What follows are the supplemental notes for the “Dot Four” 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] In regard to the date of the TG press release, the page itself says July 4, but on TG’s list of press releases it appears backdated to July 3:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991011205633/http://twingalaxies.com/press_releases.html
This is not the only such discrepancy on that list. A notice for a new record on Arkanoid (achieved on June 23) is dated June 26, but on that list the press release is given the date of June 25:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000126032523/http://twingalaxies.com/PR-Arkanoid_World_Record.html
This later press release from August says of the Pac-Man press release, “Mitchell’s feat was first announced on the Twin Galaxies web site on the afternoon of July 3rd”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000126182542/http://twingalaxies.com/PR-Players_Break_Records.html
This still does not rule out some small bit of placeholder text, which was replaced with the full press release the following day. However, the Pac-Man press release includes language on Billy’s “plans” for the Fourth of July holiday:
Mitchell plans on enjoying the Fourth of July. He will not be playing any video games.
At any rate, the press release Usenet messages dated July 5 include the text of that press release, so it could not have been posted any later than that.
My research colleagues observed that the press release has a lot of detail for something that was supposedly whipped together the evening of July 3, after Billy’s game concluded some time around 5:00 pm New Hampshire time. However, Walter in Iowa did have a one hour time zone advantage over Billy, and he has shown himself to be a prolific press release writer. Quotes from Billy and from Gary Vincent were likely taken over the phone that day. One could choose to believe this press release was written in advance of Billy’s score if they wish, however that does not need to be the case.
[S2] This TG press release would later find its way to the ACAM website (without the conclusion referring to TG and their 1998 record book):
https://www.classicarcademuseum.org/billy-mitchell-achieves-perfect-pac-man-score-at-acam
However, this would appear to be a later posting. This page only seems to trace back to May 2017:
And the ACAM site itself only goes back to 2004:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040607203427/https://www.classicarcademuseum.org/
[S3] The blurb on Atari Gaming Headquarters can be found by clicking “News briefs” and “1999 news archive”.
[S4] A Dutch site also covered the Pac-Man story on July 9, under a headline which translates to “Meanwhile in…” featuring a series of random stories from around the world:
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/ondertussen-in~b1b879cb/
The site is behind a paywall, but the blurb about Pac-Man reads as follows [GT]:
WEIRS BEACH American Billy Mitchell was the first to complete the Pacman computer game. It took him nearly six hours to avoid the ghosts with his “bite” and eat all 256 mazes with dots. He thus obtained 3,333,360 points. Pacman is the most popular computer game of the 1980s. 33-year-old Mitchell, who also has a world record with Donkey Kong to his name, will never play Pacman again. “There is nothing I can achieve anymore,” he declared.
[S5] To be clear, the only instances we found wherein Billy appears to refer to Pac-Man as a “crap game” were both auto-translations of Danish news coverage. Almost certainly the original line is the same one he usually gives, referring to not having to play “that damn game” again.
[S6] Again, trying to confirm dates, I wished to make sure “07.08.1999” was not supposed to mean “August 7”. There’s an archived version of this article which makes clear the publication date was July 8:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229121048/http://wired.com:80/news/news/culture/story/20607.html
[S7] Here is the original Dutch text of the Billy blurb from Brabants Dagblad, published July 8, 1999, third in the list of four stories:
De Amerikaan BILLY MITCHELL heeft voor het eerst in de geschiedenis de perfecte score gehaald bij het computerspel Pac-Man. Hij deed er bijna zes uur over om met zijn ‘happertje’ de spoken te ontwijken en alle 256 doolhoven met puntjes leeg te eten. Pac-Man was in 1980 voor het eerst te zien in de speelhallen. De 33-jarige Mitchell had ook al een wereldrecord met het spel Donkey Kong.
And here is the original Dutch text from De Gelderlander, published July 9, 1999, fourth in the list of four stories:
Amerikaan Billy Mitchell heeft voor het eerst in de geschiedenis de perfecte score gehaald bij het computerspel Pac-Man. Hij deed er bijna zes uur over om met zijn happertje’ de spoken te ontwijken en alle 256 doolhoven met puntjes leeg te eten.Het resultaat, de magische 3.333.360 punten, wordt bijgeschreven in het Twin Galaxies’ Official Video Game en Pinball Book of World Records. Pac-Man was in 1980 voor het eerst te zien in de speelhallen. Daarna groeide het uit tot een van de meest bekende en populaire spellen ooit.De 33-jarige Mitchell, die ook al een wereldrecord met het spel Donkey Kong op zijn naam heeft staan, speelt Pac-Man nooit meer. Er is niets wat ik nog kan bereiken.
We arrived at these while trying to find a story in another Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf. On July 23, a user on Usenet claimed Billy’s story was “FRONT-PAGE news on the biggest newspaper of Holland” (emphasis theirs):
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/bgWbGq38hII/m/Kcyh7W1TRxgJ
However, we were unable to track down this supposed front-page story.
[S8] The Wall Street Journal article was recently archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210327031354/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB932758933921658174
The original text was also posted to Usenet, in 2003 and again in 2004:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/7nQxjWvxoio/m/1K8fM00-ISoJ
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/gNZsWT_50Qw/m/88gnW3VhRL4J
Notable is that the WSJ text as copied in 2003 does not match the text seen on the site today.
[S9] The Wired article itself was of course linked in the various Usenet discussions:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/pF2kxXLqwPw/m/b9qtb0Z1nkoJ
One couldn’t help but notice this person’s email was at “tufts.edu”, but of course that’s just a coincidence.
[S10] In addition to those who were unimpressed with the story, some in the retro gaming community just missed it altogether. Here’s a July 2000 post from someone who had just visited Funspot, and were very curious about the big Billy Mitchell display on the wall:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/p4OWtmmulak/m/9FUkB7h-GWYJ
[S11] Dwayne Richard and Rick Fothergill discussed this Ms. Pac-Man score of 881,360 which Bill Bastable submitted to TG at 23:00 here:
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/29.ThePerfectFraudmanPart5Eye-candyCut.webm
The score was also noted in the Asbury Park Press in January 1985:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/14602810/jan-20-1985-asbury-park-press/
[S12] The deleted CNN page resided at the following link in 1999:
http://cnn.com/US/9907/17/perfect-pac-man.ap/index.html
Even before finding the text on Usenet, it was easy to see it was dated July 17, 1999, since CNN puts the dates of most of its content in the URL. At the time in question, the format was “/YYMM/DD/”. This is consistent with other stories from July 17, 1999:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000916184020/http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/17/kennedy.plane.06/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010428092911/http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/17/us.barak/
Note how those CNN stories, from the same day, were archived (with the travel warning story still on the open CNN site in 2007). On the Associated Press side, here’s a May 1999 AP piece about Mother’s Day cards, which references Pac-Man, and which is still active on the AP website:
https://apnews.com/article/30b330c87452ba58de0b136a207b9cbd
Apparently, this bit on Mother’s Day cards was important news worth preserving, but Billy’s claimed “perfect game” of Pac-Man was not.
As far as the CNN piece being a reprint of the AP, take another look at the URL. I noticed the “.ap”, and started to wonder if maybe that meant it was a repost of an Associated Press piece. And hey, not gonna lie, it feels good when your guesses are right. Other CNN pages on Wayback Machine from that era use the same “.ap” tag. Here’s one example:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990127220222/http://cnn.com:80/US/9804/17/fringe/geek.pride.ap/
Note: This is different from pages which the AP “contributed to” (CNN’s way of citing AP as a source for their own piece). The “.ap” tag in the URL means it’s literally just a re-post from Associated Press, although it is typical for professional outlets to do a couple small edits of their own. Additionally, news items like this are written such that the end can be chopped off to whatever length the editor desires. (Although interestingly, CNN cut out the Gary Vincent paragraph before the “Mitchell is famous among video game and pinball players” paragraph. Maybe CNN felt they needed to retain that extra bit of justification for why this was big news?)
[S13] The full text of the Knight-Ridder piece is online on the Chicago Tribune website, dated August 5:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-08-05-9908050050-story.html
It could also be found in the August 5 edition of the Dayton Daily News:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/410254684/
As well as the August 3 edition of the Poughkeepsie Journal in New York:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/114976303/
The feature also references Billy’s intention to claim the Ms. Pac-Man world record, something which he still has not done.
It was even still being reported on as though it were a new story on August 13, as seen in the Indianapolis Star:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/107254305/
[S14] As part of Billy’s story about the aftermath of the “perfect game”, he likes to say that people flew out from Germany to interview him. In his Scene World interview, at 30:00, Billy attributes this visit specifically to both Stern magazine and Der Spiegel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogBgrqY4FY
We did not locate any coverage from Stern. In fact, in Walter Day’s diligent recounting of TG’s media appearances from the era, there is a listing for Stern magazine in June of 1998, but nothing in the aftermath of Billy’s July score:
https://thewalterdaycollection.com/articles/news-stories/69-appearances-in-the-news-media
However, to be fair, these lists also do not include the Der Spiegel coverage from July 18:
https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13981285.html
That coverage is also interesting, in that there are very few quotes from Billy directly. Compare that to other coverage linked in this installment, where it’s very clear Billy was interviewed for the piece, as his narration runs throughout the coverage. Because his words were translated to German, it’s hard to say where exactly those quotes originate. But there’s no reason to think this reporter had any direct contact with Billy at all, by phone, by email, in person, or any other way. Sure, there could’ve been some other German reporter somewhere, but it’s entirely possible that in Billy’s storytelling style, “Guy wrote about my score for a German newspaper, using a few pre-existing quotes from me” became “Guy living in Germany flew all the way out to the United States just to interview me personally,” which does sound way cooler.
[S15] For those curious, here’s a look at a couple of pages of Time‘s “Notebook” section preceding the blurb about Pac-Man:
I looked for any indication that this issue of Time was actually published prior to the printed date, the way some publications distribute their “March” issue in early February (or even earlier). But the indications I got were that this was the exact date of release, during a time (pun always intended) when Time published on Fridays instead of Mondays. Note the mention by Slate that the Monday release date necessitated costlier weekend printing:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/08/what-time-magazine-s-new-publication-date-means.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060821054945/https://www.poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=11734
[S16] There’s also an undated blurb at the very, very bottom of this long page of classic gaming news at Good Deal Games:
http://www.gooddealgames.com/News_old.html
The short piece includes a stylized version of the Joe Rimkus photo discussed in “Dot Three” supplemental. Both the blurb and the image appear at the very bottom of an archived version of this page, albeit with a different arrangement of stories above it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815065209/http://www.gooddealgames.com/news/news_page.html
In either case, neither the blurb, nor the image, nor the metadata are dated.
This blurb would appear to have been first posted in August of 1999. Obviously it would be after the Rimkus photo (unless that photo was added retroactively). On the other hand, it was likely posted prior to Billy’s September Japan trip, hence no reference to it. The arrangement of stories above it is not a helpful indicator, as they appear to be out of chronological order. There’s a note about an August 31, 1999 bombing at an arcade in Moscow; however, between the Billy item and the Moscow item is a reference to CinciClassic ’99, which took place in November. FWIW, Good Deal Games refers to it as “3rd annual”, while Atari HQ refers to it as “second annual”, but both of them and the event website all agree the ’99 event happened in November:
http://www.atarihq.com/news/1999/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000816000339/http://ic.net/~craig/cinci/
But perhaps that item on CinciClassic was originally an announcement for the upcoming event and then was later edited to be a recap after the event was over?
The Billy blurb might be undatable if not for the caption under the photo, which reads:
I Have an absolute passion, a fever, to be #1.
The quote (formatted differently) appears to originate from a Chicago Tribune story on Billy’s claimed perfect score, on August 5, 1999. To this day, the quote only brings up about five Google search result hits.
Yes, this is the level of outstanding diligence and attention to detail you came here for.
[S17] Here is the whole professional translation of the Korean article:
Video Game Pac-Man : Perfect Game After 19 Years [July 25, 1999]
An American player has achieved ‘Perfect Game’ for the first time in the video game ‘Pac-Man’, said Japanese game producer Namco on the 24th. Pac-Man is a video game that was released by Namco in 1980 and recorded an unprecedented hit, and this was the first perfect game in 19 years in which Pac-Man has cleared all 236 scenes without dying. According to Namco, American player Billy Mitchell (33, Florida) succeeded in achieving this milestone after six hours of playing at an electronic arcade in New Hampshire on the 4th. The man’s final score was 3,333,336. The record-breaking moment was recorded on video and was certified by the video game record publisher, Twin Galaxies. Namco is planning to manufacture a Pac-Man software in gold and present it to the player.
There are some obvious technical flaws in this translation (wrong score, wrong number of boards), but I present it as written, in case those flaws are also present in the original.
This final line was almost overlooked, because using the Translate feature in Google Chrome makes that line disappear entirely. However, copy-pasting the Korean text into the Google Translate webpage restores the final line (although poorly translated):
[S18] Notice how that Ottawa Citizen photo caption refers to Billy as “the first person in the world to master the game”.
[S19] We’ll get to the Japan stuff in a future installment, but in the same segment of Exhibit A (around 31:30), Walter claims that when he and Billy traveled to Japan and met Masaya Nakamura, he presented to them their “research” on how many times Pac-Man was played. I put “research” in quotes, as I’m not sure what exactly it was that they presented. As we demonstrated today, Pac-Man’s default coin counter doesn’t count up to 100,000. So I guess Walter just told them “Hey, we think each Pac-Man cabinet was played 100,000 times, trust us”? Maybe they wrote it on a piece of paper, so it looks really legit?
At any rate, Walter claims that Namco then used TG’s research, and presented it as their own, forgetting that it was TG’s in the first place. You can hear Walter describe this in Exhibit A at 32:10, and again in the following interview at about 52:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mwoecTjBy0
This is also odd, in that this number was based on an assumption of 100,000 cabinets, when (as illustrated later in this supplemental section) Namco and Guinness seem to believe the number of cabinets sold was closer to 300,000.
Regardless, this ten billion number has since taken on life of its own. Here we see it in the book Greatest Moments in Video Game History, by D.B. Weston:
As my research colleague remarked:
When marketing crowds out history, we have a problem.
[S20] As seen back in “Dot Two”, the Forth Worth Star-Telegram put the number of Pac-Man machines in existence at 100,000 back in March 1982.
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/635439196/
[S21] This same twenty billion number is reflected in a TG press release from 1998, targeted specifically to Mobile, AL, and which was modified into the Play Meter snippet:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818050617/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-CrowningMobile.html
[S22] The “ten billion” number seems excessive on its face, but it is worth keeping in mind the scale we’re discussing. If you had a Pac-Man machine at an arcade, and someone played it once every hour, 24 hours a day, it would take almost 11.5 years to reach 100,000 plays. The game’s popularity did not last 11 years, but it did last a while. Obviously, two plays in one hour cuts that time in half. Surely, in its heyday, your average Pac-Man machine (found in every arcade in every city and town in Japan, the United States, Europe, and beyond) was eating much more than one quarter per hour during open hours, at least enough to pay the light bill. That said, I’m not sure how favorably Pac-Man compares, in terms of number of games played, to a console video game like Super Mario Bros., packed in with every NES, which a home player can freely restart over and over all day without plunking in a quarter each time. Also, while it’s maybe possible early Pac-Man machines racked up that many plays, later machines likely racked up significantly less, after so many players had flocked away from the original to the new, more colorful Ms. Pac-Man.
Recall that the “ten billion” number was allegedly arrived at by multiplying an estimate of 100,000 cabinets by an estimate of 100,000 plays per cabinet. It turns out, Namco actually acknowledges a much higher number of cabinets – 293,822 – in Pac-Man’s first seven years:
https://pacman.com/en/history/
But it’s not clear how much stock we should put in that number. Guinness endorses it, which already makes it suspect:
https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20100909_amshow48_pacman/
Notably, Guinness recognized the number 293,822 in 2005:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/pac-man-chomps-into-record-books/
However, still years after that, TG spokesperson Patrick Scott Patterson was still relying on the 100,000 number (albeit with the caveat that those 100,000 were during “12 months of production”, thus not including the entire run):
https://www.prlog.org/10339290-twin-galaxies-announces-new-alltime-pacman-champion.html
That article also cites the number of Ms. Pac-Man units produced as 119,000, citing it as the most successful arcade game in history – a claim repeated by others despite that number being significantly lower than what Guinness claims for the original:
[S23] Bastable continues, at 27:50:
Let me just put it to you like this, okay. I consider the most important part of Pac-Man to be that 3,332,820. The dots, I… I almost look at it as extra credit. I know Rick said it’s like the cherry on top. But let’s face it, you know, if you’re paying to go into an arcade, and you don’t have access to this board and somebody else does, think about the magnitude of that if I don’t really know that much about that board, or I don’t have a terrain map, you know. Like, I’ve… I’ve basically done the job that I was supposed to do, especially in the middle of a math major.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bZbs7Ma9QE
[S24] Similarly, at the King of Arcades premiere (as quoted in “Dot Three”), Billy emphasized how he was “beyond the difficult part” in one of his earlier perfect score attempts (at 20:40):
So I go there, and I’m playin’, and on my first game I’m off and running. It’s about 1.2 million. You talk about bein’ cocky, it went through the roof, because I was beyond the difficult part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buwsWlDC9N8
[S25] Amusingly, at a sparsely attended panel at Retropalooza 2019 featuring Billy and his buddy Ben Gold, Ben attempts to name the elements of a perfect score on Pac-Man, giving a more accurate assessment of what the score entails. Here he is at 6:30:
You have to get all four ghosts every time, on every board. So that means that… some of the boards, they only blink like once or twice. So you have to have four of them like right on top of each other. And you have to… When you hit the power pellet, it has to be right on top to get ’em. So you… Then, as you get later on, there is no… They actually don’t blink, and then it’s… they only change direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vc4ZBTSNMo
Not bad for someone who hasn’t practiced the explanation. Meanwhile, as Ben talks, Billy uses a series of hand gestures to mock his friend’s lengthier (but more honest) explanation.
At any rate, cat’s out of the bag, right? No need to keep running with this bit about eating every ghost on every power pellet, right?
Well, here’s Billy’s description when he gets his turn, at about 8:20:
Every board, as he says, every dot, every energizer. Every prize, because they’re not all fruits… Every prize. All four guys on every energizer, you play 255, and then the 256th board, and you can’t die one time.
You knew that was coming.
[S26] There was a similar characterization by the author of a 2005 profile of Billy in the Miami Herald:
It took six hours – and just one of Pac-Man’s finite lives – for Mitchell to guide the famed yellow hero through 256 levels of dots, fruits and ghosts.
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/652234242/
https://www.twingalaxies.com/content.php/2416-He-s-the-Leader-of-the-Pack
[S27] Once again, Jamey Pittman’s Pac-Man Dossier explains this cornering mechanic here:
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132330/the_pacman_dossier.php?page=4
[S28] As a partial list, Rick Fothergill did a perfect score in 2009 using a ninth key pattern which included one pass-through with Clyde, resulting in 235 such passes-through throughout his game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E85OQc9arXM
In 2012, David Race piloted the same ninth key pattern to a perfect score. However, he took the opportunity to park on board 21 for a quick break, resulting in only a mere 234 passes-through of Clyde:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGnPTtdimTs
However, in 2013, David used a combination of faster ninth key patterns with an eye on the speed record. The first of these patterns, employing several quick reversals as well as a single pass-through of Clyde, was used from board 21 through board 170. Once a sufficient speed mark had been established with that riskier pattern, David switched to a safer pattern, which happened to include passes-through of both Clyde and Blinky, for the next 85 boards. The cherry on top (pun always intended) was another pass through of Clyde using an opening pattern on the split screen, bringing David’s pass-through total to 321 on his way to a perfect score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqDaagdVCmo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyA7LtJzwdc
[S29] Immediately after that quote from the Back In Time webcast, about there being 300,000 moves in a perfect score, and after describing his training regimen (which at this point has become an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening), Billy adds:
As a matter of fact, I might ask Gary not to have the game here when I come here.
Don’t read too much into that.
[S30] You can see the “Stacked” ninth key pattern here, courtesy of dave88rock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzR9FgazHRQ
The pattern seen there uses 80 moves. The variation Billy typically uses changes slightly at the end, resulting in 78 turns, as seen here:
The 29,000 figure would leave 10,670 moves for the other 21 boards (the first 20 plus the split screen). If we were to accept Billy claims that he freehanded the first 20 boards with no patterns, including all the difficult blue time boards, he would have racked up significantly more turns per board than using patterns, although 10,000 still seems like a stretch. The hilarious 300,000 figure however, an embellishment stacked on an embellishment, which would leave 281,670 moves for the other 21 boards, is not even pretending to be realistic.
[S31] To be clear, I don’t actually wish to analogize a perfect score on Pac-Man to a perfect game in Major League Baseball, for reasons I hope I’ve made abundantly clear.
Also, my figure of “two dozen” perfect games in MLB history, one more than the official count of 23, is a deliberate reference to Armando Galarraga:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armando_Galarraga%27s_near-perfect_game
In a way, Galarraga is the Bill Bastable of baseball. He did everything he was supposed to do, but history doesn’t officially recognize him, because he did it too early. (In Galarraga’s case, his was before instant replay would have easily resolved the bad call. In Bastable’s case, his early perfect scores at actual arcades were before he could acquire a Pac-Man cabinet for split screen exploration.) Although, I don’t believe umpire Jim Joyce was best friends and business partners with Galarraga’s biggest rival.
[S32] Amazingly, with the shortstop analogies in Exhibit A, Walter Day goes back to that same well once again at 47:30. It begins with a demonstration, by Billy, of freehand grouping techniques. Billy makes it clear when these techniques are used on non-blue-time boards:
So this is what I went through each time I went off-pattern, was this… chaos.
And still, literally on the heels of Billy describing himself going off-pattern in his game, Walter launches himself back into the shortstop analogy:
What’s amazing is, you can’t lose your focus for even one second. That’s why I make the analogy to being like a star shortstop in baseball, because you can’t make many mistakes… You can’t make any mistakes. Whereas a shortstop can still make a few errors and win the Golden Glove, you know?
A spectator then points out the analogy to a perfect game of baseball. Walter answers, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
For what it’s worth, Walter’s focus on the shortstop position is also noteworthy, in that each other defensive position has won the Gold Glove Award while committing zero errors in a season (although for the shortstop’s neighbor, the third baseman, this did not happen until the pandemic-shortened season of 2020).
[S33] Regarding Knight-Ridder citing these unnamed “arcade dwellers” as authorities, while I may be old, I hope I’m not the only one whose mind immediately went to the time in 1992 when the New York Times were given a bogus list of Seattle grunge slang which they immediately turned around and published as fact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak
[S34] Here is added context to Billy’s two quotes regarding the split screen bounty. First, here is an extended quote from Exhibit A (starting at about 17:10), to make clear what Billy is referring to. Note that, beginning with “Oh, I could do it”, Billy uses a mocking voice to imitate one of his pretend naysayers:
As people… friends have achieved this, I mean I’ve sent letters, sincere letters. You know, I said to ’em, I says “Think about when you began this. Never did you feel you could achieve it.” I said “Think about the journey. You got partway into it, you look back at what you persevered through, and it was like ‘Wow, I did that?’ And it gave you strength in order to continue forward.” I said to ’em, “It’s no different than someone who goes to get a college degree. They have to do that same delayed gratification.” And I said to ’em, I said “Anybody that would ridicule you for this is somebody not only who could never do it but would never attempt to do it cuz they know they couldn’t.” I said to ’em, I says “You’ve joined a club more exclusive, you know, than the ex-living presidents.” You know, there’s that few people. Less people have done this than have come up to the moon. And, ”Oh, I could do it.” Okay, do it. “I can do a split screen.” There was a public posting. It was a $100,000 prize for anybody who could do it. “I’ve done it, more than twenty times.” There’s a hundred thousand dollars waitin’ for ya. “I don’t need the money.” They don’t need the money. No, so we’ve run into all that kind of stuff.
As for the Minnesota presentation, following the provided quote, the host asks him how many quarters he spent playing Pac-Man, momentarily sidetracking him from his story. But as soon as that’s discussed, Billy resumes his story from 1999 of getting on the “three-way” call with Fothergill. In other words, the context both before and after Billy interjecting with a story of offering $100,000 to anyone who could beat his score was events prior to the Funspot tournament in 1999.
Billy has also claimed he sent out a similar bounty press release in Japan (heard in the late night interview with his friend Triforce at about 12:10), however no evidence of such a declaration in Japan has surfaced:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9EYBfhJIB8
[S35] While I would not dispute that playing “blue time” boards freehanded is more difficult than using a pattern, nor would I be in any position to do so, for what it’s worth, if you actually watch Billy’s free-hand playing (such as on Twitch in the last couple years), his grouping maneuvers very much resemble a pattern in a sense, just not one that involves forward motion from the start of a board to the finish.
[S36] Note also Billy’s spiel about precision turns is predicated on the use of patterns. If you’re playing freehand, then there’s always, as Billy puts it, “chaos on the board”.
[S37] Since I know it’s easy for properly framed jokes to be repeated as facts, I wish to be clear that this “bowling ten perfect games” quote was a parody. On the other hand, as seen in a previous footnote, Billy has touted that fewer people had confirmed perfect scores on Pac-Man than had walked on the moon, although that is no longer true, and really a rather silly comparison for him to make in the first place.
[S38] This conflation of the split screen and the perfect score is potentially exacerbated by the rarity of actually witnessing a split screen on Pac-Man in person. Or, as Billy put it:
“One in a hundred million people has seen that screen,” says an awed Mitchell.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161223041234/https://www.wired.com/1999/11/pac-rat-2/
[S39] Note that hard-resetting cabinets is indeed a ritual of Billy’s on other games. It was remarked upon during the Kong Off 6 stream, seen here at 1:52:10:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/241475075
[S40] If you prefer a more succinct approach to explaining the perfect score:
For eighteen boards, it’s you versus the ghosts. You have to get each ghost, off each power pellet, each time for seventeen of those boards. You can’t miss a single one of them. You also have to get each fruit, which appears twice on each board. After the early boards, there’s no more eating ghosts, but you still have to evade them for 237 more boards, while clearing every dot, and again, getting both fruits. And you have to do this without dying, because on the final screen, there are bonus points you can collect for each life you have left. You can only collect the maximum bonus points if you reach that screen with the maximum number of lives.
Or if you want a true sound byte:
For seventeen boards, you have to eat each fruit, and you have to eat every ghost off every power pellet. Then the ghosts stop turning blue, and you think “That’s it,” but no, even when you can’t eat the ghosts anymore, you’ve still got 237 more boards to go.
In case there’s any confusion, these three examples of accurately explaining a perfect score were written by the author of this series.
[S41] No, I did not make up the title “patron saint” in relation to Walter Day. In fact, he put it on a trading card himself:
https://thewalterdaycollection.com/collection/gallery/item/0108a-patron-saint-rare-card
[S42] Characterizing a score of 3,333,360 on Pac-Man as a near-unattainable “Holy Grail” is especially ironic, given that it was literally unobtainable by the rules until earlier that same year.
[S43] Here’s some added context behind these statements:
When I told Rick Fothergill that Chris told me he and Billy achieved perfect games with scores of 3,333,360, he replied by saying that was not what Chris told him.
Specifically, Rick recalled being told by Chris Ayra that he and Billy had only done perfect scores through the blue time boards back in the ’80s, and had not done complete perfect scores prior to 1999.
Rick confronted Chris, and Chris apologized for lying to him.
To be clear, in apologizing to Rick, Chris reaffirmed his claim that he and Billy did indeed do complete perfect scores on Pac-Man in the ’80s. (Though again, this is an unsubstantiated claim.)
[S44] Chris Ayra’s signed statement can be read in full on page 66 of Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BMbW-_fSwCFQ1Kzl59pj7TnoQiuAdgcJ/view
[S45] In that Perfect Fraudman trailer, Rick also adds his impression that Billy and Chris had not completed a perfect score in the ’80s (at 2:30):
Through many conversations I’ve had with both Bill Mitchell and Chris Ayra, they commented on the fact that, in 1984, they were capable of getting a perfect game, and they had had perfect score to the end of the sixth key. But they had never put it all together to get the 3,333,360.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_5wzJ-lqVM
Also, to start the trailer, Rick and his fellow Canadian Dwayne Richard make a one dollar bet, with Rick’s bet as follows:
My bet is that Chris Ayra will never come forward with evidence supporting a claim that he got the perfect score on Pac-Man of 3,333,360 in the 1980s.
Admittedly, it sounds like a nice bet for Dwayne. Since Rick can effectively never win, Dwayne risks nothing for the chance to win a free loonie.
It should be noted that Billy’s answer to Rick, avoiding saying if he’d ever done a perfect score prior to 1999, along with his friend Chris’ 2003 forum post, could just as easily be attempts to falsely plant the idea that Billy had done a perfect score in the ’80s when he hadn’t, in the hopes of addressing people’s concerns that he may not have been “first” without having to state as much on the record, which would spoil his stories about 1999.
[S46] I can’t technically say Bill Bastable’s board was “unmodified”, in that it did undergo the jumper revision, which Bastable himself undid with a pair of scissors after doing a jumper perfect score. But it was restored to original operation, as evidence by his final score of 3,333,360 on photograph. (I can’t imagine anyone would make a big deal out of that!)
[S47] In the same GameSpot interview, Billy suggests that it was the ten billion number that inspired him to go after the perfect score:
And yes, of course we’ll be getting to all that other stuff later.
[S48] Here Billy expresses a similar sentiment, about Ms. Pac-Man being the hardest game, starting at about 8:40:
And Ms. Pac-Man was like the hardest game, and that was… I mean, that was the… the Oscar of all games, if you could ever conquer it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlLQdRwis1Q
And of course this quote from Rick Fothergill, already provided in “Dot Three” (at 0:20):
The Pac-Man arcade machines were disappearing rapidly, and I liked playing that game but they were, like gone by the time I came onto the scene. So I had no choice, I had to play Ms. Pac-Man, which was a much more difficult game. I’m sure many recognize that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfQLgy5Ijts
[S49] Here’s Billy, in that late night interview with Triforce, talking about reaching out for his opportunities at history, starting at 56:50:
I was there at Life Magazine. It was my opportunity, and I happened to reach out and grab it, and be in that first competitive gaming photo. That was the history that was there that I could grab. Okay. Time went on, records were set. In 1984, I was able to reach out and grab history and be the player of the year. In 1999, I had the opportunity to reach out, grab, be the first perfect Pac-Man, and be the video game player of the century and travel to Japan. That was the history that was available to me.
We’ll get to all that Japan stuff, I promise. In fact, if you’re extra nice, we might even talk about Billy’s supposed “player of the year” title in 1984.
[S50] Fothergill gives a brief recounting of his perfect score from July 1999 here, at 9:50:
So I said, “Okay, I’m going to get a perfect score on Pac-Man this month.” So I had 28 days left. So right at the end of the month, July 31, I drive 650 miles, I put one credit in, and bam, straight through, did it.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/25.ThePerfectFraudmanPart1EyeCandyCut.webm
Rick continues, at 6:20 here:
I go to the… phone, I phone Walter, he gets Bill on the phone. And he says “Is this kinda like bringing your boxing gloves… after the fight is over?”… I thought “Whatever.” My whole point is, I wanted to do it, the same month. And if he hadn’t have been so sneaky about it…
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/27.ThePerfectFraudmanPart3eye-candyCut.webm
[S51] The 2006 TG record book also incorrectly cites Rick’s perfect as a “Home performance”, despite being under the same circumstances as Billy’s visit earlier that month (as seen here in TG’s third book of records):
Also in Perfect Fraudman, we get a glimpse of the certificate Rick got at “Coronation Day” in January 2000:
He didn’t get his certificate until five months after his score (while Billy’s recognition was immediate), and when they did finally give it to him, poor guy didn’t even get his ribbon!
[S52] Yes, the top of that TG high score page says in camouflaged text “Updated: 30 Apr 99 by Ron Corcoran”. But as noted in today’s installment, several scores from after Rick’s July 31 Pac-Man score (as well as Billy’s claimed July 3 score) are included on that page. You can find them easily by searching “/99”. It seems TG’s regular updates to the page did not include the “updated” date.
[S53] Note that in Vargas’ version, the claim of Billy being the only perfect score player was qualified somewhat:
The only person in the world who is known to have played a perfect game of Pac-Man (or, at least, the only person in the world who has publicized that he played a perfect game of Pac-Man) is one Billy Mitchell, a 39-year-old hot sauce manufacturer from Hollywood, Fla.
Although the claim still wasn’t actually true.
With regard to the Tyler Morning Telegraph piece linked in today’s installment:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/590846490/
The author was Matt Slagle of Associated Press. Notably, this is the same person Walter Day was leaving a voice mail to in the opening minutes of the film Chasing Ghosts, regarding this very piece.
[S54] Links relating to Fothergill’s and Race’s perfect score speed records:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/125307-NEW-FASTEST-PERFECT-PACMAN-CHAMPION
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/145655
[S55] Here are more specifics on the cut-up version of Ayra’s tape. First, each of the six “one second” boards are removed. (Those are boards 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 18, also known as Galaxian 1, Bell 2, and Keys 1, 3, 4, and 6.) These cuts are immediate each time, with no accompanying VHS distortion. In other words, the copy method (probably VCR to VCR) was likely chosen specifically to exclude those boards.
At about score 529,000, Billy makes a phone call to Walter Day, leaving a voice mail. The actual message is not heard on the tape, as the recording cuts out, eventually fading back in amid VHS distortion around score 548,000. This cut is noticeably different than the immediate cuts to remove the “one second” boards, and was likely done at some later time, specifically to remove the message to Walter from the recording. (Whether this was done by Ayra, or Walter, or Billy, to obscure what was discussed, or whether it was done by some other party who considered the message confidential to some degree greater than the discussions already heard through the rest of the tape, is unknown.)
Aside from the phone call cutaway, the tape is mostly free of distortion until board 71, when the score rolls over at 996,780. (We’ll get more into score rollovers in a later installment, but Chris uses a different ninth key pattern than Billy uses, so their rollover points are different.) At the end of board 71, the tape immediately jumps ahead from score 1,008,200 all the way to board 255 at score 3,314,100, ten dots into the board. (Again, lack of distortion indicates this was done using the same method described above.)
On the split screen, Ayra immediately moves over to the “BC” park spot. In doing so, he checks with Billy standing beside him, asking “Is that it?”, indicating that this park spot is new to him. Ayra waits as three ghosts are trapped in the side tunnel before leaving the spot and collecting the hidden dots and all the normal dots. After his sixth life, when the perfect score is completed, Chris parks Pac-Man in a hideaway above the left tunnel. Ayra then shows his stopwatch and his final time. The tape keeps running, showing the split screen and the various discussions (and attempts by Billy to call Walter Day and leave a message). At one point, Chris remarks:
Walter, I guess if you ever get to see this, I’ll make a copy, and I’ll… Just promise you never show anybody. Not anybody significant.
Humorously, this tape was broadcast (quote and all) on a Twin Galaxies stream on Twitch last year, although the remark is likely in reference to his protected “one second” patterns, which are indeed missing from the tape.
The tape cuts out multiple times during the stretch after the final score. Unlike the previous selective edits, these cuts involve heavy VHS distortion. This could suggest this stretch was at one point complete on the tape, or it could be that the tape itself was damaged in that spot. At any rate, much of the discussion between Chris and Billy during that stretch is lost. About ten minutes after Chris first reached the split screen, the recording cuts out completely, with the subsequent VHS distortion eventually revealing a game of Junior Pac-Man, which appeared to have previously occupied this tape from the beginning.
The “complete” version of the Ayra tape includes a few extra interactions, including (at 3:44:00) Ayra getting right in front of the camera and saying:
Well, what do you think, Rick? Not that you’ll ever get to see the tape.
Given the nature of the edits made to the cut-up tape, it would appear the excision of this quote was deliberate.
Another thing of minor note on Chris Ayra’s February 2000 perfect score is that he’s credited with a time of 3:42:04, sixteen minutes faster than Fothergill’s. These times and dates were reflected in the 2007 edition of Guinness World Records:
https://archive.org/details/guinnessworldrec2007guin/page/154/mode/2up
However, the second edition of the printed Twin Galaxies record book (also printed in 2007) attributed both scores to the date of February 2, 2002:
(Apologies for the highlights in my book.)
This gives Ayra credit for doing his faster while also erasing the fact that Fothergill had done his first. It would be easy to frame this as yet another act of disrespect toward Rick Fothergill, who it seems just can’t catch a break with these guys. However, the previous page, showing the high scoring chart (with, at that time, five scores of 3,333,360) has the correct dates of both Ayra’s and Fothergill’s perfect scores. So perhaps the changed dates on the “fastest time” track really are just the result of ineptitude.
[S56] Not to put Greg Sakundiak on the spot, but at 58:40 in King of Con, Greg recalled seeing the edited version of the Ayra tape, and being under the impression it was the official submission:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0aqMDgEAG0
Also notable is that, even if the “complete” copy of Chris’ perfect score was the one submitted to Walter Day, it’s still missing a number of elements which, at least at other times, were requisites of such score submissions. (For instance, the tape does not show the machine’s initial boot up or reset, and things like the control panel and internal game switches were not filmed.) However, Rick’s Ms. Pac-Man tape from around that era also did not show machine internals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4di2neuxNd4
Thus, Ayra’s omission of those could be attributed to lower proof standards in general. But the tape is “complete” in that the actual game play is uninterrupted.
[S57] Team Billy still accuses Dwayne Richard of doctoring Ayra’s Pac-Man tape for unknown reasons, as seen in this clip from their September 2019 legal threat which we saw back in “Dot One”:
