Dot Nine Redux

Greetings, Whistlers! ersatz_cats here. It’s been almost two years since the publication of the series “The Video Game Fraud of the Century”, which launched this website located here on video game cheater Billy Mitchell’s old, expired web domain.

This series was broken up into nine installments – one for each of the hidden dots on original Pac-Man’s kill screen. The last installment, “Dot Nine”, focused on the question of whether Billy Mitchell actually got a perfect score of Pac-Man in July 1999, as he had always claimed.

When the project was initially published, it concluded with a teaser for “Dot Ten”, which I do intend to write some day, after the ongoing legal battles and related discoveries have run their course. However, the invaluable research of my unnamed colleagues has continued in the meantime, including the discovery of new evidence pertaining to the pivotal question addressed in “Dot Nine”. And while other discoveries (such as incidental photographs) can wait for a broader update to the series as a whole, I decided “Dot Nine” merited an update of its own at this time, to better align what is being presented with what we know to be true.

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

These new inclusions have been edited right into the original document at its original location (although if you wish to read the original version, that is linked at the top of the page). However, if you’ve already read “Dot Nine” and don’t want to skim for the new stuff, here’s an overview of what’s been added.

First, hours after “Dot Nine” was originally published, Billy filed copyright strikes against an upload of his “Tape 2”, as well as a compilation video. This had been addressed in “Dot Nine” by way of added asides, but now it’s all discussed in the seamless narrative (at least until the next copyright claim):

Another previous correction had been made was with regard to a quote from Billy in a print interview, which the interviewer likely misinterpreted. You can read the details of this correction (which also necessitated a correction in “Dot One”) in the newly updated supplemental notes for “Dot Nine”, under note [S2]:

https://perfectpacman.com/dot-nine-supplemental/

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=162228927693

As for new stuff, buried in Walter Day’s Facebook catalogue, my colleagues found an old album of photos from the 2001 Mall of America event where Billy’s Pac-Man game play was shown off. This includes a couple additional shots of Billy’s “Tape 1”, as well as a single photo (seen above) showing Billy at the “BC” park spot. He didn’t stay there long, though, as he returned to the spot near “A7” and parked there multiple times, including after eating some of those yet-untouched dots you see.

After the project was originally published, higher-resolution scans of Namco’s old magazine Nours were uploaded to Internet Archive. This included a better (though still incomplete) glimpse at a television which, in other photos, had been showing Billy’s split screen. Above, you see that photo zoomed in, along with an example of the split screen for comparison. If that is Billy’s tape, and if that is the split screen, and if those dots really are missing as they appear, then that would make that photo the furthest progression we see in Billy’s game. (Although we still wouldn’t be able to say if this was past Billy’s first life.)

As expected, the ongoing legal battle between Billy and Twin Galaxies has begun shaking some cobwebs loose. While much of the discovery material has not been made public, we do have this list of names, which Billy claims represents everyone who either witnessed the score itself or could testify to the hardware used. (I suppose that’s like with his cheated Donkey Kong scores, where two of his friends say they saw him get the score, a few others say there was a Donkey Kong machine present in the room that day, and Billy just lists them all together as his “witnesses” for the score.)

For some reason, I failed to discuss Corey Sawyer’s statement in the original “Dot Nine”, even though I did include it in “Dot Three”. At any rate, I have rectified that oversight. If you put his statements #1 and #3 together, you could certainly infer that Corey saw the final score, but he doesn’t say it outright, instead offering various qualifiers (such as that he was present “well into what became his final, successful run”). Also, we’ve seen “Tape 2”, and Corey seemed to be absent for most it, making that one long “brief” food break. The story about Billy teaching Corey patterns during his first attempt also seems a bit incongruent with other accounts. Given other statements of Corey’s we found, it seems like, in his memory, he’s conflating the official Funspot tournament in May 1999 with Billy’s later surprise visit, which I hope is an honest mistake. Anyway, I discuss all of that in the updated “Dot Nine”.

Another thing I discuss is this follow-up from Boston Phoenix reporter Chris Wright, which we discovered after publication. It turns out, there was a Boston reporter at Funspot that day! Except, he wasn’t there to cover Billy or watch him play. By his own account, he just happened to show up that day and was surprised to see Billy still playing. (We now believe Chris is the voice on “Tape 2”, asking if Billy hadn’t left “since the tournament”, but we’ve been unable to confirm this.) At any rate, aside from Chris’ chance encounter with Billy at the machine, this report doesn’t give the sense of being any different from any other reporting of the event, where Billy’s claims are simply repeated as fact without further elaboration. (Note, this did necessitate a couple edits to “Dot Three”, since we now know there was one “Boston reporter” there that day, if only incidentally.)

Lastly, while the subject of Billy’s more recent Pac-Man play will be a subject for “Dot Ten”, the example of his “Music City Con” was too perfect (heh heh) to not warrant inclusion. I can spin rhetoric all day, but what I could have used was a prime demonstration of Billy lying to a crowd of people about a perfect score in Pac-Man, and the crowd taking him at his word and repeating what Billy had led them to believe. And Mr. Mitchell, for some moronic reason, gave us exactly the demonstration I needed. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this whole ass video I produced on the subject last year:

Anyway, aside from that, I did the usual cleaning up of presentation, moved some less-than-necessary stuff to supplemental, and updated a couple source links. And yes, I’m aware that some of the original sources that are cited throughout the project have become, to use an imprecise word, deprecated. (That’s a fancy way of saying “The link don’t work no more.”) I’m not working to update those links at this time, as that would be an ongoing process, but I will address that when the series as a whole is updated. In the meantime, Internet Archive is your friend – for as long as it lasts, anyway.