe photographer for the photo), reporting on what they witnessed as an objective party. So if there were twenty interested parties at an actual announced competitive gaming event, what do you think the odds are there were a hundred interested spectators hanging around for Billy’s game on some open weekend? [S61]
But perhaps the most outlandish stories from that day are those about Billy’s approach to the split screen itself. In Exhibit A at about 11:40, Billy describes talking to each of Walter Day, Chris Ayra, and Rick Fothergill on the phone, all while continuing to play the split screen [S62]:
So I finally reach the split screen, and I do what you’re going to see me do. And I pull out the phone, and I call Walter, who has no idea I was there to do this. That phone call lasted however long it lasted. And then I’m sitting there, I couldn’t… I called Chris, the guy that I learned all this with, in Florida.
Billy tells the story out of order, later describing that call to Ayra (at 12:20):
I didn’t call Chris, I had somebody standing next to me call him, they go “Hey, Bill’s here at Funspot.” “No, he isn’t.” “Yeah he is, he’s right here.” He goes “He’s at he start of the split screen.” Chris says “Yeah? What’s his score? What’s the screen say?” Nobody knows that answer. Kid says “Well,” he goes, “I don’t know how many millions he has, but it’s 326,600.” Chris goes “Wow. That is true.” And that’s when Chris knew.
In Exhibit D, Billy alternatively tells the story as though he called Chris, and then solicited the stranger’s participation (at about 1:03:00):
I remember being on the split screen, putting it in the hiding spot, and calling my friend Chris. He says “Hello”, and I go “Yeah, I’m at Funspot.” I said “I’m in the hiding spot, on the split screen, with a perfect score.” He says “No way!” And I says “Okay, here.” And I pointed to a kid, who’s beyond the ropes, cuz there’s crowd control. I pointed at him. I went like this. He steps over the ropes, and I handed him the phone. I says “Talk to this guy.”
Chris’ surprise is understandable, given he was surely aware of the agreement to compete at a later tournament. (And didn’t Billy say the ropes had been taken down for “the last two boards”?)
It’s also not clear why Billy would have had to rope in some stranger’s child for this phone call, rather than a member of Funspot staff or the referee who should have been there watching his game anyway.
Here’s where stories diverge a bit. According to both Billy and Chris, Chris went online to post about Billy’s perfect score in progress. [S63] (If this post did exist, it does not appear to have survived in any public venue.) Billy’s stories suggest that Fothergill saw this post, leading to him calling Billy, as Billy describes in Exhibit A (at 12:00):
And I couldn’t believe it, then my phone rings and it’s Rick. And I answer the phone, I go “Hello” [mimics playing game while talking on phone] I mean, just like this. And he goes “Bill, you ruined my life!”
However, in answering our questions, David Race relayed portions of a text conversation he’d had with Rick Fothergill in September 2019, as they both watched the Exhibit A video. Notable are the three following remarks from Fothergill [S64]:
This is the first time I have seen this video. I was not aware he was there until I had called him, the timing was coincidental.
I am not aware of any message Chris Ayra posted on July 3, 1999
I congratulated him, I said nothing about him ruining my life in any context including a possible joke!
For what it’s worth, Walter Day recalls being on the phone with Billy as he finished his game (seen in this G4TV segment at about 2:10) [S65]:
He’s got the telephone on his shoulder. And I hear him do it. He says “Okay, I did it.” And then the people got on the phone and verified it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYAsbljHCGk
As if all of that wasn’t enough, in Exhibit E, Billy also claims to have done an impromptu interview with someone from the Boston Herald while on the split screen (starting at 6:10):
There was… a guy from the Boston Herald who was constantly walking up to the game, interviewing me in the middle of the game. There were times when I stopped. And actually, on the final board, I actually stopped on the final board, as I was playing the final board, and I actually did an interview in the midst of playing the game.
Of course, this supposed interview done during the climactic moments of his claimed perfect score has never surfaced.
[UPDATE] – My research collaborators and I continued our investigation even after the publication of this series. And in our continued search, we did find this blurb by Chris Wright in a subsequent edition of the Boston Phoenix, released on July 9th:
Chris Wright is the same reporter who authored the extensive Boston Phoenix coverage of the May tournament cited earlier. This is an interesting find, however it still doesn’t appear to be a match for Billy’s story about being interviewed during the split screen by someone from, as he put it, the “Boston Herald”. The quotes here appear to be in a post-game context, and Wright offers no indication he witnessed any portion of Billy’s claimed successful run himself. His illustration of being “alarmed” to see Billy at Funspot indicates a spontaneity to Wright’s visit – in other words, that he just swung by to have some fun, and not to cover any story he was expecting to encounter. Note that Wright was also not listed by Billy as a witness for his Pac-Man score in legal interrogatories. (See special interrogatory number four.)
https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/02/new-billy-mitchell-testimony/
As for the matter of whether or not Billy actually completed the perfect score, the relevance of Wright’s reporting will be hashed out in the updated “Dot Nine”. In the meantime, it turns out there was technically a Boston reporter at Funspot that day, and so further references in “Dot Three” have been edited accordingly. [END UPDATE]
But here’s a more important question: Why is Billy allegedly phoning everyone and doing interviews, acting as though the deed is done, giving away his secret sneak attack to his primary opponent, when (so he says) he still has one board left to clear? He claims that literally just the day before this, he had a perfect score in progress when a kid unplugged the machine out of nowhere. There’s also the possibility that the power could go out, or that some rando could walk up and interfere, or that his camera could get knocked over and broken, or that it runs out of tape or battery. Surely, if he was serious about this, he would seal the deal, and then make the final calls, would he not?
One can’t help but be reminded of the eccentricity and confidence shown in his old Donkey Kong scores, hitting exact marks and then killing off the extra lives, something which many have said no competitive gamer would ever do. And we all know how that story turned out.
The ending time of this alleged monumental feat of gaming history is also not known. The Funspot website says Billy finished his game at 4:45 p.m.: [S66]
https://www.funspotnh.com/-Articles/pc-billymitchell.htm
In a 2005 Q&A, Billy said that he finished the game “probably about 6:00 p.m.” (heard here at 4:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIbF3mLyd_I
Alternatively, in his 2019 legal threat, he cited the time as “Sometime after 4pm”:
I’m still waiting for Billy to say of any score “I did the score, and this time, there was no fanfare, and no one cared.”
We’re definitely not done discussing this score, but for now, we’d like to point back to the testimony of Pat Laffaye. Not only was Pat in attendance for the May tournament, he showed up at Funspot the day after Billy’s score. [S67] With regard to many of Billy’s stories that day, Pat recalls hearing just the opposite from none other than Funspot manager Gary Vincent:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=7070.0
We reached out to Pat and asked about this comment, specifically seeking what details he had in mind when posting this. Each of these items will be elaborated on later in this series, but for now, what Pat recalls learning from his conversation with Gary on July 4 is as follows:
– No public announcement (GV was told to keep it a BIG secret in spite of violating the Gentleman’s Agreement)
– No media (no press release about the attempt as BM travel plans were secret and WR expectation by July 4th)
– No crowds (no interest and no one is going to watch potentially 6 hour games on multiple consecutive days)
– No Senior TG Ref present (hence the need for FS to provide video recording equipment to capture on tape)
ONE PHOTO
A photograph was taken, presumably later the same day of Billy’s score, which eventually made its way to the cover of local paper Weirs Times on July 15 [S68]:
In a circa 2009 phone interview with the Special Delivery Show (starring East Side Dave), at about 7:30, Billy attributes this photo to a “gentleman from the Weirs Times”:
I did the perfect game, I turned around and I gave ’em the thumbs-up, and it just so happens a gentleman from the Weirs Times snapped a picture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIxnz8OPapQ
That would make sense, right? Weirs Times took the photo, Weirs Times published it. What’s wrong with that?
There’s a big problem with this story, but let’s start with the little problem. We can see the photo credit on the paper, and it’s Tom Fisher. Tom is the ex-marine Billy describes, allegedly assigned to guard the area around his game. Tom himself supplied a signed statement with Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, wherein he describes his duties that day:
The reason this is only a “little” problem is that Tom, while being employed at Funspot, was indeed also on staff at Weirs Times. You see, Funspot and Weirs Times are both located on the same block of the same street, and are owned by the same people, the Lawton family. If you’ve been paying attention, there are a few familiar names on this list of Weirs Times staff from 1997 (seen on page 13):
http://gencourt.state.nh.us/SofS_Archives/1997/house/HB220H.pdf
So Billy’s out would be to argue that Tom was there that day in his duties with Weirs Times, rather than in his duties with Funspot. Of course, this doesn’t line up with Billy’s repeated references to Tom “guarding the game” and such. It also doesn’t line up with Tom’s signed statement, which makes no mention whatsoever of him working on behalf of Weirs Times that day (but which does for some reason mention his prior work on nuclear submarines). It should also be noted that photography and site reporting do not correspond to Tom’s listed Weirs Times duties of “Copy Editor” and “Circulation”. What does line up, however, is Tom taking a photo while on the clock at Funspot, and that photo later being used by Funspot for their own wall displays:
The point of Billy’s story is to impress on people that Weirs Times sent a reporter to cover the story, when they did not. Yes, Tom is technically “a gentleman from the Weirs Times”, but he was literally working at his other job. Apparently, he didn’t even bring a camera – his statement above says he had to use Billy’s! [S69] If Weirs Times did want to do a story on a video gaming event at Funspot, they would send an actual news correspondent, which is what happened when they sent the late Roger Amsden to the May tournament, where he took this photo we saw earlier [S70]:
Weirs Times didn’t even do any original writing for the July score. The text included with the photo was just a reprint of the Twin Galaxies press release [S71]:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
So if that’s the “little” problem with Billy’s story of the thumbs-up photo, what’s the “big” problem?
In his stories, Billy likes to commingle the May and July events. To that end, he will sometimes cite reporters who genuinely were present at Funspot in May, and who did report on Fothergill’s new world record at the actual tournament, while carefully giving the listener the impression that those reporters were also present for his later visit in July. At other times, he outright says those reporters were present in July, such as at 8:40 here:
Funspot knew I was coming. They had the area, they had it roped off. They had a particular floor walker, his name was Tom. He was a marine, he was the kind of guy that just looks at you and you back up. He was there. He was guarding the game. There was media there, there was the Boston Phoenix, the Boston Tribune, there was a radio station, and there was a local newspaper, the Weirs Times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9EYBfhJIB8
We’ve discussed Weirs Times. The “Boston Tribune” sounds impressive, until you discover there hasn’t been a printed newspaper by that name since 1933. Also, while the full trail of media coverage is a topic for “Dot Four”, the only piece of this supposedly extensive Boston coverage we’ve found was the blurb from Chris Wright of the Boston Phoenix, who judging by his account wasn’t expecting to see Billy still playing Pac-Man during his holiday weekend visit to Funspot. Of course, this is consistent with accounts that Billy intended his visit to be a secret. (Yes, Billy has a silly story about sending out a press release in advance of his July visit. We’ll get to that in a later installment.)
And this brings us to the “big” problem with Billy’s story behind the Tom Fisher photo, which is that he started attributing it to a “Boston reporter” instead. Here Billy is, from Exhibit A, at about 12:40:
So I’m on the phone and I’m talking, and I finish, and there’s reporters and… That’s where the thumbs up comes in. I’m standing here, and I finish the game, and there’s a Boston reporter there. He goes “You did it! Quote!” And I go “I never gotta play that damn thing again.”
In that presentation, Billy pantomimes this sequence, including doing the thumbs-up pose:
In Exhibit C, at about 44:40, Billy does another reenactment, this time specifically attributing the photo to a reporter from Boston Phoenix:
And when I finally got the perfect score, I’m standing like this, and I turned around. There’s a reporter from the Boston Phoenix there, and he says… I said “Bang!” And that’s that photo.
While Chris Wright of the Boston Phoenix was at Funspot at some point that day, there’s been no indication he was present for the conclusion of Billy’s game, or that he took any such photo. Indeed, a blurb from Wright in a subsequent issue of Phoenix did not include any photo. Rather, in referring to “that photo”, Billy makes it clear we are to understand this as the genesis of the widely distributed Tom Fisher photo, the only such photo (allegedly) from that day known to exist. This understanding is so clear, the person uploading the video to YouTube inserted that very photo for reference:
Regardless of Billy’s attempts to attribute the photo to whoever he wants to in any given retelling, and regardless of the obvious dearth of media presence that day, it’s stunning that no other photos from the day of Billy’s big score have surfaced in almost 21 years. None were included in Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, despite a lengthy section dedicated to authenticating this score primarily on the word of witnesses (his friends).
Billy consistently describes the photo as happening at the immediate conclusion of his game, in dramatic fashion. Of course, the stool Billy sat on and the camcorder he used to record his game are gone. [S72] The game also seems to be back in attract mode (rather than parked on the split screen with the perfect score), with no clear picture of the game’s screen or the final score having ever been taken. [S73]
So we don’t even get to see the score on the machine? Gosh, this all seems so familiar…
Investigating this Tom Fisher photo took us on another very weird turn. Around this time, Billy had a series of photos taken, adjacent to various Pac-Man-related arcade machines, all wearing the same outfit each time, right down to the exact same tie, and where his phone was clipped to his belt. And yet, at least one of these photos (the Tom Fisher one) was definitely taken at Funspot, and at least one (and probably two) were taken at Rickey’s, the Mitchell family’s restaurant in Florida [S74]:
We also couldn’t help but notice, particularly with the two Florida photos on the bottom, that the necktie was not always put on the same way. (The star on the knot is a giveaway.) How many times did this guy dress up in the exact same outfit?
The logo on the shirt, for those curious, is for the aforementioned North American Amusement Auction LLC, Billy’s business venture with Jerry Byrum. Maybe, since it’s a company shirt, he had multiples of it? (Just think of how many identical referee shirts Walter Day must own. At least, I hope he owns more than two.)
Lastly, Billy claims the Tom Fisher photo as the genesis of his thumbs-up pose (such as in Exhibit C at about 44:50). No word on what really prompted Billy’s thumbs-up pose, which had also been attributed to Todd Rogers over the years [S75], and of course the Fonz long before that. But for what it’s worth, the thumbs-up was independently referred to as “The Pac-Man salute” in this earlier Namco promotional video from E3 in May of 1999 (seen at about 6:10 here):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY2qX9r59h0
Of course, in Billy’s case, we all know what the thumbs-up really represents:
AVOIDING THE COMPETITION
As said before, there are a number of other stories and details around this game, which we will cover in future installments. But there is one more point to go over today. If you don’t know the facts behind the story, and if you just listen to Billy talk about the importance of competition, and his insistence on doing things the right way and in the right venue, he can sound very convincing. And yet, Billy pathetically ducked away under proverbial cover of night to sneak in and get the score before Rick Fothergill knew it. [S76]
Even worse, Billy proceeded to tell everyone the opposite story. Here’s a portion from a 2016 CNN piece titled “Meet the ‘Neil Armstrong’ of Pac-Man” (as part of a series on “The Eighties”). See if you notice anything odd about this reporting:
Now, compare that narrative to the actual series of events outlined above.
What’s most interesting is that (assuming his July score was legitimate) Billy’s quotes in the piece are not technically lies. There was a competition on a weekend. Billy did indeed see Rick come nine dots short of a perfect score. And then Billy returned over a month later to play and get a score, which was “live” in the sense that he didn’t play in his own basement in the privacy of his home. But if you simply read it as written, you’d come away with an entirely different impression – probably the same impression the CNN writer was left with after asking Billy about this trivial (in the grand scheme of things) video game story.
There’s a lot more to this topic, as we’ll expand on later down the line. But another thing Billy likes to do is quote imaginary naysayers who try to get him to doubt himself. Here he is in Exhibit B, starting at about 10:40:
People say “Well, I don’t think… I’ll bet you can’t do it.” I’ll say “Don’t bet your life.” You know, people say “You could lose.” I says “I could lose, but not today.”
The only real risk Billy incurred was that he would be there so long that Rick Fothergill would randomly show up and ask “Hey, how long have you been here?” Billy even gives this away a moment later, saying “I would simply not come home without having done it.”
But what, you might ask, would have happened if Billy had just stayed there for one more week, continuing to play and play on that Funspot Pac-Man machine?
Folks, allow me to introduce you to July 10, 1999 “National Family Fun Day”, sponsored by Namco, in conjunction with Twin Galaxies, who described it as “a day of championships throughout America”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000407064338/http://twingalaxies.com/contestcal2_99.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000510174742/http://www.twingalaxies.com/National_Family_Fun_Day.html
Notice how all games at these events are to be placed on “Twin Galaxies tournament settings”. As if the collaboration between Namco and Twin Galaxies wasn’t explicit enough, this article makes it clear:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001015205710/http://www.fgnonline.com/news/7868.html
Going by the TG website, there were actually two locations in New Hampshire for this national event, one being good ol’ Funspot:
A Twin Galaxies press release was issued late June, again making it clear this was a collaboration between TG and Namco Cybertainment (the arcade facility division of Namco USA), and announcing the intention that this be an annual event:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000126075624/http://twingalaxies.com/PR-Family_Fun_Day.html
Walter Day was also promoting it on Usenet in June, again reiterating that scores achieved at these events were eligible for the next edition of the TG book of records:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.video.classic/c/RQ7iNDJdEO8/m/OV5WDB0L5iUJ
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade/c/ZgLoApZkDus/m/rOG-rv_bznIJ
Sure enough, Funspot was represented in the final results with nine submitted scores, including a modest 44,750 on Pac-Man by none other than Ken Sweet:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001003014639/http://twingalaxies.com/National_Video_Game_Scores.html
Gosh, this Namco thing was tailor-made for a big Pac-Man competition! Or at least a big score. And what a way it would be to kick off this hopefully annual event, to have something this historic achieved there. And Pac-Man was an eligible game. It’s just so weird that Billy wouldn’t wait another week to do it at that event. Isn’t this the guy who revels in the ferocity of head-to-head competition, of doing big scores under pressure?
But that’s what makes this whole stunt of Billy’s so ridiculous (and his “I love competition” doublespeak even more ridiculous). He didn’t just duck in after the Funspot event in May. He didn’t just break a witnessed handshake agreement to withhold further attempts until both players could go head-to-head. He eschewed a national Namco event, the perfect event, all to cut in ahead of time, just to make sure his rival didn’t get an opportunity to compete. That’s how badly Billy wanted to avoid the fire of competition.
Ah, but the so-called “first perfect game of Pac-Man” is only the beginning of this story! Join us right here again for the next installment, where we watch the news make its way (slowly) across the wire, while we try not to get run over by the Walter Day hype train.
Very interesting Walter C.
Can’t wait for an indepth review of the “King of Kong” scam. (that is if the powers controling such a high profile, qnd revenue generating topic allow you to even do one)
Here, I” give you factoids you won’t find in the Seth Gordon scripted fairytale that the public thinks is real.
Did you know Billy Mitchells 1982 WR score of 874,300 that was central to the main event in the story was in fact beat by Tim Sczerby in August of 2000 , 3 years before Steve?
Did you know Walter and Billy were aware of Tim but obviously allowed for and were complicit in covering up and disenfranchising Tim from what was his own topic matter?
Did you know Billy had 3 years to beat Tim back, but never did?
Did you know the producers of the so-called documentary lied and intentionally covered up Tims performance through slander when they initially stated Tims performance was “Constantly Disputed and Impossible to verify” as the initial reason for excluding Tim and stealing Tims topic matter for their own profit?
Did you know that intentionally altering a matter of official documented historic record, re-writing it to ones own benit while disenfranchising another in the process, then selling the altered content to the public as historical fact via a “so called documentary” while taking money for the same under false pretenses is legally a crime no matter how “entertaining” one may think the end made up story is?
Did you know that old TG and the film makers are indeed guilty of the previously stated actions/crime which to this day put a major shit stain on the Twin Galaxies brand name no matter who owns it?
Did you know tens of thousands of dollars were made by others from stealing and exploiting Tims topc matter and earned right to title?
Did you know Tim, the real life record breaker and holder the the film is based on, was only formally notified of the film on 8/17/07, the day the film opened?
P.S.
Walter C.
Did you know Billy actually called and congratulated Tim in the fall of 2000 for beating his 1982 WR score only to pretend Tim didn’t exist when the very same topic matter became marketable and profitable via that so-called “documentary?
Did you know that the original “anolog” VHS taped video of Tims 8/16/2000 WR performance, now over 21 years old, was always availible for viewing since 8/16/2000 and was NEVER “Constantly Disputed” nor “Impossible to Verify” as initially stated to justify robbing Tim from inclusion in what historically is his own topic?
Did you know the filmmakers got caught lying again when they stated……. “In our Twin Galaxies assisted efforts to locate Tim led to one dead end after another”……yada……yada…………
.This was obviously another failed attempt to justify robbing Tim! Couldn’t “track him down” huh? FOOL PUHLEEEEESE!
This is why Billy and Walter contacted Tim after he originally broke Billys record in 2000 and also the very day the film opened in 2007 because…. “they couldn’t track him down”? ….HUH?!
Several other staggeringly ignorant lies as to the reason Tim was cheated,robbed and slanderd out of history also blew up in their faces untill they finally decided to go with the the ” more interesting story” excuse when in fact they knew nothing of Tims story to begin with, so how can they say what was more interesting by comparison? Yup, yet another staggeringly ignorant excuse to those that can add 2+2, but some how remains the current justification even though its still no excuse for covering uo what essentialy a crime.
Walter C. you seriously need to talk some people that were involved with those events at the time and I don’t mean the ones who were bribed with life rights contracts to what is in reality stolen topic material.
You’d be doing yourself a great diservice in your work if you didn’t
This is Ken Sweet and I’m honored to be in your article, even if I think you were insinuating I may be involved in some sort of shenanigans. At least someone noticed me! 😂
I was the creator of the Funspot Tournament, the NH Pro Videogame Team, a former TG referee, the former VP of the American Classic Arcade Museum, former game industry writer, columnist, reviewer, and content creator, and a former Namco, Twin Galaxies, and Funspot employee. And I think that’s all the stuff I guess is relevant here.
Yup, I sure did pick up Billy from the airport to facilitate the arrival of the world’s only real classic gaming celebrity (at the time) to bring him to the arcade. That’s true! I don’t remember saying I was honored, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t have been. I picked lots of people up. Some of them even stayed over my house (I see you crazy Canadians).
After all this time I find this article and wonder… why does it matter that I scored so low when I gave Pac-Man a go? Jeez, I don’t even play Pac-Man. Tough crowd. I can do better if you just give me a second chance. 😂
*Co-creator of Funspot classic tourney with Walter Day and Gary Vincent, co-founder of the NHPVGT with Corey Sawyer. Really, there’s a lot of people involved in creating anything!
Sorry, I needed to make sure I gave credit where it’s due. Still, the NH tourneys / teams pre-2005 wouldn’t have happened without me. Pretty proud of that, too. 😁
Howdy Ken! My name’s Walter. I’m sincerely glad to hear from you. Hope you’re doing well.
I’m glad you find the series interesting, even if you were cast in an uncomfortable role of some scrutiny. I do hope you understand that, while the evidence shows there were a lot of shenanigans behind Billy’s various stunts and stories over the years, we’re not trying to suggest everyone involved in those stories were privy to any shenanigans. Certainly some were (such as Rob Childs and Todd Rogers in Billy’s Boomers stunt in 2010), but just as surely, some folks just happened to be in the area while shenanigans happened. And sometimes, I hate to say it, some people believe they were present for something that did not happen the way they thought it happened. (See my recent video on Billy’s “Music City Con”, linked on this site’s home page, for an example of that.) Our job as historians and researchers is to tease apart these distinctions, to take the evidence for what it is, and derive any conclusions from that (or, when appropriate, leave the conclusions for the reader). And not personally knowing any of the figures involved makes it easier for us to look at the evidence dispassionately. As long as you respect where we’re coming from on that, we can go from there.
You just so happen to be someone I’d be interested in talking to about some of this, having been a party to all these goings on. I do wish to be clear that, while it would normally be proper to seek out your input prior to a project like this, we chose to be careful, given that the central figure in this series is a known unreasonable litigant, and that we do call him a serial liar (which he is). Thus, for practical concerns, we chose not to involve anyone we thought might possibly tell Mr. Mitchell about this project in advance, as it was being developed. But since the cat’s well out of the bag now, I would definitely be interested in chatting with you further. I wasn’t aware you were a Namco employee? (Unless you’re referring to your role in orchestrating the Namco Family Fun Day event at Funspot.) We also don’t even have to talk about Billy-specific matters at all. I’d be interested in hearing about your role in Funspot and ACAM, about your involvement in organizing the early Funspot tournaments and such, and any other gaming topics you’d like to discuss.
Anyway, if you are down for a chat, or even like a proper interview on YouTube or something, lemme know. I’m easy to find on Twitter, @ersatz_cats, or you can email me at ersatzcats@gmail. (I haven’t set up any email through this site yet.)
And no biggie on the Pac-Man score, lol. I’m pretty sure that beats my PB… at least for now. 😉
By way of explanation on the Namco question: I was the assistant manager at Aladdin’s Castle in the SteepleGate Mall in Concord NH, which was owned by Namco. When I read Walter Day’s book, I contacted him to ask about running contests. Then I wrestled Namco into letting me run a tourney, and did so during an ice storm with the mall closed, but it was still publicized and successful enough. I also ran another event on consoles at a Days Inn during this time. Then I brought the idea for a larger tournament to Space Center in Hooksett, who were considering it, and then, while visiting Funspot (with the New Hampshire Pro Video Game Team I had formed wirh Corey Sawyer), realized it was by far the better venue for contests, my team’s practice days, and for TG to work with. Gary Vincent suggested that they’d be willing to host contests, so I got Walter in touch with Gary, and Bob Lawton hired me as a manager shortly thereafter. That’s how the tourneys at Funspot started, along with an explanation of my Namco relationship and my employment. Would have answered earlier, got busy and forgot about the thread.
To be clear, nah, I’m not interested in talking about Billy. I don’t see how anything I can say would prove anything beyond what I and others have already stated and seen with my own eyes. However, please keep in mind that it’s not unusual for the people who work at the arcade to be the ones who witness records and such, so it’s no mystery that Gary, myself, Tom, Randy, or Bob witnessed several records or had social involvements with many players. That’s not really a conspiracy, it’s just that we ran the place and saw what happened. The people I just listed, in order, were an operations manager, two managers, a fulltime game repairman, and the arcade owner in the list above, so at least one or two of us was almost always there.