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 Nine” can be found here:
https://perfectpacman.com/dot-nine-supplemental/
“Dot Nine” has been updated since it was first published. The original version can be seen here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211003000453/https://perfectpacman.com/2021/09/30/dot-nine/
DISQUALIFICATIONS
Today, we’ll discuss the evidence and arguments we and others have accumulated both for and against Billy’s claimed Pac-Man score of 3,333,360 on July 3, 1999. Remember that I am not here to tell you what you want to hear. I am here to tell you the truth, which you may like or not.
The first category of things to discuss are potential grounds for disqualification. This basically means, “Even if we assume that Billy played a complete game on an actual Pac-Man cabinet and hit a score of 3,333,360, his game might still not be official.” There are many reasons why a given historical game performance might not be considered “official”, such as not being fully recorded on video in an era when that was an expectation, or (depending on the game) an inability to verify the settings used.
In 2012, classic arcade gamer Dwayne Richard released two documentaries, King of Con and Perfect Fraudman, both of which discussed Billy’s Pac-Man claims extensively. Both of these films relied on the premise that, if Billy did achieve a perfect score in July 1999, he may have taken an unpermitted number of breaks to do so. [S1] Recall how Pac-Man has safe spots which, when entered properly, allow the player to effectively put the game on hold, as the ghosts circle a predictable pattern due to poor AI. These ad hoc pauses allow a player to resume their game an hour, a day, or hypothetically even months later, as long as the game remains powered on. [S2]
It’s never been made clear exactly how many breaks Billy took during his claimed perfect score, nor how long they were. Pat Laffaye, who unknowingly arrived at Funspot the day after Billy’s score, recalls hearing from Funspot manager Gary Vincent that multiple breaks were taken [S3]:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,7058.msg77900.html#msg77900
This raised some eyebrows among long-timers at Twin Galaxies, given how strictly regulated breaks were at various marathon events over the years. However, even among those same long-timers, what the exact rules around these breaks were are in dispute, with players offering differing assertions based largely on their memories of how these events from years ago were adjudicated. And with some games (including Nibbler), it seems these break rules weren’t applied at all. [S4]
In 2003, Robert Mruczek authored a new official marathoning policy for Twin Galaxies, expressly allowing at-will breaks on many arcade games:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/109910-Official-TG-Policy-Marathoning-v1-0
It’s hard to deny that these rules were crafted to retroactively accommodate Billy’s game in 1999, given that “Pac-Man type” games are used as an example of an exception. Note however that even with this concession, such breaks were still only allowed if they’re temporary. Thus, if Billy did use an indefinite hiding spot, even by these accommodating 2003 rules, Twin Galaxies should have disqualified his score.
With all of that said, it’s not clear whether marathoning rules should apply to basic high score attempts at all. The regulation of breaks during marathon attempts was originally a Guinness World Records rule, owing to their adjudication of things like “Most consecutive hours balancing a book on your head”. It would surely be the standard if one wished to set the record for “Most consecutive hours playing Galaga”, but that’s different from “Highest marathon score on Galaga”, just as much as a high score record is different from a speedrun record.
Despite Billy’s stories of press releases, the evidence shows these July 1999 perfect score attempts were an unannounced ambush, to be kept within a confidential circle until the deed could be declared done. We’ve discussed how such an ambush is anti-competitive and unsporting, but this would also appear to be a basis for formal disqualification. By 1999, the Twin Galaxies submission rules noted a distinction for “mature” games. (In this context, “mature” means the game itself is older, not that it features age-restricted content.) While the author may have underestimated the frequency at which classic arcade high score records would be broken in the coming decades, the rules for these games made clear that Twin Galaxies would be skeptical of any surprise ambushes on these older games:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990417083823/http://twingalaxies.com/theRulesintrod.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19991006214540/http://twingalaxies.com/Rules1.html
If that last section sounds like it means TG intends to have staff in person at your live record attempt, another page on basement scores makes it clear that’s exactly what they mean:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991007030744/http://twingalaxies.com/Rules6.html
On one hand, this wasn’t exactly a “basement”. It was at Funspot, an established arcade. On the other, this was not any sort of traditional live event. In fact, as we’ve established, Billy went out of his way to make sure even key people like Walter Day and Rick Fothergill were unaware of his visit (a fact he himself admitted many times until that became inconvenient).
Under a section titled “No Photographs Required in Certain Contests”, the author explains that photographs are waived during Twin Galaxies-sanctioned events:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991103204714/http://twingalaxies.com/Rules4.html
Perhaps this is another reason why Billy tried so hard to fashion his July visit as some sort of head-to-head competition when it was not. Still, this makes it even more noteworthy that Billy didn’t wait for Namco’s National Family Fun Day the following weekend. That was a legit tournament! By rule, no photo would’ve been required – just the word of a referee, if one was present.
So what happens if you don’t follow the “basement” rules, but you do have a referee present? The rules make that clear, too:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991103204714/http://twingalaxies.com/Rules4.html
Again, those were the active TG rules as captured in November 1999. The only exception given is for TG-sanctioned tournaments, as we discussed. This requirement for photographs is reiterated later down the page:
In Billy’s court testimony, he claims his Pac-Man score was verified by “referee”:
However, TG’s own records make clear this was never intended as a “referee” score. It was listed for years on the scoreboard with verification method “video” (from the guy who never submits taped scores), as seen in this capture in 2006:
Furthermore, Billy himself seems to be under the impression that nobody present was a referee at the time of the score (heard here with East Side Dave, at 28:00) [S5]:
There were Funspot people there. They were terrific, they were… so accommodating. Okay, there was news people there. There was a crowd there. I think there were people there that eventually became referees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLxh9Yi5Dc
Much as Billy may wish to emphasize referee rules, they don’t apply here in any way. But let’s say for the sake of argument that this is all a goof, and this really was supposed to be a “referee” score, despite the rules prohibiting referee scores at anything other than a sanctioned event. Who exactly would the referee be?
Here’s the list of active TG referees in late 1999:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991008174736/http://twingalaxies.com/listofreferees.html
The only applicable name is Ken Sweet, a manager at Funspot. (He’s the guy who picked up Billy at the airport for the May event.) Helpfully, Ken submitted a signed statement as part of Billy’s September 2019 legal threat. Let’s see what he has to say:
That’s nice of Ken to amplify Billy’s lie about there being some big announcement ahead of time. Of course, such a tepid statement can’t help but be technically true, as Billy did indeed tell Gary Vincent of his intention to sneak in and play Pac-Man, but to call it an “announcement” is quite generous. That said, let’s continue:
“Referees”, plural and unnamed? Interesting claim, from the only actual TG referee in attendance. (We’ll also get more into this supposed crowd Billy had to be protected from in a moment.)
Continuing:
I do appreciate that Ken was not willing to lie and say he saw the final score when he did not. However, given Billy’s stories of crowds surging him at the end of his game, it does seem at least a little strange that Ken would be on crowd control duty specifically and yet would somehow not be present for the final score.
All of this certainly piqued the curiosity of one of my research colleagues:
It makes you question why this guy who undoubtedly was there and would’ve seen the score… didn’t? He was the closest thing to a referee present.
Going back to the TG arcade rules linked above, here’s what they have to say about witnesses:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991006214540/http://twingalaxies.com/Rules1.html
Granted, the reasons given for why the referee must witness the final score don’t directly apply to original Pac-Man: The game didn’t allow multiple buy-ins, and it would be silly to think someone else walked up and got 333,360 (missing the millions digit) for Billy to claim as his own. But the reasons given for this rule are not all-encompassing. More importantly, these rules don’t say “Sure, we’ll make exceptions if you can argue your game doesn’t need witnesses, even if your game is ‘mature’, and even if you don’t announce your score attempt to us ahead of time.”
I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Billy’s violation of the often-discussed gentleman’s agreement, which while certainly unsporting, doesn’t necessarily pose grounds by itself for disqualification (not without some sort of sportsmanship clause, which the TG rules of the time did not explicitly include).
Much less frequently discussed, however, is the topic of glitch abuse. Today, speedrunners revel in breaking games in half, but this was an explicit deviation from Twin Galaxies practices, which governed game play as the game designers intended. Very few people, not even ardent Billy critic Dwayne Richard, have made a big deal of the fact that the collection of the phantom dots on the right side, which boost the score by 540 points (90 points on each of six lives), is effectively glitch abuse. These dots are the result of an unintended mechanic, being produced by code gone awry. They even regenerate with each life lost, unlike every other dot in the game.
You don’t need to take my word for it. In Exhibit E, at about 8:30, the host asks about a feature on the split screen, to which Billy’s response was:
Everything at the end of the game is a glitch.
Three years after Billy’s Pac-Man score, there was a controversy around a seemingly impossible time of 32.04 seconds allegedly set by Todd Rogers on the Atari 2600 game Barnstorming. This discussion was plagued by TG policy of secret submissions, and thus secret strategies, with people speculating how Todd could have achieved a time so low within the rules. One of the honest TG referees, Wolff Morrow, made it clear that some special glitch that would enable Todd to fly faster than anyone else would be disallowed:
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/10989-%C2%A0barnstorming-game-1-3204-what-the/page/6/#comments
In fact, then-TG head referee Ron Corcoran (a noted scumbag, and friend of Billy’s) was in agreement that such a special “trick” would have been disallowed [S6]:
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/10989-%C2%A0barnstorming-game-1-3204-what-the/page/8/#comments
This blanket policy against bugs and glitches continued for several years:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060327120240/http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=47
But in the case of Pac-Man, it doesn’t seem any discussion of glitch abuse was taken seriously. We can wonder whether these same rules would have been overlooked the same way for a competing player, showing up unannounced, in advance of an agreed upon contest, using some controversial exploit while making liberal use of indefinite breaks on their way to claim an official perfect score before Billy was back up to speed. However, it seems everyone else involved played within the rules and the spirit of competition. And their reward has been to watch Billy be praised for his maneuverings by the very people presenting themselves to the public as neutral.
At the end of the day, in a setting like a court of law, it would be hard to argue that Billy’s score should be disqualified on any one of these bases, for the simple fact that Twin Galaxies (as piloted by Billy’s friend and promoter Walter Day) was the de facto competitive gaming authority of the time. The rules were whatever TG chose them to be. [S7] For years, the game was adjudicated on 3+1 settings, for a maximum of four lives. The moment Walter decided TG would change to allow 5+1 settings, that was now the rule. A game tactic was a “glitch” if and only if Twin Galaxies said it was. TG could’ve literally said “You can take breaks on Pac-Man, and no other game”, and that would’ve been the rule. And as we’ve seen with Billy’s scores in the ’80s, any trip to any arcade becomes a “tournament” if TG decides they want certain scores to be retroactively official.
However, this is not an appeal to the Twin Galaxies of old, an organization which no longer exists. This is an appeal to the gaming public, and to people who care about competitive gaming history. Yes, we’ve all seen King of Kong, but researching this topic reveals the nepotism has gone so much further than what was seen in the movie. The old Twin Galaxies was not in any way, shape, or form any sort of impartial arbiter whatsoever for its partners like Billy Mitchell. There was no debate on whether a rule would be changed for Billy, just like there was no nomination process for his “award”. Every rule was adjusted for Billy, every allowance granted, and when he ambushed Walter Day with a surprise trip to Funspot, in clear violation of the written rules, it was simply admitted anyway. The favoritism and rule-pretzeling becomes even more stark when set in contrast to the unwelcoming treatment of Billy’s competitors (like Rick Fothergill, and later Steve Wiebe), or those who were outright excluded (like Bill Bastable). [S8] Then one must give consideration to those legitimate competitors whose names we do not know, because they were written out of gaming history altogether in favor of Walter Day’s inner circle. All of this is to say, as an historical adjudicator, old Twin Galaxies does not have the least bit of credibility.
With all of that said, we can also choose to set the entire question of Twin Galaxies adjudication aside, and look at the evidence we have. Even if we can prove that Billy violated some contemporary Twin Galaxies rule about length of breaks or whatever, it’s not clear whether that should matter when evaluating a claimed milestone achievement in its historical context from a modern perspective. In other words, if we want to ask whether Billy Mitchell achieved a Pac-Man score of 3,333,360, it would be fair of us to limit our interest strictly to whether the final score was achieved, and not whether a given adjudicator should or should not have accepted it at the time.
It is in this light that we will continue our analysis, beginning with a look at the surviving tape itself.
POINTS, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
Let’s pause for a moment and establish some quick math. We calculated early board points back in “Dot One”, but as a quick refresher, after the first 20 boards, if you collected every optional fruit and ghost (as well as the required dots and power pellets), your score will be 365,600. Board 21 begins a long stretch of “ninth key” boards, which all run the same and can all be defeated using the same pattern, netting 12,600 points for each board.
Here is the ninth key pattern Billy uses:
Again, this is a modified version of the pattern “Stacked”, with only a slight variation in the final corner. It’s a very safe, easy to run pattern (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Aside from a couple novelty patterns, such as ghost pass-through patterns, we have observed only this pattern used by Billy on every complete ninth key board he has played publicly, including his 2019 Funspot attempts and his 2020 “Reunion machine” plays in Chicago.
Before we continue, let’s take another look at the ninth key pattern given in the 1982 book The Video Master’s Guide to Pac-Man by Jim Sykora and John Birkner, seen way back in “Dot Two”:
https://www.digitpress.com/library/books/book_vmg_pac-man.pdf
In our research, we were not able to determine a definitive origin for the complete “Stacked” pattern Billy uses. [S9] However, despite Billy’s claims that he and Ayra developed all their own techniques themselves, the first half of “Stacked” is a match for the book pattern, only deviating near the upper right corner after the whole bottom half of the board is clear, and before the book pattern uses a timed pause just above the ghost pen. Sure, it could be a coincidence. With all the ninth key patterns out there, there are bound to be some similarities. But it’s also possible Billy and Chris found this pattern, with near-continuous motion, and found an alternative ending (perhaps their own, perhaps someone else’s) to cut out that one point of potential error.
Getting back to the math, since each ninth key board nets 12,600 points, and since that number does not divide evenly into 1,000,000, even though the millions digit is not visible, the displayed score will indicate the current board for as long as the player is on perfect pace. For example, board 164 would end with a score of 2,180,000, whereas no board on perfect pace ends with 180,000, or 1,180,000, or 3,180,000. The banked high score is also useful in determining the missing millions digit. [S10] Using the above pattern, the score will be 996,320 a the point of rollover, which happens on board 71 when you collect a key worth 5,000 points. Because of the way the game handles the banked record score, that means your “High Score” display will read as 996,320 for the entire time you’re between one and two million. At the two million rollover, that banked high score becomes 998,080, and at the three million rollover, it becomes 999,720. (Again, this is when using that particular pattern). Of course, it is possible to go off-pattern and still achieve the maximum score, and doing so on a rollover board will result in an unusual banked high score. But this still gives us multiple ways of identifying a given board seen out of context.
While Billy’s complete July 1999 Pac-Man tapes have never been released, it turns out there are little bits of footage from two of those tapes floating around the Internet. First up was about a minute worth of footage in Dwayne Richard’s documentary The Perfect Fraudman, starting at about 1:15:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFtDVuGxL8
This footage was captured by pointing a camcorder at a TV screen – a copy method Dwayne is apparently fond of. This makes the scores on the still shots hard to read, but watching in motion you can see that board started at score 20,800 (with no millions digit). A score of 1,020,800, with a banked high score of 996,320 (which the banked score in that shot appears to be) is consistent with the start of board 73 on perfect score pace.
In 2018, during a Facebook livestream conducted by Twin Galaxies, we were given a glimpse of more footage, this time from a tape labeled “(2) 6HR PERFECT GAME PAC MAN” [S11]:
Again, the current score (and identical banked high score) of 403,400 is consistent with a perfect score pace at the end of board 23.
This tape is one of hundreds in the possession of Twin Galaxies, which are in the process of being digitally captured and made available for public viewing as part of the Twin Galaxies video tape archive:
While our research project was underway, unbeknownst to me, this tape had already been fully digitized by Twin Galaxies for eventual release as part of the public archive. (Again, while the tape may have been important to us, it is just one of hundreds in their possession.) It was in this context that I reached out to TG, requesting that a complete digital copy of the tape be made available to help answer our various questions related to its contents.
That request was granted.
Before I continue, I must make clear that Twin Galaxies does not make any claims whatsoever about the provenance or authenticity of the tape or its contents. Any conclusions I make to those ends are strictly my own. (This also applies to the aforementioned Facebook livestream of the same tape.) As with many of the tapes in their custody, the label does not specify who submitted it, nor what date the depicted score was achieved. From their perspective, it is simply a physical tape in their possession.
With that said, I do believe this to be, if not the original “Tape 2” of Billy’s July 1999 score, then a very close-to-original copy of it.
Given the relevance of this tape to the competitive Pac-Man history we were researching, Twin Galaxies granted us permission to distribute the tape at our discretion. And so, when this series was originally published in September 2021, the full two-hour tape and a shorter highlight compilation were both uploaded to YouTube. [S12] However, the following morning, both of these videos were the target of copyright strikes:
Given YouTube’s obtuse DMCA system, I made the choice not to contest these two copyright claims. If Billy wishes to be known as the person who doesn’t want anyone to see the evidence, as far as I’m concerned, that reinforces the case against his outlandish claims as much as the evidence itself.
However, this is not to say these copyright claims are legally valid. Recall that this score was officially verified by videotape. Thus, as a Twin Galaxies score submission, the contents of this tape should rightly belong to the organization, even all these years later. As we’ve seen, the interests of Billy Mitchell and Walter Day consistently found ways to overlap, and so ownership issues such as this were not an issue during Walter’s tenure with Twin Galaxies. However, when Jace Hall purchased Twin Galaxies, that purchase included all of TG’s material and intellectual property. Thus, the contents of this official score submission should belong to the Twin Galaxies organization, even today.
At any rate, the full two-hour tape has since been uploaded to Internet Archive for preservation:
https://archive.org/details/6-hr-perfect-game-pac-man-2
While I cannot share the shorter highlight compilation without receiving yet another copyright claim, the following serves as an overview of those highlights. Each of these segments can be tracked down in the two-hour tape using the game’s score.
The tape starts with Pac-Man in the park spot, as ghosts circle around:
The current score (same as the banked high score) is 378,100, with ten dots (100 points) remaining. That places this as board 21, on max score pace. Note that while this was the first “ninth key” board, Billy did not use his standard pattern, which would have eaten those remaining dots at the start. It’s unknown what pattern he used, if any, before parking and setting up his recording. Billy also seems to have operated the camera himself, as he is not heard interacting with anyone as he takes a moment before continuing his game.
While you never see Billy’s face on the tape, nor do you even see the control panel or his joystick movements, in the monitor you do see a reflection of hair similar to his from 1999. The best view of this hair silhouette comes when Billy readjusts his seat on his stool, as he does more frequently later on the tape. [S13] You can also hear Billy’s voice on the tape. At one point, around score 988,000, Billy remarks “Steve Krogman, where are you when I need you?” (This would seem to confirm Krogman’s earlier story of coaching Billy through his perfect score attempts in May.)
The pattern Billy runs affords the player an extra moment of safety while clearing the top left corner. In 1999, Billy occasionally used this time to clear the final seven dots left-to-right instead of his standard right-to-left, for no apparent reason other than to change up the monotony. Billy took this a step further on board 73, not long after his first score rollover, allowing Pac-Man to wander well off course of the final dots:
But since Billy is never heard reacting as he reverses to eat the last seven dots before the ghosts arrive, one could assume this deviation was yet another expression of his boredom.
Early on in the tape, at score 410,000, Billy remarked that Fothergill told him he had run all 235 ninth key boards without going off-pattern once, and that he (Billy) wished to do the same. (Apparently board 21 didn’t count?) [S14] Billy also noted out specific milestones, like one million, and occasionally talked himself through his pattern, especially later on as his concentration started to wane. This becomes most apparent after he screwed up his pattern on board 142, at score 1,896,940 [S15]:
Billy was supposed to turn left at the very top of the board, but instead turned an intersection early, going off-pattern for the first time in his ninth key stretch. On the surface, it would appear Billy got a little lazy with those “1/60 of a second” reflexes and buffered his anticipated turn way too early. And that may indeed be what happened. However, if you refer back to those ninth key patterns seen above, this misstep happens to the exact point at which the “Stacked” pattern deviates from the original book pattern from Sykora and Birkner. Granted, Billy doesn’t follow up by taking the downward turn seen in the book, so we can’t say for sure that his brain fart involved turning at the junction as he had perhaps originally learned the pattern long ago (as opposed to an ordinary bad turn), but that is a possibility.
Following his bad turn, Billy darted back down the way he came and escaped through the side tunnel. He then spent the next two minutes scrambling around, manually grouping the ghosts for easier evasion, before eventually clearing the board without losing a life. As to the earlier point of trying to get through without an error, Billy simply muttered “Okay, Rick. You got me.”
Recall back in “Dot One”, I wrote:
We did find exactly one piece – one single piece – of his overall 1999 Pac-Man story which I can confidently say did happen exactly as he describes.
In Exhibit A, at about 10:40, Billy talks about making his first bad turn and going off-pattern, saying this happened specifically at the score 1.89 million. (In some tellings, it’s “1.9 million”, which is a fair approximation.) [S16] Imagine my surprise as I discovered this element was exactly as Billy described! And to such an accurate level of detail, too! With no rhetorical tricks, no weasel words, no anything. I was genuinely astonished. Aside from expected rounding, Billy went off-pattern exactly when and how he said he did.
To mark this momentous occasion, I would like to present Billy Mitchell the following award:
(Okay, in Exhibit D at 1:01:10, Billy said this happened at 2.9 million. And there was Billy’s story from “Dot Three” about going off-pattern because some Boston reporter was pestering him. And there was the time at Retropalooza 2019 where he misidentified the spot where he went off-pattern. [S17] But let’s not spoil this occasion! After all, twenty years from now, this will become the moment he was crowned “Truth-Teller of the Century”.)
Billy did go off-pattern again later on “Tape 2”, although his stories about when he did are a little fuzzier. This time, it was board 147, at score 1,960,060 [S18]:
This was a very curious error, turning right instead of left as he came down from the top of the board. That’s not a buffering error like before. [S19] He admitted it himself on the tape when he finished the board, remarking “Just forgot where I was goin’”.
This error happened five boards after the previous error. However in Exhibit D, Billy tells the story as if these errors kept happening on consecutive boards (at 1:01:20) [S20]:
I’m playin’, and I got just almost to 2.9 million, when I made my first bad turn. First bad turn, and there’s chaos on the board. There’s chaos… everywhere and I’m… 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.
While the tape does not contain any bombshell revelations people might have hoped for, there are a lot of interesting details to that tape. [S21] Here’s a quick refresher on Billy’s description of the scene at Funspot that day [S22]:
https://twitter.com/billypacman/status/1014920849332326400
Despite Billy’s stories about coming to Funspot on one of the busiest days of the year, you don’t hear a lot of background activity on his tape. What noise you do hear, such as an occasional other game being played, really stands out. It’s quite a contrast from the sort of high stress environment where Billy says true champions prove their worth. (Maybe Billy should have made some announcement that he was going to be there.) During the later portions of the tape, the sound of some kid in the distance blowing on a cheap toy whistle over and over kept echoing through Funspot’s halls, all captured in the background of Billy’s Big Score. (Whistle Kid, wherever you are, you’re our hero!)
On board 105 (score 1,424,000), a community bumpkin walks up and asks “You filmin’ that thing?” Billy tells him it’s going to be a world record. The guy asks Billy what the current record is, and (judging by the reflection on the screen) Billy audibly taps on something on the cabinet marquee and says “It’s right there.” The guy wishes Billy “Good luck”, and leaves him to his game. (So much for these crowds circling around him in rapt anticipation.)
A moment later, someone else passes by, to which Billy admonishes “Just keep your kids away.” A voice then asks if Billy had been staying in New Hampshire since “the tournament” – certainly a reference to the May tournament two months earlier. (We’ll refer back to this voice a bit later.) Their conversation leads into Billy telling the story of the kid unplugging all the games on him the night before, and how the Pac-Man machine was thus moved, in his words, “over here”. [S23] Soon after that conversation, Billy takes a cell phone call from a Tammy, who seems to be calling for business, unaware that Billy is in New Hampshire. He continues playing through their short conversation. [S24]
Recall, from Exhibit A, at about 16:50, Billy’s explanation for why his score took “more than five hours” [S25]:
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.
Despite Billy’s claim of there being “people all around”, Billy’s camera remains notably still throughout most of the recording. The only time the view shakes is when those two stragglers approach and begin chatting with him. Indeed, during a livestreamed game at Funspot in July 2019, Billy alternatively acknowledges being alone during the stretch where he went off-pattern (at 4:19:50):
Because in 1999, at 1.9 million when the wheels came off, by 2.1, I developed my self-coaching strategy… Because I didn’t have anybody around me.
Toward the end of “Tape 2”, another voice, presumably someone from Funspot staff, comes up and says “The tape’s ending.” Billy asks this person to get another tape, and they do. Notably, Billy doesn’t go into a park spot. He just keeps playing, knowing the tape is about to end. The last sight we see is Billy, still running his pattern, rounding a turn on board 155, at score 2,054,590 (with banked high score 998,080), still on perfect pace:
Billy claims to have played the remainder of his game without going off-pattern. In an interview with Scene World, in describing his practice of calling out his moves in advance, Billy adds (at 7:10) [S26]:
It was by doing that that I regained my focus, at about 2.1 million, and then I played all the way to the end, again without a single bad turn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogBgrqY4FY
But again, Billy’s stories of how often he went off-pattern have not been consistent. In 2019, Billy said the number of off-pattern boards for his perfect score was as high as fifteen (heard here at 2:14:40):
When you make a mistake, it’s called chaos. Pandemonium. It’s asses and elbows all over the board. When I… The last time I got a perfect score, I had… I only had like two… two chaoses. The first time, I had a lot. I mean, fifteen boards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrwhcConqs
In fact, later in that video (at 4:14:30), Billy gives an illustration of several supposed off-pattern boards that bear no resemblance to the sequence seen on the tape:
And I thought “Okay, I made a bad turn. No big deal.” I somehow survived. Somehow. Didn’t die. The next board, boom, I zoned out, went off-pattern again. Somehow, survived. I mean, I wasn’t nearly as good at surviving chaos then as I am now. Now, I think I could probably do a hundred boards if I… was on a perfect screen. And it was… then I… then I would do a good board, then I’d go off-pattern again. I’d have chaos. Then I’d have chaos again. Then I do one good board, then I have chaos, chaos. It just went on for about… just about 200,000 points… 2.1 million. And finally, that’s when I began… you know… “Bottom right, left s-channel, inside, all the way up, across the top, take the key, bury it in the corner, right s-channel.” And I started coaching my movements several seconds in advance, which helped me maintain focus, and not zone out. And from 2.1, all the way to 3.3, I never made another bad turn.
In contrast, the tape we were provided (which, again, ends at score 2,054,590), only shows two such off-pattern boards total. Also, he began calling out his moves on board 149, around score 1,984,000. Perhaps when Billy referred to “the first time” he did a perfect score, he meant his secret perfect score from the ’80s?
To be clear, these sorts of discrepancies, of when and how often Billy went off-pattern, and when he started verbalizing his moves in advance, are easily attributable to faulty memory. (That’s setting aside Billy’s unfounded confidence that his memory is superior to everyone else’s, of course.) But this raises a deeper question to consider. If the tape disagrees with Billy’s memory, no reasonable person would say “I believe Billy, therefore the tape must be wrong.” The tape is the permanent record. We don’t need to rely on Billy’s memory, and can in fact objectively show his memory to be incorrect. [S27] And yet, so much stock has been put in Billy’s fluid fish tales about meeting Masaya Nakamura, or about being given this or that award in Japan, or about who said what to whom, all because he tells the stories confidently, and has his friend back him up. Granted, we don’t have a full recording of Billy’s entire time in Japan, but as we’ve discussed, we do have permanent evidence relating to his visit which does not match the stories he likes to tell. Furthermore, unlike the stories of when Billy went off-pattern, which don’t particularly matter in the grand scheme of things, Billy’s outlandish Japan stories come with incentives to lie, particularly when that lie involves misattributing the origin of his “Player of the Century” title given to him by his friend Walter, claiming it came from the CEO of Namco, or the founder of JAMMA, or Sonic the Hedgehog, or whoever else Billy wishes to be “flattered” by. If Billy can’t get simple details which don’t even matter correct, why should anything be believed solely on the basis of his word?
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
If you think we’re done talking about Billy’s Pac-Man tapes, think again! Amazingly, the tape we were provided wasn’t the last bit of 1999 Billy Pac-Man footage or photography we found. For starters, it would appear Billy gave a copy of his “Tape 3” to G4TV, for use in various interview segments in the early 2000s. The first bit of footage comes from the episode “Icons: Pac-Man”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtBeGx4fTE
First up, at 0:50, we see the end of board 255, followed by the start of board 256:
While the aspect ratio is different, that does appear to be the same angle of recording, with the same ceiling tiles reflected, as in the other footage we can identify as Billy’s. (Note also that this was aired at a time when there were next to no other recordings of perfect scores, or close-to-perfect scores, available to use, much less ones that match every hallmark of Billy’s known tape.) For perfect pace, the current score entering the split screen should be shown as 326,600 (minus the millions digit), and the banked high score should be 999,720. While the scores seen on G4 aren’t entirely legible, both do appear to be consistent. [S28]
While there haven’t been many public displays of Billy’s 1999 Pac-Man footage, most of what has been shown has been clustered around these early moments of the split screen on his first life. We’ve already seen this photo from Billy’s visit to Wonder Park, showing that he piloted Pac-Man through the garbage side before eating any of the normal dots:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010725013020/http://www.namco.co.jp/home/pac20/billy-visit/01.html
You see a similar scene on display on page 42 of Tim Balderramos’ book The Perfect Game: Confessions of a Pac-Man Junkie:
This photo was taken at a “Perfect Pac-Man Show” at Twin Galaxies’ “Video Game Festival” event at the Mall of America in 2001. [S29] Portions of Billy’s game were shown on a 3×3 television display, as Billy and others kept the audience entertained. Several more photos from this event were posted to Walter Day’s Facebook years ago, including this one depicting what appears to be Billy’s blue-sleeved arm, outstretched, as if to say “Ta-da! I got to the split screen, therefore I did the perfect score”:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=162228792693
Also included among Walter Day’s uncredited Facebook photos was one that would later be featured in RePlay Magazine [S30]:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=162228902693
You can see the rest of Walter Day’s Facebook photos in this installment’s supplemental notes. [S31] Note that while we can identify sprite movement among these photos, demonstrating that the footage was not on pause, almost none of the Mall of America photos show any eaten dots on the regular side. As we’ll see a bit later on, Billy seemed to be taking his sweet time on the split screen back in 1999.
Our next progression in Billy’s game play takes us back to the G4 footage. In the show’s third segment, we see the next part of the split screen, where Billy travels down and then turns to the right, emerging through the left wall on the other side of the screen (at 5:50):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX18yB7aitM
If you’re asking how it’s possible to travel through walls in Pac-Man, normally it’s not. However, this is one side-effect of the split screen glitch. The game is only checking boundary collision on the normal side. Thus, it’s possible to travel off the right side of the screen and emerge on the left (just as one does when traveling through the normal tunnel), and to emerge cleanly through the maze boundary. Once Pac-Man has returned to his game’s standard pathways, the maze boundaries will block any attempt to travel back the same way.
In the above example, the displayed current score is up to 326,620, meaning Billy ate two hidden dots on his way through the garbage. The clip continues as Billy eats a sequence of dots on the normal side:
At this point in the G4 footage, the remaining dots correspond to the last photo we have in the Mall of America sequence, and the only one from that collection with missing dots, albeit with Pac-Man in a different location:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=162228932693
While the G4 footage shown is presented as being more-or-less continuous, there is a break in continuity relating to the disappearance of three regular dots, as you can see in this clip from another G4 episode called “Hi Score: Billy Mitchell” [S32]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmVv7QQ-1qg
Each of these different G4 uploads on YouTube vary in brightness and picture quality, with this shot being much crisper than the others. We can clearly identify the correct banked high score. We can also see his current total score is 3,326,920, and that since the earlier shot when he was at 3,326,620, he has eaten 25 dots (for 250 points) and a power pellet (for 50 points), making the two shots consistent. [S33] We can also see Billy’s still on his first life, with five in reserve. Again, Billy has eaten exactly two of the hidden dots on the garbage side, which we can’t see. [S34]
Going back to the previous G4 installment, we can actually identify that same frame, from the later footage, with a dumb overlay in the way:
Recall in Exhibit C, at about 45:10, Billy’s outlandish story of “a hundred people” being allowed to approach his game for the last two boards, and how Billy imitated getting jostled around by the advancing crowd as he valiantly continued playing. And yet, note our above examples from “Tape 2” of how Billy’s camera shook slightly as a result of just one person walking near it. Now, compare it to the various clips shown. There is a little bit of shaking in the clip showing Billy’s arrival at the split screen (probably from Billy himself jumping up and down, surprised he actually got to the end). But multiple clips starting at 5:56 here look about as calm as a Buddhist monastery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX18yB7aitM
The G4 footage continues, as Billy parks Pac-Man along the right side again. The show then fades away from Pac-Man and to a close-up of Billy’s face:
When this project was first published in September 2021, we cited this as our last glimpse of Billy’s alleged “perfect game” in progress. And that may still be the case. However, in our continued research, we discovered new scans of Nours magazine, uploaded to Internet Archive in June 2022. These scans were of much higher resolution than those available to us originally.
https://archive.org/details/nours-magazine-volume-26-winter-1999-600dpi/page/n5/mode/2up
You may recall from “Dot Six” a photo of Billy Mitchell at Wonder Park, posing with a bouquet of flowers among a group of people, one of whom is wearing a big Pac-Man costume. [S35] However, in this high-resolution scan, behind that mascot, on the same screen at which Billy was in another photo pointing at a demonstration of his game play, we now have a halfway discernable view of a small portion of what that television is showing:
I’ve included a sample of the split screen as well for reference. To be clear, even if we assume this television is still showing Billy’s tape, we can’t say for certain that this is the split screen. When Pac-Man’s kill screen glitch occurs, most of the outer maze boundary below the banked high score is erased. In this Nours photo, that portion of the boundary appears to possibly be present, but faded compared to the rest of the boundary. So maybe it’s there, or maybe it’s not and we’re just seeing some bit of glare in that spot. [S36]
However, if we do accept that faded border as indicative of the split screen, and if we accept that the dots along the game path are absent as they appear to be [S37], that would make this the furthest point into Billy’s “Tape 3”. And yet, even then, that’s all we would know about this picture for sure. This still wouldn’t confirm the completion of a perfect score. This frame could still be from Billy’s first life. Even if we take the photo at face value, all it would do is add a point of progression beyond what’s seen in G4’s fadeout to Billy’s face.
And… that’s it. The first portion of the first life on the split screen is shown so freely, but what happens from there, we aren’t allowed to see. Whether Billy Mitchell completed the perfect score or not, these tapes are a part of video gaming history, which makes the cloud of mystery surrounding them all the more interesting.
FREE PARKING
Before we continue, some eagle-eyed readers may have picked up on the fact that we just caught Billy Mitchell in yet another lie about his Pac-Man game (and not just a misremembrance this time). This one has to do with his play on the split screen in particular. Let’s go back to a topic we briefly touched on back in “Dot Three”:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-pacman-birthday-party-met-20150522-story.html
This is a reference to something called the “BC” park spot, a technique used almost universally by modern perfect score players (outside of speedrun attempts). [S38] You can see an example in Jamey Pittman’s MAME perfect score on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoH0vz3Mqk
At the start of the level, the player travels over to the yellow letters “BC” and turns down. Pac-Man comes to a halt there, since the spot below “C” registers as a barrier. The player then sits and waits, as three of the ghosts (the three whose names rhyme with “Stinky”) trap themselves in an inescapable channel along the right side of the board. The player is then free to collect the nine hidden dots, all the regular dots, and the key, needing only to contend with the mostly non-threatening Clyde in the process. (It is possible to trap Clyde in that inescapable channel as well, but that requires an additional maneuver.)
In Exhibit E, at 7:10, Billy describes the process that led to him discovering this technique shortly before his claimed perfect score:
No, that particular one is a… is a safe spot, where the men actually trap themselves. They actually take themselves out of the equation, and then you’re free to roam the board. So… and it was funny because, the night before I… I was going there to do it, I’m like “Jesus! This last board is so hard, it’s unbelievable, I… I think I’m going to get all the way up there and I’m just gonna blow it.” And I thought “Wait a minute, maybe I can trap these guys.” And it was something that had just never been done before. But I had this idea that it would work. And literally the night before the perfect game I did it… and when I did it, it worked, and I thought “Oh wow, I just gotta get there. Once I get there, it’s easy.” And I got there.
Billy continues by describing the actual technique:
When you start the board, go immediately through… through the left tunnel as quickly as you can. As you’re going through the tunnel, pull down, and the man goes through the tunnel and comes down, let go of the joystick and you’re there. That’s it. Yeah… It’s called the… Some people call it the “BC” park spot, because you’re on top of a letter “B” and a letter “C”.
In Exhibit A, Billy reiterates that he traveled through the side tunnel on the left on the way to the “BC” spot. [S39] Of course, this is a problem, as we’ve now seen multiple views of Billy parked in the vicinity of the blue characters “A7”, with all the regular dots intact (meaning he could not have traveled through the tunnel). As another example, see this photo taken by the website NGenres at the Mall of America event [S40]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011211122729/http://hub.ngenres.com/pacman_interview.html
We do get one glimpse of Billy using the “BC” spot, courtesy of Walter Day’s Facebook photos [S41]:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=162228927693
However, we can see the regular dots are still untouched, meaning we know Billy returned to “A7” after that moment. In fact, the last thing we see, before the video fades out to Billy’s face, is Pac-Man once again back at “A7”, with both Inky and Clyde still running free:
Even if we wanted to grant him leeway, and wonder if possibly he figured out the “BC” spot in the course of playing the split screen on his claimed perfect score, his characterizations makes it clear that this was a pre-game revelation. As mentioned back in “Dot Three”, usually Billy claims to have discovered the “BC” spot the night before traveling to New Hampshire, although occasionally in his stories (such as in Exhibit E at 7:30) he adds an extra flourish by saying he found it “literally the night before the perfect game”. (It would be especially strange if Billy did play a failed attempt all the way to the split screen at Funspot that Friday night, although it would be much more alarming if Billy had free access to the machine’s dip switches for easy rack advancing, and just failed to divulge that for all these years.)
More importantly for our current topic, as we’ve seen, Billy’s stories of the “BC” spot discovery seem specifically intended to illustrate that it was this discovery which allayed his concerns going into his big score attempts that he might not be able to finish the final board. [S42] Billy also likes to involve spectators in his demonstrations of how foolproof the “BC” park spot is (as he describes in Exhibit E at 6:50):
It’s something so simple, so easy, that I could teach anybody. When I was at 257 last month, I taught a number of people. I had people who really didn’t play the game, and they said “Oh, I could never do that!” I said “Sure you can, one time. Here, watch.” And… I could even teach you guys.
And the technique really is that easy. But… that’s not what Billy used, is it?
At first, I didn’t think much of this item. “Oh wow. We caught Billy in lie #1,426,895,309. Throw it in the pile.” However, my research colleague convinced me this particular misdirection runs much deeper than at first appearance. It’s not just that Billy tries to convince everyone he used a technique he did not – one that was perhaps discovered after Billy’s July 1999 game. [S43] It’s that Billy uses this to paint a false portrait of a stress-free conclusion to his game, while the surviving video (as we’ll see below) shows the apprehension and wariness in his play.
I’ll demonstrate what I mean here. If you just watch the G4 segments above, you may not notice two significant cuts, done in such a way as to give the impression of otherwise uninterrupted game play. (To be clear, the G4 editor likely had no idea the relevance of these edits, and was just focused on making a clean presentation.) The first of these cuts happens when Pac-Man is on the garbage side of the split screen. At 5:30 here, you can see Billy ignore the normal side of the board and immediately go to the “A7” spot, with no ghosts trapped in the side channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX18yB7aitM
Then at 5:50, you can see Billy leave the “A7” spot with two ghosts trapped in the channel:
The problem is, unlike the “BC” spot, Pinky does not actually trap himself when the player is parked at “A7”. Instead, he aims for his target tile (which, when Pac-Man is facing up, is a little ways up and to the left of the player), and hovers in a circle around that spot. Even the timed reversals do not resolve this, as Pinky heads to the top left corner briefly before returning to that same hover spot. In order to trap Pinky in the side channel, you have to leave “A7” and do a special maneuver. David Race helpfully demonstrated this for us on original hardware:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P89HRhqJpA
Note that the maneuver required to trap Pinky is not especially perilous, if you know what you’re doing. It just happens to be another step, likely an improvised one, which is omitted from Billy’s retellings.
The other edit comes into play when Billy parks Pac-Man just north of the ghost pen. You can see he’s already taken a quick jaunt up the channel above him, before returning the way he came. Then, at some point during the G4 cutaway, Billy leaves this safe spot, only to collect three dots, before returning to the exact same spot as before:
Those shots are from that same G4 video, at about 6:10. They are shown two seconds apart from each other, with various cutaways to Billy’s face and such in between. It’s not clear how cautiously Billy ventured from that spot above the ghost pen, or what caused him to return there after only three dots, but the trepidation in this sort of game play is palpable. (Note that David recreates a similar maneuver in his example video above. However, a player on a perfect score pace operating in an uncertain environment would surely be handling the situation with much more caution.)
These two cuts, while so quick and easy to miss, reveal a much deeper game of cat-and-mouse going on in Billy’s split screen play. Additionally, it just so happens that this approach is consistent with a description Billy gave to GameSpot Japan that September [GT]:
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9909/16/news05.html
Going by our professional translation of that passage (seen in “Dot Eight” supplemental), Billy referred to the split screen as “very important”, adding that he “took it slow and steady”.
So why, in all his stories since 1999, have we never heard of the dramatic perils of the split screen? Why are we not regaled with tales of this final boss, the ultimate obstacle between Billy and his claim to video game immortality? As my colleague remarked:
Now we all know Mitchell is not averse to giving himself a compliment or two. Ask yourself this though, why don’t we ever get the tale of “Oh man! It was tough going back then, it was even before I started using the BC Parkspot so it was far harder without trapping all four ghosts, but I still did it!” Which is what definitely happened if Mitchell did indeed go the whole way to 3,333,360. It would be a massive feather in his cap, the final screen, the pressure, no fail safes needed, and I still prevailed! How come, then, we get split screen recollections of BC parking, it being relatively easy and reporters interviewing him as well as 100 hundred fervent spectators jostling him from behind as he played the final 2 boards?? Why does he need to lie particularly if the truth would paint a far more impressive picture??
Indeed, the narrative from Billy for many years has been that the split screen is essentially a given. [S44] Here he is in Exhibit C, with his usual story of crowds of people (at 45:40):
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. But then I… The last board actually is easy, so I did the board. [long silence]
During his 20th anniversary perfect score attempts in 2019, Billy speculated on what sort of dark fate would have awaited him if he hadn’t used the “BC” spot in 1999 (at 6:09:30):
And the thing is, when I came up here to do the perfect game the first time, I was so terrified I would die on this board. And the idea of hiding, and of trapping them, it’s something I learned, might’ve been the day before I came up here, but it was definitely within a couple days, which made it easy. Otherwise, I’d have came up here and played… I don’t know what I would’ve, I mean… Who knows if I would’ve done it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sRM4GDud1Q
So if he didn’t trap them, he might not have done the score? But… he didn’t trap them. So…
Billy’s assurances of the infallibility of the “BC” spot and the inconsequentiality of the split screen take on a whole new meaning in light of this cat-and-mouse game depicted in Billy’s 1999 footage. Billy often talks of calling his friend Chris Ayra at the start of the split screen, telling the story in a way to suggest this was an act of verification. However, this always seemed odd for many reasons. If Billy was recording his game, why would this added verification be necessary? And if the purpose was instead to announce the completion of the score, why would Billy make that call before it was completed, when there’s still a chance he could fumble the ball short of the goal line (especially since he went to all the trouble to keep these attempts a secret)? However, this call makes much more sense if taken as an S.O.S. “Hey Chris, I need your help. I’m at the split screen, I’m on perfect pace, and I don’t know what to do. I absolutely have to finish this score on the first try. Do you have any advice on how to play the split screen?” And if so, that would mean Billy’s stories about that phone call amount to yet more misdirection regarding the roadblock he faced at the end of his hours-long game.
I was not the only one to raise an eyebrow over Billy’s assurances that nobody could possibly die on the split screen using his technique, as my colleague illustrates:
For the uninitiated, you listen to Mitchell talk about the Split Screen nowadays and watch him execute the BC parkspot. It is as he says, “relatively easy”. As a result, you’d have a hard time convincing anyone that the split screen may have been his undoing back in 1999. That is of course, until you see his Split Screen footage courtesy of G4!! He was struggling!! I’ve often wondered if that’s why he tries hard to convince the listener of the relative ease of the final board – to put them off the scent that the unthinkable happened and he messed up!!
Indeed, shortly before the previous quote from Billy’s 2019 stream, he made the following remark, at 6:08:10:
And there’s actually players that have gotten this far, perfect, and died in the middle of the board. Not me!
To quote the Bard, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
WHERE WITNESSES FAIL
At this point, we’re going to momentarily park our discussion of Billy’s tapes, and turn our focus toward his claimed in-person witnesses. Earlier, we discussed how Ken Sweet was the only official Twin Galaxies referee present at Funspot that day, and that he acknowledges he was not present for Billy’s claimed final score – something which, in and of itself, should raise some eyebrows. However, in our historical curiosity, we could choose to set the matter of official TG adjudication aside, and ask whether Billy had any claimed witnesses of any kind. Of course, a score submission based only on the word of onlookers would never pass muster today, and even if we were interested in granting allowances to historical scores from that era based on the limited media technology of the time, those allowances would not apply in this case, given that the full game was allegedly recorded, and that the tape has simply been withheld from us by choice. (More on that later.) But for the sake of diligence, we can still entertain this line of discussion, and see what weight we can give the first-hand accounts Billy does claim to have.
Recall way back in “Dot One”, how it was necessary to establish Billy’s pattern of lying before delving into his stories about 1999. If you just listen to Billy speak, he sounds very confident and convincing, which is exactly why his stories of closed door triumphs went unchallenged for so many years. One has to understand the context behind the person telling these stories of “winning the race for the first perfect game of Pac-Man” or “being named Video Game Player of the Century by Masaya Nakamura” to recognize these for the lies they are. With a habitual liar like Billy, even the claims that can’t be outright disproven can safely be assumed to be yet more lies.
Similarly, before we dissect what Billy’s Pac-Man witnesses do and do not specifically claim, it’s important to understand why Billy would have false witnesses at all. While certainly some close friends of his have lied for him (as we have seen happen with Todd Rogers and his technician friend Rob Childs), often times onlookers are simply misled. These bystanders are not necessarily liars, or otherwise bad people. They just believe they witnessed something they may not have.
When this series was first published in September 2021, we attempted to convey this concept, but we didn’t really have a crystal clear example of it we could demonstrate. What would have greatly helped prove my case would be if Billy, today, attempted a significant high score, in front of a crowd of people, and then lied to their faces about achieving a score he did not, all with ample documentation demonstrating the intent to deceive.
Enter “The Music City Con”:
And yet… unlike in 1999, we actually have access to full video of the end of Billy’s game, and we can see that Billy came up short, ending at 3,292,270. Even better, as captured by multiple videographers, we hear Billy at the conclusion of his game declare to everyone “And that is a perfect game”.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5099378896743002
Check out the video linked above for the full details on what Billy said, what people from the event reported, and how we can demonstrate Billy’s lies throughout. In particular, two hosts of the “Broken Token” podcast, who had been chummy with Billy during and after the event, were still convinced months later that they had witnessed Billy do a perfect score in their presence, even after being presented evidence to the contrary. In his limitless arrogance, Billy Mitchell offered a nearly tailor-made demonstration of why his own witnesses can’t be trusted.
We could have a separate conversation about why Billy would do such a foolish thing, in the midst of his big legal battle with Twin Galaxies no less. Is he incapable of simply admitting he failed at something he set out to do? Is he so used to lying about high scores that he didn’t consider the ramifications? Does he think no one actually cares about high score competitions or accurate video gaming history? However, more importantly, we should consider what would have happened had nobody at the event recorded these final moments for objective review. We would have had a crowd full of people, some of whom were dedicated gaming enthusiasts, all swearing that they personally saw Billy Mitchell achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man. And they would have been correct about most everything they saw, including various random details, except for the actual final score itself.
And that was hardly the first time Billy lied to the community about a high score. Again, it’s within the realm of possibility that some of the following people are lying, or at least stretching the truth for a man they consider a friend. But it’s also possible these accounts represent the actual truth as they saw it, and as they recalled it, sometimes many years later. All of these circumstances must be weighed when evaluating eyewitness accounts against permanent objective evidence.
With that acknowledged, let’s take a look at what Billy’s few 1999 witnesses do have to say (and also what they don’t say). Note that we’ll be limiting our discussion to actual, identified witnesses who can speak for themselves, and not the vague crowds Billy likes to describe in his stories, which at times include dozens of strangers, multiple reporters, or even other unidentified Pac-Man players. [S45]
In August 2022, as part of the discovery process in his legal battle with TG, Billy was obligated to provide a complete list of witnesses for his claimed perfect score of Pac-Man in 1999. Billy’s answer (along with some legal jargon) was as follows:
https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/02/new-billy-mitchell-testimony/
Right away, you may notice a bit of rhetorical trickery, in that TG asked for a list of people who witnessed the score, and Billy responded with a list of people he claims could either testify to seeing the score itself, or could testify to the game hardware and/or recording setup. Indeed, in his September 2019 legal threat, Billy included a statement from Randy Lawton, merely indicating that Funspot’s Pac-Man game “has always been an original, authentic machine”, while adding that Funspot does not use MAME (which nobody was alleging). [S46] Tina Gebhard, another Funspot employee, [S47] has offered no public testimony, nor has “Tom Fisher’s daughter”, and so whatever it is they might attest to is left uncertain.
We’ve already discussed Ken Sweet, whose 2019 signed statement spoke to the Funspot environment and the recording setup, but who did acknowledge that he “was not there the exact moment the perfect score was achieved”. This leaves people who, in theory, could testify as to the score itself, starting with Funspot floor walker Tom Fisher:
This seems rather vague for sworn testimony though, does it not? What exactly does this mean, “watched him finish”? “Finish” what, eating a taco? Recall that this was a legal statement, thus increasing both the need for and relevance of precise wording. And given that other signed statements accompanying Billy’s legal threat ran for much longer, Tom was not pressed under any word count which would have prohibited further clarity.
But let’s assume in good faith that Tom meant “finish his game of Pac-Man”. Did Tom merely watch Billy celebrate after the fact? Was he standing beside the Pac-Man cabinet, watching Billy as he played, unable to see the screen? Was Tom merely standing in the room as stuff seemed to be happening? Did he or did he not see either the final score, or the exact moment that score was achieved? I guess we aren’t allowed to know. That also seems like something I would have clarified. And what’s this bit about the “first” split screen? Does Tom think Pac-Man has multiple kill screens the way Ms. Pac-Man does? Also, would Tom be able to tell someone what a perfect score on Pac-Man is, or was he reliant on Billy to inform him when the score had been achieved?
Later in his statement, Fisher added “I hereby certify that his Perfect Game on PacMan was fair and honest.” This despite not being a qualified referee for such a determination, and despite admitting to leaving Billy’s vicinity for upwards of thirty minutes at a time. Again, this is apparently what passes for sworn testimony these days. [S48]
A somewhat more direct account, again accompanying Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, comes from Billy’s friend Corey Sawyer (co-host of the previously discussed Kurt and Corey Show):
Corey is at least confident enough to assert that a perfect score of Pac-Man is 3,333,360 points. He also threw in a favorable tale of Billy teaching him patterns (which must have been between serious attempts, given Billy’s repeated stories about attempting the score without the use of patterns). More notably, Corey claimed to be present “at the beginning of the run” and “well into what became [Billy’s] final, successful run”. However, note again the avoidance of outright claiming he was present specifically for the final score. Again, this is a legal statement, and all we are given is that he witnessed some portion of Billy’s game, and that Corey believes the final score to have been 3,333,360. One could certainly choose to infer that Corey saw the final score, if one were to put the first and third paragraphs together. But Corey doesn’t simply say it outright. It reads like the assurances of someone who wishes to convince you he has overwhelming evidence of something without having to divulge what that evidence is.
My research colleagues were similarly unimpressed by Corey’s choice of words:
Corey’s statement is kind of wishy-washy despite its declarative opening statement. If we look at point #1 as a thesis statement, the supporting paragraphs really don’t follow through in proving his main argument. “I witnessed Billy Mitchell achieve a Perfect score of 3,333,360” is quickly qualified by “the majority of the run,” which is further qualified with a claim that he only “briefly” stepped away to get food, which is further qualified with a claim he was there at the beginning of the run “through the first few failed attempts” and then he was present “well into what became his final, successful run,” pointing to his absence before the game’s end. Sure, he may claim he returned after his “brief” break to watch the final score, but he actually doesn’t spell that out, it’s suggested that happened if we take his witness claim of a perfect score at face value. If we presume that Corey was getting food during the entire recording of Tape 2, would anyone consider a two hour lunch break as “briefly stepping away”?
I think the thing that had always got me about Sawyer’s statement is the bit where he says he was with him “well into” his final successful run. That’s a big difference compared to stating you were there at the important part (the end). To me it smacks of someone who watched for a bit then did something else. Which isn’t the same as definitively saying you can reliably say he did it.
We’ve already discussed Billy’s Music City Con, but when it comes to these signed statements, we have yet another reason to nitpick the choice of wording. The first version of Billy’s September 2019 legal threat also included a signed statement from Billy’s former volunteer technician, Carlos Pineiro, stating that he was retracting his conclusion that Billy’s Donkey Kong tapes could not have been produced by original, unmodified Donkey Kong hardware. Carlos later admitted this statement was written for him, and that he disagreed with key parts of it, leading to hours of contention between himself and Billy. However, after being threatened with potential legal action, Carlos eventually signed the statement he disagreed with, on the condition that parts of it be changed (which they weren’t), and with the understanding that this was only to be shared between the lawyers and never made public (which it ultimately was). [S49] While Carlos’ situation got the most attention, given the extreme disparity between what he believes and what he was coerced into signing, it’s only fair to question the authorship and authenticity of each of the other affidavits. Did these statements related to Pac-Man start out more assertive, addressing each of these vagueries I’m now questioning? Were they negotiated down to something which the witness could be more comfortable signing without feeling as though they were technically lying? (This is why the signed statements aren’t admissible at trial, and the witnesses themselves must testify and make themselves available for cross-examination.) Indeed, as the legal battle proceeds and more witnesses get deposed, it may come to light that some of Billy’s other friends also simply signed the statements that were written for them, without any corrections.
And this is, of course, assuming these individuals are not outright lying to us. I have no particular desire to disparage Misters Fisher, Sawyer, or Sweet. I’d like to think their words are sincere, if a bit evasive. But I also cannot ignore the fact that other friends of Billy’s have been willing to straight up lie for him elsewhere.
https://perfectpacman.com/evidence/
Even if we do assume good faith on their part, there’s yet another issue to acknowledge with these signed statements. Of the three we’ve reviewed, Corey’s seems to be the most compelling on its face, being the only one that identifies what a perfect score is while at least alluding to the idea of him having seen the end of Billy’s game. However, about two months prior to signing that statement, [S50] Corey gave us yet another demonstration of the pitfalls inherent in relying on witness accounts alone. In 2019, Funspot announced on Facebook that they were welcoming Billy back for new perfect score attempts to coincide with the 20th anniversary of his claimed score in 1999. Buried in the comments was a thread of replies to former TG staffer Patrick Scott Patterson, which included yet more recollections from Sawyer:
Corey’s replies in that thread offer more insight into his recollections of Billy’s claimed perfect score:
As we’ve established, Billy’s surprise trip in July 1999 was not “a Twin Galaxies sanctioned event”. Of course, we could grant the possibility that Corey was misled by Billy into thinking there was some official TG arrangement behind his solitary presence there. However, as we see later down that thread, it’s more likely Corey is conflating his recollection of a perfect score by Billy with the many actual Funspot tournaments of that era, including the one in May 1999 where such a score was unsuccessfully attempted:
And thus, the details of these different events are blended together in the fog of memory. Corey recalls Walter Day being present for Billy’s claimed perfect score, when he was not. Corey also believes Billy’s claimed perfect score was recorded, but can’t say for sure if there was a tripod next to Billy, even though he does recall standing at Billy’s shoulder five hours into the score. [S51]
I don’t wish to excessively pick on Corey. Setting aside his brief signed statement full of qualifiers and ambiguities (such as that he “briefly” stepped away, and returned “well into what became his final, successful run”), Corey is open about the fact that his recollection is not reliable. But that is the point, is it not? None of these recollections from Corey, Tom, or Ken are very reliable, especially twenty years down the line.
These accounts from Billy’s friends, allegedly milling around during moments in which some of Billy’s game is being played, raise yet more questions when compared to other elements of Billy’s narrative. Recall Billy’s story of his phone call to Chris Ayra at the start of the split screen (as heard in Exhibit D, 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.”
The statements from Funspot staff seem intended to give the impression that some of these “witnesses” could vouch for being present during the conclusion of the game. And yet, when Billy wanted assistance with a phone call, none of these people were available? Billy had to call over some unnamed rando who was “beyond the ropes” (which, in a different telling, had also been taken down by that point)?
It’s also interesting to note which names are absent from this list, and which come and go from Billy’s list of claimed witnesses, depending on the day. As quoted in “Dot Three”, Billy frequently speaks highly of Funspot manager Gary Vincent, and his role in orchestrating Billy’s visit and score attempts. And yet, there’s no signed statement from him, despite multiple quotes from him being featured in TG’s same-day press release:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
Also absent from Billy’s list was Randy’s uncle, Bob Lawton, who founded Funspot in 1952 and owned it until his death in 2021 (two months after this series was first published). As mentioned in “Dot Three”, Bob Lawton was always included in Billy’s story about a kid unplugging his machine. As the story goes, this act of sabotage happened right before Bob came around the corner, intending to check in on Billy’s game, and instead encountering Billy in an unexpectedly livid state.
However, in a 2021 obituary by New Hampshire Public Radio, Billy added a new twist:
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2021-11-19/bob-lawton-funspot-laconia-nh-pac-man
As usual, we don’t have access to the totality of what Billy told this reporter to compel them to suggest that “Bob Lawton cheered in the background” as Billy (allegedly) achieved his perfect score. But if you casually read this, you would probably come away thinking the score happened at “a tournament” (one of Billy’s standard lies), and that Bob Lawton was present for the culmination of this alleged achievement. Of course, Mr. Lawton is no longer able to clarify either way. [S52]
There is, however, one more witness account to consider, one which is free from both the influence of Billy’s paralegals and the passage of time:
https://archive.org/details/sim_boston-phoenix_july-9-15-1999_28_28/page/n5/mode/2up
In the July 9th issue of the Boston Phoenix, Chris Wright included a follow-up to his coverage of the May tournament, recalling his chance encounter with Billy during the Fourth of July weekend. In our ongoing research on this topic, we have not been able to confirm this, but at present we believe Wright to be the person behind the voice on Billy’s “Tape 2”, asking Billy if he hadn’t left “since the tournament”. If so, his comments on that video paired with this write-up make clear that Wright was not expecting to see Billy, and likely was attending Funspot on his free time and not in any official work capacity. (If only someone had sent him a press release announcement.)
Wright’s update is not without value, providing further quotes from Billy and a few anecdotal notes about his July visit (most likely taken from Billy himself at face value). Ultimately, however, we’re left with many of the same ambiguities as in the other accounts. He doesn’t strictly report that “people started to gather” at the end of Billy’s game, but instead quotes Billy as telling him that “people started to gather” as the record was approached. Wright notes what a perfect score is, but doesn’t say he personally saw the end of the game or the final score, or describe it in any way beyond simply reporting that it happened. Oh, and Wright was not named by Billy as a relevant witness in his lawsuit interrogatory.
Again, we could take statements like Wright’s at face value, if we did not have such frank demonstrations of Billy ascribing bogus scores to events with real “witnesses”, with the Music City Con being only the most recent of these. In that case, we can demonstrate the deception thanks to abundant evidence, and yet, the local television news in Tennessee simply reported what they were told. Not to cast any aspersions on Mr. Wright in particular, but does his account convey the sense of being any different from that?
And arguably, one shouldn’t even need those examples to comprehend how a fraud like this could be perpetrated. Stage magicians have been in the business of hoodwinking audiences for centuries. In 1983, David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty “disappear”. This was done by moving the audience platform to the right, with loud music covering up the noise and underfoot vibration, so that when the curtain dropped, from the vantage of the audience, the statue was no longer where it was before. A fake statue platform was constructed, so helicopters could shine overhead lights on the vacant spot where Lady Liberty ostensibly should be. Had Copperfield been a psychotic narcissist, perhaps he could have threatened and sued anyone who suggested the Statue didn’t really disappear, or had his toadies mock anyone for thinking this one man could pull the wool over so many people’s eyes. But in reality, everyone understood that to be a performance, involving techniques the performer did not wish to divulge.
While Billy Mitchell may choose to dress as a stage magician, his tricks are far less impressive. David Copperfield would never have let anyone see that big red joystick at Billy’s visit to the 2007 mortgage broker convention. [S53] But while Billy’s ambitions may be much smaller in scale, the key difference for our purposes is that Billy insists the magic is real. It is as a result of his own actions that we are right to treat any and all witnesses he trots out with a healthy degree of skepticism.
NO VID, NO DID
This leaves us with the surviving video evidence, which honestly should be the focus of our attention anyway. So far, we’ve seen several portions which raise some interesting questions. But even more curious is what portions of the video we don’t have.
It has been said many times that Billy’s recording consists of three tapes. “Tape 2” begins on board 21, and goes for two hours before running out on board 155. On a standard VHS tape, this would mean it was recorded on “SP”, or “Standard Play” (highest quality), granting two hours per tape. Using the same setting, that gives two hours for “Tape 1” (boards 1-20, including all the tedious “blue time” boards), and two hours for “Tape 3” (boards 156-256). [S54] Worth noting is that Billy never takes a break during “Tape 2”, thus any such breaks he may have taken during “Tape 3” would cut short the number of boards he could play before that tape would run out.
The beginning and end of “Tape 2” are different in basically every way. The first time, Billy has parked Pac-Man and appears to handle his own tape setup, whereas the second time, someone else handles it. The first time, Billy doesn’t use his regular ninth key pattern, whereas the second time, he never (intentionally) interrupts his pattern, even when he knows the tape is about to end.
In researching this story, no legitimate question was completely off-limits. And thus, we considered the possibility that there never was a “Tape 1”. The idea would be, Billy just sat there playing, with an idle camcorder, starting and restarting the game until he got the first twenty boards correct. Then, rather than wearing out a single VHS tape by recording and rewinding and recording each attempt each time, he just parked once he got his golden start and began filming from there. And then he would have cheekily labeled this first tape “2 of 3”, figuring nobody would ever know the difference. And honestly, would that really be so alien from the Billy Mitchell we have come to know?
This theory was bolstered by certain language in some of the reporting, specifically this bit from the Tampa Bay Times:
To be clear, this was in reference to the previous game that allegedly got cut short due to a kid unplugging the machine. But still, it raises an eyebrow, does it not? If this was a perfect score attempt, why would he not be recording from the beginning?
The UK Dreamcast Magazine also references some odd recording habits, describing the aftermath of the unplugging incident as follows:
However, the theory that there wasn’t a “Tape 1” was dashed by photos from the 2001 Mall of America event, showing what appear to be some of Billy’s early boards [S55]:
At first blush, that banked high score looks like six digits leading with a 5. However, the dots eaten are a significant departure from the ninth key pattern Billy uses, and no such departure was seen at around 530-thousand on “Tape 2”. A closer inspection shows that score is actually five digits, in the 53-thousand range. (If it helps, see how the letter “C” in “SCORE” is duplicated across two screens.)
It’s also within the realm of possibility that Billy recorded and retained a full “Tape 1” of the blue time boards from an earlier game, and ultimately presented that as the “Tape 1” from his successful run, rather than continue grinding that poor VHS tape into dust recording over and over with each attempt. After all, there’s very little that would identify it as being from a different Funspot session, provided Billy brought multiple of his company-branded shirts for his big moment. At the end of the day, without having seen Billy’s submitted “Tape 1”, there’s no way to say for sure. [S56]
Getting back to the tapes we know we have footage for, another interesting aspect is that they are known to be incomplete. First, we have a technical break in continuity between “Tape 1” and “Tape 2”. [S57] In fact, we don’t even know how Billy arrived in the standard park spot, and whether he did so on camera. Did Billy just keep playing as “Tape 1” ran out, as he did with “Tape 2”? Billy and his defenders insisted that Bill Bastable’s maximum score in the ’80s should be disqualified on the basis that he activated the pausing dip switch during the game – something which he openly acknowledges. However, with any lengthy break in video, Billy could have just as easily done the same, and only he and his Funspot friends would have had any way of knowing. It would have been incumbent on one of them to say “No Billy, this big score you’re attempting at our arcade has to be disqualified.”
The point is not to say that any legacy scores of that era with poor recording should be disqualified or otherwise automatically cast into doubt. But it seems Billy lacked even a good faith effort to authenticate his incomplete tapes. First and foremost, the VHS standard does include an “EP” a.k.a. “SLP” setting (short for “extended play” and “super long play”) to record for six hours on lower quality. But let’s assume the camcorder he used only had the “SP” (“short play”) option, as some camcorders did, which only granted two hours. Or maybe he wasn’t sure how long he would be playing. [S58] Or maybe he chose SP because he wanted to record his big historic moment in highest quality possible, so he could show it off at a couple events and then never again. [S59] But that still doesn’t excuse the lack of continuity. Was he not able to acquire a second camcorder, in addition to the one provided by Funspot? This wouldn’t even require a second tripod, as the second camera could be brought out only to record the main camera’s tape transitions for continuity.
At the very least, a clock or stopwatch could be used, started on camera, set on the bezel where your “next game” quarters go, which would A) demonstrate some tiny piece of continuity between tapes, and B) account for how much time had elapsed. Surely Billy owns a stopwatch:
Remember Chris Ayra and his submission tape? Only a few months after Billy’s trip to Funspot, Chris used two stopwatches during his perfect score, which were shown frequently on the tape. The point is, for a game like Pac-Man with its park spots, there are many ways to at least try to make a good faith effort to produce a complete record of your score which you wish to be adjudicated. But Billy made no such effort at the start of “Tape 2”.
And of course, the break at the end of “Tape 2” is even worse. Forget a good faith effort, Billy makes no effort whatsoever to capture game play in a camcorder that he is told is about to run out. (And we know he has a park method for the ninth key board.)
In the 2004 Wired profile on Twin Galaxies, while bouncing back and forth between talk of arcade score and console scores, Walter Day made clear what should be included on a videotape submission:
https://www.wired.com/2004/11/the-scorekeeper/
Not only was Billy given a pass on these things, his inclusion on the scoreboard, along with the withholding of the tape from public view, is a tacit claim to the public (by himself and by Twin Galaxies at the time) that Billy’s submission actually did live up to these standards, which would of course then be expected of his competitors.
This double-standard is made even more apparent when you recall (as discussed in “Dot Eight”) that Billy was credited for an estimated completion time of exactly five and a half hours, which appeared on TG’s official “fastest time” leaderboard in their printed books. Again, it was represented to the public that Billy was less than six minutes behind Donald Hayes. Had there been a complete recording, a TG referee could sit down and determine an actual completion time. Instead, with incomplete tapes in hand, Billy’s ballpark estimate was simply taken on his word.
Of course, Twin Galaxies wasn’t so keen to note these breaks in continuity, reporting just the opposite in their press release the day of Billy’s score:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
As was noted before, no one from TG had watched Billy’s tapes when that was written. So why were TG staff in Iowa so quick to assure everyone that “every last move” was recorded, when they had no way of knowing it was true?
These breaks in continuity could be one reason why Billy does not eagerly show off what’s supposed to be the masterpiece of his gaming career. As for known public viewings, we have Billy’s presentation at Wonder Park in Japan, and we have the Mall of America event. And… that’s it? And the listed schedules for those events didn’t allot nearly enough time to show the whole performance.
There was one other event where there was at least some discussion of publicly showing some of Billy’s Pac-Man tape. In 2004, Walter Day announced that portions of (in his words) “Billy Mitchell’s famous ‘perfect’ Pac-Man game” would be shown as part of a presentation on gaming at the upcoming New York Video Festival.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040908091855/https://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=19&id=854
However, we have found no indication that any such Pac-Man play was ultimately shown at the event. Instead, a blogger in attendance recalled seeing playback of a brand new claimed world record… on Donkey Kong. Yes, this was the very event Billy publicly announced his later-withdrawn 1.014m DK score. While we can’t say for certain, it would be reasonable to assume Billy’s desire to upstage Steve Wiebe precluded any plans they may have had to show five-year-old Pac-Man footage.
Even more strange was CGE UK. In August 2005, Billy, Walter, and some other American gamers wearing matching shirts all took a trip to a gaming convention in England. At their booth, Billy showed off footage of his recent Donkey Kong MAME tape, as well as a Pac-Man tape – except, as seen briefly over Billy’s shoulder in this video, it wasn’t Billy’s 1999 tape. Both the video and audio are a match for the 2000 perfect score tape by Billy’s old friend, Chris Ayra. You can even hear Billy (on Ayra’s tape) shout a time of “13:53” in both recordings (18:20 in the CGE UK video, 12:10 in the TG stream):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt02I3mYOT0
https://archive.org/details/chris-ayra-perfect-pacman-patterns
This is quite odd, as Ayra himself was not present at that event. It’s not clear whether this was presented as being Ayra’s game, or falsely presented as Billy’s tape, or presented without any context (with people then likely assuming it belonged to Billy). [S60]
But this again raises the question, why wouldn’t Billy simply show his own tape? It’s his big moment! These days, he has channels on Twitch and YouTube dedicated to scores he wants to show off, to silence all those darn haters. Instead he just redoes the score on stream every so often? Is it simply that the tape shows unflattering phone calls (which Billy could have muted), or poor game play, or the lack of spectators Billy claims were there?
As one of my research colleagues remarked, when we began our research:
When the anniversary rolled around for his 1999 feat last year, why hasn’t he uploaded the video of this momentous performance to YouTube to celebrate? Why is he going off to Funspot to “re-enact” the moment? Why is it that I can go off to YouTube and watch Franco Harris’ 1972 “Immaculate Reception” for the Pittsburgh Steelers to clinch the game, but I can’t watch Mitchell’s 1999 recording of his perfect score? The perfect Pac-Man was the bedrock claim of the Most Famous Video Game Player, a figure that Day promoted at every opportunity as boosting the TG brand. Why didn’t Day digitize anything from that game and upload it to TG’s video archive in the 2000s like he did with Steve Wiebe’s 885k Donkey Kong game? Why did Mitchell apparently bring Chris Ayra’s Pac-Man patterns tape to London in 2005 instead of highlights from his own game, from Mr. Perfect Pac-Man himself?
WHERE’S THE FINAL SCORE?
So we have footage of the split screen, on a perfect score pace. But it ends a ways into the first of six lives. Our next question is: Does anyone claim to have seen the final score of 3,333,360 on Billy’s tape? Bear in mind, at this point we’re not even talking about witnesses to the actual score anymore – we’re talking about anyone who may have watched Billy’s final tape, at any point.
First up, we have Ron Corcoran, a man who for nearly two decades has remained in prison for appalling acts we shall not discuss here. He claimed to have watched Billy’s tape #3, though he was very tight-lipped on anything past the phone call to Chris Ayra:
Even if Corcoran had said outright that Billy had achieved a score of 3,333,360, one must remember that this is the guy who joined Todd Rogers in entering his own illegitimate scores and assisted Todd in falsifying world records (which, again, is far and away the least of his crimes). But even with that said, we have no such assurance to go on. He simply refers to “the end of the tape”, while deferring to Billy to explain what exactly that means.
There’s also this professional translation of Japanese coverage of Billy’s visit to Wonder Park (originally posted by GameSpot Japan), which we saw in “Dot Eight”:
While Mitchell showed off his incredible skills live at the event, a video broadcast played back the stunning moment when the record was achieved.
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9909/16/news05.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818004700/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9909/16/news05.html
A similar note was included in Namco’s Japanese coverage of the same event, with a description of the split screen squeezed in as well [GT]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030222094937/http://www.namco.co.jp/home/pac20/billy-visit/index.html
While this may at first appear to be two sources corroborating the same claim, a closer inspection with translations turned off reveals much of the text is a verbatim match between the two:
The green underlined segment is part of a direct quote attributed to Billy (which should be identical, as it was presumably received through a single translator), while the blue underlined segment is the portion referring to “the moment when the record was achieved”. Oddly, the biggest differences are in the different at length quotes attributed to Billy. Other than a parenthetical aside inserted into the Namco piece (the one emphasizing the split screen effect), the text framing the quote, underlined in red and blue, is almost completely identical.
Especially curious is that neither piece cites the other as a source. While it’s possible we accidentally unearthed some twenty-year old case of plagiarism, there could also be a perfectly innocent reason the two pieces share so much verbiage in common. [S61] At any rate, it’s safe to say this was indeed a single claim of Billy’s tape displaying “the moment when the record was achieved”, repeated by two outlets, rather than two distinct claims.
With that out of the way, there are a few reasons not to take this as a serious claim of having witnessed the actual final score (aside from the possibility of something being lost in translation). First, as with Mr. Fisher, the language given is very inexact. What exactly does “the moment when the record was achieved” mean? As we’ve discussed, some spectators mistakenly believe that the reaching of the split screen itself is the “perfect game”. In fact, one of the two pages literally describes the “moment” as if it were the split screen, further reducing confidence that the original witness wasn’t confused about what they saw. Second, neither entry attributes this claim of witnessing this to any actual person. Who exactly saw this “moment”? Don’t tell me it was Billy (who is already quoted in the piece) who told some reporter “Oh yeah, I just showed off the final moment of my game! That proves without a doubt that I did the score!” Third, even if the information wasn’t being relayed from Billy himself as a trusted source, this could still very easily be a case of some writer reporting second-hand what they were told from someone at the event, someone who maybe didn’t know what the final score should be, with miscommunication along the way. We’ve seen all sorts of misreporting and incorrect impressions from English language professionals at CNN and Wired. Obviously the same thing can happen in Japanese media. Lastly, while there are other references to Billy’s tape playing at Wonder Park, there are no other references to the specific final score being shown on his tape.
A claim to be taken more seriously, however, is that of later TG head referee Robert Mruczek. In 2018, parallel to the Donkey Kong dispute, a dispute over Billy’s Pac-Man score was opened up by TG user Almighty Dreadlock. This dispute focused on the claimed time of 5.5 hours, noting that an inconsistent approximation should be ineligible for the “fastest completion” perfect score track. In the course of this dispute thread, Mruczek recalled pulling Billy’s “Tape 3” out of a box, and watching it just out of curiosity:
When pressed for whether he recalled seeing the exact final score, Mruczek recalled that he did:
This gives us a specific, identified witness who claims to have seen the final score on the tape. A few months later, Mruczek expressed similar recollections in an interview with YouTuber Tipster (starting at 1:11:30) [S62]:
I did have possession, at one point, of the three tapes for the perfect Pac-Man. I mentioned on the forums that I watched portions of it out of curiosity. I wasn’t officially charged with verifying it. The score was already done for years, and was in the database. I just never saw someone clear the ninth key before, and never mind the kill screen, so I watched portions of his tape. And it was amusing watching Billy standing there and telling himself “focus” at the beginning of every board. It’s actually pretty funny. I watched the very end of the performance, and it looked like a good performance to me. I don’t think that Billy’s perfect Pac-Man was fake. I think it was perfectly real, as evidenced by the fact that almost a dozen people have done it since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sarJ_YL7wOE
The following year, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Mruczek for YouTube, and we discussed the matter yet again (with the following quote starting at 51:50) [S63]:
Well, I never saw a perfect Pac-Man then. I never saw a ninth pattern successfully executed at that point, let alone a kill screen. So… as far as I know, it looked legit. I would have no way to compare it to anything else, to be honest with you. I never saw anything else at that point. But it looked like, you know, it was definitely Billy in front of the game, hand on the joystick, playing the game. That much I’m 100% sure of. It wasn’t… It wasn’t, you know, Billy playing a video tape of a previously recorded performance, and mimicking joystick movements. It was definitely him playing the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jsTVjeZUI
If this sounds like a loose evaluation for an adjudicator, it should be reiterated that this was not an adjudication. Mruczek produced extensive notes and write-ups for various scores he authenticated. But in this case, he makes clear that this was a casual viewing of a tape he pulled out of a batch sent to his house by Walter Day.
At any rate, I found Mruczek’s answers satisfactory at the time (as I also expressed in the linked TG thread), and I had decided that, aside from the various grounds for disqualification we’ve discussed, a score of 3,333,360 likely was indeed set on Pac-Man that day.
However, discoveries made in the course of this research project (more of which we’ll get to in a moment) put that confidence in doubt yet again.
Notably, another tape in the same batch of tapes in Mruczek’s possession was finally aired on the Twin Galaxies Twitch channel last year [S64]:
As we discussed at the end of “Dot Four”, this tape (the one labeled “Perfect Pac-Man patterns”) was a condensed copy of Chris Ayra’s perfect score on Pac-Man, minus the “one second” boards and the long ninth key stretch. Twin Galaxies broadcast the tape during a Twitch livestream in November 2020, allowing the public to see this mysterious tape for the first time. And what we saw was a tape that, in some ways, matches what Robert Mruczek describes. In fact, you hear Billy’s voice on the tape more than you hear Ayra’s, as Billy explains various Pac-Man lingo and makes phone calls, while Ayra continues playing (with neither of them being seen). Billy even at times speaks to the recording, referring to Chris by name as if he wasn’t there. Aside from the reference to “World record headquarters” (which is not heard on any publicly available footage of either Billy’s or Chris’s game), the key element Mruczek describes that would seem to be unique from the available footage of Billy’s game is the sound of other Funspot games in the background. [S65]
This is not to impugn Mruczek’s memory in general, or to suggest he necessarily popped in the Ayra tape when he meant to watch Billy’s “Tape 3” (although those could be considered). Rather, it could simply be a case of watching multiple tapes in one night, waking up the next day, and forgetting which elements belonged to which tapes, with perhaps a movie line thrown in. Truthfully, everyone’s memory sucks, which is why hard documentation is so important. I know I’ve been certain in my memory of things, only to discover I’d had something wrong for years. Mruczek was very clear that he was watching this casually, and not with an eye for adjudicating or documenting what was a years-old historical score. And he was, at the time, an admirer of Billy (as many of us were before we discovered he’s a cheater), making favorable memory another thing to come into play. Note also Mruczek’s stated recollection that he is “fairly sure” a phone call was received but not initiated, which runs contrary to Billy’s stories of calling Chris Ayra and Walter Day (if we are to put any stock in those). It’s also possible that everything Mruczek recalls, from the phone calls to the “Headquarters” line, are all accurate, except for the final score which by itself was added in memory.
In my own opinion, this alone would be weak grounds for declaring that the score didn’t happen. Sure, maybe Mruczek misremembers, or misattributes Ayra’s final score to Billy’s final tape, but the fact that something could happen is not evidence that it did. However, the next two points served to reignite my own doubts in Billy’s claimed score.
All this time, we’ve been discussing missing video, but there’s something else missing from Billy’s visit to Funspot: Still pictures! They supposedly exist. Let’s go back to what Tom Fisher had to say in his signed statement:
I was radioed by a floor attendant, that Billy was almost up to the first “split-screen,” I went to the game and watched him finish. I and other patrons congratulated him, and I took pictures with his camera.
Well, if he took pictures, it must be legit, right? Heck, he apparently did it with Billy’s own camera! Except, of these multiple “pictures”, we’ve seen exactly one of them, on the Funspot Wall of Fame and the cover of Weirs Times:
But as was mentioned in “Dot Three”, this photo appears to have been taken some time later. The camcorder Billy used and the stool he sat on are gone. Whatever high score display Billy physically tapped on during the “Tape 2” video appears to be gone. Worse, the machine appears to be back in attract mode, and not parked on the final screen. And given that they apparently had all the time to set up the shot they wanted, it becomes hard to ignore the possibility that the angle of this photo was chosen specifically to obscure the player score in the upper left corner.
And that’s all we have. No photos of – or perhaps more importantly, no photos from – the supposed crowd of people.
But what’s truly shocking is the lack of photo of the final score – just literally the game showing Billy’s displayed score of 333,360 (with a banked high score of 999,720) on the split screen. [S66] Not a single such photo or video frame in over two decades! Remember, we got a close (if hard to read) photo of Rick’s 3,333,270 score in May, complete with the split screen fruit display on attract mode:
And that was at an actual sanctioned tournament, with a referee team present, where photo and video proof was not even required. And they still managed to take a photo of the screen with his big score! (I mean, seriously, who wouldn’t be thrilled to take a photo of their big score they worked so hard to achieve?)
Recall the passage we saw earlier, from TG’s 1999 rules requiring photographs for arcade scores:
For a score that Billy insists is genuine, and demands people accept as true, he doesn’t seem to have gone to even the most basic efforts to authenticate it.
And there’s another item I found stunning. Let’s go back to that G4 episode, particularly that shot with the corny overlay:
So G4 had access to “Tape 3”, and they wanted a shot to represent Billy’s big game. And they indeed showed the moment Billy arrives at the split screen. But they didn’t show the actual final screen with the actual final score? They had to show a screen-in-progress, with an overlay? This alone should raise the question of whether the final segment, with the final score, was actually captured on tape. In fact, out of the nine total clips G4 used between their various features (only two of which were repeats), all of them come from the early stretch of Billy’s first life on the split screen. [S67] In other words, G4 used seven unique segments of Billy’s game play, and they didn’t once show the end of Billy’s game.
In Exhibit D, at 1:04:20, Billy described a slow, casual approach to the split screen, while throwing in his usual stories of crowds of onlookers and multiple Boston reporters as well:
So I played, and again, people and the crowd were coming forward, they hadn’t seen the split screen, and they were seein’ it, and… Once I get there, it’s relatively safe, and I could show people stuff and talk, and there were reporters, a couple of ’em, from Boston.
Of course, this relaxed picture Billy paints, safely showing off just short of the goal line, stands in contrast to how he describes the rest of his game play that day (as heard here at 5:10):
I had such a tight grip over the joystick at times, I was afraid I was gonna shatter it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX18yB7aitM
While Billy’s split screen play as seen on G4 may not have been as casual or relaxed as he describes in his stories, both versions of events could be characterized as “slow”, the difference being that the actual footage we see is slow out of necessary caution rather than by choice.
Billy also claims to have made and received phone calls with everyone from Chris Ayra to Walter Day to Rick Fothergill, all during the split screen. There’s no word on exactly how long this split screen allegedly took him. Whether this stuff is or isn’t true, is it possible the tape just ran out before he decided to finish his game? [S68]
But even so, would that not have been yet another reason to take a photo of the final score? It’s not like he can say he didn’t have a camera.
And then we bring in Walter Day. Day in particular has claimed on multiple occasions (noted in “Dot Three”) to have been on the phone at the moment Billy finished the perfect score. Here were Walter’s words to Oxford American:
As he played the final board, having now gone without food for nearly two days, Mitchell called Day on his cell phone. Day recounts, “He was telling me, ‘I’m going here, now I’m going here,’ and then he said, ‘I did it.’”
https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect-man
Of course, Walter would be reliant on Billy to inform him what the current score was. But still, that would be a significant element to this, would it not?
So why was there no mention of this historic moment in TG’s press release issued hours after Billy’s score?
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
Day quotes himself multiple times in his own press release, praising this score as “possibly, the most difficult feat to accomplish in the world of video game playing”. And yet he didn’t think it important to add “I was on the phone for the big moment”? Especially at a point in time when he hadn’t actually seen the tapes?
My research colleague was especially incredulous over this omission:
Now it bothered me that this “telephone witness” testimony wasn’t included in the original reports of the perfect in July 1999, and particularly that it wasn’t mentioned in TG’s own press release that Day authored or vetted. This kind of “I was there when history was made” quote seems tailor made for Day’s promotional machine. Based on what you’ve outlined above, it just makes me wonder if such “telephone verification” is there in case the public learns one day that 1) Mitchell died on the split screen before clearing all 9 dots, or 2) the tape that recorded “every move” actually ended or somehow missed the moment when the 360 threshold was crossed, and that no one thought to take a photo of Mitchell’s history-defining score (which is equally perplexing with all the “Boston reporters” with cameras apparently floating around, let alone Mitchell’s own duty to document his score for submission to TG if there was a video tape issue that didn’t catch the last moments).
And again, calling back to things we discussed previously, why was Billy supposedly horsing around on the final board, calling people and giving away his ruse of a secret trip to cut in line and be the first, when anything could still go wrong? According to him, he was not even 24 hours removed from some kid unplugging his machine and resetting his game.
All of this, combined with the fact that Billy, for two decades, has declined to “silence the haters” by publishing the tape with the final score himself? Or a picture? It’s not as if a photo with the final score would reveal any strategies (to say nothing of the fact that they provided actual video of his strategy to G4). In Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, he and his team compiled witness statements and odd photos and article screenshots as “proof” of this score he was demanding that Twin Galaxies reinstate. But they didn’t include the one photo, or video still shot, that would incontrovertibly prove a score of 3,333,360 was achieved?
Some gamers genuinely don’t care about recognition, and that’s their choice. But Billy Mitchell is very obviously not one of them. Literally the only argument defending Billy choosing never to show the final score from his 1999 Pac-Man game is “Because he never needed to,” and even that is an act of disrespect to the community which has a right to see this claimed watershed moment in gaming history which they are asked and expected to recognize as fact. Every other argument for why the moment was never shown, when other moments recorded from the same event were, boils down to either “His tape ran out” or “He never actually got the score”.
I’ve mused and speculated about various possibilities as they’ve come up, such as the idea that Billy’s “Tape 1” could have been from an earlier game. However, these circumstances bring us to a serious, and I believe, justified question: Did Billy Mitchell actually complete the “perfect score”? Aside from Mruczek’s recollection, it doesn’t seem like the final score was on his tape, and the only registered referee present that day claims to have arrived after the deed was done. Is it possible Billy died on the split screen? Did he just get close enough and declare victory, because who’s going to say otherwise? Did he exaggerate his score, the way he exaggerated at Music City Multi Con? Did he convince his few onlookers that he achieved his goal because he got to the end on his first life when Rick didn’t? Did he tell everyone “I got every conceivable point in the game” the same way he told that to the Miami Herald in 1984? Is this why he says getting the perfect score “was not the most memorable moment”? Did he screw up the math, clearing eight dots on one of his lives instead of nine, failing to catch his mistake in time? Was Billy afraid of having to tell everyone about such a boneheaded mistake? Did not eating food for two days factor into such an error? Did it factor into an impatient decision to declare victory? Did Billy make a big show of calling his friend and declaring he had completed the perfect score, to assuage any curious onlookers as to what they just saw? [S69] Did Billy hang out on the split screen for an extended time, telling people “Yeah yeah, I’ll finish it in a moment,” and then quickly “finish” his game (and reset his machine) when no one was looking? Did Billy tell Funspot staff “Oh you just missed the final score, but don’t worry, it’s all on tape,” before later telling G4 “Oh, the tape ran out, but don’t worry, Funspot staff witnessed the final score”? Is this why Ron Corcoran curiously referred to the end of Billy’s game play as “the end of the tape”? Did Billy’s Funspot friends, lured in by his confidence, simply accept Billy’s story of finishing the perfect score when they weren’t looking? Did they think there was no need to check the current and banked high score on the machine? Did they get suckered into thinking there was no need to take a close up of Billy’s screen? Did they tell themselves, “Well, I never saw the final score, but I won’t bring that up, because that might make some people think Billy was lying, and I know he would never do that”? Or even worse, were they every bit as complicit in a charade as Billy’s other friends at Boomers in 2010, who were more than happy to go along with his bogus story and avoid any video shots of the game cabinet showing the wrong score? [S70]
In the context of what we’ve seen so far, none of these possibilities seem particularly outlandish. Throughout this series, we’ve seen some weird justifications for what are effectively lies. Certain statements (such as that Billy was “introduced” as “player of the century” by “Namco”) can be argued to be technically true, but the impression the listener is expected to receive is decidedly false. In this light, my research colleague reflected on the frequent references to Billy’s Pac-Man score being an impressive feat specifically because it had to be achieved on his first life [S71]:
Amazing to think we still haven’t got anything beyond life 1 to show the world. It always takes me back to a lot of the reports where the emphasis was Mitchell’s achievement being done “without losing a life.” You do wonder if that was his get out if the unexpected did happen. “Yeah, oh well, there goes my first life. It’s irrelevant anyway because I did what Rick couldn’t do, I got there on 1 man. So congratulations to me! I did it! Perfectly!”
Another theme that comes up often in Billy’s stories is that of him being one of the original Pac-Man masters (even though, as we’ve seen, he was not), and of “the Canadians” being newcomers. While Billy doesn’t say it outright, the narrative as told from his perspective is one of unworthy rivals on their way to steal recognition which should rightfully be his. However, this draws an alarming comparison to other known video game cheaters, who later confessed that they did what they did because they felt the game “owed” them the record. [S72] It’s hard to say to what extent Billy bothers justifying his more obvious lies within his own mind, but it’s not hard to see this mentality attempting to bridge the gap between reality and fantasy with a foundational assumption of “I’m a better player than him, so I should have the record anyway”.
While it’s tempting (and to some degree necessary) to amateurishly dwell on the psychological underpinnings of what may have been an emphatic, decades-long fraud, the facts in this case are by themselves compelling. We started with clear TG rule-bending (and at times rule-breaking), along with selective enforcement, and verification without review. We had disputes over breaks, a lack of witnesses, and a video tape that wasn’t watched before the announcement. And now we’ve come to the far end of the road, and we’re standing over a gaping hole where either a video or a photo of 3,333,360 should be. [S73] No image of that score from Funspot, no image of it from Wonder Park, no image of it from Twin Galaxies, no image of it from Namco, no image of it from G4, and no image of it from Mall of America. [S74] Heck, with the possible exception of the unidentifiable Nours photo, we don’t even have a single shot from lives two through six! Out of over twenty total stills or clips of his split screen, each and every one of those we can identify is from Billy’s first life. [S75]
And in addition to that final photo or video not being there, we’re surrounded by red flags, saying it should have been there, with a few nonsensical split screen stories sprinkled in. To say nothing of the alleged crowds of witnesses who have produced no evidence themselves.
As my research colleague remarked:
It actually makes all of his sport analogies all the more laughable. We don’t have to take the word of a friend and business partner that Tiger Woods won the Masters or Joe Namath led the Jets to victory in Super Bowl III. But that’s what you have to do with Mitchell and his perfect score.
Another research colleague had some fun with this scenario, calling back to Billy’s embarrassing attempts to compare himself to Neil Armstrong:
Next thing we know Armstrong and co. are on their way home claiming they achieved their goal. No photo of the flag stuck in the surface, no moon rock collected. Just a thumbs up photo of Armstrong stood inside the Lunar module next to a porthole. Oh yeah and his buddies on board said he did it too. The entire journey was filmed but they don’t want to show it.
THE BURDEN OF PROOF
So who has the other tapes? [S76] Or to put it another way, who should we be seeking for proof the final score was indeed captured on tape? (Or proof that it wasn’t?)
In his sworn statement as part of his lawsuit against Twin Galaxies, Billy attempted to characterize Jace Hall as a malicious party for declining to either publish the tape in TG’s possession or speculate as to who the tape originally belonged to:
There are many problems with this particular block of text, [S77] but the most important things are, if one read that statement and took it at face value, they might be led to believe that A) what Twin Galaxies has is the entirety of Billy’s recording, and that B) Billy has no copy of his perfect score and is thus reliant on the publication of the tape in Twin Galaxies’ possession.
A similar passage is found in Walter Day’s signed sworn testimony, filed as an exhibit accompanying Billy’s declaration. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar:
On the face of it, this seems to be a deliberate mischaracterization. Both Billy and Walter know full well that Billy’s performance was not recorded on a single tape, and yet according to them, the provision of this one single videotape is all that stands between Billy and the authentication of his score. Meanwhile, we have now seen the tape in question, and we are no closer than before to knowing if Billy reached the final score. In fact, all the tape constructively did is provide a few laughs and refute some of Billy’s ancillary stories.
This Team Billy narrative was also reflected in a more recent video produced by Billy’s son, “Little Billy”. Here he is, starting at 3:40:
And Billy recorded his game. But some may ask, “Where is that recording? It was never released publicly.” That’s a great question. The truth is that Twin Galaxies, specifically their owner Jace Hall, actually has Billy’s recording, but is deliberately hiding it from the public eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmgNyPKS-Xo
Little Billy continues with many of the same speculative talking points from Billy’s and Walter’s court declarations, before concluding (at 6:20):
Obviously, Jace Hall knows that the video belongs to Billy Mitchell. He just doesn’t want the public to see the undisputable evidence that Billy Mitchell achieved the first perfect score on Pac-Man.
Setting aside the question of how much Little Billy may or may not take after his father, we’ve seen extensive use of selective language on the part of Billy and Walter throughout this series. On that note, you’ll notice neither of them outright say Billy does not have a copy of his perfect score. It is merely implied by way of accusing Jace Hall of having withheld media they consider to be to their benefit. [S78]
This “Jace is withholding the tape that would prove Billy’s innocence” story becomes even more incredible in light of more recent events. Again, when this project was first released, the contested tape was published on YouTube. It was public for several hours before Billy filed copyright claims on both the full tape and the shorter commentary version:
It would be one thing if Billy simply wished that I, a vocal critic of his, did not benefit from his work by way of attention or traffic to my channel. But Billy did not use the opportunity to take the available video – the one he claims would “publicly refute” allegations against him – and upload it to his own channel. Instead, he just tried to send it down the memory hole. These arguments in Billy’s and Walter’s court testimony, pretzeled as they were to present Jace Hall as the villain allegedly withholding Billy’s exonerating evidence, were all made in bad faith right from the start.
That’s even assuming Billy was ever reliant on TG’s copy of “Tape 2” in the first place. Honestly though, the very idea that Billy did not keep a copy of his perfect score is such a strange thing to actually believe, it’s tempting to leave it at “I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.” Billy evidently had enough copies to bring one to Japan, and then to provide one to G4TV, and then to bring one to Mall of America. This premise also runs contrary to Billy’s and Chris Ayra’s stated inclination to retain their gaming materials, as noted in Billy’s 2008 profile in Harper’s Magazine:
However, once again, an obscure Billy interview saves the day for us. This time, it was a March 2016 phone chat with Donkey Kong player Allen Staal, streamed to Allen’s Twitch account “Muscleandfitness”. [S79] Here Billy is in his own words, at 3:03:40
Speaking of videos, I thought, thanks to… thanks to a friend that I… I won’t mention his name, I thought the… I thought the copy of the perfect Pac-Man game that I did way back when, I thought it was gone forever thanks to somebody who I’ll… who I won’t name here. But I… But I actually was down at Chris Ayra’s house, and he actually has the original copy. I didn’t know that. Yeah. So now I… I have it again. Not that… Not that it matters, but I just thought it was lost to history.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/56261197
So what exactly was this contrived nonsense Billy was so adamantly accusing Jace Hall of again? And more importantly, why can’t we simply see the tape showing the final score? [S80]
As my research colleague remarked:
I just find it suspicious that for all intents and purposes Mitchell has CCTV footage proving he didn’t shoot JR but instead of showing it he’s simply using the eye witness account of someone who used to work for the CCTV company who is “sure they saw it.” Around 17 years ago.
While the most obvious explanation for the lack of provision of the tape is that it doesn’t include the final score, in fairness, I should point out that there are other possible reasons. However, these possibilities aren’t flattering to Billy either. As my research colleague similarly pondered:
Imagine if the tape caught Billy talking to Day, where it’s clear from Mitchell’s side of the call that he has to convince him to ignore the handshake agreement. “Look, I know what you said in May to the crowd at Funspot, but I’m looking at a perfect score right now! It’s on tape! You can’t throw it out because I didn’t get this score playing against Rick at the next tournament!” To say nothing about the strong possibility that Tape 3 wouldn’t support anything that Mitchell has claimed over the years – the giant cheering crowds, the Boston reporters jotting down his sassy quote “I never have to play that damn thing again” (which if it did happen, was probably muttered to a Funspot tech who came over to check on Pac-Man while the Whistle Kid’s whistle echoed through the arcade). Strip away the bluster, Mitchell would be just as vulnerable as Bill Bastable to charges that he didn’t play by the “rules of fair competition,” which begs the question: Who’s really first now?
Imagine if we were to see the mythical “Tape 3”, only to discover Billy strong-arming Walter Day with his usual ultimatum. “You either accept this score, or I’m going to pull my funding, and I’ll sue you for defamation!”
It can be fun to speculate on what “Tape 3” may reveal, [S81] and with the various TG tape stashes still floating around, it’s possible we could one day find our answers despite Billy’s obstruction. But at the same time, the “We won’t show you the evidence” game becomes tiresome. Meanwhile, the withholding of the evidence provides Billy yet another liar’s canvas; as long as he doesn’t publish the tape, then from the perspective of him and his defenders, it shows whatever he says it shows.
You may choose to believe in Billy’s claimed 1999 Pac-Man score, if you wish. But ask yourself: What exactly would disprove this score? The one where he arrived without announcing it beforehand, while lying and saying that he did. The one where he apparently played in isolation, where the only “witnesses” he names were loyal friends among the arcade staff, and even they can’t attest to witnessing the whole game. If the game wasn’t completed, how exactly would we prove that? How would we go about proving a negative? To that end, why should such a score (from this guy of all people), under these circumstances, be treated as anything other than unofficial, no matter what his friends are willing to say for him? What exactly is it that’s supposed to make this more credible than any other arcade high score rumors of yore?
As my research colleague said:
I’ll be the first to say that if Mitchell got 360, then he got 360. But right now, it looks like we don’t have any actual video or photographic evidence that it happened, leaving us with just “witnesses” who, according to the rules, wouldn’t be enough to have that score recognized. If this sounds pedantic, I guess one only has to speculate if TG would have accepted a perfect submission from Fothergill without a photo of the screen displaying the score?
In fact, we’ve tried proving it was real! We found footage of the split screen, which we’re happy to share. We’ve shown that he did indeed get that far, on perfect score pace. We’ve shown you exactly one person who claims to have seen the actual final score themselves. If we had that final shot of 3,333,360, we would just show it to you, and close the matter of whether he hit the score or not. Instead, we have a very conspicuous absence of it, and a lot of lies and shifting stories, from parties who have already shown themselves to be untrustworthy in these matters.
IN DONKEY KONG’S SHADOW
People are naturally very trusting, and thus are reluctant to believe that someone exuding confidence would be telling outright, brazen lies. You see this in the tendency to want to see if a statement is technically true if you interpret it a certain way (which of course leads to professional liars being vague or evasive enough as to later claim the widest possible latitude in interpretation). In our diligence, we followed each of these roads we saw, even when at times we felt the premise of such an overly favorable interpretation of a misleading statement was silly.
But we also cannot escape the fact that this same person and his close associates have lied to us elsewhere, and are even now taking their fraud to court in the hopes of suppressing the truth. While this Pac-Man story has been told in some shape or form a few times over the years, it’s especially worth revisiting in light of what we’ve learned from the 2018 dispute over Billy’s fraudulent Donkey Kong scores. One cannot help but raise an eyebrow looking at the similarities between the story around his claimed Pac-Man score and his later claimed DK scores, which are (no matter what Billy says) proven to have been completely falsified.
You don’t even need me to make the comparison. Billy will do it himself, such as in a 2018 interview with Josh Houslander’s X-Cast. (Note that Billy refers to Boomers, the site of his fake DK score and board swap video, by its old name “Grand Prix”.) Starting at about 6:10:
I was thinking about it today, and I didn’t realize it ’til today, that the situation at Funspot was not a whole lot different than the situation at Grand Prix in 2010. The game was supplied by an arcade or a distributor. The situation was announced. And the location, obviously was announced. And it’s kind of interesting that… When this attempt was going to be done, and people knew about it… I got up there, and I arrived early. And everything was already prepared. In the case of Funspot, Gary had everything prepared. Quite honestly, he was terrific. Grand Prix had everything prepared. The recordings were set up. The area was roped off. A lot of people smarter than me set up the situation to be recorded. They set up the game settings, to make sure that they were on the proper setting. And the fact of the matter is, I wasn’t even a caretaker of the surroundings. And, you know, when I finally gained success, when the good news finally came to me, I mean there were scores of people there to congratulate me. There was media. I did a few interviews. You know, there was, you know, the obvious fun stuff of, you know, hugs and handshakes, and all that silly stuff. I was there for hours afterwards, and, I mean, I was interacting with people. So I sat here and I realized, today, that what happened at Funspot with the perfect Pac-Man is not a whole lot different than what happened at Grand Prix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSzpjo8Oe0
If you wanted, you could interpret this to mean that it took Billy a few days to realize that the story he tells about Boomers is similar to the real story of Funspot. But on the other hand, if one of those series of events genuinely does remind him of the other, that would be a stunning admission.
Regardless of Billy’s nostalgia for his various gaming hoaxes over the years, there are notable similarities here. First up, there’s the lack of sincere verification. The MAME DK tapes do not show the machine power-on, as the written rules require. As we would later learn, this was to hide the loading screen, which would have been a dead giveaway for MAME. While it would be pretty silly to think Billy’s 1999 Pac-Man score was on early MAME rather than Funspot’s genuine Pac-Man cabinet, the breaks in continuity on the recording and the lack of photo of the final score from the same liar are all the more alarming.
Recall also that Billy never published his Donkey Kong tapes himself. One was shown at Funspot, another was shown at the Big Bang event in Iowa, and clips were provided to King of Kong and Chasing Ghosts. (The Mruczek MTV interview was a function of Twin Galaxies and not of Billy himself.) The DK tapes that proved Billy cheated were leaked without his involvement, while the Pac-Man tapes were never published at all. In both cases, we were asked to trust the word of random, uninitiated witnesses in lieu of actual evidence.
And any time a peculiarity was raised about Billy’s methodology with Donkey Kong, be it that he discarded extra lives and points, or that he played in front of a bunch of clueless mortgage brokers rather than actual gamers, the answer was always the same: “Because I’m Billy Mitchell”.
The Pac-Man and Tokyo Game Show saga built Billy’s public profile, enabling further fraudulence down the line. When Billy claimed to hit back-to-back records on Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior in 2010, rather than facing overwhelming skepticism, much of the response amounted to acceptance that Billy Mitchell of all people could pull off such a feat:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/130764-A-rumor-about-Billy-Mitchell-and-the-DK-record
Remember how Billy’s friend, Walter Day, was only too happy to promote a perfect score on Pac-Man as some sort of century-defining achievement? Check out this Twin Galaxies poster promoting the Donkey Kong competition between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe [S82]:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/images/generalinfo/celebrating_donkey_kong_1million_725.jpg
So now, not five years into the new century, a million points is already being declared the “classic gaming feat of the 21st Century”. It seems that, whatever game Billy’s focused on at any given moment, Walter Day’s Twin Galaxies would say that’s the most important game of all time. (Oh, and for reference, the world record on DK currently sits at 1,272,700 by John McCurdy.) [S83]
Recall how much of the promotion around Billy’s Pac-Man score was fueled by Twin Galaxies, under the guise that TG was somehow separate from Billy. Well, you see this at play in this “Twin Galaxies” branded poster. You’ll never guess who commissioned it!
https://web.archive.org/web/20051212173933/http://www.twingalaxies.com:80/index.aspx?c=19&id=1191
As one of my research colleagues incredulously inquired:
What kind of person creates a poster claiming their score as gaming feat of the century just 4 years in to a new century??
There’s a line Billy likes to repeat that, if his Donkey Kong scores are fake (which they are), then you can’t just blame him; you have to blame all these other people tangentially involved in the scenario as well. But just as with Donkey Kong, surely not everyone involved intended to deceive. Billy got a few individuals from Funspot to sign pre-written witness statements, which as we discussed don’t leave us any more informed as to what happened than we were before. [S84]
In 2020, despite the mountain of evidence against Billy’s lies, Guinness chose to reinstate all of his scores, including for Pac-Man, as well as a DK score Billy also assured them was never intended as an actual scoreboard submission but which he demanded be reinstated anyway. Of course, the informed public saw this move by Guinness as an attempt to avoid being named as a defendant in Billy’s defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies. This was an astute hunch, as two years later, court processes required the disclosure of private communications between Billy’s lawyer and Guinness, showing both that this was exactly the threat on the table, and that Guinness never inquired about or demonstrated any evaluation of the evidence.
https://perfectpacman.com/2022/12/25/guinness-exposed/
Of course, none of this stopped Billy from touting his Guinness reinstatement as some kind of exoneration. With Donkey Kong, as with Pac-Man, Billy loves to outsource his authentication, so that (at least by appearances) it’s not just him and Walter personally saying it. [S85]
It’s interesting to compare the situations of Rick Fothergill and Steve Wiebe, and Billy’s self-absorption and poor sportsmanship toward both. In 2003, on MTV’s True Life episode “I’m a Gamer”, Billy announced he would be vying for a gaming feat so major it would shock the world, refusing to say what this feat would be (starting at about 37:00 here):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qW2AiO5jIQ
Billy expressed a similar sentiment to Retro Gaming Radio in 2003. When asked by the hosts where he’s gone to break records, Billy ignores the specific question and starts talking about his trip to Japan, and his plan to return to the limelight (starting at about 10:00):
My favorite trip, without a doubt, after doing the perfect score on Pac-Man and gaining all the notoriety I gained, I was flown to the Tokyo Game Show. And in front of Mr. Nakamura, who is the father of Pac-Man, and probably about 70,000 Japanese, I was awarded the title of “Video Game Player of the Century”. For sure, that was my favorite trip. And I keep telling everybody that, when I do my next accomplishment, it’ll be bigger than that. It’ll take me back to Japan again.
https://archive.org/details/rgry6/07+Episode+2004-08+Part+02.mp3
It is believed that this planned feat involved the aforementioned million point score on Donkey Kong, something which (due to his choice to cheat) he was evidently unable to do legitimately. Compare this to his 1999 interview, where he expressed his desire to achieve the fastest time for a perfect score on Pac-Man:
And earlier that summer, in his local South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1999-07-16-9907160436-story.html
All of this sounds great. Sure, as one might say, “accept nothing less than victory”. But that becomes a problem when “accept nothing less than victory” becomes “deny others the satisfaction of their earned victories”. Billy lost his million point race to Wiebe, but rather than simply congratulate Wiebe and look to the next milestone to chase, Billy chose instead to tell the world he won the race after all. In fact, he went so far as to fabricate evidence wholesale just to authenticate his lies. (You don’t suppose he laid awake at night terrified of being taunted for failure the way he and his son happily taunted Fothergill all those years?) And then, for years afterward, he shamelessly embraced those accolades he knows he never earned.
This is the guy whose word we’re supposed to take? This is the guy who supposedly would never lie (again) about a Pac-Man score?
Of course Billy will tell you that Masaya Nakamura personally declared him the “Video Game Player of the Century” to a roaring crowd of thousands. Just like he’ll tell you he defeated Rick Fothergill in head-to-head competition. Just like he’ll tell you he hit all the contested Donkey Kong scores exactly on the head. Just like he’ll tell you he has no idea how his DK tapes got covered in MAME signatures. It is a classic case of someone who is unsatisfied with the truth, and who has no compunctions about running with a bald-faced lie instead.
As my research colleague put it:
His arrogance knowing he can control whatever he wishes TG-wise leads to his blatant disregard for the rules. In terms of having a copy of the full run recorded? Agreeing to a gentleman’s handshake in the name of sportsmanship? Following the rules on breaks? “That’s for all you plebs. I’m Billy Mitchell! All I’m interested in is making sure I get the headlines and putting the extra sprinkles on top of my achievements.” It’s this arrogance that had led him to where he is now. The unthinkable happened – the peasants revolted against the king and he has no evidence to clear his name because he never thought he needed any back when he was on the throne. Any player abiding by the rules back in the day would have the evidence needed to exonerate any accusations of wrong doing. That’s all people have been asking for, from Mitchell, since the dispute into his scores was opened. Mitchell was untouchable at the top of the TG tree, he answered to nobody, and he arrogantly presumed his word was good enough. Whilst others were jumping through hoops to get their own scores accepted.
At the beginning of “Dot Nine”, we discussed bases for disqualification, had Walter Day’s Twin Galaxies had any interest in holding their favored players accountable toward their own rules. But one topic we did not examine in that context was Billy’s choice to lead Rick Fothergill into believing they would compete head-to-head the following year, before launching a planned sneak attack to get the record first. Since Twin Galaxies had no sportsmanship clause, there was technically no rule against this, therefore one could not say it was “cheating” to conduct one’s self in this immoral manner. And indeed, this would have no bearing today on whether or not Billy scored 3,333,360 on Pac-Man that day.
However, if we were to take Billy at his own word, given his oft-repeated stories of the “race to be the first”, there were different kinds of competitions at play in this saga. Just like how there’s a difference between “Highest score on Galaga” and “Most consecutive hours playing Galaga”, there’s a difference between “Highest score on Pac-Man” and “First to achieve 3,333,360 points on Pac-Man”. And with regard to the latter, if you and your competitor have agreed to the terms of a race, then it is very much cheating to unilaterally discard those terms and conduct a sneak attack to hit the mark first. (Imagine a 100-meter race at a stadium, and then one competitor shows up an hour early, runs the race by himself, and declares himself the winner.) In that respect, Billy Mitchell very much did cheat at Pac-Man in 1999, like he cheated at Donkey Kong years later. Billy’s claims to greatness – a Pac-Man race he cheated at, Donkey Kong scores he faked evidence for, and an award from his friend for which no one else was allowed to compete – his entire legacy, is all built on lies.
As I write this updated version of “Dot Nine”, it’s April 2023. We continue to discuss Billy Mitchell’s and Walter Day’s fraud, primarily because Billy has taken his lies to court, in an attempt to strongarm Twin Galaxies into recognizing his bogus scores, and to quash journalism on the subject. Had Billy simply admitted his Donkey Kong tapes were fraudulent in 2018, when the MAME evidence was discovered, this project would almost surely not exist, and most people would have forgiven him by now. Given the stress and financial cost he’s put so many people through these past five years, it’s hard to imagine any forgiveness is in his future, but even if that were possible, it would require contrition. Forgiveness cannot happen for someone who continues rolling the dice with destructive lawsuits, who keeps adding new lies to cover for the old ones, and who continues to insist we accept claims we know to be untrue, all with the apparent hope that the broader gaming community accepts at least some of his tall tales if they cannot be outright disproven.
THE SOAPBOX
I’d like to conclude today with a bit of soapboxing, which I think I’ve earned. Like most of you, I had always heard the basic elements of this story, told confidently by people in positions of authority. Even after discovering Billy Mitchell is a massive liar and a cheater, the process of researching this aspect of his “legacy” was still shocking, discovering just how badly we, the entire gaming community, had all been lied to all these years. It’s not just that the walls of this house were flimsy. The whole foundation was rotten to the core.
And yet so much of it had been taken for granted to such a degree, for such a long amount of time, it seems that few people really questioned it. I myself had not thought to call it into doubt, until it was brought to my attention that Billy’s Namco plaque said nothing of what Billy ascribed to it, and that his printed certificate from Walter Day preceded his trip to Japan – a circumstance that merited an explanation. And even when I did start to examine the facts, I did not expect to find so much material evidence (especially from Japan) to contradict the stories. (And again, that’s a massive credit to my research colleagues who left no stones unturned!)
I’m not going to put anybody on the spot of course, but it seems even many of Billy’s most ardent critics, the ones who would have had the most reason to broadcast corrections like these, even they had taken so much of this narrative for granted. One such person even responded to the Donkey Kong MAME evidence by suggesting Namco be asked to rescind Billy’s “Video Game Player of the Century” award, an award which it turns out Namco had nothing to do with in the first place.
In a way, this recalls the later events leading up to King of Kong, how the community had accepted the Billy-favorable framing that Wiebe’s early DK scores should be disqualified because he played on a “Double Donkey Kong” board, something which is now perfectly within the rules [S86]:
http://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=2429.0
It’s only natural to ask what other aspects of this Pac-Man story, what other portions of this foundation, are also worth calling into question. And one that springs to mind immediately is the framing around competitive Pac-Man and the “perfect score” itself.
A “perfect score” of Pac-Man, as we have defined it for the past twenty years, consists of three elements: Perfect eats (ghosts and fruit), enduring the three hour stretch of “ninth key” boards, and knowing about the hidden dots on the split screen. (Remember that the regular dots and power pellets are requisite.) Two of those are challenges of skill; even using patterns, one must recall and execute the patterns without dying. The third is simply a question of information. Sure, nothing in video gaming is guaranteed. It is certainly possible to die on the split screen if you’re not using the “BC” spot as it’s used today (and we’ve discussed the possibility that this is what happened to Billy). And even if you do use the spot, it’s possible to park incorrectly, or make some other colossally poor turn. But if you have the knowledge of where the hidden dots exist, and how to trap the ghosts in the side tunnel, the dots themselves are trivial to collect. They’re not protected by any other in-game threat.
And yet, the Twin Galaxies of Walter Day so readily discarded the two signifiers of skill, and made the question of the perfect score entirely one of who knew about the hidden dots.
Why is that?
At about 1:10 in this clip from G4, Billy’s biggest cheerleader, Walter Day, stresses how supposedly impossible a perfect score on Pac-Man is to achieve:
It was so extraordinary that, even though now the rest of society knows how to do it, no one can probably really pull it off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmVv7QQ-1qg
And just like that, up becomes down. The things Billy had in common with those who came before him – the ability to eat every ghost, and survive the ninth key stretch – those are meaningless, while his rack advance discovery of unintended extra points becomes the defining thing that, even with a guide, only the most elite of gamers allegedly could achieve. [S87]
And yet, when Twin Galaxies went to describe the feat in 1999, the signifiers of skill (the ones demonstrated by Bill Bastable and others years earlier) were the sole focus:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
As we’ve discussed, what actually separated Billy and Ayra from those who came before them was the personal possession of a Pac-Man cabinet. No arcade owner was going to let you open up their machine and fiddle with the settings, all so you could explore the garbage half of the split screen, and maybe get even better at tying up their income box for several hours. It’s not that I totally begrudge this advantage. Many players have “unfair” advantages (such as excessive free time, or access to rare games or equipment). It’s that I don’t believe such advantages should be characterized as something they are not. This was never a discovery of skill, but rather a discovery of money. [S88]
And yet, here we are, still arguing over changed settings, and who was supposedly “first”, precisely because Billy and Walter have gone to such lengths to reduce the Pac-Man conversation to just that scope. (Setting aside that Billy’s key argument for being “first”, that anyone who may have done it before him didn’t record it, falls flat if Billy didn’t finish recording his either.) Six lives plus hidden dots is still spoken of as if it’s Mt. Everest, while a perfect score with four lives is tossed into the rubbish. In no other game is the gulf of recognition so wide, over a margin so insignificant to actual skill or achievement.
The stilted discourse around this score, while it was always there, is stunning when you allow yourself to see it. For all the later references to it being a “Holy Grail”, very few at the time seemed to think of it as a thing that needed to be or had not yet been achieved. Nearly everything you thought you knew about this score was a lie, including perhaps even the score itself. Tragically, our collective understanding of gaming history may never fully cleanse itself of Billy Mitchell’s and Walter Day’s opportunism.
I don’t presume to speak for the competitive Pac-Man community, but for my part as a gaming historian I am comfortable saying, without reservation, that Bill Bastable got a perfect score on Pac-Man in 1982. He did it in the “no hidden dots” / “no glitch abuse” category, which was the only category known at the time (aside from the shorter “blue time” category promoted by Randy Tufts, who likely also did a full 256-board perfect score at that time, albeit with less contemporary documentation). Yes, eventually the “hidden dots” category was discovered and developed later, and yes, that allows a player to reach a higher score. And we can discuss who got that score at what time. But the knowledge of those hidden dots are not what make the player. The ability to execute perfect eats, combined with the ninth key stretch, are what make a Pac-Man player a champion. It was never genuinely a race, but even if it were, Bill Bastable had snapped that finish line tape before Billy Mitchell had even arrived at the race track. [S89] And even beyond Mr. Bastable, into the present day, if you want to learn Pac-Man grouping and patterns, and you want to knock out a perfect score at your nearest barcade, as far as I’m concerned, you can show up and do so, at whatever settings that machine is set to. You can do a 3+1 perfect score, or a 5+1 perfect score, or a “jumper” perfect score, or a “Reunion” machine perfect score, or whatever is available, as long as it has a kill screen. You don’t need to arrange for the proprietor to open up the cabinet and change the settings (or unsolder the board revision) before it “counts”. [S90]
A MEANS TO AN END
As for Billy’s claimed score, we’ve presented the evidence and the context both for and against. Setting aside all the unsportsmanlike conduct, and setting aside the many grounds on which this score should have been disqualified even by the rules of old Twin Galaxies, your guess as to whether Billy Mitchell ultimately piloted a Pac-Man cabinet to a score of 3,333,360 on July 3, 1999, is as good as mine. I would certainly argue that, at the very least, it stands unproven historically, noting that a number of people attesting to it have proven themselves untrustworthy. But you have a right to make your own conclusion, as long as it is based on the facts. [S91]
But there’s yet another question to answer: Why are we discussing this in the first place?
I’m assuming the reader, like myself, cares about gaming history in a general sense. What I do find neat about the top Pac-Man score is that it’s a “maxout”, but rather than being all nines, it’s a very particular target score. There are no extra points to endlessly leech. Add the fact that this was an extremely popular game in its day (so much so that it put a hit song on the radio), and it’s easy to see why the score would carry some prestige. But that’s sort of an intellectual curiosity. With the highest respect to Misters Tufts, Bastable, Fothergill, and Race, as far as gaming skill, I can think of any number of feats that impress me more than a single perfect score on original Pac-Man. In 2015, dram55 beat Kaizo Mario World deathless, a feat which has since only been repeated by Calco2. [S92] Eight people have beaten Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! all the way through while blindfolded, a feat which while astonishing in itself, was further upstaged at AGDQ 2020 when sinister1 and zallard1 beat the whole game blindfolded and while sharing halves of one controller. [S93] Even the Pac-Man masters themselves seem to be in consensus that the various derivatives of Pac-Man (Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, etc.) pose a greater challenge than the original.
Billy’s narrative relies, in part, on the conflation of attention (especially mainstream media attention) with gaming prestige. It could be that a perfect score on Pac-Man is strictly less difficult than a deathless run of Ninja Gaiden, but Time Magazine isn’t going to cover the latter. CNN isn’t impressed by real-time arbitrary code execution on Ocarina of Time. USA Today has no idea what is or is not a real Pac-Man score. Guinness World Records is a household name, but that doesn’t mean they know anything about gaming adjudication. (Heck, they still have a page for Rodrigo Lopes, years after he was wiped from Twin Galaxies.) [S94] And as we’ve seen, newspapers routinely print rounded scores.
But what these outlets can’t offer in terms of proper gaming adjudication, they more than make up for in attention. Billy and Walter valued Time and CNN because that publicity was what they sought. Never forget Walter Day’s all-too-telling words from King of Kong:
The success of this was not just because someone got a perfect Pac-Man score, but because Billy Mitchell got a perfect Pac-Man score.
As my research colleague pondered in response to this famous line:
Isn’t it usually the feats or achievements that define the player, and not the player that defines the achievement?
And of course, Walter Day’s own stories and exaggerations are tailor-made to play into this quest for media coverage. Here’s an extended version of Walter’s spiel on Billy, delivered at the 2007 Pac-Man World Championship (at about 12:40) [S95]:
Billy’s the most distinguished person in the book, because he’s the only person to have a full page that recognizes his status as the video game player of the century. He was crowned the video game player of the century at the Tokyo Game Show in 1999 because he had the most distinguished career in video game playing, because he was the person with five listings in the Guinness World Record book back in 1983, ’84, ’85. He’s the person who was the… the founding member of history’s first official video game… professional video game team, back in 1983. He’s held more world records almost than anybody back then, during that early era. He also is like a… a very close friend of Mr. Nakamura, who congratulated him on the stage in Tokyo for his distinguished… distinguished achievement of being the first person in history to do a perfect game on Pac-Man. And if you don’t know what a perfect game of Pac-Man is, I’ll tell ya right now. He had to go through 256 screens, eating every single dot, eating every single fruit, getting every single blue man, every single power pel… power pellet, to the 256th screen, which took him six hours, playing freelance without a pattern, without dying even once. So that put not only Billy Mitchell on the map, but it actually put arcade gaming on the map again.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/27.ThePerfectFraudmanPart3eye-candyCut.webm
While we could argue whether or not Billy Mitchell’s and Walter Day’s pursuit of mainstream media attention (or their choice to exaggerate and outright lie) was good for competitive gaming, it was certainly good for themselves. They looked for a “Holy Grail” to jumpstart Billy’s career, on which the old Twin Galaxies could also ride to prominence, and “The Perfect Pac-Man” fit the bill, well, perfectly. For years, Walter went around telling people “Here’s Billy Mitchell, you don’t know who he is, but I assure you he’s famous”, and it worked. [S96] He told people “This guy was just named Player of the Century” (without saying it was he who decided that), and with enough emphasis, he got others to repeat it. They got the attention they wanted, which in turn could be monetized further, leading to feature film appearances, monetary investment in Twin Galaxies, and countless dollars in convention fees. And we’re left with a byproduct mythos of a man who, no matter what he says, is no more of a “Player of the Century” than Todd Rogers is the “King of Video Games”.
This attention continues to this day, amplified it seems by the controversy of his cheating. You sit only a click away from interview after interview after interview, featuring a charismatic Billy Mitchell, always in a safe venue, either among known friends and sycophants, or those who choose to rely solely on him for their information and therefore won’t notice or react to the many blatant, provable lies he likes to tell to their faces (such as that he got three million point DK scores his first week of streaming, or that he hit his contested scores “exactly on the head”). Billy showers these hosts in flattery, suggesting to people who have done literally zero research into the case that they’re the ones who can see what’s really going on. [S97] Billy is quite skilled at convincing these suckers both that they don’t need to know any more, and that the people researching these stories are somehow less informed for their work. And consequently, he has casual observers who are only too happy to carry his water for him: “How are you gonna argue with the guy? Namco themselves called him player of the century!”
I have said elsewhere that Billy’s actual skill is not games, it’s people. Unlike Todd Rogers, who simply told lies, Billy successfully got others invested in the lies as well. He went to great measures to wrangle others into his stories, to involve innocent (and sometimes not-so-innocent) bystanders. His self-flattery of his own claimed perfect score became communal flattery of other perfect score players down the line, who were the ones most qualified to comment on his claimed achievement. His involvement with Funspot meant his lies were of tangible value to them as well. Like other narcissists, Billy Mitchell compels those around him to compromise their morals (as we’ve seen with prepared witness statements his acquaintances did not want to sign), knowing that the first compromise makes one more malleable down the road. He knew when and how to turn friends against friends, and when not to. And through it all, he never forgot who his true accomplices are.
Billy didn’t play the game as much as he played the people and the media around the game. Sure, he needed something to latch on to – in this case Pac-Man – but it didn’t ultimately matter what that was. Had Rick Fothergill completed the perfect score at the May 1999 tournament, the mythos around Billy Mitchell would have been manufactured the same way around something else instead, with Rick’s score becoming an afterthought. And once Billy was established, he could tell whatever story he wanted, about Fothergill, or Bill Bastable, or Masaya Nakamura, as nobody was going to make a stink and tell him “No”. Even now, by way of his lawsuits, the community is forced to give him attention, lest they otherwise isolate the bully with his target(s). Even this series you’re reading, compelled by ongoing legal battles and lingering historical questions, is forced to acknowledge what few elements of Billy’s story may have been true by way of debunking the many lies and exaggerations. (Although given his genuine hostility to critics and journalists over the years, to say nothing of legal threats and litigation, it’s hard to believe Billy actually wants this sort of coverage.)
And thus we arrive at the true conflict of this story: Billy Mitchell’s need for attention, versus the truth. At no point did Billy decide the truth should win out. Never did he respect the community or gaming history enough to sit down and at least once tell the full and unvarnished story of his insistent claim to video game immortality. We are asked to believe and recognize this score, and yet all we are given to flesh out the story are provable lies, and blatant ones at that. As if we had any doubt where his priorities are, his lies have now crept into his sworn court testimony.
We can spend all day attempting to answer the question of whether Billy hit a score of 3,333,360 on a Pac-Man cabinet on July 3, 1999. And as a matter of gaming history, it is a question worth asking for our own sake. But from the perspective of Billy Mitchell, it was never about Pac-Man. All of this, all of us, have merely been a means to an end.
REWRITING HISTORY
There’s one last item to discuss in all this. They say journalism is the first draft of history. On this occasion, that certainly wasn’t the case. There was no actual journalism in Billy’s “perfect Pac-Man” story when it originated. Nobody was going around issuing corrections to Billy’s and Walter’s stories. This was all about confidence men, rubber-stamped press releases, mainstream fluff profiles, and very few uncomfortable questions.
The reasons for this are varied. From the mainstream perspective, this story was no more important than those “lost dog” type stories concluding every nightly newscast. Time Magazine wasn’t going to waste their fact-checkers’ time investigating whether a Pac-Man score was real or not. Of course, industry publications weren’t going to raise a stink, not when there are new games to review and sell. And from the perspective of many hobbyists, their approach to games journalism was an extension of their approach to the games themselves: It’s supposed to be fun! (And it should be!) Surely, many didn’t even want to consider that these de facto authorities and heroes for which they relied on for their information were outright liars, not even if someone had raised that possibility. After all, if this story was a lie, what would that say about all their other gaming community coverage which was similarly based on unquestioned repetition?
All of this should be taken into account when we reexamine a story such as this today. Billy often talks about his critics “reaching into the past” and “changing history”, while of course never acknowledging that he both changed “history” (or his story) over the years, and that he never accurately told it in the first place. He has been rewriting history for decades, sometimes replacing it altogether with whatever self-serving narrative he decides is more flattering, while at other times vacillating between different variations depending on the convenience of the day.
Billy’s and Walter’s relentless tour of the convention circuit plays into this as well, giving both of them frequent opportunity to repeat and solidify the lies. [S98] In Exhibit C (2017 Classic Game Fest in Austin), Billy defended his friend Todd Rogers from analysts who correctly concluded Todd’s claim of 5.51 seconds on Dragster was impossible. Here are Billy’s ironic words, starting at about 51:10:
You would be shocked as to the number of people who want to go back in history, and they want to rewrite history. They want to take something, or change something, or minimize something that you did to compete in the… or that you did in the industry of gaming. And that can never be done when we do things like this, and that’s one of the reasons we do ’em.
And continuing a moment later:
Now they want to rewrite history and say the score he got, he never really got. Why? Because they weren’t there to beat it, to see it, and if they can rewrite it, they can have their name up there at a score that they did get because they participated at a more minimal level. That’s why we like things written into history, so no one can ever change it.
Read that again, and think of how the man saying those words treated Bill Bastable.
At any rate, the scheme worked, since people didn’t question it for years, until it had gained a tenure as established history. As my research colleague said, in reference to Karl Jobst’s 2019 video on Todd Rogers and Dragster [S99]:
Ultimately, Jobst argues (I believe) that Todd’s story could have been dismantled years earlier if people would have fact-checked his story. I think the criticism, while valid, is a tad unfair – if Todd is being interviewed at Funspot, for example, you basically have people who know nothing about Todd taking him at his word, which is to simply say that basic trust still greases the wheels of human interaction. And people like Todd (and Mitchell) were able to exploit that.
And it’s true – both that Todd’s fraud could (and probably should) have been uncovered years earlier, and that healthy people aren’t always looking for everything around them to be part of a conspiracy, and thus will miss lies which may seem obvious in retrospect. Just like how gaming competition requires trust between competitors, gaming journalism requires trust between sources. [S100] The true problem is failing to recognize when that trust has been broken. Piecing together gaming history decades later is difficult enough without bad faith parties allowing the record to be vandalized and polluted with self-serving lies. While we cannot account for every potential new story Billy will come up with to plug the holes in his previous ones, we can demonstrate that his existing claims do not match the documentary record, which I believe we have sufficiently done here.
Lest anyone think I’m just out to take shots at everyone from behind the bulwark of hindsight, I used to be a fan of Billy’s and believe in him as well. I was on Reddit speaking highly of him as recently as February 2018. [S101] Much like competitive Pac-Man, this isn’t about who figured out that Billy Mitchell is a liar first. This is about coming to terms with the facts and accepting that a massive fraud has been perpetrated on the gaming community for over twenty years.
I have no qualms with the people who innocently interviewed Billy Mitchell years ago, back when he was widely considered a legitimate competitor. [S102] While “journalism” (of a sort) may have had a role in carrying the bogus “Player of the Century” story in the first place, it has also had a hand in exposing it now. We never would have pieced all of this together if people had not interviewed Billy so many times over the years. Having said that, this is a different era now. Not everyone has to care that a guy cheated at Donkey Kong or Pac-Man, but the people covering the story as “journalists” are obliged to. If you are choosing to interview the guy, not caring whether he’s a toxic scumbag makes you a toxic scumbag (and would mean you certainly have no grounds whatsoever to complain about anyone else’s lack of integrity in gaming journalism). There have been sincere attempts to cover the Donkey Kong cheating scandal in a constructive manner, and I thank those journalists for their efforts. [S103] But that work involves fact-checking, investigation, and a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions, and not simply giving an established liar an unconditional opportunity to amplify his lies. Should Billy Mitchell have something to say today, he has a platform of his own on Twitch and YouTube; he does not need yours as well. Much of this work has been done for you. I have cited original sources here as much as possible. If you are not willing to do the work of reading and processing the fruits of that research, then you should not be giving attention to proven liars and swindlers. Gaming history – actual gaming history – is worse off for your indifference.
Charisma and flattery go a long way, so I have no doubt that Billy will continue to enjoy interviews and positive attention in some quarters of the gaming community. He has lost allies in recent years, including current Pac-Man champion David Race, who was alienated in part due to various claims from Billy about Pac-Man which David knew were not true. [S104] On the other hand, Billy has also rounded up new allies, including new self-described “journalists” willing to conduct new interviews, eager to be sharing a stage or a YouTube window with a gaming movie star, excited for the opportunity to ask Billy Mitchell if he’s set any world records on Call of Duty or Fortnite, and too starstruck to care that he unironically compares himself to Neil Armstrong. Nothing we say or do will stop that altogether. All we can do is report the truth, and remind people that when you’re listening to Billy’s stories, you are listening to a lying narcissist’s fanfic autobiography, and not any actual gaming history.
CONTINUE?
Once again, tremendous thanks to David Race, Pat Laffaye, Bill Bastable, as well as Rick Fothergill (who answered questions by way of David Race), and also to Robert Mruczek, who helped clarify some items for us after this series began publishing. And while my research colleagues have chosen to remain anonymous, they deserve a massive standing ovation, which I assure you, they do see and hear.
When this series was first published, it concluded with a teaser for “Dot Ten”, which I still intend to write some day. [S105] In addition to everything covered thus far, we also took interest in Billy’s more recent attempts to “recreate” his claimed perfect score on Pac-Man on Twitch, his 8th place finish at the 2007 Pac-Man World Championship, and his “beyond perfect” stunt in Chicago in late 2020. Obviously everything we had was summarily reviewed for material relevant for “Dot One” through “Dot Nine”, but producing a full presentation on these isolated follow-up stories would have considerably delayed this project for little meaningful gain. (Spoiler: Billy Mitchell still lies a lot.) Additionally, it was our hope that getting these first nine installments published would help jog some people’s memories, or would help bring to light new discoveries, as you’ve already seen incorporated into this updated “Dot Nine”. And of course, the ongoing legal battle and related testimonies are sure to shake some further recollections loose. I also anticipate working on a full update to each installment in this series after the conclusion of the current court battles, and hopefully an audio version of that final edition. As always, my research colleagues and I continue our search for evidence to be incorporated in any future installments.
Thank you again for reading. Keep on whistlin’. And we will still see you all again some day in “Dot Ten”.
But the most important thing, the thing that everyone will remember is… who was the FIRST to leave a comment: 😉
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“If you are not willing to do the work of reading and processing the fruits of that research, then you should not be giving attention to proven liars and swindlers. Gaming history – actual gaming history – is worse off for your indifference.”
Except if your Seth Gordon , Ed Cuntingham or Steve “wannabe” Weibe who are free to alter gaming history as they please then slander,defame and disenfranchise a previously established player (with help from TG) from their right to title so they can steal the subject matter for themselves and sell you false history for profit based on the afore mentioned srolen topic matter.
However this is…….. “Constantly disputed and Impossible to Verify”…….. Remember?
You won’t be seeing erstaz/Walter covering that.
“And it worked, since people didn’t question it for years, until it had gained a tenure as established history. As my research colleague said, ”
In the case of KoK, ….”It”….. worked long enough for the life rights checks to clear involving what ammouts to disenfranchised/stole subject matter.
Unfortunately you won’t be seeing Walter C break down the criminality involved with the actual greatest fraud in gaming history, KoK, because that can’t be turned into a Steve Weibe “ass-kissing” festival like its been for 14+ years. Steve has a life rights check and film contract because is pals in the film industry could buy off TG like $5 whores. You won’t be seeing Walter C’ cover this. So much for the sanctity preserving gaming history.
Thanks for this. I only knew bits and pieces of the story; I followed the Todd Rogers Dragster debacle much closer.
“NO VID, NO DID”………
Really? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P6edH95LCc
The film makers stated this performance ( the one in reality KoK is based on) as “Constantly Disputed” and “Impossible” to Verify”as the initial reason for exclusion. Talk about slander and liable! Several other staggeringly ignorant excuses/lies blew up in their face before the unwritten “new rule requirement” of having to be a “cool and entertaining celebrity” was added tho the submission rules” Now the topic becomes a matter of opinion instead of facts.
Steve had the connections to the film makers who easily could buy off TG’s upper management like the street walking whores they were………….guess that makes Steve “cool and entertaining” huh?
Billy practically if not owned the place and the primary beneficiary of the bribe money involved altering historic documents of record…guess that makes Billy “cool and entertaining” too huh? Ohhhh loookie, the”new rule requirements have just been met!
“There have been sincere attempts to cover the Donkey Kong cheating scandal in a constructive manner, and I thank those journalists for their efforts. [S85] But that work involves fact-checking,”
It also involves addressing Steve Weibes complicity in recieving from TG and exploiting for profit the stolen subject matter central to the “so-called” documentary to begin with…..before Billy even MAME’ed his first game …and that is a big …….No…No! Walter C. You will NOT be permitted to do this.
Its O.K to give Steve and Billy undeserved historical credit for “higher scores back in the 80’s”” as retro active justification for disenfranchising a documented current WR , especially with no proof of such “higher 80’s scores”. So much for “No Vid, No Did” huh?
Its O.K to disenfranchise a pre established player qnd rob them from their earned right to title using defimation and slander to rewrite history so Steve and Billy can exploit the stolen subject matter for profit.
Its O.K to give Steve credit for a 19 yearold “lost WR” that was NOT played on an original DK PCB. anymore than Billys. This is easily proven. Still no answer from the “experts” at the DKF on this blunder. Billy actually can prove bias here for once and it cannot be disproven at all.
You as a gaming historian are here to prmote Steve and kiss his ass and NEVER cast aspersions on him. KoK was scripted as such.
“It’s interesting to compare the situations of Rick Fothergill and Steve Wiebe, and Billy’s self-absorption and poor sportsmanship toward both.”
Ahhhhhh,….no Walter, I need to make a correction here. Steves situation does not even come close to compare to Ricks because Steve was in on the KoK scam from the start. The “Steve vs. Billy” rivalry was SCRIPTED for what in reality is a fictional film based off a performance I originally did! 110% proven historical fact that no historian can deny.
Like Billy, Steve was well paid for his complicity in disenfranchising the real 1982 recod breaker and holder at the time (myself) with provable slander and liable so they could re-write history and sell it publically as fact.
Rick and myself were victims, Steve was just a different kind of cheater and was only allowed in because his film connections had the money to bribe TG with. Obvious if you can add 2+2.
Don’t ….”EVER”…… paint Steve Weibe as a poor mistreated victim because he plays the part in a fictional movie you think is real. Behind the sceens he was just as much a decitfull crook as Mitchell.
FYI, Billy has already filed copyright strikes against the two upload vids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ufz16AafaY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TuU0VwOqsc
Again, Billy Mitchell hates evidence. Also “Jace Hall is evil for withholding this evidence that would exonerate me! Wait, no, don’t publish it! No one’s supposed to see it!”
And as stated, as a score submission, that tape and its contents are property of Twin Galaxies.
Stay tuned.
Yup, Mitchell and his Manson family like cult are at it again. They were recently complaining that the tape(S) were not shown. Now they wont let them be shown? Message to the Mitchell cult members, If Billy asks you to put cyanide in your Kool-Aid……PLEASE DON’T DRINK IT.. I make flip commentslike this here and there but I’m serious here. I worry about them (Mitchell Cult) sometimes.
Update: The whole two-hour vid is now up on TG’s video archive:
https://view.vzaar.com/23489924/video
“Rick and myself were victims, Steve was just a different kind of cheater”
Steve had legitimate submissions declined for BS reasons (Double DK comes to mind).
I also don’t see how you’re a “victim”, you’re a wealthy man who can afford his own DK cab (something that immediately disqualifies 99+% of players from even competing).
Really!? Your saying NOT playing on an original arcade PCB (is what Steve did for years according to his “lost tape”) is a B.S reason for disqualifying Steves game? Yet shitting on and all over Billy Mitchell for the same basic reason is not?
Let me tell you what the real BS is. It’s when a REAL player like myself takes the time, follows to rules to set a WR only to have it unjustly discredited through the use of lies and slander when the topic material becomes profitable so Steve could be unfairly and unjustly given the credit for beating Billys 1982 score in the first place! Then profit from the same in a documentary marketed as fact. “THAT” is some serious B.S.
As for the rest of your staggeringly ignorant comment, I’m just going top let you wallow in your own ignorance. Less thyan a hand full of people know the true story behind Billys 1982 score being beat for the first time. KoK was a scripted fact and should NOT be used as a historical reference to the topic..
Ohh and my “RICH ASS” has NEVER actually bought a Donkey Kong machine……ever!
Here I’ve set you up with a “gotcha” moment if you care to respond back.
Really!? Your saying NOT playing on an original arcade PCB (is what Steve did for years according to his “lost tape”) is a B.S reason for disqualifying Steves game? Yet shitting on and all over Billy Mitchell for the same basic reason is not?
Let me tell you what the real BS is. It’s when a REAL player like myself takes the time, follows the rules to set a WR only to have it unjustly discredited through the use of lies and slander when the topic material becomes profitable so Steve could be unfairly and unjustly given the credit for beating Billys 1982 score in the first place! Then further profit from the same in a documentary marketed as fact. “THAT” is some serious B.S. and perfectly illustrates how corrupt and worthless the Twin Galaxys Scoreboard really was.
As for the rest of your staggeringly ignorant comment, I’m just going top let you wallow in your own ignorance. Less thyan a hand full of people know the true story behind Billys 1982 score being beat for the first time. KoK was a scripted fake and should NOT be used as a historical reference to the topic..
Ohh ……and my “RICH ASS” has NEVER actually bought a Donkey Kong machine……ever! If you knew the actually history and NOT the Seth Gordon fairytale you could make a factual comment on the matter.
Here, I’ve set you up with a “gotcha” moment if you care to respond back.
Tim, at the time of Steve’s record there were no rules disallowing DDK. It was specifically added to void his submission. It’s completely disingenuous for you to suggest this is the same as Billy faking high scores with MAME. On the subject of billy, I didn’t shit on him for anything. You brought him up. Back to Steve, he wasn’t unfairly given anything, in fact, when he legitimately beat the world record, Your record, live at funspot, he was immediately screwed over by Billy’s “this is not a submission” submission. I also haven’t used KoK as any sort of historical reference. Next time please don’t strawman so hard. If you truly have never *Owned* a DK cab then I apologize, but I stand by my statement that Steve was also screwed over.
“Tim, at the time of Steve’s record there were no rules disallowing DDK.”………..A: At the time of Steves performance, I was also the arcade record holder too. Steve knew that. There were no rules in place to specifically allow DDK either. When going for a record in an arcade game its a forgone conclusion your using the original hardware and required settings. Steve should have double checked. There were no rules in place for the required rom set either but I assure you that was a required rule as I called TG and specifically asked in the summer of 99. I was told the latter set without the barrel trick and “Nintendo of America” in the title screen was required. I had both variants at the time and was not sure which one to use.
“Back to Steve, he wasn’t unfairly given anything”,……………A: .WHAT!? Steve was “given” the credit for my performance in a documentary film at my expense. My performance was unjustly discredited with slander and liable in which to negate it so Steve could have the credit and further use it for the bases for that film and promote the faked Billy vs. Steve rivary. Initially my performance was called” Constantly Disputed” and “impossible to verify” as a means to negate it from the history. This was a blatent lie and easily proveable.
“It’s completely disingenuous for you to suggest this is the same as Billy faking high scores with MAME.”…….A: I said it was the same basic reason not the same overall. Besides, nobody will ever 100% conclusively prove MAME or emulation was used although I believe it was.
Billy has that 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of plausible deniability that will always use.
If you truly have never *Owned* a DK cab then I apologize, ………A: I said I never “purchaed” a DK game, I did however pull a couple DK machines out of local operators trash dumpsters including the one in 1998 the same one the now historic, history making game that the KoK film was based on. So to imply I’m a wealthy man is disingenuous on your part.
.”but I stand by my statement that Steve was also screwed over.” A:……… >boo hoo< Steve was in on the scam and got paid for his trouble, so I have no sympathy for him. Steve played a part in a fictional film based on a gaming performance I originally did.and got paid for it so how was he screwed over and I wasnt? I'll wait…………………………
If you truly have never *Owned* a DK cab then I apologize, but I stand by my statement that Steve was also screwed over.
Not sure if the Tim posting here is *the* Tim Sczerby because according to this article, Tim owned several cool machines back in 2000, including DK.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010429172948/http://www.classicgaming.com/features/dkscorer/
That said, I will add that just because Tim owned arcade games didn’t mean his was “rich.” Back in 1999-2000, you could buy many classic common games like DK for $50 – $100 thanks to ops clearing out their warehouses and auctioning their games. These machines typically took up more money in upkeep/repair than their purchase price many times over. It was a fun time to get into the hobby, prices today for these machines are far less kind on the wallet.
To “eagal-eyed” observers, I stated I never bought/purchased a DK machine. I did however pull a couple from local operators trash dumpsters. back in the 90’s,. so they cost me nothing but the repairs afterward. Its a fact, but I’m told that isnt a “cool and entertaining story”. Some jerkoff in Redmond Washington in cahoots with a streoid addled musclebrain creeping around with a DDK PCB is? Go figure.
Concerned Citizen has actually done some historic research on the matter (thanks for the link) unlike a lot of others that only “claim” they have done research. . One “so-called” historical researcher stated I live in New Jersey. in her “well researched” piece. WTF passes for historical research when you cant even get the state your subject individual lives in correct?
Also, a huge thank you for sharing this research and your findings over the last month. I will be definitely re-reading all of the dots again!
https://web.archive.org/web/20010429172948/http://www.classicgaming.com/features/dkscorer/
Wait a minute, I’m confused! The initial reason why this now history making game with a film based on it was excluded and negated was on the grounds that it was “Constantly Disputed” and “Impossible to verify”
You mean to tell me that Seth Gordon lied about this so he could profit selling re-written history to the public as fact?
Oh wait a minute, They also stated as an excuse that “in their TWIN GALAXYS ASSISTED” attempts to locate Tim led to one dead end after another………I gues thats why Walter and Billy were able to contact me shortly after I broke the record 2007 and the same day the film opened…2007 ..at TWO different addresses because ….”they could not track me down”. Gee that certainly adds up doesnt it? I would not trust them to find their ass with both hands after this.
The “better story”excuse came into play after the first few lies blew up in their faces so bad ( i.e. articalls from 2000 as well as the actual video performance itself “that I was able to force a retraction from the film makers….something they hate to do. A huge victory. The truth is they were scared of a lawsuit and were covering their asses once again.
There was an artical from some Washington newspaper that admitted at the start, but very low key , that “some guy” in N.Y. had beat Billys score before Steve, then continues praising Steve for the same thing I did as if he ( Steve) were the second comming of christ!
From the very start of this, without provocation from me, Steves PR machine just pissed in my face comming up short of outright saying my life and story involving the topic matter was worthless and only Bily and Steve deserved the credit and payment from my stolen topic. They may have gone so far as to say that……..Steves promoters and quite frankly Billy and Walter may have well said to me “Get to the back of the bus….BOY….were taking your seat and any financial renumerations associated with it. Watcha gonna do ’bout it?
“At the time of Steves performance, I was also the arcade record holder too. Steve knew that. There were no rules in place to specifically allow DDK either. When going for a record in an arcade game its a forgone conclusion your using the original hardware and required settings”
The point of using original hardware is so the timing of everything is right, and all players going for that record have an even playing field. What gave Steve some inherent advantage by using the DDK? This also doesn’t touch on the fact that he broke the record live, and was still screwed over.
“WHAT!? Steve was “given” the credit for my performance in a documentary film at my expense. My performance was unjustly discredited with slander and liable in which to negate it so Steve could have the credit and further use it for the bases for that film and promote the faked Billy vs. Steve rivary. Initially my performance was called” Constantly Disputed” and “impossible to verify” as a means to negate it from the history. This was a blatent lie and easily proveable.”
I’ve never made any claims about the accuracy of KoK, and in fact just about everyone who was in the movie says the same thing, including Steve: KoK was fake. What’s more, anyone even REMOTELY interested in DK scores knows that you had the WR. A casual viewer of KoK isn’t going to care, and likely isn’t going to even remember the names of the record holder. But I would ask you clarify one point here: when you say it was at your expense, do you mean it came at actual financial harm to you, or is this about your pride? Genuinely curious, so please don’t take offense to my asking.
“I said it was the same basic reason not the same overall.”
When phrased the way you did, it heavily implies that they were guilty of the same thing. So just for clarification: we do agree that Billy using an emulator to fake a high score is definitely worse than Wiebe just using the incorrect hardware? Can we at least agree on that?
“I said I never “purchaed” a DK game, I did however pull a couple DK machines out of local operators trash dumpsters including the one in 1998 the same one the now historic, history making game that the KoK film was based on. So to imply I’m a wealthy man is disingenuous on your part.”
Again, I wholeheartedly apologize for the incorrect information. That said, you’re still being disingenuous. You zoned in on the word “bought”, and made no mention that you do, in fact, own a DK cab until it was pointed out by someone else. You won a race that almost no one could compete in (and still can’t).
“boo hoo< Steve was in on the scam and got paid for his trouble, so I have no sympathy for him. Steve played a part in a fictional film based on a gaming performance I originally did.and got paid for it so how was he screwed over and I wasnt? I'll wait…………………………"
Well first thing you can do is PROVE that Steve was paid for KoK, not that I really doubt it. Secondly, I'd go back to the question I asked earlier. Are we talking about actual financial losses or a point of pride? Even after KoK Steve didn't become some celebrity. No one cared about Mitchell either, the only reason anyone knows him is because Walter made a press release any time Billy breathes. So what exactly were you screwed out of? The chance to be in a "documentary" that you seem to hate? The same documentary that basically everyone accepts as fiction?
I forgot to add: the fact that you pulled your games from a dumpster and fixed them yourself is probably the coolest thing ever. No sarcasm intended. That’s actually really awesome.
“1m isnt even possible”hmmmmmmm, curious as to why you chose that name, yea I get it. Being the skeptic that I am, I mentioned that same thing years ago when the score first got that high. Didn’t take me long shortly afterward to hit over 1m myself. Just using the bottom hammer on the barrel boards was enough.
Dont think I dont know about the hit piece comming up as well. People have been asking me questions for years. Sucking up to me, pretending to be my friend so as to gain info. Doing background checks and even hacking my PC at times.. Yup I’m aware of that. Have been for a while. Playing a pshychological, mind fuck game trying to get inside my head. Yup Im fully aware of that. Guess what…..It didnt work! The gang stalkers are not as smart as they think they are.
They give themselves away far too easy.
I will say this, with the exception of a few people, this gaming community is rotten to the core! Its why I dont bother anymore, but I do creep around to make sure people like Walter/erstaz get some detail correct when need be…….your welcome walter.
Haha, Someone pointed out to me that I had VHS “SP” setting as “Slow Play” instead of “Standard Play”. I guess I always called it the former. I fixed it.
Hi-dee Ho, capitain obvious here! Walter/erstaz dont you find it odd that it takes THREE VHS tapes to record a 6 hour game? Just ONE tape was capable of recording 8 hrs. Why THREE for 6 hours. The “amazing genius” of the CAG community can’t figure this one out either? Yea I’m aware of the video quality issue but there isn’t that much difference and why break the fluid continuity when you don’t have to?
Also, What do you think of my original game being negated on what is proveable liable and slander “Constantly Disputed and impossible to verify” Yup, that was the initial reason. or the “In our Twin Galaxys attempts to locate Tim led to onne dead end after another…..” only to be called the day the film opened? TG and the film makers could not find their asses with both hands……a team of dumb-asses together! What do you think about that.?
Admittedly i chose the name to poke fun at you. For the sake of possible discourse I’m going to change it.
“Dont think I dont know about the hit piece comming up as well. People have been asking me questions for years. Sucking up to me, pretending to be my friend so as to gain info. Doing background checks and even hacking my PC at times..”
Alright, now I’m legitimately confused.
Ya, see how I caught it, I knew. I remember. I go back a long way on this topic. As far back as 1981.
Theres a lot of TRUE history behind the toppeling of the 1982 arcade WR and remember, this was an important enought topic to base a feature “so-called” documentary on……involving lifrights contracts to the matter.
Too bad you and the rest of the public were decieved with Seth Gorfons fairy-tale yarn reguarding the matter. Less than a handfull of people are aware of the REAL story.
How about Walter/Erstaz discuss how shortly after the “so-called” documentary, the rules were changed to NOT allow for video submissions over 1m points. This was a clever way of restricting the competition. Not many people remember that one. The whole thing was scripted for Billy and Steve while the topc matter was hot and the field of competition was low. Unlike Billy and Steve the rrest of the competition was not funded for travel and room and board nor paid appearence fees to boot. What a scam they had set up.
Yup the goalpost” sprouted another pair of Nike’s and continued its zig-zag sprint down the field.
Very dirty movie when you get into what happened behind and after the scenes.
Hey wait a minute, I’m not a “historical researcher” what would I possibly know?
“I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Billy’s violation of the often-discussed gentleman’s agreement, which while certainly unsporting, doesn’t necessarily pose grounds by itself for disqualification (not without some sort of sportsmanship clause, which the TG rules of the time did not explicitly include)”
Theres was a mutual agreement made modifying the existing playing rules between the players involved, the parties involved agreed. Doesnt matter what the written TG rules were after the fact. (worthless and selectively enforced as they were and you know I know about that.)
The verbal agreement that added to the existing rules was violated, thus rendering Billys performace unacceptable no matter how clean the game play was.
For example, befor playing, Billy and Rick agree not to zap one another using a cattle prod during the competition. Billty and Rick are playing head to head and in the middle of the competition, Billy pulles out a cattle prod and sends more than 60,000 volts into Rick causing a heart attack and the inability to continue.
Then officially Billy “wins” the competition and can justify it by citing that there was nothing “specifically” written in the rules stating Billy can’t shock Rick with a cattle prod. Yup I’m pretty sure theres no “explicitly written rule” listed in the TG rule book that prohibits the use of a cattle prod against your competitor. Yep, absolutely NO MENTION of a cattle prod anywhere in any written TG rules at anytime. The same dynamics apply with the added gentelmans agreement instead of a cattle prod.
How much more selfish and sociopathic can you get than stabbing one of your friends in the back to that kind of magnatude?
Rick is the first to do an “official” perfect pacman in accordance to the rules at the time. Bill Bastible is the first to document one.outside the rules.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Billy’s violation of the often-discussed gentleman’s agreement, which while certainly unsporting, doesn’t necessarily pose grounds by itself for disqualification (not without some sort of sportsmanship clause, which the TG rules of the time did not explicitly include).”
You can bet if Rick were to have doublecrossed Billy in the same fashion Billy would have raised hell if not filed suit. Been studying this “Billy” character for years. and there is most definately a double standard in effect that is ALWAYS manipulated to benifit himself no matter what and at times using manipulative legal mumbo-jumbo.
Personally I think Billys legal counsel (if any) are a bunch of fuck-ups!
“Geee I “forgot” about that $10,000,000 lawsuit we filed even though we have another lawsuit with the same busness in another state…we just could not track them down! (where have I heard that malarky before? Oh yea, now I remember!)
Why else would anyone file a $10,000,000 lawsuit then “forget about it” latter unless it was intended as a publicity stunt to begin with? Even the legal system is not spared from such parisitic exploitation.
wkqYgtvzMFDKLQ
It’s worth noting that with regard to the tape length claims one possibility may be that the camcorder was Video8/Hi8. Video8 tapes could hold up to 5 hours in LP mode (150 SP), but shorter lengths were more common, like 120 (240 in LP) and 60 (120 in LP). If 60 minute tapes were all that they had at hand, or the LP mode wasn’t used with 120 min tapes, that could explain the split into three tapes.
Good dots. You are the Dot Writer of the Century.
It is completely baffling that, now that some tape is easily available, a person confident in their performance wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to share it broadly amidst the controversy. Taking down those newly available videos has got to be one of the strongest points against him.
Greetings….gaming community……..or should I say………FOOLS!! HaHaHa!
This is Willy Mitchell . Your naive idiocy never ceases to amaze me! For decades I have been taking advantage of your goos sportsmanship,and ignorance, by lying, cheating and manipulating you lowly germs for my own selfish whimsey,, not to mention profit! Bwaa Ha Ha Ha! YOU MORONS! Suckers!
Just recently one of my one phony lawsuits has been enough to con you gaming fools to collectively flush $55,000 down the toilet to ….”help”….. defend against it. HA HA HA! WHAT FUN! YESSSSSS….LETS HELP THE FOOL I”M ABUSING WITH MY ULTIMATE POWER! Even if I lose, I still win! How?. I just conned you naive gaming idiots into throwing your money away FOR NOTHING….Ha Ha Ha .which makes me very happy! I relish in the pain and fear I cause people! The only winner is the scammer lawyer. who took your money……I lose NOTHING!. YES, I”M THE GREATEST SUPERVILLAN/ASS-HOLE EVER! BWAHHA HAA HAA!..
. Now pardon me while I pose with children for a positive PR image. >click<…….isnt that picture just the very definition of warmth and caring? Makes me sick to the core! inside!" If anyone were to bust into an arcade event and start peeling caps, I would have no problem using one of the little snot-nosed brats for a meat shield! Better them than me! I'm a rich millionaire, they rest of you are worthless trash and thats why I treat you as such! . Thats all part of being a deceptive bullshit artist. HA HA HA
What Fun. I've abused the Gaming systen for my advantage and now I abuse the legal system for my amusement as well and theres nothing you "GAMING WORMS" can do about it!
Did you really think your pitifull articals and documentarys could stop me? DID YOU!? NEVER! IT JUS ADDS TO MY POWER! MAWHAAA haa haaa!
I can con you out of your money, reality and even get you to simply throw your money away whenever I wish.! HA HA HA! FUCK TRON! I WILLY MITCHELL, RULE THE GAME GRID!!!! Ha Ha Ha! And theres NOTHING you FOOLS can do to stop me!
I have the means to bully and terrorize the hell out of you with my phony lawsuits and it doesnt cost me a dime if I win or lose! I have too many brainless bobblehead "yes men" at my disposal that will do and anything I say I command, even lie under oath. I AM UNSTOPPABLE……BWAHAAAAA……MAWHAAAAAA!
Now remember worms, I wear a suit, and wear an american flag tie and speak in soft MPR tone of vioce…..so would a face cloaked in such apparel lie? BWAAAAAHHHAHHHAHH! FOOLS!
Now if you gaming dolts will excuse me, I have a retro 80's luncheon to attend with other cartoon supervillians such as Cobra Commander, Bill Gates, Skeletor Dr. Faucci and Megatron. There we will decide the fate of your punity humanity. MAWWWHAAAAHAAAHAHAAAA!
Farewell…..FOOLS! Enjoy playing my "lawsuit game….and feel free to piss away as much money away as you wish……IN THE END I LOSE NOTHING! ………….BWAAAAHHHHAAAAHHAAAHHAAAA!
Greasy Gibbons :
I’m sending a cease and desist letter here to one “Walter Erstaz Cats. You will take this site down and refrain from making my client look stupid and decietfull more so than the deceptive trash he already is!
We will be suing for $999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,.57 If you fail to cease and desist now.
Jace hall is at fault and here’s why. Mr. Hall was stupid enough to believe my clients lies to begin with. If Mr.Hall wasn’t such a naive, trusting person he would not be in the position he is now, so thats his problem. Billy Mitchell cheated and decieved him fair and square.
Mr. Hall chose to believe the lies my client told him in order to dump that worthless scoreboard in his possesson so that’s Mr. Hall’s fault, not Mr Mitchell .Billy only lied to him, Mr. Hall is the one who chose to believe the lie. The only thing that matters is that my client, Mr. Mitchell got his money by any means at any cost even if it means taking advantage of someones ignorance in the process. The rest of you can piss up a rope.
Only my client Billy Mitchells life is worth anything the rest of you are worthless trash and should just go kill yourselves! Your trivial gaming achievements mean nothing and Mr. Mitchell has every right to steal them from you and exploit them for his own personal benifit as he sees fit.
Mr. Walter/Erstaz you will be shutting this site doewn or we will come after you with the full force of the law (If we can remember the court date 🙂
Yours Truly, Greasy Gibbons.
RTM states that Billy kept saying “focus” at the beginning of every board.
Do any of the tapes you have watched [e.g., “(2) 6HR PERFECT GAME PAC MAN” or “Perfect Pac-Man patterns”] exhibit such audio?
Doesn’t matter, the rules stated Rick Fothergill was to be playing head to head at the time. No Rick=disqualification of Billys game no matter how clean Billys game was.Billy knew he was violating the rules.
This wasn’t just fantastically researched, it was expertly told too. You and all of the people who put this together have eaten up an entire day’s worth of my leisure time doing nothing but reading all this. Downright engrossing, thank you for the posts!
Since a big portion of the end of this Dot was spent talking about Billy’s narcissism, I gotta say that a big thing I appreciate is that the names and pursuits of the actual champions and folks who figured this game out inside and out were cited frequently and shouted loud. I admittedly didn’t know much at all about competitive Pac-Man going into this beyond some bits I read on Wikipedia many years ago (citing Billy as the “first” perfect game, of course), so seeing all the early 80s newspapers writing about the kill screen and learning the names of the people who came up with “Cruise Elroy” and other oddball trivia like that is super neat. Again, this must’ve taken ages. I will no doubt read this many more times.
Thank you tremendously for the kind words! I’ll make sure my research collaborators see it as well.
Yeah, digging up the true history of all this is fascinating stuff. If you are interested in more of this, don’t forget to check out the supplemental notes linked at the top of each installment. Dot Two, note S24, about the Bozeman Think Tank (who are worthy of a future profile of their own) devised a solution to an “impossible” problem on Ms. Pac-Man, fueled by the erroneous impression that someone else had already solved it.
https://perfectpacman.com/dot-two-supplemental/
I didn’t think this whole series would be novel length when I started reading it. But it was too fascinating to put down. I spent yesterday and today reading it all.
Billy would make an excellent politician, I think. The narcissism, the lies, the cheating, the fake achievements… he’s got it all. He’s a pretty good con man, if such a thing were to be proud of. His ability to pull “the player of the century” title out of his ass is downright impressive, in terms of gaslighting.
Frankly, for such a title you’d think he’d be great at every genre of gaming, not just two games from the early 80’s. Do you think Billy has ever played an FPS? An RTS? Literally any game made after 1983? Now that I think about it, I can’t see why anyone ever bought into that lie. Gaming by the year 1999 had already evolved way past arcades. Did Billy ever check out Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, or Ocarina of Time? Or how about even Tetris, Sonic, or GTA?
I can almost envision a movie adaptation of his life, where we see what really happened (him sitting alone in front of Pac-Man and no one really caring) juxtaposed with his grand retellings (no, trust me, there was a crowd and reporters). I think he’d sue it into oblivion though.
But that being said, I’m glad the truth has come out in the end. Billy (and Todd) thought they could just lie forever. Luckily, gaming has grown beyond them, and younger gamers who don’t worship these guys can see what kind of frauds they are.
with people beating mike tysons punch out blindfolded, i dont see why anyone would give two flying fucks about a perfect pacman.
couple things i want to point out. aracdes had a resurgence at this time due to fighting games. no one cared much about retro stuff, it was just still around after the second boom. people like me, ben cureton, alex valle, etc were tearing it up all over the usa at this time.
the day billy mitchell walks into in arcade and beats one of us at street fighter, tekken or mortal kombat is the day he can call himself player of the century, until then, the 90s belong to the fgc.
“The King of the 90s” Draxxon
Is this Tim guy who keeps commenting being serious? how come ezcats hasn’t replied to him or addressed what he has said?
he sounds a little unstable
There’s no way to read this in a couple days like the one person said. it took me a month
This series is one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I’ve read. Now I want to play a perfect game of Pac’, although I’m not sure where submitting that makes sense. There’s a small speedrun.com board, and Jace’s Twin Galaxies, but that’s all I can find. And, well, Walter’s Twin Galaxies hasn’t left a trustworthy brand behind for Jace to take over.
Thank you for reading! Honestly, current TG is fine. I still think they should just shitcan all the legacy scores and stick to the TGSAP stuff from 2015 to present. But I don’t think there are serious doubts about any of the other perfect Pac-Man scores on their list.
I read this whole thing over a couple of days to the neglect of several kind of important things I needed to do instead. Props!
If Billy Mitchell and Walter Day really believed that counterstopping Pac-Man is the herculean task they made it out to be (and to be clear, I know they don’t really believe it) their heads would pop right off their neck at the sight of a world record score of any given shooting game by, say, Cave. But no, arcade games stopped existing after 1983, right? Of all the puffing up they did of TG and Billy and stuff, their absurd overselling of the difficulty and cultural importance of a Pac-Man counterstop is probably the most frustrating to me as an arcade gamer lol.
For another random thought, Billy’s behavior is really similar to Tommy Tallarico’s. Tons of exaggerations and outright lies, lots of rehearsed stories with details tweaked, some of which are about knowing and being respected by all these industry higher ups. All of course delivered in the face of mountains of very clear evidence to the contrary.
Anyways, great series of articles. Thanks
Thank you for reading! lol Funny you mention Tallarico, the hbomberguy video about him wasn’t even out yet when I wrote all this. But yeah, definitely some connections. At some point, I’m going to give this entire series a fresh coat of paint, along with a “Dot Ten” to cover everything that’s happened since then (including Billy’s fake plaque recreations, lmao).
Tonight I watched this wonderful video, a recording of the current world record in Battle Garegga, a 1996 shmup that’s still relatively popular in Japan, by the player Kamui. She gives running commentary in text alongside the game explaining every little scoring trick in great detail, and there are a LOT of tricks. It’s not an easy game to even just clear on one credit, and it is EXTREMELY difficult by this point in time to get a new WR score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usDbpa90LHA
There’s a point at about 34:15 in the video where she’s just milking the stage 6 boss for points so there’s not a lot more to say about it in specific, so she starts talking about how five years prior she didn’t feel like she needed to go for a world record anymore and instead would become a kind of “missionary for Garegga,” streaming on Twitch and going to various arcades in Japan and just playing the game for people, explaining what she’s doing, and trying to introduce this game she loves so dearly to others. She, at that time, “enjoyed aiming for other people’s progress in Garegga than improving [her] own record.”
It put a smile on my face. I didn’t immediately make the connection then, but later on I remembered reading about somebody claiming to want to become “an ambassador of gaming” despite all of his doings being shrouded in secrecy and despite his being known more for boasting about himself and his supposed achievements than for any kind of genuine passion for arcade games. Can you imagine Billy Mitchell making a video where he’s (legitimately) recorded a perfect Pac-Man score, explaining in excruciating detail the patterns and grouping techniques, and then after explaining the final pattern that he’s going to repeat for the next few hours going into just how much he loves Pac-Man and wants other people to feel the joy he feels playing it, all without once talking about how great he is? Just lol.
Sorry to keep commenting on this same article but I want to point out that a deathless run of Ninja Gaiden is definitely far easier than a perfect Pac-Man, assuming you mean the NES game. The game’s more just kind of a dick than it is super difficult; having to memorize exact maze patterns for different phases of the game and/or learn how to group ghosts effectively is already way more demanding than anything Ninja Gaiden asks of you, which is more or less “remember some of the trickier enemy arrangements and have a particular subweapon for some parts.” There might be a case for damageless Ninja Gaiden being harder though, but I’m not 100% as I’ve never tried to do it.
I know your point wasn’t about Ninja Gaiden in specific, just felt like being pedantic 😀
It’s all good. Thank you for reading!
Yeah, maybe I should’ve said damageless instead. I’m willing to venture damageless is more difficult, since it really did take eons to achieve. That said, while I did fail to get perfect on all blue time boards in my first round of perfect Pac-Man attempts, I really don’t think it’s as demanding as it’s been made out to be. I suspect, once the perfect Pac-Man techniques are sufficiently practiced, the hardest part truthfully is maintaining attention for 5+ hours. And at least one perfect score player has told me that that is indeed the hardest part. Nice thing about that is, it’s totally legal to park it whenever you want to take a break.
Indeed, I always forget about the fact that a knowledgeable player can effectively pause the game. All things considered Pac-Man is a pretty firmly average difficulty counterstop I think, especially given that it’s mostly memorization and not a lot of execution as it’s deterministic and all you do in the game is move in rigid paths. Though I imagine recovery after a mistake requires good improvisational skills. I can think of at least a dozen arcade games off the top of my head, even given a whole credit’s worth of lives, that are definitely harder to counterstop/score 10,000,000/otherwise play indefinitely than it is to get 3,333,180 in Pac-Man. Like in general videogame terms it’s hard for sure, you’re gonna put in dozens of hours learning it, and it’s an achievement to be celebrated (as long as you’re not a horse’s ass about it like some players), but relatively speaking for general arcade game difficulty ranking it’s probably middle of the road.