What follows are the supplemental notes for the “Dot Five” 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] Later, on July 20, Lee Seitz posted to Usenet, relaying a message from Walter Day reiterating that Billy would at least be demonstrating Pac-Man perfect score techniques at CGE:
Billy got every blue man – even the one’s that last less than two seconds. He manipulates them into a group and then eats them when they are virtually on top of the energizer. He will be demoing this at the CGE’99 show.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/KMrgz2HsSbk/m/KhFbbQKdGRYJ
[S2] As noted in “Dot Three”, the particular language used indicates portions of this announcement of TG’s presence at CGE were possibly written prior to Billy’s claimed perfect score, and thus references to that claimed score could have been added later. Note for instance the suggestion that Billy would be going for a “new” world record on Pac-Man. This could arguably be a reference to a speedrun of the perfect score, though there is no indication Twin Galaxies was looking to add a time attack leaderboard in addition to their high score leaderboard at that point in time.
[S3] Here’s the full text of the Pac-Man “Game of the Century” award:
THE GAME OF THE CENTURY AWARD
The Most Popular Game of the 20th Century
Presented by The Classic Gaming Expo ’99 and the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard
In recognition of historical contributions to the long tradition of video game playing, Namco’s Pac-Man has been recorded in the historical archives published in Twin Galaxies’ Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records and will be forever honored for the following accomplishments:
Pac-Man
THE 20TH CENTURY’S MOST PLAYED GAME
In the course of Pac-Man’s 20-year career, more people around the world spent more hours playing Namco’s Pac-Man and its family of games than any other board or puzzle game during the 20th Century. Pac-Man’s global influence and popularity transcended cultural and geographical boundaries everywhere, winning the undisputed title of “Game of the Century.”
Walter Day, Electronic Games Historian
John Hardie, Classic Gaming Expo
[S4] One may rightly point out that one significant title in the Pac-Man series, Ms. Pac-Man, was not developed by Namco at all. For those unfamiliar with the game’s origin, it started out as a conversion kit called “Crazy Otto”, developed independently by General Computer Corporation. As GCC had already fallen into legal trouble for other arcade conversion kits, they approached Pac-Man’s U.S. distributor Midway, who acquired the rights to what would become Pac-Man’s first official sequel.
[S5] While there are often references to there being only three classic Mario animated series, a simple check shows four, although in the show Saturday Supercade, Mario and crew shared time with Q*Bert, Pitfall Harry, and the protagonist of Frogger:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Supercade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Super_Mario_Bros._Super_Show!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Super_Mario_Bros._3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_World_(TV_series)
[S6] Interestingly, the “Arcade of the Year” award was signed by John Hardie on Sunday, August 15, the final day of the event. This is a bit odd, considering the awards were all announced at the dinner on Friday night.
[S7] It wasn’t easy to figure out what “Game Square” was in 1999, other than a trademark registered by Andy Chan. Thankfully, Usenet still exists as Google Groups:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.video.sony-playstation/c/AMoOBEUz2KU/m/gZSPjYYWjt0J
Another odd but totally unimportant thing about that Playstation certificate is, it clearly says the award is for second place. Why are they giving a “Playstation Champion” award for second place? The TG historical archive page also concurs that the award is for second place, using different language than the certificate:
And yet, if you track down the original results page…
https://web.archive.org/web/20001214192500/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PSXstandings.html
…there’s Paul Luu, with exactly the score ascribed to him on the certificate, in first place.
One possibility is that the award really was for first place, and that the error was overlooked during the first printing of the certificate, resulting in the production of a subsequent corrected certificate. The correct copy was then given to Paul Luu, while the erroneous copy was kept in TG archives (and then used as the basis for the entry on the TG documentary archive).
[S8] Yes, we saw that. That’s pretty wild, huh? There are actually quite a few more interesting details to the certificates seen in today’s installment, but we’ll be seeing even more of these certificates (or ones like them) in our Japan coverage. We’ll catch up with all of these certificates in “Dot Seven”.
[S9] We nearly missed this bit about Billy stealing the Centipede trick from his friends (as seen in the Fort Lauderdale News), as it did not appear in the version of the printed article we had originally acquired. The truncated edition removed that segment between the paragraph ending in “for a world record” and the one beginning with “Young children”:
[S10] Billy’s leeched Centipede score is said to have been achieved in the lead-up to the Life Magazine photo shoot in 1982. In footage taken at the event, Billy suggested the score happened the week before the event (as seen at about 12:50):
Well, about a… about a week before this was all… to happen, I decided I was gonna break the record on Centipede, because I wanted to be here, and have the record while I was here. So I just started Friday night, and Sunday I finished. I played 47 hours, and… I guess that’s why you picked me to be here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSGiXO-XRTw
Billy sometimes tells the story as though he needed it to get into the famous photo, but in actuality, the travel arrangements were made well ahead of time. Here’s an excerpt from the book Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade, by Carly A. Kocurek
The arrangements between Day and gamers began months in advance; since many of the players were still in high school, their parents were hesitant to allow them to travel hundreds or thousands of miles away from home for the arranged photo shoot. Life ultimately allowed Day to hand out Greenland’s direct number to skeptical parents, and Day not only promised to pay for the hotel rooms of the majority of the players and some of their parents but signed affidavits assuring parents that he would be responsible for chaperoning their sons. After weeks of arrangements, Ferorelli photographed sixteen players in the middle of Ottumwa’s Main Street in November 1982.
https://books.google.com/books?id=gTB0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT53&lpg=PT53#v=onepage&q&f=false
And in Exhibit D, at about 30:30, Billy indeed describes going for the Centipede score during his travel preparations out of concern that he may look unqualified among his peers without such a record:
But anyway, so I had gotten in contact with different players, and having met different people on the phone verbally, and now it was the first gathering that was coming. And to give you an idea, without lyin’, I’m sure paranoia’s the right word. I’m gettin’ ready to go there, and I’m paranoid to the point, “Gee, I think I should take this Centipede game, and I should put this record under my belt, so I go there kind of a little more qualified.”
Billy’s father does vouch for the Centipede score… sorta. He doesn’t really say he particularly witnessed any of it, just that he believes it happened:
https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect-man
In Perfect Fraudman, starting at about 1:14:50, is a clip from Billy’s 1999 Pac-Man tape. In the clip, Billy discusses games he has played competitively, adding in reference to Pac-Man:
This is by far the most intense… It’s non-stop…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFtDVuGxL8
This seems like an odd choice of words for someone who claims to have once played Centipede (even with the trap trick) for 47 hours straight. However, while the veracity of his claimed 1982 score is worthy of doubt, Billy genuinely did marathon Centipede at the 1985 Iron Man competition, with actual living not-made-up witnesses, believe it or not. Greg Sakundiak recalls assisting Billy with food for the event (since Billy could not leave his machine for long), recalling that Billy had a bathroom emergency at about the 18th or 19th hour:
Dwayne Richard and Jeff Peters also recalled Billy playing Centipede at the event, which they attended, although Jeff recalls the bathroom emergency being closer to 4-5 hours in (heard here at 3:00):
[S11] Billy tells this story of supposedly doing a charity marathon of Centipede (along with not recalling how much money was raised) in this episode of Retro Gaming Radio, recorded in 2003, starting at about 7:10:
https://archive.org/details/rgry6/07+Episode+2004-08+Part+02.mp3
In that segment, he claims the charity was Toys for Tots, while saying he’s unaware of how much money was raised. Toys 4 Tots was also given as the charity in this coverage of the May 1999 Funspot tournament, along with a figure raised of $9,000:
But again, this score was reported on in newspapers multiple times in the ’80s, with no mention at the time of it being for Toys for Tots, or for any charity whatsoever.
[S12] Here’s an extended version of the 2017 SFGE quote, starting at about 14:40:
Life Magazine’s gonna have their photo shoot, and they’re gonna have all the world record holders… a group photo at the top, and all the world record holders at the bottom. I’m gonna lose my spot at the bottom because this guy’s lyin’. And I thought “I’m not gonna lose my spot at the bottom.” So actually, without a whole lot of notice, I started playing Centipede heavily. And I thought, “I’m gonna beat the world record, and somebody’s gonna beat it before the photo shoot,” kinda like a last minute thing on eBay. And so, it was in November, the photo shoot, and it was October, and I thought “Well, I gotta play, and I gotta put up a score nobody can beat.” The world record at the time was 15 million. And I played, and I got forty… I got 25 million, I played for 47 continuous hours on a quarter. And that was my guarantee that nobody would beat that score. And today? The world record? Is 25 million.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QnXadkFv3Q
Notice the creative storytelling. He had no idea how Life Magazine would lay out their page. Also, it was a super-last minute thing, just for the photo shoot, but he also somehow managed to hook up with a charity and arrange donations beforehand, and then never told anyone about it for 17 years.
[S13] The section of that SFGE 2017 video (hosted by “Empire Arcadia”, a.k.a. Triforce) about Billy playing Centipede for Life Magazine starts with a title card reading “Why Centipede and not Pac-Man By Billy Mitchell” (seen at about 14:20). Kind of odd to frame it that way, though, when the actual reason Billy didn’t play Pac-Man was because he hadn’t even taken up the game competitively yet.
[S14] We were certainly not the first to notice the discrepancy with this list not recognizing the famed Life Magazine score, allegedly achieved at Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa. In 2013, Hank Chien remarked:
If this came out after the Life magazine shoot, shouldn’t the DK score be either 3M or 874K?
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,5411.msg65563.html#msg65563
Later that year, Twin Galaxies did recognize Billy’s 874,000, but curiously, going by section 17 of this 1983 printout, they also recognized a higher score of 886,000, of unknown attribution:
http://www.videoparadise-sanjose.com/tg-rules.htm
[S15] Here, at that same SFGE 2017 panel, Walter Day describes how the Twin Galaxies partnership with Guinness came about several months after the November 1982 Life Magazine photo shoot:
And so when I called him, in that early summer, like May or June of 1983, he said… he said this, and this is almost an exact quote, he said “Mr. Day, of all the subject matter that we cover for Guinness Book of World Records, and all the things we get petitioned for, the biggest category that we get the most inquiries and the most requests for are video game world records.” It was the number one thing, the most phone calls, most letters that they were… they were being contacted from the outside world about. Video game high scores. And he says, “But because of the huge variations in the games, and the unreliability of the witnessing, and the gameplay, and the standard settings and stuff like that, we don’t feel comfortable doing it.” But I continued to send them information that showed what we were doing, which usually included lots and lots of media attention, because we were in the media all the time, almost literally every day we’re in the news some place, for high scores. And of course, Billy would be in the news three times a day. We’d only be in the news one time a day. But he’d be in three… maybe five times a day. And essentially… He got back a hold of me, he says “Okay, we’re gonna do this. We want you to inaugurate a contest, we’re going to run the results.” So we did a contest, which involved maybe about ten or twelve or fifteen of the top gamers, can’t remember the number anymore. They converged on Twin Galaxies. This was in July of ’83. And based on the find… the results, we sent that in to Guinness, and that was the first listing of video game high scores in Guinness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QnXadkFv3Q
[S16] You can read more about Jeff Brandt and his DK Junior score in Iowa here, in his hometown newspaper:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/73560631/
[S17] We did not finish fully exploring this “First kill screen of Donkey Kong” rabbit hole prior to publication, as it’s tangential to the Pac-Man / “Player of the Century” / Tokyo Game Show thread this series is focused on. However, here are some quick notes. First, let’s start with an expanded quote from Billy’s interview with Uncommon Journalism (at 6:30):
I played and excelled and… got to a level on Donkey Kong, a kill screen in 1982, in July of 1982, at a… event, there, in South Florida. And the fact that… that wasn’t done again, in any venue like that for twenty years… that tells me that was a difficult game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flj8qbuR-Mc
And to reiterate the other two references to this July 1982 kill screen from today’s installment (at 45:10):
In 2007, before the movie came out, I wanted to set the record to… upset the apple cart of the movie. Just to show you I do have a cynical side, just like everybody says. So, exactly 25 years to the date when I got my first kill screen is when I did that score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US35ZSUPXv8
And the 2007 press release, where this story seems to have started:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090221114203/http://twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=19&id=1465
Glad Todd Rogers was there to see it.
Compare those to the following statements. First, as quoted in today’s installment, Billy’s Guinness reinstatement video (at about 1:10):
To put it into historical perspective, esports began in 1982. History’s first gathering of competitive game players. I was there. My career began. At that event, I had the good fortune of setting a world record on Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong’s first kill screen in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2x6ZrWUkWo
In the introduction to Billy’s 2018 interview with Josh Houslander’s X-Cast, Josh and his co-host Adam Hernandez ponder if Billy had the first kill screen on Donkey Kong (without attributing any dates to the event). Billy responds here, at 4:10:
To go to an earlier point that you, Josh, and your counterpart here were mixed up on, yes, the first kill screen was in 1982 on Donkey Kong, about a year or slightly under a year after it came out. I did a kill screen. I did it at Life Magazine. I did it inside Twin Galaxies. I did it in front of what was considered to be the sixteen best video game players at that time. And it was nearly two decades later before it happened again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSzpjo8Oe0
In Exhibit B, at 0:40, Billy starts telling the story of the Life Magazine photo shoot:
Well basically, I had met Walter the summer before. Maybe about five months prior to. When I say I met him, I met him over the phone. And… he talked about potential events that were up and coming. And then the first major gathering of esports players… the best… seventeen, I think, players in the world were gathering there. And I just… It was too difficult for me to believe that anybody could beat me on Donkey Kong. It was just too difficult, and I just pushed so hard.
Triforce’s friend makes a remark about Billy’s confidence, before Billy continues:
And so, I ended up going there. That, along with a score on Centipede. But I was there, I was one of the people invited there. And basically, when I was there, everything… I’m not too proud to say, everything fell in my favor. I absolutely stole the show. It was awesome. And it was that moment that I just forever became possessed with the idea of competitive gaming. And… whatever I did, I wanted more.
Billy then suggests there are more details to the story, which would have to be for a longer show. The host pries Billy for one such detail, which Billy then provides:
At the point that I knew that I had a passion that would not die was when I was playin’ Donkey Kong, and every single game in the arcade was not bein’ played. And every single eye was on me. And that was when I did the first ever public viewing of a kill screen on Donkey Kong. The next public viewing would be, you know, more than two decades later. And… but it’s the kind of thing, when you get up from the seat there, and you look over at the guy who thought he was better’n you, and just shake his hand and say “Hey, how you doin’? Your turn now.”
In Exhibit D, Billy gives a similar lengthy description of his interaction with Steve Sanders at the Life Magazine photo gathering, before adding (at 35:40):
Oh, well I finished with 874, because we hit the kill screen, and that was the first time anybody had ever gotten to the kill screen, and of course nobody in the room knew what that was like, and everybody’s starin’ and lookin’ at each other funny.
On the King of Kong DVD commentary, at 44:40, producer Ed Cunningham expressed his impression that Billy had done two public DK kill screens prior to the 2005 Funspot event:
At this time, when Steve did this, it was only the third time in public that someone had reached the kill screen. I think Billy had done it twice prior to that, that we know of. So I think this was the third time that, Steve… that the kill screen had been seen public. So it was a really big deal for a lot of the gamers there.
While the commentary track itself does not firmly establish whether it was recorded before or after Billy’s claimed mortgage brokers score (which appears to be when this previous kill screen story originated), the participants do make mention of various audiences having seen the film. This could be a reference to film festival audiences which had seen the film in the early half of 2007, however the wide theatrical release was not until August 17, after the mortgage brokers convention in July, and thus could be a reference to audiences after that date.
In this 2010 interview, Steve Sanders recalled speaking with Billy on several occasions in the summer of 1982, adding his belief that both of them had kill screens by that point, with Steve’s coming first albeit on more favorable settings granting a total of seven lives:
But then again, Steve says Billy “would not – COULD NOT – lie about a video game score” (emphasis his), so obviously Steve’s at least a little gullible.
As to the location of this supposed Donkey Kong kill screen, Billy offered a clue during an unsuccessful Pac-Man perfect score attempt at 2019 Retropalooza. After Ben Gold mentioned not thinking much about old arcade locations, Billy countered as follows (at 5:22:20):
I’m the other way around. Like, I know… Every single spot, I say “Look at that ice cream shop there. That used to be an arcade.”
Billy’s wife Evelyn can be heard interjecting, “Yeah, he does.” Billy then continues:
I say “See that ice cream shop? Yeah, that’s where I got the first Donkey Kong kill screen.” “In an ice cream shop?” “Well, it was an arcade then.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrwhcConqs
There’s also the issue of a player by the name of Terry Batson, who was briefly recognized by TG with the top Donkey Kong score of 912,000 in late July 1982. While it is believed that Terry played on more favorable 6+1 settings, the score is generally accepted to be genuine in that context, and thus would be a live kill screen game prior to Billy’s alleged kill screen at the Life Magazine photo shoot. However, the finer details around Terry’s score will have to wait for another time.
[S18] Billy claims to have gotten one of his big DK scores of the 2000s at the convention of the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers (or “FAMB”). Of course, this is one of the scores which was proven to have been done on MAME or a MAME equivalent, and not on original arcade hardware as claimed, but let’s set that aside. The stories around exactly which day Billy claims to have gotten this score have changed over time.
First of all, some initial reporting in the media seemed to be confused, citing “Friday, July 14”, when July 14, 2007 was actually a Saturday:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=277.0
The original Twin Galaxies press release cites Friday, July 13:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090221114203/http://twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=19&id=1465
However, in his June 22, 2020 declaration accompanying with TG’s lawsuit, Billy said the score was done on Saturday, July 14:
In Guinness’ 2020 announcement that they were reinstating Billy’s cheated scores, they chose to attribute this score to that July 14th date:
Thus, this date was copied and reported by various media covering the Guinness reinstatement story:
And yet, going back to the records of the time, the FAMB people themselves catalogued their own convention, and they seemed to think Billy’s score was on Friday:
As part of Friday’s tradeshow, world renowned gamer Billy Mitchell broke a Guiness Book of World Record in Donkey Kong while at the FAMB membership booth.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070803161724/http://www.famb.org/newsletter/index.asp
What’s more, in his legal threat, Billy claimed to get this score “on the second day of the event”, which would have actually been Thursday, July 12:
https://activerain.com/blogsview/92399/annual-famb-convention—a-time-to-meet
Hopefully by now they’ve decided which day Billy got his claimed July 1982 score on.
[S19] Given how these things go, we cannot entirely rule out that it genuinely was a Donkey Kong score, as reported in the Ottumwa Courier, which then became a Donkey Kong Junior score in subsequent tellings by matter of convenience. However, while modern Donkey Kong games hit the 950k mark at about two and a half hours due to extensive point pressing, a comparison of earlier recorded DK and DK Junior games (namely, those of Steve Wiebe from the early 2000s) shows a Junior score of that length would more likely be closer to the given time of two hours and ten minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiXAa83YX1c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27O7vt81c5Y
Also, note this passage from that Ottumwa Courier piece on Billy:
”I don’t like to play games I’m not good at,” he says. He also doesn’t like games with patterns or home video games.
lol
[S20] Here’s more detail on the discrepancies between the two editions of Guinness. The 1985 edition of Guinness (including scores from the qualifying events held in calendar year 1984) has two scores noted as being achieved in 1983, designated with an asterisk. These scores are 379,500 on Congo Bongo by Steve Harris, and 315,380 on Super Pac-Man by “Steve Saunders” (Steve Sanders).
The 1984 edition of Guinness (printing scores from 1983) lists only twelve scores in total – seven from their “Master’s Tournament”, two from the Life Magazine photo shoot, and three from the “First Annual Video Game Invitational”. Those two scores by Harris and Sanders noted in the 1985 edition are on that list (with Harris’s score being from the Master’s Tournament and Sanders’s score being from the Invitational). Four of these twelve appear to have been played under different rule sets (playing on marathon settings on a time limit rather than “tournament” settings), and thus the new scores are not directly comparable. Of the remaining six scores from 1983 (for DK, DK Junior, Frogger, Galaga, Millipede, and Ms. Pac-Man), three are higher than the scores printed in the 1985 edition. Notably, Billy’s claimed 874,300 on Donkey Kong done at the unofficial Life Magazine event was not among those retained into the 1985 edition, with that book honoring 196,900 by Randy Davis of San Jose as the top score. (The other two are a Frogger score by Todd Walker and a Galaga score by Eric Bull.) It is not clear exactly why Harris’s and Sanders’s scores were retained when these other three were not.
Billy Mitchell’s only other score from the 1984 edition was a claimed 366,730 on Ms. Pac-Man. In the 1985 edition, it was supplanted by a new claim by Billy of 679,260. Theoretically, if this score is real, it would have been achieved at the Miami event where Billy was featured in the Miami Herald (as seen back in “Dot Two”). However, that piece also credits Billy for winning the Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior “competitions”. No such DK score from that event appears in the 1985 edition of Guinness, and as we see in today’s installment, the DK Junior score Billy was credited with was attributed to Billy’s visit to Ottumwa back in March, and not the official qualifying events between June 29 and July 1. (Note: Possibly, Billy won the local “competitions” on these scores as opposed to the national ones, and thus perhaps the Miami Herald reporting was not technically incorrect, but that would mean Billy was unable to best the 196,900 score by Randy Davis printed in 1985 Guinness.)
[S21] Given Billy’s scores were admitted whenever and wherever he claimed to have achieved them, it’s astonishing they had the gall to harangue Roy Shildt for years over a score he achieved at a live event on a game he began shortly after the day’s deadline.
[S22] We’re far from the first ones to remark on these disappearing DK Junior scores. In February 2018, during the DK score dispute, former TG referee Patrick Scott Patterson recounted these scores and others, recalling his attempts to get an explanation:
https://www.scholarlygamers.com/feature/2018/02/07/king-wrong-deconstructing-billy-mitchell/
[S23] Here’s a feature on Calvin Frampton as seen in The Pleasant Grove Review in September 1983:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/554269812
[S24] This characterization of Tim Collum as strictly #1, Billy Mitchell as strictly #2, and Ben Gold as strictly #3, was also printed in a January 13 feature in the Muscatine Journal:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/543432311/
There are also occasional other references to Tim having been the sole winner of the title, such as on page 22 of the June 1984 issue of Computer Games magazine:
The book The Year You Were Born, 1984 (published in 1992) also listed Tim as the sole “U.S. Video Game King”:
https://archive.org/details/yearyouwereborn100mart/page/n9/mode/2up
[S25] The characterization of Billy as “first runner-up” was also printed in Wisconsin’s Kenosha News on January 13:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/596181169/
And again days later in the Tampa Tribune:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/336011731/
This “first runner-up” version included Day’s characterization of the three contenders:
While Collum shows an all around mastery of many games, Mitchell holds the title in such top attractions as Ms. Pacman, Donkey Kong and Centipede, and Gold is unsurpassed in Stargate and Millipede, Day said.
[S26] The February 1984 issue of Replay Magazine also listed five participants (Tim Collum, Billy Mitchell, Ben Gold, Steve Harris, Eric Ginner) as receiving equal shares of the “Player of the Year” award.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818050425/http://www.twingalaxies.com/coronday.html
[S27] The April 1984 issue of VideoGiochi magazine in Italy included a feature on the “Coronation Day” event, which was attended by Billy and Tim Collum, and not by Ben Gold. Also included were an interview of both, and this photo:
While it’s hard to make it out for certain, it appears possible the seal on Ben’s award was gold, and that Billy’s was silver. (There is definitely a gold seal on a portion of Ben’s award, and a silver one on a portion of Billy’s award, but it’s hard to tell if those two are directly comparable. The lower seal visible on Billy’s award is hard to distinguish due to the lighting.)
The VideoGiochi feature also included the following passage, referencing the $500 prize being split evenly between them (seen just before the subheader “Intervista a Tim Collum E Bill Mitchell) [GT]:
Although both already knew, not only that they were champions, but that they were the two best in the world, at the moment of the award ceremony the emotion was very intense and in front of the lights of the flashes very proud they held the distinguished recognition, as well as the 500 dollars that , a little less enthusiastically, they had to split in two.
https://archive.org/details/Videogiochi_N.14/page/n113/mode/2up
This same VideoGiochi article also features a printed quote from Billy, listing his claimed record scores as follows [GT]:
Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man with scores of 3 million and 300 thousand and 874,300 respectively; Donkey Kong, with 909,000; Donkey Kong Jr., with 1.2 million; Centipede, with 25 million points. My Donkey Kong Jr. record has now been broken but I intend to try again soon and regain the lead.
However, it’s hard to read too much into these particular score claims as presented, given that Billy’s exact alleged Life Magazine score of 874,300 is attributed to Ms. Pac-Man instead of Donkey Kong. More likely, this is either the result of a translation snafu, or good old-fashioned half-assed reporting.
[S28] Note that there’s some discrepancy with the way the early “Player of the Year” titles were awarded. In January 1983, Ben Gold won Twin Galaxies’ first national video game championship, famously filmed for That’s Incredible! It seems that this championship victory was later refashioned into “Player of the Year” honors (for 1982), allowing TG to give out new “Player of the Year” honors in January 1984 (for 1983):
However, the 1983 honors were not the result of the “Coronation Day” tournament held in January of 1984, but rather were announced in advance, with the original order being Collum-Mitchell-Gold (as explained in today’s installment). This led us to wonder if the 1984 honors (announced in January 1985) were also decided in advance. But we found no indication of this.
The author of this CAGDC page was under the impression the invitations were nominations for the title, and that there might not be correlation between the title and the tournament itself:
Apparently, the nomination was for consideration of ‘Player of the Year’, and this honor was a part of ‘Coronation Day’, where the top three players receive recognition. I don’t even remember if these players, and the contest winners, had any correlation, but hope to find out in the future.
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Jan1985/extras/index.htm
At any rate, the Entertainment Tonight clip, and Walter Day’s own words, indicate Phil Britt won the tournament, and therefore, was declared “Player of the Year”. And of course, the reference to Texas winning the previous two years (Ben Gold in ’82/’83, then Tim Collum in ’83/’84) is unmistakable.
[S29] That same edition of Guinness seemed to think that Roy Shildt’s Missile Command score was enough to earn him the honor of being the first player inducted into the “Video Hall of Fame”:
The first person elected to the Video Hall of Fame was Roy Shildt (b July 2, 1955) of W Los Angeles, whose official record score on the tournament-set “Missile Command” machine of 1,695,265 points on July 3, 1985, confirmed that he was entitled, without dispute, to that honor.
That’s a rather glowing endorsement, especially considering Missile Command was Roy’s only score in that book. So maybe Roy didn’t deserve to win “Player of the Century”, but was he at least nominated?
[S30] Going back to the Retropalooza 2019 panel, a questioner asked Billy Mitchell and Ben Gold why they didn’t continue playing in gaming competitions as those moved to home consoles, to which both expressed disinterest with the prospect. However, to Ben’s credit, he discussed the Nintendo World Championships in 1990, and he knew the winner’s name off the top of his head (at 32:40):
There’s a guy named Thor Aackerlund, who I think won the first one. I met him a couple of times. Nice guy. So he won… which, I think it was far more competitive than it was in the early ’80s, because I think the Tetris world championship was probably… hundreds of thousands of people that tried it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vc4ZBTSNMo
Try as I might, I have a hard time believing Billy would remember Thor Aackerlund’s name, or would care who he is.
[S31] It’s also not as if Walter Day is at a loss for naming talented arcade players of the ’80s. In this video, he lists Phil Britt, Eric Ginner, Jeff Peters, Donn Nauert, Todd Walker, Ben Gold, and Darren Olsen among the most talented gamers he encountered in the ’80s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2S8xC6LVvU
[S32] This detailed blog on the That’s Incredible! tournament indicates Billy’s reason for not attending was not wanting to take time off of school, although the claim is not sourced:
Day invited 21 of the top players to compete in the event. Only two failed to participate, including Billy Mitchell. Mitchell wanted to attend but after the expense of the Life magazine trip he decided that he didn’t want to spend any more money or take any more days off from school.
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2013/02/thats-incredible-north-american-video.html
What sometimes gets lost in the shuffle was another, previous That’s Incredible! tournament in 1982, also featured in the above blog. This tournament was for Ms. Pac-Man specifically, and was won by Tim Collum. Years later, Billy reportedly expressed regret for not entering qualifiers for this event:
It’s a bit hard to judge this item, as this is relayed second- or third-hand, and we don’t have a direct quote from Billy himself. It’s possible he could have said “I didn’t enter the That’s Incredible Ms. Pac-Man tournament because I hadn’t started playing Ms. Pac-Man competitively yet”, but if he did that, his peers might have slapped him with the dreaded label of “Johnny-come-lately”.
[S33] No official announcement ending Guinness’ Gamer’s Edition was made, however the 2021 edition was pushed back several months, before disappearing from the listings altogether:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/ooo/wall/9276/what-has-happened-to-the-guinness-gamers-edition-for-2021
The decision probably has something to do with the fact that neither Twin Galaxies nor Speedrun.com affiliate with them anymore, with the perceived reason being Guinness’ choice to reinstate Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong scores, which were proven fraudulent. Thus, Guinness is left without any source to authenticate gaming scores.
https://www.speedrun.com/the_site/thread/07rvd
[S34] An occasional retort from Billy’s remaining fans is that he’s akin to a wrestling heel – a soft villain who promotes engagement by giving spectators someone to root against. I could certainly make a case for why his behavior goes well beyond the bounds of accepted performance villainy, but the mere fact he cheated so deliberately and so brazenly disqualifies him from any “performance” or “ambassador” role in any serious competitive endeavor. Billy’s only remaining fans are the people who either still deny the evidence that he cheated, or think it’s funny that he did.
[S35] Another instance of this “nine dots” taunting can be seen in this photo from the next annual Funspot event, in June 2000:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=1097.0
Dwayne, who at the time was a close friend with Billy, commented on the “Canadians will be chomped” sign while speaking to the Back in Time webcast, starting at about 34:40:
There was a subtle joke that most people won’t pick up, that Rick missed the perfect Pac-Man game about three months before Bill Mitchell did it by nine dots on the last screen. And so they have these nine dots up there, symbolically, reminding him of those nine dots. Rick has been agonizing about that lack of eating of the nine dots ever since Bill did it before he did it.
https://archive.org/details/bit06152000h
I wonder if, when Billy does a handwritten signature with the nine dots, somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks “Nobody here knows that I came nine dots short when I died on the split screen.” (Oh wait, did I get ahead of myself?)
[S36] The 2008 Wired reprint article can be read here:
[S37] Fothergill also speaks of this phone call, also recalling it being on the tenth anniversary, as heard in this trailer for Perfect Fraudman, at about 2:40:
[S38] The direct connection between Billy’s claimed perfect score on Pac-Man and the “Player of the Century” award was not lost on Billy’s friend, Steve Sanders:
“The fact that Billy Mitchell was the first person to record a perfect game on Pac-Man is the single biggest reason that he was named Video Game Player of the Century,” Sanders said. “It is the main reason for his popularity. Had Billy only ever played Donkey Kong, there is a good chance that few would know his name today. […]”
[S39] Media coverage of CGE didn’t entirely exclude Billy, Walter, or Twin Galaxies. GameSpot made mention of Walter Day hosting tournaments and of Billy playing games on-site, although they did not acknowledge any awards:
For those curious about this line in that coverage:
Despite an Internet scandal in which an important industry leader backed out of a commitment and accused the CGE team of inappropriate behavior, the show went on (as all shows must) and a grand time was had by all who attended.
This is a reference to Nolan Bushnell backing out, after having been announced as an invited guest. The public speculation indicates perhaps the announcement of Bushnell’s presence was made prematurely.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/8Pk-b2cbg48/m/pQ08phmEfjUJ
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/eOibfSUznQ0/m/UkFeGlgNXDkJ
https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?6687-CGE
Researching this controversy showed that Namco was supposed to be a sponsor of CGE but backed out:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/6m6KDatifpo/m/YsOZKudXtK4J
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/Z0trpMK-NzE/m/x6Rxco6PFYYJ
Back to CGE coverage from ’99, GameFan made mention of some unnamed classic gamer killing it on Tempest, so I guess that rules out Billy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000226132749/http://www.gamefan.com/hotinfo.asp?s=2190%26rs=
The site I.C. When did acknowledge the award Walter Day gave to the site in their coverage:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010208165143/http://www.icwhen.com/articles/myheroes.html
[S40] While Twin Galaxies were not a major star of the Atari-focused CGE, they did continue to partner with CGE for many years after:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001019033813/http://www.cgexpo.com/news.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20001018204255/http://cgexpo.com/booths.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20010815164006/http://cgexpo.com/booths.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20020806015953/http://cgexpo.com/booths.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20030810152645/http://cgexpo.com/booths.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20030810192149/http://www.cgexpo.com/news.html
To think that you missed out on the Todd Rogers Decathlon Tourney!
[S41] On the Donald Thomas “I. C. When” site, there was a banner link at the top of that main page with an offer to purchase a two-hour documentary on CGE ’99, produced by Mark Santora:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000420224433/http://home.earthlink.net:80/~santora/cgevideo.html
That would seem to be the same footage uploaded to YouTube in 2020, linked in today’s installment. This may also be the “Classic Gaming Expo Documentary” listed on IMDb:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233460/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Interestingly, Mark Santora indicated the documentary was cut down from 14+ hours of raw footage. No word on the whereabouts of that footage… yet.
[S42] The photo of Billy’s big moment is so tiny, I zoomed it in to 2x just so you could see anything. No doubt, Billy will throw a fit in the eventual lawsuit. “They altered the image!!”
[S43] There’s another shot of Ron Corcoran at CGE here, this time in a striped TG referee shirt:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010208165631/http://www.icwhen.com/cge99/cg_expo_99_day1c.html
The original file name for that photo – “aug14_79.jpg” – pairs it with the caption “A tense moment during a Warlords competition.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20010208165631/http://www.icwhen.com/cge99/cg_expo_99_day1c.html
[S44] You might say “Wait a second, that’s a Junior Pac-Man machine!” But another photo from that page appears to show an original Pac-Man machine, set up in a different location:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030303085009fw_/http://cyberroach.com/cyromag/six/interv1.jpg
[S45] Here’s another index page from that Japanese site:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/cvs/odyssey/event/cge99/index.html
Here’s some of their more specific coverage:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/cvs/odyssey/event/cge99/shop/index.html
Along the left side of that page, you see links labeled “BLOCK(1)” through “BLOCK(5)”. If you click on “BLOCK(3)”, it takes you to a series of captioned photos. If you just dart through quickly, you might miss this the other copy of the photo of Billy playing on a non-original arcade cabinet, with the other provided caption:
As for the anime characters’ conversation, the language in the translation appears to indicate this coverage was posted after Billy’s appearance in Tokyo, so that is the assumption I’ve made. But these translations are sometimes fraught with silliness. It could be that the intention was to say that Billy was slated to appear at the upcoming TGS, which will be held “the other day” in the future, if that makes sense. Translations are dumb sometimes.