What follows are the supplemental notes for the “Dot Eight” installment of our series The Video Game Fraud of the Century. These are not intended to be read straight through the way the main narrative is. Rather, these notes are made available to answer clarifying questions, to assist with sourcing, to make additional observations, to help satisfy the especially curious, and to assist any other researchers who wish to pick up where our work left off.
[S1] As a fan of American football myself, Billy comparing himself to Joe Namath is especially ridiculous. First of course is the physicality of football, and the fact that NFL rules at the time basically allowed the defense to maul the quarterback. This isn’t to say that less physical pursuits are of lesser stature, but it is to say that guaranteeing you’re going to beat a championship-caliber NFL team is just going to goad them into brutalizing you that much harder. Second, setting aside that physical aspect, football is head-to-head competition, involving eleven players on the other side who are actively trying to thwart your efforts. Billy sneaking off to play with himself while his biggest rival isn’t looking isn’t in the same universe. Third, the New York Jets of the upstart AFL were 18-point underdogs to the mighty Baltimore Colts of the NFL, and thus Namath’s guarantee actually meant something. And lastly, Namath’s guarantee was audacious precisely because it was done openly, in front of the media, and published everywhere before the big game, and not retconned after the fact.
[S2] Despite Billy’s braggadocio over his alleged public proclamation that he would do a perfect score at Funspot, and his claimed interactions with unnamed “media people” over the audacity of this supposed guarantee, Billy has also told the story as though he waffled on going and nearly backed out (heard at 30:10):
It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing that fell together for me, you know. And I… I remember, I remember bein’ there, sayin’ “Gee, do I really wanna go to… go up to Funspot and play and… Gee, well, yeah, I already got my ticket. I’ll go.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdATIvZn1vM
Billy told something similar to PARtv in 2020, albeit with a suggestion that the plane ticket was not the deciding factor (at 35:00):
There were times where… I’m not kidding, can you imagine the first time I went to Funspot, it was like… it was like the day before or maybe the day before that, I’m like, “Man, do I really want to go and do this?” I mean, I had the plane ticket. So what? I can get a credit on it. And even… even last year, on the 20th anniversary, I was like “Man, am I really gonna do this?” I really said that to myself.
[S3] Billy compares himself to Babe Ruth a lot. Here he is, in Exhibit B, at 11:30:
Again, it was like Babe Ruth pointing at the wall. Once he pointed at the wall, he had to achieve success. He had to. Otherwise, he would just be mocked. But if he achieved success, you know, he would have forever be revered.
[S4] Billy reiterates the claim that he said he would do the score on the Fourth of July weekend at 54:40 here:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3PQuOk4cblJAD8UsyWRaum
[S5] Taking a quick look at the list of TG news appearances, a June 30 piece from the Boca Raton News in Florida may jump out as possibly related to Billy’s upcoming Funspot trip, but it’s actually just a profile of TG alum Stephen Krogman breaking the record on “Ackenoid”:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=gxb_f1p9zx4C&dat=19990630&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
[S6] We get another example of Billy stressing that Chris Ayra had no idea he was at Funspot in today’s linked 2017 interview with Triforce, at 9:30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9EYBfhJIB8
[S7] As for Walter Day’s evasion of the question of whether he knew about Billy’s July 1999 visit to Funspot prior to his claimed perfect score, here is the relevant text from Day’s letter to Guinness in 2019:
In 1999, Billy achieved his most well known and popular achievement, the Perfect Pac-Man. This achievement was the culmination of years of work and dedication. This world record was achieved at one of history’s most notable arcades, Funspot, in Laconia, NH. Billy achieved this score in the company of Twin Galaxies representatives and witnesses of impeccable credibility, and it was adjudicated as a live world record. Due to Funspot’s exclusivity to original hardware, it was a premier location for players to set world records. The credibility of these world records, and this particular one, cannot be questioned, despite the claims made by Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies.
[S8] This notion that scores on “mature” games (meaning, older classics) must be pre-arranged with Twin Galaxies is referenced multiple times in the rules of that era. One page outlines the process for doing a “basement” score with witnesses, who must be “approved by Twin Galaxies ahead of time”. But this option specifically rules out application to games like Pac-Man:
This offer is not available if this involves a “mature” game. This has to be arranged ahead of time through Twin Galaxies so the situation can be thoroughly examined.
We will get into a full analysis of the rules which should have governed Billy’s July 1999 score attempts in “Dot Nine”.
[S9] It seems one press release from that era was not archived. Dated December 5, 1998, it was an announcement for an upcoming Playstation tournament in Valparaiso, Indiana:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110816052711/http://twingalaxies.com/PR-INDYPlaystation.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19991103212615/http://twingalaxies.com:80/press_releases.html
A reference to it was posted to Usenet, although the full text was not copied.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.marketplace/c/CQjfQBsUQik/m/0ISb7UZzwjgJ
I’m going to go out on a limb and say an announcement for an Indiana Playstation tournament was not where they tucked away all their “ten billion games of Pac-Man” research.
[S10] It is possible that Billy’s comments here (recorded at the CGE in August 2003), claiming to have sent out a press release prior to returning to Funspot, were in response to Pat Laffaye’s forum post about the gentleman’s agreement in March of that year (as linked in today’s installment). Ayra’s forum post in September (discussed back in “Dot Two”) about allegedly having done perfect scores in the ’80s could also have been a response to that forum post, or to subsequent discussions resulting from that post.
[S11] Here’s the extended quote of Billy describing his perfect score as though it were part of the back-and-forth at the May tournament (at 4:50):
So it was the U.S. versus Canada. And to make a long story short, we’re playin’ at a location. I’m playin’, I have 1.2 million, I’m in front, and I’m gonna beat him to the perfect score. And he’s just watchin’, pretending to be a good sport. And suddenly, at 1.7 million… a way that I’d never died before, I died, and I… I mean… I could’ve jumped through the ceiling if the cameras weren’t watching. Then it was his turn to play. He’s playin’, and he’s beyond two million points, he’s at 2.4 million. And I was so disgusted with myself, I walked away. And I’m standin’ around the other end of the machines. And suddenly I hear that beautiful sound… [mimics Pac-Man death noise]… And a whole crowd of people are behind me, and I run around and I look, and I’m right in front and I go “…Oh wow, that’s unfortunate.” He died, he continued to the end of the game. But at the end of the game, when you get there on your second man, even though you’ve got the points, it cheats you out of nine points. It cheats you out of nine dots. So he was ninety points short… short of 3.3 million. Then it was my turn again, and I did a perfect score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbacFcdqw5k
[S12] The claim from Rick Fothergill is conveyed via David Race. This was first posted as part a YouTube upload of one of Billy’s Twitch streams:
As noted, Billy filed a copyright claim to have the video taken down. (Again, Billy Mitchell hates evidence.) That upload was located here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shAkNbMB4PI
David reiterated Rick’s words (including “He is outright lying”) in the description for this later video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKSNJXo5rqg
[S13] CNN also added an interesting qualifier, that Billy was the “first one to get a live perfect score”. But given the low quality of the rest of their reporting in this piece, I wouldn’t consider this a deliberate reference to Bill Bastable or any other perfect scorers of the ’80s.
[S14] As explained in “Dot Three” supplemental, Fothergill’s quote here is trimmed down some.
[S15] Dwayne does say, at 5:10 in this chat with Pat Laffaye filmed prior to his documentaries, that he had “always heard” that there was an agreement between Mitchell and Fothergill to wait until a later time when all of the parties could be present to compete against each other for the perfect score (although Dwayne does suggest he learned further details of this agreement over time):
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/81.PatLaffayeAndDwayneRichardChatting.webm
In researching this matter for his documentaries, Dwayne asked Greg Erway, who had also heard of this agreement:
I can tell you this. I heard the rumors that, at least Rick and Bill, and I think Chris might have been involved, that they had an agreement that they were not gonna play again until the next Funspot.
[S16] Billy issued a copyright strike to take down a recent upload of that long quote from his 2019 stream. Again, Billy Mitchell hates evidence. However, you can hear portions of that originally uninterrupted quote in this commentary re-upload, at 1:10, at 1:40, and at 4:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKSNJXo5rqg
[S17] The extended version of this Dwayne Richard quote is interesting, in that it appears to represent his perspective early on in the process of realizing that his longtime friend was not the honorable competitor he thought he was. At 5:30:
Supposedly there was an agreement, and they were gonna wait so all of them could be there so they could have the chance to play head-to-head, and then someone could achieve it and they would get the recognition for it or whatever. And so it would be fair. But what ended up happening was, is that Bill broke the agreement, went behind everybody else’s back, in a secretive way, and then went to the Funspot, you know, July 1-4 or whatever, trying to get the world record. And… and that wasn’t even an issue. So he got the world record, but then he made it some kind of nationalistic type thing where… American patriotism versus Canadian nationality or whatever like that, when he wasn’t even playing against anybody. And that was the thing that offended me the most because… It’s ridiculous. If you get the score, that’s great. But don’t say you’re better than Canada or you’re better than all of Canada or whatever when all the players know, Rick is a better Pac-Man player than you, and Chris Ayra is a better Pac-Man player than you.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/81.PatLaffayeAndDwayneRichardChatting.webm
[S18] Even if for the sake of argument we did choose to analyze Billy’s laughable nonsense for just a moment, while Buzz Aldrin did have an expressed desire to be the first human to set foot on another celestial body, neither he nor module pilot Michael Collins sucker-punched Neil Armstrong so they could go down the ladder first. They respected the terms of the mission that Armstrong as mission commander would do the honors on behalf of humanity. This brings us to an important distinction: While someone had to do the honors, and while the Apollo program was largely motivated by a desire to show up the Soviet Union and their list of achievements to that point (first satellite, first manned mission to space), such achievements were the result of collective group efforts, with individuals’ names used as a shorthand to remember those efforts. The thousands of people who worked on that project shared in that victory. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, he did it on behalf of everyone. (But obviously, none of this virtue interested Billy in his quest for personal fame.)
There also wasn’t a quagmire of rules around what counted as “first”, with NASA contorting official definitions to get their guy into the top spot. Had Bill Bastable been an astronaut, he would have received full honors whether he used a pause switch on the way to the moon or not.
[S19] You see an example of Billy alluding to moon landing conspiracy theorists in his extensive 2019 profile in EGM (online only), titled “The Split-Screen Man”:
https://egmnow.com/the-split-screen-man/
To be clear – and this is a fine distinction, but I believe an important one – author Josh Harmon did not entertain Billy’s self-comparison to Neil Armstrong, or at least not the main thrust of what Billy typically intends with the comparison. What you see above was the only point in the article in which Mr. Armstrong’s name was invoked. In this case, rather than comparing what he claims he did to the achievements of Apollo mission astronauts, Billy uses moon landing conspiracy theorists as general examples of suckers who will believe anything (which actually would be an adequate comparison to people who still believe Billy’s lies at this point). Whether Billy also tried to make his usual self-comparison to Mr. Armstrong (that they were both “first” to do something, allegedly in Billy’s case) among the interview sessions done with Harmon, which Harmon would have then chosen not to include, is unclear.
[S20] It is true that a case such as this can attract individuals eager to see conspiracies in everything, and who are thus too eager to believe with minimal evidence that certain high scores are fake, or that the moon landing was staged, or that the Earth is flat, or that Donald Trump is the Shadow President, or whatever other nonsense someone has successfully peddled to them. And for that reason, there are individuals who believe in each and every one of these things. However, while genuine research contributions from such individuals can be considered based on those contributions’ own evidentiary merits, the hyper-skepticism of some individuals is not representative of the broader community. Speaking for myself, I used to be a fan of Billy Mitchell, and used to assume his arcade high scores I’d always heard about were genuine, until the publication of the MAME evidence. I believe Billy cheated his Donkey Kong scores, and the reason I believe that is because it has been proven that he did. (And if Billy wishes to argue that point in a court of law, I would be more than happy to do so.)
[S21] We can only wonder if Billy Mitchell would have had any interest in doing the perfect Pac-Man score if it would have been recognized as second or third.
[S22] It’s not clear exactly when Twin Galaxies added a Pac-Man “Fastest to achieve a perfect score” time track to go along with the score track. However, it would appear that it was subsequent to Ayra’s perfect score in 2000, and well before Ayra’s time was beaten in 2009. Note the time track in the second edition of Twin Galaxies’ Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records:
(Apologies as always for the highlights in my book.)
Recall also that recognition of Fothergill’s perfect score was deferred until around the time Ayra had achieved his score anyway.
The site Pac-Man Forum, which still currently recognizes Billy’s claimed score, has a “Fastest perfect” track, with Billy’s and a few other gamers’ scores not included:
https://www.pacman-forum.co.uk/perfect-scores-arcade/
[S23] This 2001 interview with NGenres seems to suffer from a subpar transcription. (Among other things, it has Billy saying “Mr. Nakamoto” when he has not messed up Mr. Nakamura’s name anywhere else.) That said, Billy appears to suggest a fastest perfect score on Pac-Man was at one point part of his secret multi-game feat he had made hints to over the years:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011026233825/http://hub.ngenres.com/pacman_interview2.html
Of course, all that ever seemed to come of this multi-game mega-feat was his back-to-back scores on Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior in 2010, and both of those were cheated. So maybe Billy was eyeing using MAME for a big gaming ruse as early as 2001?
[S24] In that Hit Start Now interview, Billy continued his diatribe against Pac-Man speedrunning moments later, at 31:50:
No, it doesn’t. To be honest, having achieved the perfect score… you search, and you try to find something that’s important, in… in an effort to keep you focused on that. And… I guess pretty soon we’ll say to ourselves, “Well, that’s… the fastest we can do it. What if we do it but we gotta play left-handed?” You know, it just gets monotonous. So really, I always choose to go on to the next challenge, whatever that next challenge might be.
Of course, Billy doesn’t acknowledge to the host that he attempted to compete in exactly that fastest completion competition. But setting that aside, notice how expertly Billy frames his lack of desire to compete as a virtue, as though it actually makes him more competitive to eschew the most straightforward Pac-Man competition in favor of “the next challenge”. And if you have to compare speedrunning to playing with one hand behind your back or whatever, that’s what you gotta do.
Now, if Billy’s actual thought process was “Fastest perfect score completions don’t interest me, because it’s exclusively pattern-running, which I find tedious and monotonous”, sure, that would be fair. He’s allowed to not like a certain competition. But if that was his perspective, he should just say that, rather than denigrating the competition as meaningless. (But if he did, he might have to acknowledge that others were, ultimately, better and more dedicated at the game than he is.)
[S25] And even with regard to other games, or if you choose not to believe Billy’s story of having personal ownership of a Pac-Man cabinet, he likely had free access to whatever arcade cabinets were at his father’s restaurant, where he claims to have done his Centipede score.
[S26] As an example of Billy exaggerating the hardships of learning Pac-Man in the early days, listen to this panel with Billy, Todd Rogers, Richie Knucklez, and David Race (at a time when each were on good terms with Billy), with Billy giving his version of the old “uphill both ways” story at 15:40:
Way long ago, you played Pac-Man up to a certain point, it would take an hour to get where you want to try this one thing. You die, you gotta put a quarter in and play again. Everybody gets to cheat nowadays and use MAME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uv2jU7ylcc
Todd Rogers calmly interjects with two words: “Rack advance”. (It’s bad when even Todd Rogers is like “C’mon man, be real.”) But Billy continues right along:
Richie… coined the term a long time ago, that was, when I had to learn how to play games, I had to learn it, what we call, we had to do it in the raw. You know, there wasn’t any technology to help us.
David Race then also corrects Billy: “There was rack advance”. Billy leans in David’s direction and starts to speak before realizing he was indeed duly corrected, at which point Billy simply moves the goalposts instead:
Well in that… A few particular games, there was. On Donkey Kong there wasn’t. “Can I see level 22?” Yeah, you got about three hours.
Wait, I thought we were talking about Pac-Man?
The full discussion on how classic arcade scores of yesteryear should stack up against those of today is beyond the scope of this project, however it is a topic that comes up in the forums from time to time. In 2009, Jon Stoodley, perfect score player (as of 2015) and current Billy supporter, expressed his belief that all Pac-Man speed records should be listed on the MAME track, whether performed on MAME or on original cabinet, due to the common practice of using the emulator to practice techniques:
Stoodley also bristled at any mention of rack advance, noting that “it was not a feature of the cab for the ‘normal’ gamer” (which is true).
While some players romanticize the notion of playing exclusively on arcade hardware, it’s not as if such hardware itself cannot be modified for a player’s convenience. At about 2:00 in this video, Chris Ayra shows off his pimped out cabinet, which was modified to add easily accessible switches for rack advance and for freeze on original Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Junior Pac-Man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zya6WY95wIA
[S27] In Perfect Fraudman, at 1:19:30, perfect score player Donald Hayes cites Rick Carter as an example of a player with the capability of doing a perfect score who has no interest in sitting down and doing so:
A lot of it was just a matter of A) having the desire to go for it. Cuz there… I had seen people out there, Rick Carter for one, who… who has the techniques and the ability to do it, but he says “I just don’t care. I know I can do it myself, I don’t need to do it…” you know, actually do it. And to me, that’s… you know, that’s his right. That’s… there’s nothing wrong with that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFtDVuGxL8
Indeed, a perusal of old forums reflects Carter’s extensive knowledge of high end Pac-Man play (with his contributions under the username “Permafrostrick”):
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/110355-Fastest-9th-Key-Patterns
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/110553-Perfect-Pacman-Stats
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/112990-Ms-Pac-man-Maze-Statistics/page2
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=1984.15
Hayes does add however that, if a player is going to say they can do something, at some point they should prove it.
Note also that Billy’s rhetoric that “No one cares who was second”, even if we were to take it at face value, would essentially be an argument that the alleged rarity of a perfect score on Pac-Man is as attributable to lack of interest as anything else. Note that, while I acknowledge the limited sphere of public interest in a perfect score on Pac-Man, this is not the argument I would make. People who have done perfect scores worked hard for the accomplishment and deserve the recognition, whether in 1982, 1988, 1999, 2009, or 2021. But it is the logical conclusion of Billy’s stated position. (On the other hand, the “No one cares who was second” rhetoric could just as easily be an attempt to discourage others from duplicating the “one in ten billion” feat.)
[S28] You can see another view of Rick as Captain Canada in TG’s coverage from the 2000 Funspot event:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815201600/http://twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/news_funspotresults.pl
Also, Fothergill didn’t wear the costume for the entire tournament, as evidenced by photos from the event:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=1097.0
Fothergill would apparently go on to don the “Captain Canada” cape for a while longer. Here it’s referenced by Dwayne Richard in coverage on the 2001 Mall of America event:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011023024302/http://cubesource.net/features/tg.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20011123203348/http://cubesource.net/features/tg_3.php
Note, even though Dwayne is Canadian, he was at the time still firmly a friend of Billy’s, so I’m chalking up his “mental institution” remark to rivalry.
[S29] In case you care, at 57:00 in the After 2 Beers interview, Billy claims his rivalry with Fothergill was the origin of his arcade initials “USA”. This was also reflected in Billy’s 2008 profile in Harper’s Magazine:
[S30] In Exhibit D, at about 49:30, Billy even tells his story of meeting the Canadians, making it sound as though Rick and Neil had only been playing Pac-Man since 1989.
[S31] In this interview with the Obsolete Gamer Show (alongside Todd Rogers, Triforce, Ben Gold, and Steve Sanders), Billy gives another answer saying this statement from Mr. Nakamura was on stage at TGS, the day after his closed door meeting (at 57:40):
And then the next day, I’m on stage in Tokyo, where he hands me, you know, the video game player of the century award, and he credited me with the resurgence in the interest of classic gaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfb_SBUh08o
[S32] Billy tells a similar iteration of this story here, at about 33:30:
Because I was on stage in Tokyo, and because… Masaya Nakamura said the words he said. And he said “This event has captured the world.” He said “This event will be the reason why there is a resurgence in interest in classic gaming.” He said that. I’d like to take credit. Okay. He said he wanted to see movies made about this. Lo and behold, we got back, and the movie crews started following us.
[S33] In December 1999, Forbes published an article highlighting the success of the Namco “Museum” series, which began in 1995:
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1227/6415292a.html?sh=3fe7957c59b7
However, the timing of this article (December 1999), and the window of the given sales figures (across the whole year of 1999) do not adequately confirm nor refute Billy’s claim that his July 1999 trip to Funspot was responsible for a resurgence in interest in classic gaming.
The bit about “400,000 units of a 20th-anniversary edition” would appear to be a reference to Namco’s brand new (at the time) Pac-Man World for Playstation, which was branded “20th anniversary”, and which released in North America on October 15:
https://www.prweek.com/article/1241437/campaigns-product-launch—inky-beware-pac-man-cometh
Surely, Pac-Man being in the news boosted interest in this game by some nominal degree, and news coverage of Billy’s Funspot game was part of that media blitz. Heck, as we’ve covered, Namco flew the guy who they believed to be Mr. “First Perfect Game” out to Japan specifically to be a part of their promotion for this PS1 game! But it would be a stretch to connect such sales of a brand new 3D platformer on PS1 to “a renewed interest in classic gaming” just because the platformer stars a certain yellow dot-chomper.
[S34] Here are a couple more links pertaining to the Namco History series for Windows 95:
https://archive.org/details/namcohistoryvol.3
The list of Namco arcade compilations just goes on and on, as seen on this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bandai_Namco_video_game_compilations
The first ones were the “Disk NG” series for the MSX 2 home computer in 1990. That’s almost far enough back to not even be considered nostalgia, but since they are compilations of games which surely would have sold individually on a system like Atari 2600, it does belong on the list.
1995 and 1996 also saw the “Namco Classic Collection” for Namco’s ND-1 arcade system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco_Classic_Collection_Vol._1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco_Classic_Collection_Vol._2
But no, nobody cared about the classics until Johnny-come-lately Billy Mitchell reminded people about them in 1999.
[S35] This interview was poorly recorded, resulting in some audio interference. The transcription of this quote matches the recording available, but may not be exact.
The quote is amusing, both for the car collecting comparison and the claim that Pac-Man “was always called the Holy Grail of video games”, in light of the previously mentioned late 1999 interview, where Billy does not refer to Pac-Man as the “Holy Grail” but does call it “the Cadillac of games”:
[S36] We tried earnestly to track down this Billy quote attributed to an interview with Wired magazine, but were not able to find its origin. Wired did have a Japanese site, which did post translations of some of the 1999 Billy coverage:
Notably in our search, we came upon this short piece from November 1999, where Billy talks up Pac-Man World:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161223041234/https://www.wired.com/1999/11/pac-rat-2/
But that does not appear to be the origin of the quote. The “2” in the URL (indicating a second article under that title) led to the discovery of this other blurb relating to hoarded Ms. Pac-Man cabinets, but nothing related to Billy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161222090557/https://www.wired.com/2000/07/pac-rat/
If you do find this mystery Wired article, we’d love to see it!
[S37] There are many instances of Billy referring to this supposed second perfect score in Japan, all from after the 2018 score dispute. He he is in Exhibit B in 2020, at 24:30:
”Gee, would I put together, would I produce in Japan what I performed as well there as I did here?” Yes, I did. They wanted to see me play. And I put together another perfect score.
And again here, in a 2019 interview with the Unemployed Guys Podcast, at 1:00:10:
I simply cannot argue the fact that, when I did the perfect score on Pac-Man, and the fact that that was considered the Holy Grail of video games, and that sent me to Japan. That… put me at Namco, in Japan, actually where in Japan and… where in Japan, I redid the perfect score.
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-unemployed-guys/the-unemployed-guys-podcast-gakO6iSBZLd/
[S38] In that same April 14, 2018 stream, you hear Triforce once again refer to this supposed second perfect score at 1:12:40. Then, in a longer follow-up stream that same night (which is now unlisted), he refers to it yet again, at 1:15:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgF1dnLR7vc
[S39] There are actually a sixth and a seventh way to debunk the “second perfect score” lie. First, as previously mentioned, Twin Galaxies tracked fastest perfect score of Pac-Man on its own leaderboard. As late as 2010, you can still see Billy credited with the exceptionally long five and a half hours from July of 1999:
The reason I don’t list this in the main narrative with the other five ways to debunk this lie is that Billy would simply say “Oh, we didn’t track how long I played, so the time was unofficial” (although that obviously didn’t stop the 5.5 hour guesstimate from being listed as official). Alternatively, he could claim “I took longer this time.”
In the NGenres interview, Billy is also asked the question:
Did you only get a perfect game once or did you try to get a better time on it?
https://web.archive.org/web/20011026233825/http://hub.ngenres.com/pacman_interview2.html
Billy’s answer, as printed, evades the exact question, but he clearly makes no mention of having done a second perfect score in Japan. However, I also left this off the main list of reasons why the “second perfect score” story is debunked because of the aforementioned transcription issues with this interview. Those issues could apply to the particulars of the questions asked as much as the answers Billy gave. Hey, five is already more than enough.
[S40] Billy was clear that this supposed second perfecto happened at Wonder Park arcade, but even if he tries to switch to saying it was at Tokyo Game Show (as if he had innocently mixed those up), he runs up against the same problem. Each day at TGS was only open between seven and eight hours. :
http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/99autumn/english/profile/index.html
There’s no evidence he spent the day hunkered down on some Pac-Man or Puck-Man machine somewhere, but even if he was, all he could get would be a couple hours worth of starts before he’d run out of time to finish before closing.
[S41] This translation was done by the same outfit that did our “more expensive” translation of an item referenced in “Dot Seven”. Here’s the full translation we received of that page:
Finally! A perfect playthrough of Pac-Man!
Commemorating a world record.
On July 3rd, at an amusement center in New Hampshire, USA, the world’s first perfect playthrough of Pac-Man was achieved! Namco’s masterpiece just so happens to be also celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
This jaw-dropping record was set by Billy Mitchell, who also lives in the US (photo center). It took approximately 6 hours to clear all 256 stages, a first-ever to be witnessed, scoring 3,333,360 points.
To commemorate this new world record, a Pac-Man Festa event was held with Mitchell on September 15th at the Pac-Man Studio inside the Wonder Park at the Kohoku Tokyu SC shopping plaza in Yokohama, Kanagawa.
“Pac-Man is a popular game in the United States and I’ve always wanted to play a perfect game. I had a rival Canadian, and it was July 3rd, right between Canada Day and the United States’ Independence Day. There was no better day for setting that record,” says Mitchell.
“I practiced about 10,000 times on the day of the event. The final (256th) stage was very important, so I took it slow and steady,” he added enthusiastically about the historic day. While Mitchell showed off his incredible skills live at the event, a video broadcast played back the stunning moment when the record was achieved.
During the event, crowds of people enjoyed the exhibitions and sales of Pac-Man goods (see photo), photo sessions with the titular mascot, as well as free plays of the normally coin-operated arcade game.
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9909/16/news05.html
[S42] Note that Billy’s failure to give a number of total perfect scores he’s done over the years can also be interpreted in the context of perfect scores he may have done in the ’80s. Recall Rick’s words from “Dot Four” (at 3:40):
I asked Bill, in the game he had on July 3, 1999, which was officially recognized as the first perfect Pac-Man score, I said “Bill, was that indeed the first time you ever did it, under any circumstances?” And he says… to me, “Rick, I’m not going to answer that question, and I’m doing it to protect you.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_5wzJ-lqVM
But again, as stated in “Dot Four” supplemental, those could just as easily be attempts to plant the idea that he possibly had a perfect score in the ’80s when he didn’t, allowing people to believe he was “first” even if someone else came along with evidence later.
[S43] If you look closely at this other photo from GameSpot Japan (now hosted by ITmedia), you do indeed see a white Puck-Man cabinet in the background:
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9909/16/news05.html
[S44] Regarding Billy’s quote from his 2018 SFGE panel:
That’s not human error. That’s not a mistake. That’s a flat-out lie. That’s a childish lie, and you’d have to be a moron to believe it.
Unfortunately, the original video has been removed. Note that this is not indicative of any sort of shame on the part of SFGE, who continued inviting Billy back to future events, and who still host subsequent discussions with him on their YouTube channel. They simply chose to remove it, for reasons undisclosed. (Most likely, this was done because Billy’s statements could reflect poorly on him in his legal battles.)
The context of this quote was Billy’s attempts to redeem Todd Rogers, claiming that Todd had lots of witnesses for his claimed Dragster time of 5.51, on three separate occasions. Of course, none of these witnesses have ever spoken up, which admittedly is hard to do when you don’t exist. As usual, Billy is very assertive in even his most tenuous lies. Personally, I would be very embarrassed if I was put in a position of having to defend Todd’s lies, but given that Todd is Billy’s key witness for his scores, the two are now joined at the hip.
[S45] While a formal psychoanalysis is well beyond my expertise, it’s possible that in Billy’s messed up mind, he genuinely does think he wants the competition, and simply equates competition with attention and envy, rather than with the thrill or risk of actually competing. His observed behavior is quite consistent with such a theory. On the other hand, it’s possible he knows full well how much he disdains genuine competition, and enjoys saying the opposite.
[S46] The interaction my colleague describes, wherein Billy alludes to supposed verification of his stories (which, again, is just him claiming to have received verification), can be heard in Exhibit E, at 10:20:
And so the story that I told about what happened in Japan behind those closed doors, all these years… How do you know I’m tellin’ the truth? I mean, how do you know it’s not just something I’m makin’ up?