Another “perfect score” that wasn’t

by ersatz_cats

In this website’s relatively short lifespan, we’ve already had a couple opportunities to discuss cheaters faking perfect scores on Pac-Man.

Of course, the most blatant of these was Billy Mitchell’s “Music City Con”:

For those who don’t recall, in October 2021, Billy attended the Music City Multi-Con in Tennessee, announcing his intention to play a perfect score on a modification of Pac-Man known as the “jumper” version, which would have a final score of 3,297,360. At the end of the day, a range of witnesses from random attendees to event organizers to local news all reported that Billy successfully achieved a perfect score in their presence. Billy even signed game marquees for two podcaster friends of his, commemorating this achievement as a “first”. However, astute observers noticed that in footage taken at the event, you can actually see Billy’s final score, which was 3,292,270. Most likely, Billy missed a key (worth 5,000 points) and lost one life (deducting another 90 points due to the nine hidden dots on the split screen). Lest anyone think this was somehow an honest misunderstanding on the part of the guy who lies about everything else, this missing life along the bottom status bar would have been staring Billy in the face for his entire game. It’s as if Billy has been lying about video game scores for so long without any consequences that, even in the midst of a legal battle over his cheated Donkey Kong scores, at a time when he needs to portray himself as virtuously as possible, he still can’t help but tell more lies for attention. Honestly, if I could have handed Billy a script and said “Go do this, in front of everyone and their cameras, it’ll help prove to everyone what a fraud you are”, I could not have written a better scenario.

If you’d like to see more about what I called the “Music City Con”, check out this narrated video, going over all the evidence:

While this was the most blatant fake perfect score to happen during this website’s watch, we’ve also discussed possible fake perfect scores from the past, including… checks notes… Oh, look at that, it’s Billy again.

We can’t say for certain Billy’s claimed perfect score on Pac-Man in 1999 was fake, the same way we can’t prove Bertrand Russell didn’t really own a tiny teapot orbiting the sun somewhere. However, given Billy’s many other lies about his claimed accolades from 1999, and the fact that Billy has never shown the final sequence of the game despite claiming to have it on tape, and that the only other objective piece of evidence we’re given is the above photo from Funspot employee Tom Fisher of a Pac-Man game back in attract mode with the player score obscured, people are right to suspect that maybe that score was fabricated as well. You can read all about that score in our newly updated “Dot Nine” chapter from the series “The Video Game Fraud of the Century”:

https://perfectpacman.com/2021/09/30/dot-nine/

https://perfectpacman.com/fraud/

But today, we’re here to discuss the recent revelation of another fake perfect score. And this time, it actually wasn’t Billy Mitchell who lied to everyone! Although Billy is a character in this story, and of course he’s always lying about something. Well… read on, you’ll see what I mean.

REUNION REVISITED

Today’s story involves not the original version of Pac-Man from 1980, but the 2001 re-release of Pac-Man on something called the “20 Year Reunion” machine.

As you can see, the “Reunion” machine is billed as a combo cabinet featuring Galaga (released in 1981) and Ms. Pac-Man (released in 1982, but based on a modification of Pac-Man created in 1981). However, a third game is available if you enter the following inputs on the game select screen:

Up, up, up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right, left

Doing this sequence turns Blinky (the red ghost) into Pinky (not the red ghost), and allows you to play regular Pac-Man instead of the advertised Ms. Pac-Man. Mechanically, the game is mostly identical to the original. The ghost AI is largely the same, although the original patterns don’t always work on this edition, likely due to a slight change to the ghosts’ erratic “blue time” behavior. But new patterns for the Reunion version have been developed, and freehand Pac-Man players can still use the same techniques they’ve always known.

However, there are two key differences (pun always intended) in this release of the game. First, this version of Pac-Man allows the player to insert another coin and continue their game, and their score. The early days of Pac-Man were fraught with fantastic tales of nine million point scores or higher – scores which are strictly impossible without using the “rack advance” feature, or without restarting games and unofficially adding all of your sessions’ scores together. But now, you can indeed keep playing the same game, continuing the same score indefinitely, without having to flip any hidden switches.

But more importantly, the Reunion game’s split screen is different. Here’s what the game’s final board looked like in the original release:

For those who don’t know, original Pac-Man operates normally for 255 screens, or “boards” as the cool kids call them. Each early board is represented by a “fruit” (yes, bells and spaceships are “fruit”, don’t @ me), until you reach the point where every board is represented by a key. From board 21 on, each board functions identically, and would continue doing so indefinitely, if not for the variable tracking the level number. That variable is stored as a single byte (eight binary digits), which means that once you hit board 256, that byte rolls over, and the game is instructed to draw board number zero. The game would actually succeed in doing so, if not for the algorithm that draws fruits in the bottom right corner, indicating your game progress. Instead of drawing just the last seven fruits, it attempts to draw 256 fruits, which end up overwriting just over half the board with computer garbage.

People figured out how to marathon Pac-Man pretty early on, with documentation at least as early as March 1982, although at first the split screen was interpreted as a spontaneous machine malfunction. However, even as this garbled board became a known phenomenon, what was not as readily apparent was that among that programming garbage, the split screen hid nine extra dots. These dots, some of which were invisible or discolored, were peculiar in that the split screen effect drew them back onto the game board each time the player died. In other words, while every other dot stays eaten, these nine dots alone would regenerate, allowing a player to maximize their points by bringing all their lives to the final screen, then sacrificing them for 90 points a pop.

This was all due to the split screen effect drawing graphics and game elements from unintended code. However, the Reunion machine has different game code, owing to the aforementioned continue function, as well as other minor details (such as there being two entire other games on the same circuit board, along with the programming allowing the player to switch between these games). As a result, Pac-Man’s split screen effect on this machine is represented a little differently:

And it’s not just the visual elements that have changed. That little dot near the top, flanked by the letters “FDE”, is a bonus, tenth hidden dot. Therefore, when playing this version on maximum six-life settings, a player can boost their total score by an additional 60 points by collecting that dot six times. Not only that, those extra six dots end up being just enough to trigger the appearance of the board’s second key, worth another 5,000 points. Thus, while original Pac-Man could only be pushed up to a score of 3,333,360, the maximum score a player could achieve on the Reunion game is 3,338,420.

At this point, we should be clear on one thing: There is no skill difference between a score of 3,333,360 on original Pac-Man and a score of 3,338,420 on the Reunion version of Pac-Man. You’re still grouping all of the ghosts for each “blue time” on the early boards. You’re still running a standard pattern on 235 consecutive “ninth key” boards. You’re still sitting there for about four hours, with the same options to park your game at will. If you’re playing freehanded, it’s all literally the same techniques, and even if you’re running patterns for the blue time boards, you can use different patterns particular to that edition. And the split screen can still be easily defeated by use the same “BC” technique. (By parking Pac-Man near the letters “BC”, visible on both versions, three ghosts trap themselves in a side tunnel, leaving only the mostly harmless Clyde to roam the board.) Everything that makes a perfect score a difficult achievement worthy of recognition is present on both versions; the Reunion edition simply has ten effortless dots to collect at the end rather than nine.

The Reunion machine’s extra dot was a known secret in the Pac-Man community for a long time. In an interview from around 2010, while discussing Pac-Man players Chris Ayra and Billy Mitchell, perfect score player Donald Hayes remarked that he was “sworn to secrecy” about something they discovered on the Reunion version of Pac-Man (at about 1:14:50):

We actually discovered something, I’m actually sworn to secrecy… well, not really, but… We actually discovered something on Pac-Man, on the Reunion game, that hasn’t been made public yet. So just even based on that, I know there are things that they keep to themselves, because that’s the way they are. They have these techniques or these secrets, and they want to keep ’em to themselves, for whatever reason.

In 2015, Hayes participated in a Twin Galaxies live stream, hosted by new TG owner Jace Hall, and featuring fellow Pac-Man players Tim Balderramos, Dwayne Richard, and Abdner Ashman. In this stream, at the 25-minute mark, Hayes told a more candid version of the story of discovering this extra dot. In short, around 2004, Hayes attended a tabletop tennis tournament in Fort Lauderdale, and took the opportunity to visit the Mitchell family’s restaurant. He and Billy, along with Ayra, played around on the Reunion machine present, advancing to the split screen, where together they discovered the arrangement of hidden dots was different. When Jace Hall asked if they did anything with that information at that time, Hayes replied:

At that point in time, no, we just kinda… kinda sat on it. In fact, I remember Billy saying, you know, “Let’s keep this quiet for now. Let’s…” Cuz Billy, number one, is a showman. He… He wants to show things to the world that the people have never seen.

Since this later became a point of contention, in writing this piece, I reached out to Donald Hayes to inquire about his recollection of who was actually to credit for this extra dot discovery. If Billy really did have a part in this discovery, I’m willing to report it as such, but I wanted to be sure before doing so. Donald was gracious enough to offer a reply, confirming to me that he is still on good terms with Billy, and has tried to avoid what he referred to as “the drama” of the last few years. In regard to the Reunion machine discovery, Donald recalled:

As for the discovery of the 10th dot, as far as I recall it was mostly myself and Bill, although Chris was present that day too but not for the whole time. I honestly don’t recall if Chris was there when we first realized there was an extra dot.

As far as the actual game play, we were taking turns running 9th key patterns and such, but we did use continues as well. I don’t remember exactly but I think we used the rack advance too. When we got to the split screen, we were mostly just playing around on it, and somewhere along the line we unexpectedly noticed that we got more than the normal 90 points after losing a man. I actually have a paper that I drew by hand that shows where we found the extra dot (my cell phone at that time did not have a camera). We spent a lot of time trying to see if there were any other unknown dots, and also trying to determine if there was another way to get past the split screen.

The other thing I remember is Bill, and I think Chris, suggesting that we keep knowledge of the extra dot to ourselves for the time being. So, I didn’t tell anyone else about it until Dwayne happened to mention that he heard a rumor about it several years later.

Of course, ten years after this initial discovery, this “secret” was no longer much of a secret. Most participants in the 2015 livestream had no expressed animosity toward Billy Mitchell, nor any apparent inclination toward thwarting him for thwarting’s sake. (Billy was still generally considered to be an upstanding member of the community at the time, as the MAME evidence was another two years away.) It was also safe to assume that, if Billy had intended to use this “secret” in some special event, he’d had every opportunity to do so by then.

Rather, the purpose of this 2015 livestream was to show off the Reunion game’s two peculiarities to the world. The tenth dot, allowing the player to achieve a higher score on a single playthrough, was actually the lesser discussed feature that day. An unintended consequence of the added continue function was that it can be used to pass the game’s split screen in a way that was never possible on an original Pac-Man machine. The game registers certain events based on how many dots have been cleared. These events include when the fruits should appear, when Blinky should start speeding up, and most importantly, when to register a board completion and advance the player to the next screen. Because the hidden dots regenerate each time you die, and because the continue function allows the player to die an unlimited number of times, eventually enough of these dots can be eaten to make the game think you’ve cleared the board, as if it were a normal board with 240 dots:

During the stream, Balderramos was eventually able to reach the split screen without losing a life, although he did not maximize points during the “blue time” stages. Concurrently, Donald Hayes attempted a complete perfect score, and did complete the first 103 boards on perfect pace, but eventually died at score 1,423,590, during the long stretch of “ninth key” boards. If one could have put Donald’s start together with Tim’s finish, one would have had a Reunion perfect score of 3,338,420 that very day. Of course, as far as historical scorekeeping goes, that’s not how it works. But it does go to show this feat was readily attainable. (Note that, technically, two of the players from that livestream were using the “25th anniversary” game instead of the 20th anniversary “Reunion” machine. However, that version of Pac-Man is identical to the Reunion game, with the exception that no special code is required to play Pac-Man.)

Getting back to the “secret” of the tenth dot, while Billy Mitchell did not share this knowledge with the wider gaming public, you couldn’t say he didn’t show anyone. During the stream, classic arcade gamer Dwayne Richard made multiple references to Billy having shown off that tenth dot to Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani, at an event in Chicago. Dwayne expressed bewilderment that Billy used that opportunity to show Iwatani this relatively unimpressive bug (the fact that an extra dot allows an extra key to appear), rather than using the continue function to offer Iwatani what surely would have been his first time seeing a successful completion of the split screen (at about 27:50):

So when Bill saw Iwatani, I thought like, why did you show him the… the key? That’s nothing. He could’ve shown Iwatani how to… what it looked like to get by the split screen. And for whatever reason, Bill decided not to do that.

“PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF”

I suppose at this point I should at least attempt a description of who Dwayne Richard is. I first spoke to him in 2019, shortly after publishing my discovery of the old MTV interview where Robert Mruczek shows off Billy’s MAME tape. I noticed early in our conversations that Dwayne will effortlessly assert conflicting positions without any evident regard for reconciling them. He likes to emphasize how he’s not focused on making money or in seeking out opportunities for their profitability, while at the same time framing his ideas primarily in terms of how much money he could be making. Dwayne often remarks how frustrated he is with the state of classic gaming and how much he’d like to move past that chapter of his life, and yet he makes no apparent attempt to simply divest himself of these gaming ventures he claims are so burdensome. It’s not that he’s a hypocrite per se (although, as we’ll see, some of his actions do bear hypocrisy’s stench). I believe it’s more that he can’t make up his mind what his goals and motivations truly are. Dwayne Richard is chaos incarnate. He genuinely does want one thing in one moment, and then an entirely different and contradictory thing in the next, all the while expressing these ephemeral and conflicting thoughts continuously, without any filter, or indeed any regard for his reputation. Granted, this does make him an information security risk, and a practical liability in general. And Dwayne is certainly capable of deceit, as we’ll see. However, his lack of filter can also be refreshing, in a strange way. They always say you never really know people, and while I prefer not to be too cynical, I do recall many times being disappointed to learn who some people really were, despite their earnest attempts at hiding their true selves. (Given that I used to be a fan of Billy Mitchell, you can count him among them.) But with Dwayne, everything he is, everything he’s thinking, good and bad, is all on the table. I can confidently say that Dwayne Richard has never murdered anyone, because if he had, he would have freely made an umprompted and detailed confession to someone by now.

Dwayne’s relationship with Billy Mitchell could accurately be described as “complicated”. Once upon a time, he was one of Billy’s most loyal defenders, travelling to screenings of the movie King of Kong to stick up for his film-battered friend. He even began work producing what eventually became two feature-length documentaries (King of Con and Perfect Fraudman), which began life as an attempt to defend Billy while casting doubt on the sincerity of Billy’s Donkey Kong rival, Steve Wiebe. Of course, if you were to watch those documentaries, you would see that’s not exactly how they turned out. Dwayne still holds animosity for Wiebe, accusing him of “cheating” without any discernable proof beyond his intuition. However, Dwayne’s ire toward Billy Mitchell has become nuclear by comparison. And of course, on the other end of that equation, we’re talking about the same mulleted narcissist suing Jace Hall, David Race, Karl Jobst, and anyone else within ten meters of any valid accusation against him – a man who could be said to value loyalty above all else. I can see why Billy Mitchell detests Dwayne Richard, and I can see why Dwayne would detest Billy. The sense of betrayal is palpable from both sides. However, while Dwayne speaks freely of his feelings toward his former comrade, Billy takes efforts to not even utter Dwayne’s name, sometimes attributing Dwayne’s antics to “Mr. Bigwig” (Dwayne’s email handle), or to no name at all. If not for Dwayne’s usefulness as a scapegoat, it seems Billy would sooner banish him to the Shadow Realm than acknowledge his existence. And yet, throughout all of this, Dwayne continues to tell people that he still considers Billy a “friend”, at least on some level of his own imagining.

While one would have difficulty going through life avoiding anyone who is a little unpredictable, it’s safe to say that Dwayne Richard is more than a little unpredictable. One need only read his remarks to EGM writer Josh Harmon (seen above) to understand how Dwayne can be a dangerous person to have on your side in anything. It’s already difficult trying to urge bystanders in the gaming community, taken in by Billy Mitchell’s and Walter Day’s charm and their claims to history, to look at the hard evidence of their fraud. But that becomes even harder when you have Dwayne Richard standing behind you, affirming what you’re saying, while also shouting crazy nonsense about flat Earths and secret societies. It’s a shame, because Dwayne’s documentaries do contain valuable research, and he was indeed correct all along about Billy Mitchell and Walter Day perpetuating lies on the community. However, at least in my own opinion, Dwayne tragically chose to bury the fruits of his own labor more effectively than Billy Mitchell ever could.

We’ll be hearing more from Dwayne again a bit later. But for now, let’s return to our timeline. The aforementioned 2015 livestream concluded with continue-enabled completions of the split screen by Tim Balderramos, Donald Hayes, and Dwayne Richard, as well as an utterly dominating performance on Ms. Pac-Man by the prodigious Abdner Ashman. And the fabled tenth dot was indeed discussed and shown off. However, no perfect score on Pac-Man was achieved. That distinction would have to wait for another day.

AWAY FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Five years later, on November 17, 2020, Billy Mitchell announced on Twitter his intention to attempt “a new feat” at his friend’s arcade, in Twitch streams to begin the following day. While Billy did not make it clear at first what this “new feat” was intended to be, once people saw that he was playing Pac-Man on the Reunion machine, it didn’t take long for the pros to figure out what he was up to. Billy intended to complete a perfect score, including the Reunion game’s bonus tenth dot and the extra key, and would then claim to have achieved a higher-than-perfect score on Pac-Man, likely without being forthright about what such a score actually means in the grand scheme of things.

Billy began his Reunion perfect score attempts the following day, November 18, which just so happened to be “Guinness World Records Day” – a promotional vehicle for Billy’s favorite fraudulent record-keepers. It appeared as though his intention was to hit the score that very day, but… that’s not what happened. For several days, Billy was streaming around ten hours each day, putting in dozens of failed attempts which only sometimes got out of the early “blue time” boards.

Billy likes to portray himself to the public as the greatest Pac-Man player in the world, simply because in 1999 he broke a handshake agreement with rival Rick Fothergill to compete for Twin Galaxies recognition as the first player to achieve a “perfect score”. However, any claim Billy may have had years ago to being the top player has long been surpassed, both in efficiency and in demonstrated consistency. Currently, the record for fastest completion of a perfect score belongs to David Race, making him the most efficient Pac-Man player in the world. And on Billy’s third day of Reunion attempts in 2020, David also demonstrated his world-class consistency, by firing up his own Twitch stream and nailing a perfect score on the original game on his very first attempt. David showed exactly why he’s the single best Pac-Man player in the world, while Billy’s unsuccessful attempts at a publicity stunt continued to painfully grind on.

While we could have fun laughing at Billy’s several days of failed Reunion machine attempts, stretching past Thanksgiving, I already covered that sequence in my video on Billy’s “Music City Con” (starting at 18:00), and that’s not really what we’re here to discuss today. In short, on “Black Friday”, November 27th, Billy did eventually hit the target score of 3,338,420, in what may or may not have been genuine fashion – we’ll never really know for sure. (More on that later.)

To be clear, a perfect score on Pac-Man is still a great accomplishment, no matter how long it takes to achieve. Players have spent months or even years practicing to grind out their first such score. I myself got a taste for how difficult it is last year when, after two weeks of streams, I was able only to maintain perfect pace through the first eight boards. However, I think by now we all understand that Billy is not satisfied with being seen as one of the better players on his pet games. After all, this was the man who, multiple times, produced cheated tapes to keep himself at the top of the Donkey Kong world record ladder. What Billy seeks is the adulation afforded solely to the game’s undisputed top player in the world. And yet, even if we were to take scores such as his streamed Reunion game at face value, his play is still not meriting the narrow distinction he seeks – not when it takes him ten days to do effectively the same thing that the actual world’s best Pac-Man player can smash out in a single attempt.

And yet, this did not quash the enthusiasm of Billy’s remaining defenders on YouTube, who in the immediate aftermath of Billy’s stunt, heaped praise on him for supposedly besting Pac-Man’s “perfect score”. A full point-by-point rebuttal is beyond the scope of today’s story, and honestly, not necessary. Suckers will be suckers. However, one common theme among much of this coverage was the omission of the fact that this game was done on a Reunion machine variant specifically, and not just on the game of Pac-Man in general. Indeed, in at least one case, it’s clear the pundit was truly ignorant of this, speaking as though Billy had somehow found a way to squeeze an extra 5,060 points out of the original game, without bothering to ask or address simple questions like “If this is the new maximum score, then why was the other score billed as ‘perfect’ for all those years?” (One could ask, if beating the 3,333,360 score on a Reunion machine counts as a new world record on the game “Pac-Man”, wouldn’t the same be true of a six-million score on one of the re-releases where the split screen bug is patched altogether?)

Not every attempt to defend Billy’s position was completely without merit, however. One of these reaction videos was from Casey Ross, a.k.a. “Uncanny Casey”, an Indianapolis playwright who previously had written and directed a pro-Billy theater production she called “Arcade Fire” (with no apparent relation to the band of the same name). In this video, at about 4:40, Casey tells a story of also having been let in on the Reunion machine’s secret dot, at an event in February 2019. Later, at 6:10, Casey offered her explanation for why she was producing that video, at that time:

So, why do I tell you this story? And why do I think you’ll believe me at all? Honestly, I don’t. My story will probably fall on deaf ears, but I bring it up because there’s already rumblings that this guy didn’t do it first. There’s already rumblings that it wasn’t legit. In fact, those rumblings started while he was still playing the game…

THE CLAIM

And this brings us to our actual topic of the day. Allow me to introduce a classic arcade gamer by the name of Greg Sakundiak:

The above screenshot was from Greg’s profile page on the site www.pacman-forum.co.uk – a site which is non-operational as of me writing this. On May 20, 2020, Greg joined an exclusive club, with a perfect score of 3,333,360 on original Pac-Man, as adjudicated by Twin Galaxies. While Greg was the eighth such player recognized by Twin Galaxies, and the 15th such player recognized by Pac-Man Forum (counting both arcade and MAME), this was noted for being the first perfect score in the year of the game’s 40th anniversary. Of his accomplishment, Greg was quoted in TG coverage as follows:

“I can’t even begin to express how exhilarating it is to finally achieve a life long goal,” he said, looking back over the path leading to his perfect game. “It’s like winning a gold medal at the Olympics knowing that you’re the best in the world.”

Greg was also quoted as having achieved another such score soon afterward, one which he believed was two mistakes away from landing on third place on the speedrun leaderboard.

At this point, it should be reiterated that, skillwise, a perfect score on the Reunion game is not appreciably different than a perfect score on original Pac-Man. Either is a difficult achievement, worthy of celebration and a sense of accomplishment. Regardless of what happens later, Greg’s May 2020 perfect score is documented, proven, and accepted by the community. And indeed, multiple perfect score players have gone on to repeat their performance, thus demonstrating that that first triumph increases the success rate of subsequent attempts. Therefore, it is safe to say that, at least starting in the summer of 2020, Greg could have achieved a perfect score of 3,338,420 on the Reunion version if he wanted to, and had the means to do so (meaning, the time to do it and access to the game itself).

After Billy began his Reunion machine attempts in November 2020, Greg chose to begin floating the claim that he had indeed already done a Reunion machine perfect score earlier that summer. The first instance of this claim I’m aware of was in David Race’s Twitch chat on November 20, 2020. Recall that this was running concurrently with Billy’s third day of Reunion game attempts. Here’s Greg, using the unmistakable new handle “Misterperfect2020”, as David was playing the final few boards:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/810444709

By this point, David Race’s prior friendship with Billy had soured, with David finally realizing that Billy lies about basically everything. Indeed, a month earlier, David had provided to Twin Galaxies a legally-recorded phone call wherein Billy discussed his plan to falsify evidence in an attempt to make Twin Galaxies adjudicators look bad. (Billy had not yet filed his lawsuit against David over this phone call, but that was on its way.)

So naturally, this claim that Billy’s sought-after “first” had already been done piqued David’s interest. And Greg was a respected member of the community, so no foul play was suspected. Still, David followed up with Greg via Facebook the next day, asking for proof that could be provided to others:

In their voice conversation, Greg reiterated his claim from Twitch chat that he didn’t record his game. However, Greg did cite Dwayne Richard as a witness for his score, adding that it was Dwayne who provided him the PCB to play on.

In researching for this piece, I trawled through my extensive yet admittedly incomplete archive of Billy’s Twitch chats from his November 2020 streams. (Note that his games were also broadcast on the Galloping Ghost Arcade channel, but those streams were set to auto-delete, so I have no archive of them.) The comments from “Misterperfect2020” were a bit less direct than in David’s chat, but still to the same effect. On day three:

On day nine:

And on day ten:

And back on day five, while chatting with perfect score player Jon Stoodley (“pacman83”), Greg offered a story of how he had plugged a Reunion board into an original Pac-Man cabinet, thus eschewing the microswitch-style joystick Billy was playing on:

Interestingly, Greg wasn’t the only one floating the idea that a Reunion perfect score had already been done. On day three, whoever was handling Billy’s account while he played had this to say:

I suppose that was Billy’s backup plan, if someone else jumped on stream and got the score before he could? Part of me wonders what that tape would have looked like, or if it would have even been made public, had circumstances played out a bit differently. (Or if it exists at all.)

Eventually, on day ten, when Billy finally reached his target score of 3,338,420, Greg messaged David again, sarcastically congratulating Billy for “coming in 2nd”:

While Billy’s grandstanding resonated with his remaining fans, others in the wider gaming community were still uninclined to validate the self-promotion of a proven cheater, especially when they learned that the only difference between this score and a traditional Pac-Man perfect score is a trivial dot on the split screen, rather than some fundamental test of skill. It was in this context that news of an alleged earlier Reunion perfect score began to gain traction. When people began to reply to Casey Ross’ video noting Greg’s claim of an earlier perfect score, Casey asked why this claim was being accepted without apparent proof:

As you’ve probably figured out by now, Casey’s skepticism was valid. Jumping ahead, in late May of this year, Greg Sakundiak was compelled to admit he had lied about this claimed Reunion machine perfect score the entire time. We’ll get into the “Why” of all this later. This confession was offered by way of a brief message, sent to several members of the classic arcade community, which read as follows:

I’m making a public statement as some things have come to light.

I’ve claimed in the past that I got a perfect score on the anniversary edition of Pacman.

This was fabrication of a prefect score by Dwayne Richard that I agreed to and totally regret. This fabrication was brought about to get back a Billy Mitchell to suppress him getting the first prefect on the anniversary edition. I want to apologize to all my fans and players for going along with this please accept my apologies.

Sincerely

Greg Sakundiak

I do wish to be clear that, while this is framed and likely intended as “a public statement” on Greg’s part, I’ve found no indication this was actually offered in an open public forum, at least by Greg himself. (For my part, I had never spoken to Greg when this message was issued, and I was not included on his mailing list. I received the message second-hand from multiple parties.) We’ll discuss the “how” and “why” of all this later, but for now, take note of Greg’s initial choice to frame this as a Dwayne Richard initiative which he regretfully “agreed to”. The problem is, even at this early point in the narrative, we’ve already seen Greg assert this claim, proactively, and purely of his own accord.

Getting back to our timeline, in January 2021, Greg was still running with his story, offering an example of the patterns he claimed to have used while practicing for his “Reunion perfect”:

When asked by an organizer with Pac-Man Forum for a date for this supposed Reunion game, Greg claimed it was done on August 15, 2020. This claim was then incorporated into a new leaderboard for the Reunion game, with Greg’s score listed first and Billy’s second:

Reportedly, Pac-Man Forum’s moderators received legal threats from, of all people, Donkey Kong player Robbie Lakeman, who at the time was still an ally of Billy Mitchell. The Reunion leaderboard was then removed, and later replaced with one covering both of the “anniversary” games. Greg’s score was now bumped below Billy’s, despite the earlier claimed date, with a new note that Greg’s score was “unverified”:

Flash forward to November 2021, about one year after Billy’s Reunion game streams. Billy had recently demonstrated his willingness to lie with his “Music City Con”. David Race subsequently did his own offline perfect score attempts, this time using the same “jumper” version Billy had failed on. And once again, David succeeded in what Billy failed to do. With David receiving media inquiries about his achievement, he reached out to Greg to ask if there was at least a photograph of his Reunion game final score he could provide to media, hoping to garner Greg a mention for his claimed “first” from the year before. But even a year out, Greg chose to maintain the lie, suggesting that he thought he had such a photo somewhere, but may not have it anymore, or it may be on some old hard drive somewhere:

David also messaged Dwayne the same day, again asking for any photos of Greg’s final score. After a few days, Dwayne responded, saying he didn’t have any, but repeating the line about Greg possibly having one on an older phone:

Note the bit at the end where Dwayne is expressing his belief that someone had already done a Reunion perfect score before Greg. While Dwayne did not make it clear to David, this was the same individual on YouTube who developed the Reunion patterns Greg cited earlier. David followed up by asking Dwayne for a link to that person’s page. However, Dwayne replied that he’s moved on and just has no interest in pursuing this matter:

And yet still, despite the unsatisfied requests for proof, no suspicion was raised. Greg had a fully documented perfect score on original Pac-Man. It was known he was capable of the same feat on the Reunion machine. The “secret” tenth dot had been made public many years prior. Dwayne’s story, that they didn’t think to make a big deal of Greg’s claimed score because they thought someone else had already done it, made some sense. And Greg was a trusted member of the community, and not considered someone who would risk his reputation by lying about such a thing.

THE JIG IS UP

All of this changed on Friday, May 26th of this year, when David was contacted out of the blue by Dwayne Richard, asking to speak on the phone. In this conversation, David learned that Dwayne and Greg, once good friends, had recently suffered a falling out. Dwayne also casually mentioned that, oh by the way, that “perfect score” the two of them had insisted Greg achieved on the Reunion machine was all a lie. As Dwayne put it, they just made that up to get back at Billy. That way, even if Billy did eventually get the Reunion machine score, people would say he wasn’t really the first.

What?

The?

Fuuuuuck?

David informed me of this deception the following day. Speaking for myself, I was truly dumbfounded and disappointed. And not because I needed this score to be true, or would have been devastated to live in a reality where Billy Mitchell was credited with the first perfect score on this particular re-release variant of Pac-Man. It just seemed so stupendously dumb and pointless to lie to everyone about it. Also, on a journalistic level, I had repeated the score claim as fact, in my later video on Billy’s “Music City Con”. I didn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be true, and at least from my perspective, all the other Pac-Man experts seemed to accept this as fact as well. But now, like David, I was on the hook for inadvertently helping spread what turned out to be a falsehood. At any rate, obviously this warranted an immediate correction to my “Music City Con” video and commentated transcript.

David reached out to Greg directly for confirmation, before expressing his own disappointment and irritation in a Facebook post on Sunday afternoon. David called for both Greg and Dwayne to offer public acknowledgment and apologies for lying to everyone, while also expressing his own sincere disappointment in the matter:

I didn’t really say much in response to what Dwayne told me, but upon reflection, I get the impression he was trying to spin this as something positive.

He punctuated our conversation with how he always tells the truth, but seemed oblivious to the contradiction inherent in his admission. Apparently, he didn’t see anything wrong when he and Greg perpetrated AND perpetuated a FRAUD for more than two and a half years.

David also reiterated his own words from late 2019, when he began to realize that Billy Mitchell and Rob Childs had been lying to him all along about Billy’s cheated Donkey Kong scores:

I don’t like being lied to. I don’t like having my time wasted, and I certainly don’t like it when someone tries to gaslight me or others.

David maintained private contact with Dwayne, attempting to facilitate a public acknowledgment of the falsehood and an apology. Dwayne’s first response was brief and dismissive:

David i don’t care anymore about all the bullshit. I haven’t used Facebook got kicked off youtube what do you want from. Its just a video game score.

About a half hour later, David received a longer, somewhat more thought out reply. However, David was still unimpressed with what, in a message to me, he called Dwayne’s “attempt at severity softening”. Dwayne again made it clear he was “trying to get back at Bill”, believing a number of people should have gotten the Reunion perfect score first, if they’d had the proper equipment. Dwayne also claimed to not know the score had been officially recognized, thinking they had just floated it out into the world as unconfirmed hearsay (as if that would have been okay).

David continued to press the matter, stressing the fact that both Dwayne and Greg continued to lie about the score long after Billy’s “beyond perfect” score had left the Pac-Man community’s attention. David offered Dwayne the opportunity to provide a better public apology, which Dwayne chose to do the following morning:

Again I have to say, David is right to do this and call us out. I’m sorry and apologize. The misinformation may have caused a detraction from William Mitchell’s achievement. He spent the time to do it and wanted it more than anyone else, so he deserves what ever his desire was. I regret getting caught up in the never ending story. To lie about a video game score shows a lack of maturity and the deception is even worse. My judgement was bad and the misuse of the implicit trust and value of my statement of facts was the reason people took the lie seriously, so I have to accept the responsibility. I am going to move on and leave the scoreboard behind. I have met a lot of great people and apologize for letting them down.

………….BUT WHY?

In drafting this write-up, I reached out to both Dwayne and Greg, trying to ascertain exactly how this whole fiasco came about. Of course, “Please tell me about this stupid and embarrassing thing you did that you’d also really like to forget about” is always going to be an awkward conversation. While this particular foul-up cannot be attributed to a youthful mistake in judgment, I know I did many stupid things in my youth which I’m glad are not preserved by way of analyses on the Internet. I have no interest in excusing this lie, or sweeping it under the rug, or glossing it over with good intentions. But my role is to help preserve these bits of gaming history, and I knew that people, like myself, simply want to know the story for what it is.

I got in contact with Dwayne first. The last time I’d heard from him was about two years ago. Indeed, his Internet footprint has diminished considerably since the days he was uploading impromptu commentary videos nearly every other day. To answer a question some have asked me, Dwayne said his YouTube channel had been terminated because he posted, as he put it, “controversial material”.

According to Dwayne, this all started with the previously discussed Twin Galaxies Pac-Man livestream from 2015, wherein Donald Hayes was going for this exact Reunion machine perfect score, failing only to clear “the Desert” (the long stretch of repeating ninth key screens). Dwayne attributed Donald’s failure to achieve a perfect score that day to what he (Dwayne) characterized as cheap, plastic joysticks that were supplied for the event. However, recall that Tim Balderramos used the same provided equipment, and was able to complete a deathless ninth key run, albeit without the perfect blue time boards.

This score was not important enough to Donald to arrange a reattempt. However, in Dwayne’s mind, Donald Hayes should have rightfully had the score that day. In our conversation, Dwayne recalled knowing in his heart that Billy would one day try to use this Reunion machine secret as a promotional vehicle. Dwayne wished to thwart that before it could happen, even if other players had little interest in following up on it.

In 2020, months prior to Billy’s Reunion streams, Dwayne met up with fellow Canadian Greg Sakundiak, with Reunion PCB in hand. Their shared hope was to secure the Reunion machine Pac-Man perfect score, with full recording, to settle the matter once and for all. However, in their desire not to repeat the mishap with the poor joysticks, they attempted to plug the board into an original Pac-Man cabinet, so they could use that machine’s classic metal joystick. Up until this point, this account matches what Greg had mentioned in Billy’s chat. Unfortunately, as Dwayne told me, rather than successfully installing the Reunion game into a classic cabinet, this attempt actually resulted in them frying the only Reunion board they had.

It seems this matter of the lingering Reunion perfect score never strayed far from Dwayne’s mind. Dwayne directed me to a low-engagement YouTube channel he had previously encountered (again, the same channel Greg cited), where an unidentified individual displayed impressive talent for Pac-Man specifically on the Reunion version of the game. This person had developed his own Reunion patterns to account for the ghosts’ slightly different behavior. Among the channel’s videos are a perfect patterned run through the first twenty boards, and a freehand perfect clearing of some of the game’s “one second” boards (where the ghosts only stay blue for a single second):

https://www.youtube.com/@zo6rob/videos

Dwayne wasn’t clear with me exactly how he would have known this, but he expressed to me his belief that, surely, this person must have achieved a complete perfect score on that version prior to Billy. Dwayne seemed to be laying the groundwork for the justification that, if someone out there had already done a Reunion score of 3,338,420, then even if the specific claim of such a score by Greg was a lie, the fundamental claim they wished to convey – that Billy was not the “first” – would be true. (Obviously, this way of thinking is fraught with perils, but we’ll get to those later.)

Billy’s streamed attempts in November 2020 came with exactly the artifical pomp and circumstance Dwayne claims to have expected. Recall that Billy’s announcement was offered only one day prior to the beginning of his streamed attempts, likely in the hopes of thwarting exactly the type of subversion Dwayne had been plotting all these years. (It seems the two of them know each other very well indeed.) Dwayne was not clear about exactly whose idea it was to attribute a fake Reunion perfect score to Greg. However, he recalled that the plan was to limit this claim within the bounds of hearsay. In other words, Dwayne simply wanted people to have the impression that someone had already achieved a perfect on the Reunion version, without putting forth a formal score claim to that end. How exactly Dwayne imagined such a claim would stay confined to the realm of hearsay while at the same time having the impact he intended is not really clear. And of course, one may have difficulty reconciling this characterization with Dwayne’s choice to continue promoting this lie long afterward, repeating the claim that Greg likely had a photograph of this score which he still claimed to have personally witnessed. Oddly, in our conversation, Dwayne seemed to be laying some of the blame on David Race for promoting Greg’s claimed score, which elevated it from the realm of hearsay, although Dwayne added that he had “no animosity” toward David for that. (Aw, that’s awfully nice of him.)

Again, I’m not sure exactly what Dwayne thought would happen. Dwayne made clear, this whole venture was strictly about Billy, and attempting to deny him the attention he was seeking. Dwayne said outright that he wasn’t thinking about the community, or the broader impact this lie could have. Dwayne expressed his frustration that Billy Mitchell is allowed to lie and lie about everything, without ever facing any justice for how he treats people.

I did ask Dwayne about the nature of his reported falling out with Greg. Dwayne avoided the question. I chose not to purse that further with him, given that such a rift in a friendship could relate to personal matters which are beyond the scope of what I have a right to know.

In concluding our conversation, Dwayne lamented the negativity in the classic gaming scene, and expressed his desire to be done with it forever. He said very specifically, that if I were to do him “a favor” and push for all his scores, all his records, to be expunged from every leaderboard, I would make him “a happy man”. And yet, a moment later, Dwayne discussed some sort of Pac-Man competition he has an eye on organizing in the not-too-distant future.

A few days later, David Race put me in touch with Greg Sakundiak, so I could get his side of the story. Early on in the phone call, Greg made clear the many demands on his time between work and family, but expressed that he was taking the time to return my call and address this matter because he really did regret his actions. (Indeed, it didn’t take me long to pick up on the fact that Greg was calling while driving, possibly due to that being the only free time he had.)

Greg discussed his longtime friendship with Dwayne in more detail than Dwayne offered. They had met growing up in the ’80s, both being heavily into arcade gaming and living only an hour away from each other. Greg said Dwayne was always the better player, but that he (Greg) wasn’t jealous of this. Between them, he was always the second place guy, who followed Dwayne’s initiatives. In 2007, during qualifying for the X-Box Pac-Man Championship in New York, Greg said he chose not to compete so that Dwayne could be assured of the invite for representing the Canadian region. In return, after finishing third at the event, Dwayne gave Greg the prize he had won: An X-Box signed by Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani.

While it can be difficult to draw direct answers from Dwayne, I had little such difficulty with Greg. However, when I asked exactly how the idea to claim the fake perfect score came about, the question elicited a series of reluctant pauses. While I was journalistically obligated to ask the question and seek an answer, in my heart, I knew exactly how to interpret this reticence to respond. As a writer, at least when using this medium, it’s not often that I find myself unable to clearly express my thoughts, or to rhetorically navigate a tricky topic. But I also have to acknowledge and recognize when people don’t have that same skill. In that moment, speaking with Greg, I interpreted his reluctance to answer this question as reflective of his desire not to deflect responsibility, or to make the situation worse by appearing unremorseful, while at the same time wanting to be helpful by truthfully answering my question. In the end, while I did not jot down Greg’s word-for-word answer, and while he did make clear that he bears responsibility for going along with the stunt, I was left with the impression that the impetus for this deception was Dwayne’s desire to suppress Billy’s quest for attention. Greg, however, fully acknowledged having gone along with the lie the whole way.

Greg did confirm a number of elements from Dwayne’s version of events, including that he and Dwayne had met several months before Billy’s streams, and that they fried a Reunion board by incorrectly installing it into a classic Pac-Man machine. Greg also expressed his belief that Dwayne does deserve more recognition for his gaming achievements, relative to the attention Billy receives. He also expressed embarrassment as he recalled what he wrote in Billy’s Twitch chat, directly claiming this score achievement for himself.

As to the question of their falling out, Greg offered me details where Dwayne did not. Reportedly, Greg assisted Dwayne with the purchase of hundreds of dollars worth of light bulbs. Greg ended up having to source them from two different outlets, which resulted in two different orders. Dwayne, believing he was only obligated to pay for one order, accused Greg of trying to swindle him. Greg said that Dwayne didn’t even allow him to explain the situation, instead ceasing contact with him. Greg likened this to a previous interaction, wherein Dwayne accused Greg of stealing a gold coin from him, before Dwayne eventually found where he himself had misplaced it.

As to the whole fiasco, Greg made his thoughts clear, in a statement that I did write down word-for-word:

It was something I shouldn’t have done, and I do regret it.

Greg said he has since contacted Billy Mitchell himself and apologized to him directly, and that Billy has forgiven him. Greg then expressed a desire to apologize again to the community, and to ask for their forgiveness. As for the Reunion perfect score itself, Greg added:

And maybe in the future, when I have a little more time, I’ll actually go for it and actually get it.

ONE DUMB MOVE

Unlike other cheating scandals, which have dragged on for weeks, months, or even years, this scandal wrapped up very shortly after it was discovered. The score itself was recognized and insisted on for two and a half years. However, once others had been cued into the fabrication, the ruse was very promptly dropped. Dwayne and Greg did waste some of the community’s time, but not nearly as much had one of them chosen to continue insisting on the lie once the deception had been discovered. Unlike in “Dot Nine”, where I had to present and weigh piles of evidence, and explain why various witness statements weren’t as relevant as they were being presented as, all while carefully crafting my wording to avoid giving a narcissistic liar any unsecured thread that could be seized upon in bad faith, I don’t have to sit here and compile an argument for why this score was fake. We just know now that it was.

But the one question I still have, which I may never have an answer to, is: How did anyone think this was a good idea?

Given that I’m one of the people who was bamboozled into repeating this bogus claim as truth, I’ll leave it to the reader to decide who does or does not share in the overall responsibility for allowing it to cross over from unconfirmed hearsay into accepted fact. But I do think it’s fair to say the primary responsibility for this fiasco lies with Greg and Dwayne – the only people who knew the claim to be false, but who chose to repeat it anyway.

When I reached out to both Dwayne and Greg, I expressed that my desire was not to write some inflammatory lambasting, unnecessarily dragging them for participation in something they now admit to and regret. (The sentiment was genuine, as such a piece would not be appropriate and would not accomplish much now that they’ve confessed and apologized.) But at the same time, I did make clear from the start that faking a score in this way was a very dumb decision, and that there was simply no way to frame it otherwise.

Let’s set aside the obvious ethical considerations involved in lying to the competitive gaming community about a high score claim. Dwayne and Greg obviously chose to make themselves comfortable with those implications, when weighed against whatever they had hoped to achieve with their decision. And in discussing the underlying reasoning, let’s also set aside whatever degree this fiasco may have reflected the inclination of one friend to simply go along with the whims of another friend. Functionally, there was no difference between their actions in perpetrating this concerted lie, except for the fact the bogus score itself was attributed to one of the pair and not the other.

Dwayne’s and Greg’s stated motivation was to suppress the positive media they expected Billy to receive when he inevitably hit his target score. The justification seems to have been that they believed (without proof) that someone else had already achieved the Reunion perfect score, and that multiple others (Donald, Greg) could also have achieved the score at any time. Therefore, ipso facto, at least in their minds, the core of what they were trying to imply to everyone – that Billy was not the true “first” – was itself accurate, even if the specific claim being used to impart that impression on everyone was not.

However, this reasoning exposes the flaw in their mindset. Dwayne even admitted to me in our conversation that he wasn’t thinking about the community when he did this. It was all just about Billy. They wanted to undermine Billy’s quest for attention, and tried to do this by making Billy the sole focus of their attention.

As you can probably tell, I’m no fan of Billy Mitchell (although before the Donkey Kong cheating scandal, I used to be one). But I figured out pretty early on in my research into the score disputes, there are types of attention Billy likes, and types he doesn’t. He does not – I repeat, DOES NOT – enjoy people bearing evidence calling his lies and his bogus score claims into question. However, he does thrive on other sorts of community attention, even some which portrays him as “the bad guy” (an impression which he can then diffuse with his charisma). Billy Mitchell loves being seen as “the guy to beat”, the guy who the community’s attention must revolve around.

If it was true that someone had already done a Reunion perfect score, then that’s simply a fact that can be asserted and discussed. However, manufacturing such a claim feeds into exactly the type of attention Billy is seeking. The discussion still revolves around the narcissist. It still elevates Billy’s stunt into something that matters to people. Even actually doing the score as a sneak attack can run the risk of playing into this, if the only underlying reason one is doing the score is not for its own sake, but to make sure Billy doesn’t get the credit first.

As it stood, the Reunion perfecto wasn’t important enough to Donald Hayes, or Tim Balderramos, or YouTube guy, to grind out the score with full proof. Even Greg Sakundiak and Dwayne Richard had opportunities to do this score themselves, and while they may have made a nominal attempt at it, they did not put in enough effort to finalize the achievement. So, given that the extra 5,060 points are incidental and not a test of skill, one could have rightly said that the difference between a Reunion perfect score and an original perfect score is not enough to merit added prestige. It didn’t matter enough to the people who knew about this tenth dot for over a decade, and never sought it out. However, if it’s important enough to lie about, then that says it really does matter who succeeds in achieving it first. And thus, given the way Dwayne and Greg chose to elevate this issue, it becomes a credit to Billy that he sat in that Chicago area arcade and streamed about ten hours a day for ten consecutive days, all because he wanted that desired distinction badly enough. And you can also correctly say that Billy didn’t let rumors of previous such scores dissuade him from staying at that arcade until he got what he came for.

If Greg’s and Dwayne’s goal was to undermine Billy’s publicity campaign, it’s quite arguable how much that succeeded, even in the short term. Billy still got press for his score, still got attention. Their stunt may have even driven engagement from people who replied, saying “He wasn’t first, someone already got it”, when they otherwise would have shrugged their shoulders and said “Whatever, it’s functionally no different from an original Pac-Man perfect score, and he’s still a proven cheater”.

And this is even assuming the lie is never discovered! As soon as it is, it becomes a massive positive for Billy. “See? Like my friend Steve Sanders always says, the only way they could beat me was to lie.” Oh, and look at that! Thanks to two knuckleheads, here we are, almost three years later, still talking about a claimed perfect score of Billy’s, one which (unlike in 1999) was recorded in full, from beginning to end. Sitting here now, I’m trying to imagine what they could have done that would have been a bigger boost to Billy’s Reunion score story, and I struggle to think of anything.

And that’s just restricting our view to this “beyond perfect” stunt, itself. The lie also feeds into Team Billy’s overall narrative of “Billy Mitchell is the victim of unfair Internet lies”. Getting back to Casey Ross’ pro-Billy reaction video, she took the opportunity to frame the discussion around the claimed Greg Sakundiak score as follows (at about 8:30):

Imagine if Billy Mitchell had popped into comments somewhere and stated “Oh yeah, I’ve done this score, too. There’s just… no proof, and no, I… I didn’t do it live, and no, there were no witnesses, and no, I didn’t think to record it, even though it’s a fairly groundbreaking discovery on the game, because I was, you know, just focused on something else.” The Internet would eviscerate him. There would be no benefit of the doubt for Billy Mitchell.

Oh, and let’s not forget, Billy Mitchell is still suing Twin Galaxies over the removal of his cheated Donkey Kong scores.

Billy’s strategy in his case has largely consisted of throwing whatever he can at the wall and hoping something sticks, all while changing various stories (even those to which he had already sworn under oath) in service of whatever momentary convenience presents itself in any given week. However, insofar as Billy could be said to have a theory of the case presented in his defense, it’s that the nefarious Dwayne Richard somehow tracked down every copy of Billy’s otherwise legitimate DK tapes and used some sort of magic tool to cover them all in MAME signatures. Granted, as I’ve explained elsewhere, this is incomprehensibly unfeasible. Even assuming such editing was possible, Dwayne would have had to add several different types of MAME signatures throughout the tapes, while never missing a single arcade signature (such as the “rivet ramp”), at a time when these minute differences in loading screens were completely unknown to everybody. Dwayne also would have had to track down every copy of Billy’s game play floating out in the wild, because the revelation of any unedited copy would have exposed this wacky hypothetical scheme. Furthermore, thanks to the discovery of the MTV interview from February 2006, we know that Dwayne would have had to sit down and do all of this for Billy’s claimed 1.047m score in 2005, and then do it all over again for Billy’s claimed 1.05m score in 2007. (And that’s setting aside Billy’s claimed 1.062m score in 2010, which also shows indications of MAME, and which Dwayne never had access to.) Oh, and all this tech wizardry would have had to be done by a guy who doesn’t even know how to use his phone, or how to copy tapes without pointing a camera at a television screen, or how to install a Reunion PCB without frying it.

However, to the uninformed, Billy’s confidently told story of being the innocent victim of a malicious conspiracy to frame him with fake MAME evidence is bolstered by Dwayne’s own actions. Dwayne really did own a website called fuckbillymitchell.com. Dwayne really did ask for help producing a MAME tape that could be passed off as arcade. Dwayne really did tell people he was going to “take [Billy Mitchell] down”. Granted, none of these things affect the actual evidence, no more than if any other classic arcade gamer had said or done those same things. But all of these things still feed into the portrait Billy wishes to paint.

The point here is, if the objective was to undermine Billy’s quest for favorable media, this plan was catastrophically doomed to failure before it was even conceived. Billy now has a documented example of Dwayne Richard lying about video game achievements for no stated or otherwise discernable reason than to stick it to Billy Mitchell. Worse, Billy had been insisting to everyone for years that the nefarious Dwayne Richard was capable of this sort of dishonesty all along. Just like how I couldn’t have written a better script for Billy at Music City Multi-Con, Billy could not have handed Dwayne a better script to feed right into his own narrative of claimed innocence.

We already got our first glimpse of how this framing will play out at the recent NERG gaming festival in the U.K., where Billy publicly addressed this Sakundiak retraction for the first time. Starting at 1:19:00 in this upload, Billy began by making a clear reference to Dwayne, although not by name:

The source of the allegations that began with Donkey Kong came from one particular place. A particular person… okay… And that person has been extremely angry […] Those accusations came as soon as he realized that he wasn’t included in “King of Kong” or “Chasing Ghosts”. He just like became so angry. He spent ten years of his life doing things that were to the detriment of the people he thought got ahead of him.

Right away, Billy attempts to paint Dwayne as the sole source of the Donkey Kong related allegations against him. While Dwayne may have been accusing Billy of various things years earlier, Billy knows the Donkey Kong dispute originated with the MAME evidence, which was published by Jeremy Young without any involvement from Dwayne. (It is true that two public uploads of Billy’s DK tapes that were originally examined came from camera-at-television copies Dwayne had published, but everything was later confirmed using matching copies Dwayne never had access to. And again, Billy’s 2010 score was also examined, and Dwayne never touched that.) Billy then describes the Sakundiak situation before reading Greg’s apology, skipping both individuals’ names. Billy then tries to tie Greg’s lie back to the supposed mastermind, using words that sounded very familiar from my own conversation with Dwayne:

How does that guy, who pressured him into it, how does his… How does he not get called to the carpet for all of the allegations he made? He doesn’t answer to any of it. When collectively you have an agenda, when collectively you have an animosity, when collectively you want to suppress an individual.

I do wish to be clear that, while this farce may feed into Billy’s distractions of what he would like bystanders to believe his score dispute is about, this doesn’t actually affect the technical case against Billy’s Donkey Kong scores, nor will it cause Twin Galaxies, Karl Jobst, or anyone else to lose their legal battles against Billy. Dwayne Richard could literally stand on a mountaintop and shout “I, and I alone, produced MAME Donkey Kong tapes to replace all of Billy’s original tapes, with the hope of calling into question his genuine world records, which I now admit I know for a fact to have been legitimately achieved on original, unmodified hardware”, and (when weighed against the actual evidence) it would still be every bit as impossible as Dwayne’s fantasies about flat Earth. But that doesn’t mean Billy’s narrative won’t resonate with people too overwhelmed by Billy’s ongoing avalanche of lies to sift what is true apart from what isn’t.

And as for Greg, Billy now has a written apology, straight from one of his “detractors”. Granted, it seems Greg never really had a personal beef with Billy the way Dwayne did, but that’s how it will be spun. After all, this is Billy Mitchell we’re talking about. Imagine screwing up so badly that you put yourself in the position of having to apologize to that guy of all people – a conman who has stolen from so many others without the least bit of remorse.

There isn’t really a way to sugarcoat this. As I remarked to people in the community when I first learned that this perfect score claim was a lie to get back at Billy, the whole venture was “colossally stupid”. And I do believe, at this point, all parties understand this.

And of course, stepping back from the broader implications of all this, there’s also the smaller picture of how this will affect Greg and Dwayne going forward. Regardless of which of them may have swayed the other into going along with the lie, the fact is, both of them expended energy perpetuating this falsehood on the community. Sure, video game scores don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, and there are far more heinous crimes in the world to be concerned with. But a competitive community still can’t allow an act like this to slide without consequence. It’s not my place to say, but I suspect that both Greg and Dwayne will have lost a certain degree of trust within the Pac-Man community, which is so difficult to regain.

THE KILL SCREEN

Aside from all the negatives to come from this debacle, I can identify two potential positives. First, I hope this can stand as a lesson by example. We can look back to the likes of Badabun, who it seems faked a Super Mario speedrun not with the intention of scamming a community or leaderboard, but rather thinking a silly speedrun video would be fun entertainment. But when one focuses on the wrong thing, they lose sight of what gives these high scores and speedruns importance in the first place. These achievements reflect not just the skill developed by the player, but the immense amount of work that was put into making these dreams reality. That’s why people care the way they do. Except in extreme cases, focusing on “who should have been first”, among competitors who had every reasonable opportunity, misses the point of all of this. We’ll never know how many similar lies with similar motivations became accepted “facts” back in the old wild west days of competitive gaming. Nowadays, the knowledge of games has become so extensive, and the proliferation of evidence so pervasive, the community is better equipped than ever to spot cheaters. And even if you can account for those technical methods, there’s still the chance your childhood friend gets mad at you and spills the beans. But the community memory – the only true source of accountability in competitive gaming – is also more robust than it has ever been. When you lie, you run the risk of losing the respect of the only people who know the true value of your accomplishments.

Both Greg and Dwayne are indeed exceptional players, and they both do regret what they did. Speaking for myself, disappointed as I am to learn of this fiasco, I can honestly say that I am hoping Greg and Dwayne redeem themselves on this. The community doesn’t need any more drama and bickering and resentment. But just like those high scores we love to watch, there are no shortcuts. It’s going to take more than good words and “should have”s. It’s going to take dedication and work. That’s what people really care about.

With regard to lessons by example, this should also be a reminder that one ultimately cannot lie their way to the truth, especially when facing a much more skilled and accomplished liar like Billy Mitchell. Yes, the truth has warts. Yes, the truth is verbose. Yes, the truth is even actively painful sometimes. But the one virtue it does have is that it is the truth.

However, in reflecting on this absolute cock-up, I can see one other potential positive to ironically come from it. As I discussed, this fiasco will no doubt be a rhetorical trope in Team Billy’s ongoing war-of-words against the evidence. “Oh look, one of the people who has accused Billy in the past has admitted to lying about him, maybe everyone else involved in the score dispute also lied, and maybe you should also ignore the mountain of evidence as well just to be sure.” But there’s a certain admission in Billy’s choice to emphasize this as proof of a more elaborate conspiracy against him.

One of the things Billy frequently harps on is his claim that he “recreated” his contested scores on Donkey Kong. (To be clear, Billy still has not actually “recreated” any of his contested scores, no matter how much he insists otherwise, but we’ll set that aside here.) When discussing his cheating scandal, Billy always frames these “recreated” scores as exonerating evidence, which his detractors refuse to acknowledge. Billy gave a new iteration of this line at that recent NERG festival (at about 1:01:00):

They don’t acknowledge anything. All they do is move the goalposts. There’s nothing I can do to help those people. And if anybody can tell me anything, I’d like to know. Somebody’ll show me something on social media, and somebody… reasonably level-headed… will say “I don’t understand, why doesn’t this guy just go somewhere and play and do it again?” Okay, I’ve done that. I’ve done it like twenty-two times. But that person’s unaware, God bless ’em. […] It doesn’t matter if I do it again. I will do it again, many, many times. You’re right, it’s not gonna change.

Of course, if you’ve read this far, you understand the fallacy involved (as does Billy). Being able to do a score in 2018 doesn’t mean one didn’t cheat at that same score in 2005. Billy’s remaining loyalists still latch onto this notion; as pro-Billy YouTuber TheConcertCruizer remarked with an on-screen comment (at 7:44): “A fraud wouldn’t be able to duplicate their scores”.

However, while Billy may have been unable to score a million on Donkey Kong without chicanery at the time Steve Wiebe came onto the scene (a possibility which the bizarre game play on Billy’s tapes attests to), that was never a requisite of the score dispute. It could be that Billy simply did not want to sacrifice the time and energy necessary to grind out a million points legitimately, but selfishly wanted recognition as the “first” to do so anyway. Indeed, as we see, this lie by Sakundiak and Dwayne was similarly about ensuring someone else wasn’t recognized as the “first” to do a different gaming achievement.

Greg Sakundiak was already a documented perfect score player when this happened. His skill was never at question. For Greg, and for his accomplice, the only thing preventing this goal from actually being achieved was the time and effort it would take to grind out the score in a valid manner. If Greg had all the time in the world, I do believe he would have had both the original perfect score and the Reunion perfect score achieved years before this fiasco. Setting aside what Billy’s actual skill level at certain games is, being world class at a video game doesn’t preclude one from cheating or lying about their scores. Now, with this documented example acknowledged by all parties, even Billy’s staunchest defenders can’t deny that, now.

With all of that out of the way, it’s time to address our final question of the day: Does this mean it’s true that Billy Mitchell really did get the first perfect score on Pac-Man on the reunion machine?

Obviously, I’m going to set aside any claimed perfect score someone on YouTube may or may not have gotten without proof. I’m not making that mistake again. As far as I know, Billy’s is the first such claim to come accompanied with a recording of his game, from start to finish.

However, to be blunt, I (and by extension, this website) don’t recognize Billy’s November 2020 claim as a valid achievement. I’m not saying it’s definitely fake. I have no particular evidence disputing it. But I know about the person making the claim, and the outrageous lengths he’s willing to go to seek validation for his lies and to secure illegitimate recognition for scores he knows he didn’t earn. And I’m also familiar with his ability to rope others into attesting to whatever he can convince them they saw. It doesn’t matter whether he streamed it, or where he streamed it from, or how many of his friends are willing to vouch for him. Am I supposed to believe, after he has lied to us all so many times, that this is the time he chose to be honest? Billy Mitchell could literally wheel a Pac-Man cabinet into my home, do an apparent perfect score right in front of me (hopefully in fewer than ten days’ time), and knowing the frauds he has already perpetrated, I would still remain skeptical. Has the ROM set been altered? Has collision detection been disabled? Has fruit time been extended? Is he using some kind of macro? Is this machine just displaying pre-recorded game play, which Billy is able to mimic? Each of these, while unlikely, are possible, and I’m under no obligation to dismiss them, not for Billy Mitchell’s sake.

If Greg’s and Dwayne’s actions have cost them trust in the community, then it’s only right that Billy’s actions have cost him a thousand-fold more. There are so many ways to cheat at competitive video gaming, and Billy made the choice to dabble in some of the most egregious and pernicious of those methods. That was his mistake, and he can live with the consequences. If he had at least owned up to what he had done and apologized, as Greg and Dwayne have done, we could have a conversation about forgiveness and reacceptance. Instead, he doubled and tripled down on his lies, blaming anyone within reach for his own misdeeds, making him a prime candidate to cheat again. As much as Billy’s remaining loyalists may howl with indignation, there are different rules for Billy, precisely because he conducted charades, produced fake evidence, and lied through his teeth to everyone for so many years. (Oh, and the lawsuits. Don’t forget the lawsuits.)

And that means, as far as I and this website are concerned, there is no standing verifiable first perfect score on Pac-Man on a Reunion machine. It is a vacant distinction, waiting to be claimed by anyone with the knowledge and ability, and the willingness to put in the work and grind out the achievement while recording the required proof. In fact, I would enjoy seeing a legitimate competitor complete such a score. All I ask is that they don’t take shortcuts or lie about it.

(Big thanks to David Race for his investigative contributions to this story as it was unfolding.)