ersatz_cats here. I’ve got some great news for non-cheaters: The evidence against Billy Mitchell is back!! Relive all your favorite hits, like the rivet ramp, the board swap, rotated screens, the infamous MTV interview, unicorn boards, “recreated” scores that don’t add up, submissions that weren’t submissions but actually were, crowds of disappearing witnesses, Walter Day lying under oath, Dwayne Richard in a TARDIS, and of course the one-and-only MAME girder finger himself.
The first edition of “Evidence” (version 1.0, if you will) was posted to Donkey Kong Forum on April 12, 2019 – the one-year anniversary of the verdict in the TG dispute. The goal was to compile all the most relevant evidence collected by the community at large, from historical material to the 326-page dispute thread to a few post-dispute discoveries, all in one location. (While I’ve made some contributions to the body of work, very little of it represents my own original findings.) This was all under the hilariously optimistic belief that the story had run its course, and that such a compilation would serve as a nice coda to the whole saga. Ironically, that post could have been a great resource for Billy’s lawsuit preparation, given that it effectively outlined what Billy would have to disprove. But it seems Team Billy chose to simply ignore most of it and focus on made-up nonsense instead, which to be fair is what you do when you’re mega-guilty but don’t want to admit it. As I remarked at the time, I basically gave them a road map, and they still got lost.
In September 2019, Team Billy slapped together a 156-page evidence packet to go with their legal threats, offering us way more flimsy arguments, lies, bad spelling, upside-down pages, and general tomfoolery to tear apart. This ballooned the once-concise “Evidence” summation beyond Donkey Kong Forum’s character limit, necessitating a whole new thread to spread Version 2.0 across two comments. (Yes, it works to Billy’s advantage that the more nonsense he can make up and sling around, the longer it takes to address it all. But you do what you gotta do.)
As court declarations trickled out, and the lies piled up, the updates kept coming. We found our way to Version 2.3, and wouldn’t you know it, I had now stuffed TWO Donkey Kong Forum comments to full capacity. This hindered not only content, but also sourcing, which is important when a crazed narcissistic litigant might decide to call on you to prove that, at the barest minimum, you really do believe what you’re writing. Meanwhile, Donkey Kong Forum went into lockdown, so the general public couldn’t see any of it anyway! Crud, what a mess!
A blog post on the Twin Galaxies website solved the matter of accessibility. But what the “Evidence” really needed was a permanent home, with image hosting and no discernable character limit, which will never randomly go under privacy lock. Maybe even its own link in the site banner. Ooh, and to top it all off, a custom URL:
https://perfectpacman.com/evidence/
Welcome to Version 3.0! A lot of improved wording, a ton of new sources, better organization, a few items I had left on the cutting room floor (such as the extra credit and phantom pause), and a couple more recent developments (such as the Music City con). But most importantly of all, a permanent home… at least, as long as I don’t blow all my web-hosting money on coke and hookers.