What follows are the supplemental notes for the “Dot Nine” 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.
Note: Both the main post and this supplemental page have been updated since they were first published. The current notation numbers line up with the correct references in the updated “Dot Nine”, but may not align with their original references.
[S1] Given how much evidence we were able to accumulate casting doubt as to whether Billy actually hit a score of 3,333,360 at all in July of 1999, it’s a bit strange in retrospect that Dwayne Richard focused so heavily on topics such as marathon rules for break time during his two documentaries, while seemingly conceding the question of whether the score was achieved altogether.
[S2] When this project was originally published, I cited the following interview as an example of Billy claiming Pac-Man’s reversals operate on 18-minute intervals:
However, after publication, David Race reached out to me to clarify that, unlike original Pac-Man, the sequel Ms. Pac-Man does rely on 18-minute ghost reversals. This is acknowledged in a Ms. Pac-Man report authored by the legendary Bozeman Think Tank, who we discussed back in “Dot Two” (although they rounded the interval to “approximately 20 minutes”:
http://gamesmuseum.pixesthesia.com/games/mspacman/mspacprj/mspacprj.html
David was also kind enough to record a demonstration of Ms. Pac-Man on MAME, showing two of these 18-minute reversals:
While the context of the previously cited interview gives the impression Billy was talking about original Pac-Man, it’s actually more likely he was referring to a Ms. Pac-Man competition between Chris Ayra and Rick Fothergill at the 2000 Funspot event. Indeed, in addition to mixing up the games, it seems the interviewer was mixing up the people as well, attributing the following quote to Chris:
At last May’s tournament, I missed by nine dots. And then I found out that Rick did it. Four weeks later, I did it. And then he did it as well. It kind of puts all of us in a spectrum above everyone else.
When this confusion was pointed out by David, a correction was added both to “Dot Nine” and also to where Billy’s “every 18 minutes” quote was referenced earlier in “Dot One”. As of the June 2023 update to “Dot Nine”, both the reference and correction were removed from “Dot One” altogether.
[S3] While the following statement is not fully attributed, Pat Laffaye also recalls witnesses being put off by how many breaks Billy was taking during his attempts:
At FS, witnesses saw multiple breaks, enough to take note despite knowing nothing about the game!!
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,7333.msg79429.html#msg79429
Second, Dwayne Richard also recalled it specifically being said that Billy took a half hour break after the “blue time” boards, before the long ninth key stretch (at 1:10):
Bill admitted that it took him two hours to do his grouping, and then he said he took a half an hour break. I didn’t say that. He said that.
[S4] Okay, for those who are interested, here’s a breakdown of the question of permitted breaks in early Twin Galaxies arcade scores. This entire topic is a quagmire of unwritten rules and selective enforcement, but hopefully this will serve as a summary.
As part of developing a set of competitive gaming rules in the ’80s, TG established regulations governing marathons. In 1983, ten minutes of break were allowed for every two hours of game time. The use of a “holding pattern” was also expressly forbidden, with the rules noting “The player should be actively scoring points at all times”:
http://www.videoparadise-sanjose.com/tg-rules.htm
This changed at some point over the years. In 2002, a chat log was posted to the Twin Galaxies forums, discussing what the marathon gaming rules are and what they ought to be. While there was some disagreement on the particular rules used at past events, most agreed with Dwayne Richard in his recollection that break time was to be banked based on accumulated game time, similar to Guinness marathoning procedures:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/109338-Arcade-Games-vs-Home-Consoles
However, players had disagreed on how often break time was banked, and the maximum that was allowed to be accumulated. In the above thread, Dwayne recalled the banked break time accumulating up to two hours, while Darren Harris recalled it capping at half an hour, and Greg Erway (user name “awesome”) recalled it capping at 45 minutes.
In Dwayne’s collection of videos, Jim Vollandt discussed the 1985 “Iron Man” contest, where the goal was to play a video game for 100 consecutive hours by Guinness rules. His description seems to indicate breaks were limited to strictly five minutes at a time (at 0:10):
And then during some of the five-minute breaks we were allotted, I would walk around and take a look at what other people were doing.
Similarly, Vollandt recalled a hardware malfunction, and how the break rules applied to his restart (at 3:40 here):
What happened was, the joystick broke, so it’d only go in one direction. And they scrambled to try and fix the game, and what happened was, when they opened up the top, the game shut off. So by the stipulations of the rules, I was allowed a restart within five minutes once the machine was fixed.
So even if one tried to apply traditional marathon rules to Pac-Man, nobody could agree what those rules were.
Mruczek’s revised marathoning policy in 2003 made a clear distinction between the policies for home console games (most of which include a pause function) and arcade games, expressly allowing at-will breaks on many of the latter. This would seem to have been an explicit change in policy, as later Nibbler champion Rick Carter referenced in that thread:
It’s likely not a coincidence that multiple arcade competitors were all on the same page that these rules previously applied to TG-sanctioned high score attempts, marathon or not. Even the following year, in a profile in Wired, Walter Day was still touting that TG’s break policy was “very similar” to Guinness. The context was marathon scores, but (at least in the quotes provided by Wired) no effort is made to differentiate marathons and standard high scores:
https://www.wired.com/2004/11/the-scorekeeper/
There’s one more comparison to note, which is to the arcade game Nibbler (made famous by the film Man Vs Snake). Not only does Nibbler allow for some lengthy breaks, a byte rollover bug can end the player’s game if they accumulate too many extra lives, thus actively encouraging players to occasionally sit back and let lives die off.
Tim McVey recalls talking “a lot of breaks” during his billion point game in 1984, without offering any recollections as to whether there were official rules around these breaks (at 5:20):
I started at 2:00 on Sunday afternoon, which we were supposed to start at noon, so I started late. And… my game actually officially ended at quarter ’til eleven on Tuesday morning. So officially, they said I played 44 hours and 45 minutes. I took a lot of breaks. Maybe I took too many, I don’t know. The game was reasonably long, longer than it needed to be I’ve come to find out several times since then. But… It’s the chicken and the egg, you know. Did I take too many breaks, and make my game go too long cuz I got a higher score, or was the breaks I took enough that allowed me to get to that score?
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/46.TimMcveyTalkingNibbler.webm
Given that an idle Nibbler player loses lives at a modest pace, and that the byte rollover introduces a hard cap to how many extra lives can be accumulated, it’s common for modern Nibbler players to simply take whatever extended breaks the game allows
[S5] However, not a whole week after indicating to East Side Dave that nobody present for his 1999 Pac-Man score was a referee yet, Billy went on Josh Houslander’s show to say that the tape was not intended to be the basis for its verification (at 7:50):
As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even in charge of the recording there at Funspot. Again, I… didn’t even own a camera. So… It was only through the kindness of other people that all of that came to be. At no time was the recording of what was goin’ on there ever meant to be a means of verification, in… in any circumstance. I mean, it wasn’t at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSzpjo8Oe0
So if it wasn’t verified by tape, and it wasn’t verified by referee, does that make the score unofficial? No different than if you just rolled up on any arcade on any weekend, and pound out a score that you didn’t bother fully recording?
In the interest of clarity, Billy does seem to bounce back and forth between different historical situations in his descriptions to Houslander, thus the bit about the tape not being intended as verification could have been a reference to his fake DK score he claims he did at Boomers in 2010. But I’m not sure the argument “Much of what Billy says is indecipherable word salad” really helps him when he insists we believe his stories.
[S6] Corcoran also made clear that, per TG policy at the time, Todd’s tape (and thus his strategies) could not be released without Todd’s permission. He specifically cited Billy’s Pac-Man strategies as an example of proprietary tactics that players were entitled to keep secret from their competitors:
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/10989-%C2%A0barnstorming-game-1-3204-what-the/page/2/#comments
But don’t think for a moment that Corcoran was an honest dealer in all this. The “secret strategy” excuse was used to cover for multiple fraudulent Barnstorming claims by Rogers, including a time of 32.04 (which was later attributed to a coffee stain). Once that time was disqualified, Todd was credited with a time of 32.50 (still faster than the current non-glitch world record) which Corcoran claimed was achieved and recorded in his presence at the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas in 2002:
https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/710yi3/history_i_have_reason_to_believe_todd_rogers_was/
Former TG referee Wolff Morrow, on the other hand, is an honest dealer. In that same Atari Age thread, he discussed a conversation he’d had with Robert Mruczek, to the point that unfair advantages must be revealed to all players in the interest of competition:
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/10989-%C2%A0barnstorming-game-1-3204-what-the/page/8/#comments
[S7] When asked at Free Play Florida in 2014 whether it’s legal to use glitches or manufacturer mistakes in high score attempts, Billy’s response (heard at about 24:20) is:
It depends on the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US35ZSUPXv8
[S8] As one of my research colleagues remarked:
My biggest issue is the blatant double standards that TG employed. If RF had gone to FS in the middle of June on the sly before Mitchell, there is No way a Mitchell led TG would’ve accepted his submission. Even if he had all the evidence under under the sun. I’ll go further and say they would’ve used their influence and strong armed FS into dismissing the attempt. “Say the right thing or we’ll find somewhere else to have our own tournaments. All the top players will come to ours over yours.” “Say the right thing.” And we all know where we’ve heard that quote before. I feel sorry for the poor f***ers bending over backwards following a giant list of TG’s prerequisites in order to get one of those god awful certificates and a few seconds of fame. When all Mitchell (and others) had to do was wave his hand.
[S9] The only indication we found of the origin of the “Stacked” pattern was on this YouTube description, from dave88rock:
This a safe easy to run 9th key Pac-Man Pattern I call ‘Stacked’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzR9FgazHRQ
It’s unknown whether dave88rock originated the pattern, or just the name, or whether this is an odd bit of rhetoric. (In a sense, I too call the pattern “Stacked”, although I did not invent it.)
[S10] Again, with the math presented in “Dot One”, your score on a perfect score pace will be 365,600 after the first 20 boards. From then on, you get 12,600 on each ninth key board. (This is 2,400 points from 240 dots, 200 points from four power pellets, and 10,000 points from two keys.) Multiply this 12,600 by 50 boards, and you get 630,000 points. Add that to the 365,600, and you get 995,600 points after the first 70 boards.
On board 71, using the “Stacked” pattern Billy uses, you eat 72 dots (for 720 points) before eating the first key. This bumps your score up to 996,320 at the time your score rolls over, making that your banked high score for your first million.
79 boards at 12,600 points per board is 995,400 points. Thus, having finished the first 70 boards with 995,600 points, you finish board 149 with a score of 1,991,000. On board 150, you again start by eating 72 dots (for 720 points), and the first key (for 5,000 points), putting your score at 1,996,720. Note that, if you are tracing the pattern with your finger, at this point you will be passing over dots you’ve already eaten. You then eat 57 more dots (for 570 more points), while passing over 10 previously eaten dots, before eating a power pellet (for 50 points), putting your score up to 1,997,340. From there, you eat 21 dots (for 210 points), while passing 13 eaten dots, to eat your next power pellet (for 50 points), bumping the score up to 1,997,600. You then eat 48 dots (for 480 points), passing over 21 previously eaten dots, putting your score up to 1,998,080. You then eat the second key, rolling over your score, making 998,080 your new banked high score for your second million.
Once again, 79 boards at 12,600 points per board is 995,400. Adding that to the 1,991,000 you had after 149 boards gives you 2,986,400. But you can actually add one more board worth 12,600 points before the next rollover, giving you 2,999,000 points at the end of the 229th board. On board 230, you get the easy math again. Eat 72 dots (for 720 points), before eating the first key, giving you a score of 2,999,720 as you hit your third and final million.
[S11] Twin Galaxies’ Facebook livestream from March 2018 was located here:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=10156194515649904
The Pac-Man footage started at about 13:30 in “Part 2” of the stream, and ran until about 22:20. However, as this project is being published, the page is currently under a privacy lock. The first portion of that live stream can be seen here (albeit without the Pac-Man footage):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iirf4_jiX0Y
[S12] The full two-hour video was originally made available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ufz16AafaY
The shorter highlight compilation was available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TuU0VwOqsc
Additionally, the tape was made public as part of Twin Galaxies’ video archive here, before later being disabled:
https://view.vzaar.com/23489924/video
[S13] Billy started adjusting his seat more and more frequently the later the tape went on. This would be done either between boards, or sometimes during the spot halfway through the ninth key pattern where Billy’s going in a straight line from near the bottom all the way to the top (seen in purple on the right side of the given ninth key pattern).
[S14] In the October 2000 issue of Shift magazine, Billy made a reference to having told himself on board 21 he wanted to get all the way to the split screen without messing up his pattern:
Note that he did not specify whether that started with board 21, or was to start on the following board (which is what we see on his tape).
[S15] If you want to be technical, Billy went off-pattern at score 1,896,930. His first off-pattern dot put him up to 940. For clarity, I used a screenshot that showed him clearly off-pattern. The whole off-pattern board took him two minutes and 38 seconds. This board can be seen at 1:49:40 in the full recording.
[S16] In Exhibit A, Billy first gives the more specific figure of 1.89 million for his first bad turn (at 10:40):
So I’m going, I’m running, I’m doing it, and I’m at a million 890 thousand, when I made my first bad turn. Just… dopey.
Then later in the same presentation, he gives the “1.9 million” approximation, at 44:50:
When you go off-pattern, like I did at 1.9 million, to show you how difficult it is, I’m gonna try to do one board without a pattern.
Again, 1.9 million is a fair approximation.
[S17] The video from Retropalooza 2019 can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrwhcConqs
At 4:13:20, Billy starts telling the story of going off-pattern for the first time in his claimed 1999 perfect score. He starts out a bit unsure exactly which board he went off-pattern on, before correctly identifying it as board 142 (the one starting on score 1,888,600). However, Billy incorrectly identifies the wrong turn as occurring immediately after the second key:
And where did the bad turn come? Right there, I turned out there, instead of up here.
Surely, with this new information, Billy will soon hop on social media and clarify “Okay, sorry guys, I guess my memory sucks after all.”
[S18] Again, for those especially curious, board 147 starts at 1:55:50 in the full recording. This board took him one minute and twelve seconds, less than half the time of his previous off-pattern board, which he played much more carefully.
[S19] With regard to Billy’s pattern mistake at 1.96mil, I looked to see if maybe Billy’s pattern had been subtly disrupted prior to that turn, and that possibly (due to ghost positions) he knew he had to bail on it. But no, that was giving him too much credit. He just plain went the wrong way (as he admitted verbally). Here’s a comparison between boards 146 (where he correctly turned left) and 147 (where he incorrectly turned right), in the moment just before that turn:
[S20] Billy also says his next mistake was the “next board” (after the 1.9 million mistake) in his interview with Scene World, at 6:40:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogBgrqY4FY
[S21] On a technical note, based on Twin Galaxies’ livestream, it was observed by others that this tape had an audio/video desync:
The tapes were sent to Twin Galaxies and Jace Hall played a little bit of one in March during a livestream. The tapes showed that the sound was not in sync with the video, being slightly behind. However, given that the machine’s refresh rate is 60.61Hz and a camcorder records at 59.94Hz, this is unremarkable.
The digital copy we were provided showed no significant desync on the early boards. The two do desync later on, but it is actually the audio that slightly precedes the video. However, that may not be reflective of any desync in the original tape.
[S22] If you prefer not to take Billy’s Twitter as a source, as any social media post may have been typed out and posted by his son, Billy himself tells an equivalent story of his score being at “the busiest arcade in the world, on the busiest weekend that they have”, in Exhibit D at 1:02:50.
[S23] As for the story of the kid unplugging the machine, knowing Billy, it could be a story he made up to explain away his day one failure. We still have only his and his friends’ word to go on. But it is at least a story he was telling the day after it allegedly happened. (Or was it two days after?)
[S24] Notably, Billy tells Tammy on the phone that he “should be back” in Tammy’s vicinity (presumably at home in Florida) on Tuesday. He also tells one of the stragglers that, if all goes well, he’ll “leave tomorrow probably”. With his game being on a Saturday, this gave him a day or so of wiggle room, before he’d have to disappoint dear Tammy.
[S25] In Dwayne’s documentary The Perfect Fraudman, at 1:26:30, you hear another clip from an old Billy interview, telling the same story of crowds and interruptions and media interviews causing him to take between five and six hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFtDVuGxL8
[S26] Given “Tape 2” ends on score 2,054,590, Billy’s repeated references to being in the clear after 2.1 million could indicate that he parked the game around that score while the tape was being changed over, perhaps even using the moment of the changeover to take an extended break. Thus, to paraphrase, “I was in the clear after 2.1 million” could be equivalent to saying “I was in the clear after the changeover to tape 3.”
[S27] It’s actually a bit astonishing that Billy apparently never popped in the tape of his big history-making moment for his own review, which would have assisted his memory for these stories he would go on to tell over and over and over for twenty years – that is, of course, unless there were elements of the tape he did not wish to be reminded of.
[S28] In Exhibit D, at about 1:04:00, Billy tells the story about the kid talking to Ayra on the phone, saying his banked high score on the split screen was 999,990. It’s not a huge deal. Probably not the level of a “lie”, or anything. It just seems a little weird. This is the Grand Master, Mr. Pac-Man with the perfect memory who grills chumps and fakers with all those Pac-Facts that nobody knows the answers to (unless they have Google). He doesn’t know off the top of his head at a moment’s notice what his banked high score is when he hits the split screen? Why would “all nines” even be informative at all to Ayra? You can’t even get to the split screen with a score less than 663,000 (without using rack advance), thus any displayed current score less than that (as the displayed current score would be on a perfect score run entering the split screen) would indicate the score rolled over at least once.
[S29] Here’s a Twin Galaxies announcement for the Mall of America event (which does not mention anything about Pac-Man):
https://www.zophar.net/news-archive/video-game-festival-@-mall-of-america-2177.html
Pac-Man does however feature on the schedule for that event:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020223114356/http://www.twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/festival_schedule.pl
There were two “Perfect Pac-Man” presentations, at 4:00 pm on Friday and 11:00 am on Saturday. Scheduled for 4:00 pm was a “Billy Mitchell-Rick Fothergill Showdown”, which never occurred because Fothergill was unable to cross the border:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011123203348/http://cubesource.net/features/tg_3.php
As for the provenance of the perfect score being played on the big screen, on page 45 of his book, Balderramos specifically says that “Billy Mitchell’s video of his perfect game was in the spotlight on the big video wall” at the 2001 event. There were not many other videotaped perfect scores they could have been replaying at that time. Also, a Twin Galaxies announcement prior to the event does mention that “Mitchell will demonstrate how to achieve perfect games on Pac-Man and Donkey Kong” at the event (whatever a “perfect game” of Donkey Kong is):
Some additional reporting on TG’s “Video Game Festival”, written by another person named Billy, can be found here:
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/1864/twin-galaxies-video-game-festival
There’s not much particularly relevant to our story there. Among the photos, we see Billy Mitchell playing Donkey Kong Junior, and posing for a photo alongside Dwayne Richard:
That coverage, currently hosted by Nintendo World Report, was originally published under the site’s previous name, “Planet GameCube”:
[S30] The included photo from RePlay Magazine was taken from a physical copy, and not the linked scan. The photo was printed in monochrome.
[S31] Out of several images from the Mall of America event that can be found on Walter Day’s Facebook (all of which are accessible through the provided link), thirteen appear relevant to the topic of Billy Mitchell’s Pac-Man tape. What follows is a list of those thirteen photos (four of which are used in “Dot Nine” proper), assembled in chronological order with regard to the progress on Billy’s tape.
First up, this look at the Cherry board is very obviously the earliest point of progression we have:
The photographer was diligent enough to get a close-up of the sign affixed to the television, identifying the playback as belonging to Billy’s claimed perfect score from 1999.
Next up is a shot of Tim Balderramos and Billy Mitchell, with later progression from “Tape 1” in the background:
The photos skip “Tape 2” entirely, with the next progression being Billy’s gesturing toward the early split screen:
Next, you can see Balderramos and Mitchell still on stage together in front of “Tape 3”, in similar poses from when “Tape 1” was playing. Here, Pac-Man has left the “A7” spot, with all dots still accounted for:
While there’s no apparent game progression, the order in which the photos are posted to Day’s Facebook suggests this picture of him, having now taken the mic, is next in line:
Walter then continues speaking, still with no apparent game progression:
Notice Billy’s Pac-Man plaque has entered the frame. It, along with his “Century” certificate from Walter, and some unknown third thing, remain in view as Billy and Walter share center stage:
Dwayne Richard then joins Billy on stage, with still no apparent game progression:
That was the only photo in which it’s not clear whether the flashing energizers are in on or off state. Each other photo from this event shows them as on. We discussed if this was an indication the playback was paused for a stretch of the presentation, however the Pac-Man and ghost sprites appear to be moving. Again, it seems Billy took an awfully long time on the split screen. The fact of most energizers appearing on could be the result of photographic exposure, or just the luck of the coin flips.
Another shot of old pals Billy and Dwayne on stage:
While those are presented in clear progression in Day’s album, the following photo (also with Billy and Dwayne, and also showing no game progression) is ordered separately:
Finally, we have two photos featuring Dwayne and some youngsters. One of which shows Billy at the “BC” spot:
And lastly, in our only glimpse of progression, we see some eaten dots behind the youngsters, Dwayne, and Walter:
It’s one thing to look at a single photo from this event, and be curious about what else may have been shown. But having a dozen photos showing the game play, including a focus on the arrival on the split screen, makes the absence of the game’s conclusion all the more jarring. As one of my research colleagues remarked:
Here’s the greatest moment in video game history – “the Perfect score” – and Mitchell just walks off stage while the crowd is still staring at a barely-touched play field of eaten dots after at least several minutes of run-time. And it could be even longer? Imagine getting the crowd pumped for a new 1.3 million record score on Donkey Kong, and the unnamed champ has a video of Level 21-1 playing behind him, and he simply walks off stage before the final score is anywhere close to being shown, which is obviously confirmation that you “achieved” the record. Why is Mitchell happy to dazzle the crowd with the big “crazy” garbage screen and leaving the stage when he’s still 5 screens away from the moment that really matters to show the crowd “I did it”?
The album also contains three other photos relevant to the topics of this series. First, is a photo we saw in “Dot Seven” (included twice in the album), showing Billy’s Pac-Man plaque on display at the event:
Also included are two close-up shots of that plaque, and the TG certificate that preceded it:
[S32] FWIW, this episode of G4TV at about 0:30 has footage outside Funspot dated Friday, July 9, 1999, which was the day before Namco’s National Family Fun Day.
[S33] “Hark! I hath found an error!”, a medieval naysayer might say. “I hath seen thine footage from G4, wherefore thou sayeth Billy had eaten unto himself dots numbering 25 on the split screen. But I hath counted them with mine own eye, and counted I did but 26!”
Well, thank you for fact-checking me, Erdrick of Alefgard. No, but seriously, despite my best efforts, I can and will get things wrong on occasion, so it’s good to double-check. But I did not make a mistake this time. Here’s a normal Pac-Man board, with the dots and power pellet Billy had eaten on the split screen colored red:
There’s actually one little dot in that channel above Blinky’s head that doesn’t get eaten. While the split screen effect looks like it takes up “half” the board, it’s actually a little more than half. That one dot does not exist on the split screen, while the others in that channel do.
[S34] Regarding Billy’s score on the split screen board, one might wonder how we can be so confident that Billy had eaten exactly two of the hidden dots if we can’t see which hidden dots have and have not been eaten. (Setting aside that we have the other clip showing Billy’s score at the start of the split screen.) This is because you have to have eaten every single dot and power pellet in the game to get to board 256, and because dots and power pellets are the only things that yield fewer than 100 points. As said previously, the only points you are actually able to miss out on as you progress are fruits and ghosts, and the smallest increment of that is 100 points (the cherry on the very first board). In fact, missing one single ghost actually puts you 1,600 points behind. You are required to eat all 240 small dots and all four power pellets on each of the first 255 boards, meaning that the tens digit of your score will always be 0 when you start the split screen (or, in fact, when you start any board).
[S35] Okay, technically, this hi-res Nours photo is not the same one we showed in “Dot Six”. That one, which was printed in Tips and Tricks magazine, was a slightly different angle than the Nours photo, but they were both from the same session.
Also, one may be inclined to curse that Pac-Man mascot for wearing a big stupid top hat that gets in the way of what we want to see. But to be fair, that hat is what’s allowing a person of normal height to wear the mascot costume. Otherwise, the spherical Pac-Man character himself would have had to be impractically large around.
[S36] Regarding the high-resolution Nours photo, you could also say, as I did at first, that the point where the blue maze boundary appears to fade is not exactly where the boundary ends on an actual split screen. However, since we’re looking at an angled photo scan showing a differently angled television playing a differently angled recording, ultimately I wouldn’t put much stock in a minute variation of where the boundary appears to fade.
[S37] Comparing the hi-res Nours photo to the other photo, with Billy pointing at the screen, it does seem like we’d be able to see the dots along the game path if they were there. But one may still hesitate to say the dots are certainly absent without a better look.
[S38] Billy likes to joke that the initials “BC” stand for “Billy Champion” or “Beat Canadians”. It is perhaps the opportunity to make this joke that plays into his decision to tell everyone he parked at “BC” instead of “A7” in July 1999. Of course, knowing what we know now, the more accurate one would be “Billy Cheated”.
Billy’s current website, www.videogameplayerofthecentury.com, is currently registered to an organization called “BC Productions”. Again, we know what “BC” really stands for.
[S39] The extended quote from Exhibit A at 57:50 is as follows:
It was the night before I was traveling, I go “There’s gotta be an easier way.” So I traveled through the tunnel, came out here [points to the characters “A7”] and stopped. I flicked down, and pointed up right there. The red guy came right at me, he hit the wall in front of me, he went to the side and down, and got stuck in the channel. So… What I did was, I called it “the trap”. I went and I sat there, on every board, and… three of the guys, not him, three of the guys got trapped. The other guy ran loose. Whatever. Not a problem. Then I thought, “Gee, there should be an easier way.” I ran through, and instead of pointing up there, I let him run down, right on top of the “BC”, the Pac-Man sits. They come down to get you, and on their way down, they move over into this alleyway, and they run right past you. They run halfway over you, the three guys. The fourth guy, I can trap also. It’s a lot trickier, and I usually don’t do it. So with those three guys trapped, there was no danger. I could easily get all the dots. I could easily get the dots on the other side. And when I chose to die, because there were no more points to get, I once again went up, went through the tunnel. When you’re in the tunnel, you pull down, you immediately turn down, and you stop there.
At the beginning of this explanation, Billy physically gestured to the left, making clear his claim that he traveled to the left through the side tunnel to start his split screen.
To be clear, in both Exhibits A and E, Billy does not outright say “I parked at the ‘BC’ park spot in my game on July 3, 1999.” He just does his usual style of giving a long roundabout answer, talking about how he found one spot, and then after some time has passed (Minutes? Days? Years?) found a second spot, all of which is told strictly in the context of his July 1999 visit to Funspot.
As a footnote to a footnote, in Exhibit A at 57:00 (prior to the above quote), Billy describes exploring the split screen with Chris Ayra when they discovered there was a channel that would sometimes indefinitely trap the ghosts. Since Chris was unaware of Billy’s impending trip to Funspot in July (no matter what he says now), this means Billy was aware of this trap on the split screen well before his trip, with perhaps Ayra being the one to show him. Thus, the only thing left to be decided in June or July of 1999 was which spot was ideal for forcing ghosts into that channel. This makes it weird that this one decision, through the magic of Billy’s storytelling, becomes this massive game-breaking discovery.
[S40] The NGenres page does not specifically say their split screen photo was taken at the 2001 “Video Game Festival” at Mall of America. However, the other photos shown on the page are from that event (demonstrated in part by Billy’s identical shirt, tie, and name badge), and the site includes other similar coverage from that event. Also, there’s no indication Billy’s tape was ever shown on a giant 3×3 TV grid at any other time prior to 2001. Also, the image file itself is in a site directory named “vgfestival”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011219102231/http://hub.ngenres.com/vgfestival/lastlevel.gif
[S41] The original version of this publication said we never see Billy return to the “BC” spot in available media. We discovered these Mall of America photos, posted to Walter Day’s Facebook in 2009, after this project was initially published.
[S42] To be clear, we only have footage of Billy’s first life on the split screen. Thus, one could argue, perhaps Billy uses the “BC” spot on subsequent lives. However, this seems unlikely, as there would have been no reason to play his cat-and-mouse game and risk danger of dying on the split screen if he knew the golden trick to avoid all of it.
In Ayra’s perfect score, achieved in January 2000, Ayra goes immediately to the “BC” spot and checks with Billy: “Is that it?” So while Billy did not use this technique during his split screen (in the available footage), it was known to the two of them six months later.
I inquired with David Race as to the possibility that it was Rick Fothergill who originated the discovery of the “BC” spot. The idea would be that, if Rick had used it in his July 1999 perfect score, and if Billy or Ayra had access to his submission tape, they could have learned about the technique from Rick during that six month window. However, Rick confirmed to David that he did not know of that trick at that time and did not use it during his 1999 perfect score, instead defeating the split screen using a pattern.
[S43] It could be Billy’s trepidation and uncertainty during his July 1999 game that convinced him and Ayra of the need to develop a more foolproof technique to defeat the split screen.
[S44] Billy also demonstrates the “BC” spot to Toru Iwatani (along with Iwatani’s same translator from the Pixels panel) in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jDA5dq7GuI
Billy specifically makes a show of how easy the split screen is using that spot “because you trap the guys”.
[S45] In “Dot Three” supplemental, we gave examples of Billy ascribing the number of random spectators as “about a hundred”, or in one case, a “zillion”. Additionally, we have this colorful description from a 2007 podcast interview with Major Nelson (at 30:40):
In that particular game, there were people all around, there were other players, there was employees, and there was even… two guys, two reporters there, so without kidding you, I was stopping sometimes in the middle, I was answering questions…
https://majornelson.com/2007/05/06/show-224-the-one-with-e-and-the-pac-man-expert/
[S46] Here’s Randy Lawton’s statement, for anyone who doesn’t want to have to go find it:
[S47] Billy’s 2019 visit to Funspot, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his claimed perfect score in 1999, will be a story for another time. However, on the subject of Tina Gebhard, you can briefly see her on Billy’s preserved stream, at 4:23:30:
A minute later, Billy begins conversing with her. Tina lingers near the game, out of view, until about 4:28:50. A couple times, Billy refers back to the events of May and July 1999 during her chat with Tina, but no corroboration from her is ever offered.
[S48] In Tom Fisher’s sworn statement, he claims to have served aboard nuclear-powered submarines and to have held top government clearance. To be clear, I made no effort to confirm these things, nor do I have any interest in contesting them. These items have been repeated by people in Billy’s circle, with the implication being Mr. Fisher’s credibility is thus above reproach:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/robbie-lakeman/wall/9755/response-to-david-race8217s-misinformation/
Of course, this argument is a fallacy on the face of it, but if I don’t mention it, then it will appear as though I had no answer. This can be addressed simply by pointing out that former TG head referee Ron Corcoran, a notorious scumbag and liar and former friend of Billy’s, held similar credentials as a former U.S. Army Ranger, before going to prison for doing very, very bad things. (If you want to find out what Corcoran did that is so awful, Google is available, although you may wish you hadn’t looked.) To be crystal clear, I have no reason to think Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Fisher bear any similarities whatsoever beyond the aforementioned military careers and government clearances. I write this only to point out that the argument “I held government clearance, therefore I’m trustworthy” is a fallacy. Mr. Fisher’s testimony can be considered on its own merits, not on the basis of unrelated credentials.
[S49] To be clear, it was not Billy’s side who made Carlos’ signed statement public, so perhaps they indeed had fooled themselves into thinking it would stay between the lawyers. However, Team Billy did furnish it to both Guinness and Twin Galaxies along with their legal threat, and TG was well within their right to publish the threat and accompanying evidence they received, which was how the statement was ultimately made public.
[S50] Corey’s statement was signed August 25, 2019. The Facebook comments were earlier, spread between late June and late July, 2019.
[S51] Note the following remark from Corey later in that Facebook conversation. It seems he does recall the basic idea of what a perfect score entails:
However, even if Corey did witness the actual end of Billy’s game (something which he did not specify in his signed statement), it’s entirely possible Billy did collect some hidden dot points, but didn’t collect the maximum necessary on each life. Thus, it would be a question of how closely Corey was paying attention to the score at that time.
Corey also re-emphasizes, as Billy does, how there’s no meaningful skill difference between a perfect score on 3+1 settings and a perfect score on 5+1 settings. As I expressed in this installment, fundamentally, I do agree, although that’s with the concession of using the “BC” park spot to trap the non-Clyde ghosts in the side tunnel. (Due to his two-way script, Clyde avoids getting near you except in the bottom left corner.) Perhaps Corey has bought Billy’s line all these years of him having used the “BC” spot to finish his game in 1999? At any rate, with the additional ghost roaming around the board as we’ve seen on Billy’s tape, the possibility of dying on the split screen becomes much more real.
Also… Does Corey think that subsequent perfect scores were due to Billy’s bounty, for anyone who could score higher? That doesn’t really make any sense.
[S52] As we discussed way back in “Dot One”, after Pete Bouvier’s passing, Billy retroactively added him as a claimed witness for his 1.062m Donkey Kong score (the one allegedly done at Boomers arcade). This was despite documented statements at the time, as well as others’ recollections, that this score was conjured in Pete’s absence and without his prior knowledge. One could speculate as to why Billy is not explicitly attempting the same with Bob Lawton in 1999, placing him at the scene of his claimed Pac-Man score now that Bob can’t speak for himself. (Again, the cited obituary makes it sound like Bob was present, it’s just never said outright.) One possibility is, perhaps Billy knows his other witnesses would recall the elder Lawton not being present at Funspot at all that day.
[S53] If you’re not familiar with the story of Big Red, see this video by Karl Jobst:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHK0Jg2R7SQ
And of course, the still shot of Billy I used is from his video where he threatens Karl with legal action over a previous video:
[S54] If two hours for boards 1-20 seem like a lot, one should remember that the “blue time” boards are much more delicate, especially when played without a pattern (as Billy claims he did in 1999). However, in his more recent Twitch play, the time he takes for those first twenty boards varies significantly. First, in his 2019 game at Funspot, Billy took about two hours and twenty minutes to get through boards 1-20:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sRM4GDud1Q
Much of this play was very slow and plodding, with Billy at times parking Pac-Man to chat with people and sign autographs (something it seems he didn’t have to worry about too much in 1999). So that time could conceivably be shaved by 20 minutes to fit on a VHS tape, if Billy was so concerned about doing so. In fact, in a June 2020 livestream, Billy got through boards 1-20 in just an hour and forty minutes:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/653987405
Then, later that year, on the “20 Year Reunion” machine, Billy went back to taking two hours and five minutes:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/653987405
If you’re interested in a more thorough examination of these streamed games, you’ll have to wait for “Dot Ten”.
[S55] There is other evidence attesting to the existence of a “Tape 1” as well. Tim Balderramos recalled seeing a tape of Billy’s which included “grouping”:
I have never seen Chris’ tape. I did see Billy’s tape at the Video Game Festival – but that was all grouping. I did make a tape – with bits and pieces of my first perfect game – to serve as a “highlight reel” for the festival.
Note that “grouping” would only be occurring on blue time boards (although similar free-hand play could be seen on the occasion Billy goes off-pattern).
Also, in addition to the photo featured in “Dot Nine” proper, I was provided with another photo from a similar moment at the event:
Again, that is a five-digit high score, with one of the digits and the “C” in “SCORE” duplicated across two screens. I was given this photo directly, so I do not have a URL to cite. However, I did find a lower-resolution version of the same photo, uncropped, while trawling through images archived on the old TG website:
[S56] Even if we do get access to Billy’s “Tape 1”, it’s unlikely we’d be able to prove definitively that it’s from a different game than the other tapes, assuming of course that “Tape 1” was recorded on the same Funspot machine. Perhaps we’d get lucky and Billy or some bystander says the date or time or some such. But there may be clues that make us more confident in our guess. The ambient background noise could be identical to the slow Saturday we hear on “Tape 2”, indicating no such switcheroo. Or, alternatively, the scene could sound completely different, like a busy evening.
Hypothetically, given Billy’s story of the machine being moved to a different location during his visit, the sounds from other games could be different. However, given the Mall of America photos, the game recorded on “Tape 1” was almost certainly in the same location as on “Tape 2”. Note the ceiling tiles reflected in the bottom right corner:
On the other hand, the angle at which Billy’s game was filmed is noticeably different in these shots (and not just because of the different aspect ratio). The “Tape 1” footage on the 3×3 display at Mall of America also appears to be tilted differently than on “Tape 2”, although the conflicting curvatures of the televisions make that less certain:
Of course, this is easily explained regardless. Possibly the camera was repositioned when switching between “Tape 1” and “Tape 2”, in a way that it was not moved between “Tape 2” and “Tape 3”. Again, there’s little that would definitively prove or disprove this theory either way.
There is one other practical matter to consider. Billy’s unusual setup to start “Tape 2” suggests a spontaneous maneuver, possibly the result of Billy being excited to finally have a run past the early difficult boards. If “Tape 1” was retained from an earlier game, that same park with the same remaining dots would have had to be set up each time a new “Tape 2” was attempted. However, this assumes “Tape 1” is complete, and that Billy did not take longer than two hours for the early boards. If he kept playing on as the recording ran out just like he did at the end of “Tape 2”, or had the camera stopped manually at some point prior to that park spot, then there would have been no ending to have to match.
[S57] We are certainly not the first to remark on the fact that Billy’s tapes are incomplete, or that (as a videotape submission) these breaks in continuity should have been grounds for disqualification. Pat Laffaye, who attended the May 1999 Funspot tournament and who showed up the day after Billy’s big game, has remarked on the same:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,7333.msg79423.html#msg79423
And while it’s not as if we need Billy’s confirmation that the recording was incomplete due to breaks in continuity between tapes, we do get it, courtesy of the NGenres interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011026233825/http://hub.ngenres.com/pacman_interview2.html
[S58] Note that, while most given estimates for Billy’s score round down from six hours to about five and a half, the Nours magazine profile on Billy (specifically the white text on red background) quotes Billy as saying the score took over six hours [GT]:
Pac-Man is a special game for me. I started playing 17 years ago and was immediately absorbed in it, and two years later I was listed as a world record holder in the Guinness Book of Records. But I stopped doing it for a while. I was there. However, when I heard that a Canadian player was trying to record, I thought I’d try to achieve perfection. It took me more than 6 hours, but I was happy.
https://www.bandainamcoent.co.jp/corporate/bnours/nours/vol26/pdf/26_03-07.pdf
Again, it’s wild that we can never get any sort of firm time to what was supposedly the “Holy Grail” achievement in all of video games.
[S59] While Billy has not used the “Those tapes were for entertainment purposes only” defense here (as he has with his DK scores), it would be interesting if he did, given that very little “entertainment” value has been derived from providing them only to Namco and to G4 TV, plus whatever portion of footage he showed off at Wonder Park in Japan and Mall of America.
[S60] Gosh, did Billy bring Ayra’s tape to the UK specifically because it does have the final moment?
[S61] While the similarities between the Namco page and the GameSpot Japan page may not be a mystery that needs solving for our topic of interest, we did look into reconciling which of those sources originated the claim that Billy’s tape contained “the moment when the record was achieved”.
The Namco page is not a fully fleshed out write-up the way the GameSpot one is, which suggests maybe that was the page to lift the text from the other:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030222094937/http://www.namco.co.jp/home/pac20/billy-visit/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818004700/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9909/16/news05.html
However, the GameSpot page includes a “(C) NAMCO” note at the bottom. We looked for other instances of this note on pages relating to Namco properties, thinking it perhaps referred to the use of names like “Pac-Man” in the write-up, but we did not find it used consistently in that way:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001029030916/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9909/17/news05.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000824002016/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9909/19/news04.html
Another page relating to Tekken Tag Tournament did include that note. However, it also included an explicit nod to participation by the Dreamcast Magazine editorial department, making it seem unlikely that the page of our interest used such outside material without an explicit credit:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818052319/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9908/18/news03.html
Ultimately, we did not come to a definitive answer. However, the most likely explanation is that there was a third item from which both pages originate. This was probably an original Namco press statement in Japanese, which was posted in its entirety by GameSpot (hence the “(C) NAMCO” note at the bottom with no other elaboration), and which was cannibalized for Namco’s own splash page about Billy’s visit (hence no attribution on the Namco page either, since they have no obligation to cite their own press release).
[S62] In his interview with Tipster, at 17:40 and again at 21:20, Mruczek also describes finding the three Billy tapes among a batch of tapes sent to him by Walter Day, years after 1999. Between those two timestamps, Mruczek describes trying to give the tapes back to Walter Day after his (Robert’s) separation from TG, and getting no answer. Eventually, Mruczek recalls that Brian Kuh (Mr. “There’s a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up”) took the tapes off his hands, and turned them over to TG referee Shawn Cram in New Hampshire.
[S63] I reached out to Mruczek again in relation to this project, and Mruczek confirmed many of these same things. He recalls watching Billy’s final tape, and recalls watching Ayra’s tape after having seen Billy’s, though he does not recall if the two viewings were around the same time. Mruczek added that he does not remember how long Billy’s tape (in his recollection) lingered on the final score.
[S64] In 2009, Mruczek went into detail about this cache of tapes in his possession, noting the existence of both Billy’s and Ayra’s perfect score tapes together:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php?topic=2235.0
[S65] On the Ayra tape, no one is heard answering the phone “World Record Headquarters” (a line made famous by King of Kong) in either the cut-up version or the recently published full version.
[S66] While the subject of Billy’s reenactments will be a subject for “Dot Ten”, amazingly, his 2019 trip to Funspot did conclude with Funspot staffer Tina Gebhard taking a nice, crisp digital photo of Billy’s score for the occasion:
https://issuu.com/weirspublishing/docs/wtimes071119
While I can’t share Billy’s original Twitch stream from July 2019, in the extended cut, you can actually see the moment Tina approaches the game, camera in hand, and takes that picture of the final score:
Shame nobody thought to do that in 1999 (albeit with an older analog camera available at the time).
[S67] For a full recounting of the G4TV clips featuring Billy’s “Tape 3”, here are the four segments featuring Pac-Man:
“Icons: Pac-Man (Part 1)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtBeGx4fTE
“Icons: Pac-Man (Part 2)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuRt6G2QLdU
“Icons: Pac-Man (Part 3)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX18yB7aitM
“Hi Score: Billy Mitchell”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmVv7QQ-1qg
“Part 1” contains a clip at 0:50
“Part 2” contains no clips
“Part 3” contains clips at 5:28, 5:30, 5:56, 5:59, 6:04, 6:08, 6:13
“Hi Score” contains a clip at 1:27
In chronological order, these clips are
“Part 1”, at 0:50 (also seen in “Part 3” at 5:28)
“Part 3” at 5:30
“Part 3” at 5:56
“Part 3:” at 5:59
“Part 3” at 6:04
“Part 3” at 6:08
“Part 3” at 6:13 (also seen in “Hi Score” at 1:27)
[S68] To the question of whether “Tape 3” ran out before Billy finished: Let’s set aside the remainder of board 155 (which “Tape 2” ended on), and assume “Tape 3” starts on board 156. Conveniently for our math, that would mean “Tape 3” consists of 100 boards (156 through 255) plus the split screen. Based on the “Tape 2” copy we were provided, the ninth key pattern Billy uses takes just shy of 55 seconds from the load-up of one board to the next. (So, over several boards, one second will be cut off that time – that is, if Billy stays on pattern.) For 100 boards, that’s 5,500 seconds, or 91 minutes and 40 seconds, which would leave 29 minutes and 20 seconds on a two-hour tape. That seems like a lot of time – enough to complete 32 ninth key patterns. But the split screen is no ordinary board. Recall the strategy of parking up (either at “A7” or “BC”), and waiting for the ghosts to funnel themselves into a trap, before proceeding. Plus you have to factor in Billy’s cat-and-mouse game on the split screen, as described in today’s installment. Also, even setting aside Billy’s bogus stories about crowds of people distracting him, or unnamed Boston reporters interviewing him in the middle of his split screen, Billy claims to have made a phone call to Chris Ayra, and a phone call to Walter Day, and he claims to have received a phone call from Rick Fothergill, all during the span of the split screen. (Although Fothergill claims his call was after the conclusion of Billy’s game.)
Is that enough time to get the whole split screen on tape? Sure, if Billy was in a hurry to do it, but by his own stories, he was not.
[S69] Given everything else we’ve seen, we would be right to ask when exactly this claimed call to Chris Ayra would have happened. Based on available footage, it’s possible this call could have been made during Billy’s initial park on the split screen, between the clips seen at 5:30 and 5:55 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX18yB7aitM
My research colleague wondered about the odd timing of the claimed phone call:
Was the call at the beginning of the split screen and intended to act as some kind of weird insurance policy for Mitchell who was less than confident on tackling the split? If Billy messed up he’d keep it quiet and would still have Ayra backing him up that he’d made it?
But if the call was made later than was claimed, an untimely death on the split screen could have changed the nature of this phone call completely, as my colleague further illustrated:
I’m now wondering if he did call Ayra at the end. The “end” being the point he messed up on during the split and NOT the 360. I do wonder if Mitchell then immediately parked up on his next remaining man and called Ayra to legitimise he’d “done it” more than likely to appease any onlookers unsure of the situation. Remember this is pre-FaceTime calling. Ayra and subsequently Day (maybe he called Day first?) had no screen to look at, but just the word of a liar desperate to grab the first perfect but unwilling to start all over again.
It would also be pretty hilarious if, after a death, Billy did some quick head math, decided how many dots he should eat to end on a score of 3,333,180, then assuaged any onlookers with a copy of the 1998 TG book. “See? 3,333,180! Perfect score achieved!”
[S70] This might be a bit pedantic, but one might ask if Billy could have played up to the split screen, accidentally died (without the bonus points) on the split screen, and then quickly started another game, played to exactly 333,360, killed the game, and then (along with the banked high score) passed that off as a perfect score. The answer is “Highly unlikely”, but in my diligence, and to satisfy any theorycrafters out there, I’ll explain what would happen. (For the sake of discussion, let’s assume no one’s standing around watching Billy do all of this, which would be blatantly questionable.)
On the cherry board, your ghost points are 12,000 out of 14,800 total. So a massive percentage! But, ghost points aren’t easy. The most are gained on the fourth ghost, which gives 1,600 each time. What this means is, to actually collect serious points on the early boards, you have to be playing them perfectly – all four ghosts on each power pellet. Recall that Billy claims to have played those boards the slow freehand way, but let’s say he used a pattern this time (assuming he recalled such a pattern). That would still take quite a bit of time. The patterns for the blue time boards are much longer than the ninth key pattern. You’d have to play perfect halfway through board 18 before you hit 333,360. If someone who knows what they’re looking at comes up to you during that lengthy stretch of time you’re eating ghosts, the jig is up. (This assumes, of course, that this person believes you and isn’t intending to lie on your behalf. But if they’re just going to lie for you anyway, why bother with the charade at all?) If you played without ghosts, which would also require either atypical patterns or freehand play, you’d have 161,600 points at the end of board 20, and would require 13 and a half more boards to hit 333,360 (since keys give a whopping 5,000 each time).
But another problem emerges. Let’s say you do this, you play perfect through board 17, skip the second key on board 18, and eat just enough dots to hit 333,360 on the nose, then kill your game. You wait for the game to go back into attract mode (since you don’t have a split screen to photograph), and then once the board is clear, you take a picture, with both the current current score (minus the millions digit) and the correct banked high score. And you show it to the world. “A-ha! Look at my totally legitimate and not at all cheated photo of my perfect score!” (Or in Billy’s case, never show it to anyone, because it may not exist.)
However, this ruse would still be foiled. Here’s Jamey Pittman’s perfect score, on YouTube. Advance to the very end, and see if you can notice the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoH0vz3Mqk
Even after the game goes back into attract mode, the fruit display in the corner still shows the glitched display from the split screen – the first seven fruits, with keys drawn on top of them. That display would give you away.
It should be noted that Billy’s witnesses (Tom Fisher and Ken Sweet) probably would not have noticed this discrepancy, and possibly could have been fooled into thinking Billy had hit the magic score, especially if that display showed all keys. And perhaps Billy assured them “Oh, don’t worry, I already took a pic of the final screen, no need for you to do that.” But that’s just speculation. Since we have no such photograph showing “333,360” (not even close up), there’s no need to think any such charade was performed.
And of course, trying to play up to the split screen, a whole million points shy of a perfect score (by skipping exactly 200 keys, for instance) would take way too long for this scenario. That time would be better served just playing for a legitimate perfect score anyway.
[S71] As we’ve seen, different players have had different definitions of what “counts” as a perfect score. Would it really be so out-of-character for Billy Mitchell to define his as “Get to the split screen on perfect pace on your first life” the moment he dies, and then to go around telling everyone a selectively framed story, like “A perfect score is every dot, every energizer, every prize, and every blue man. I first did a perfect score in 1999…”
And there was also this odd quote from Exhibit D, featured back in “Dot Four”, where in a possible slip of the tongue Billy says he has to do everything on his “first guy” which also happens to be his “final guy” (at 1:04:40):
So I finally finish, and I finally close out the final guy, the final point. I’m doing it on the first guy, which is what you have to do for a perfect score.
[S72] At 18:30 in this fireside chat, Goldeneye speedrunner Ryan White discusses another competitor who fell victim to bad luck, and then decided to submit a faked run because he felt the game “owed” him:
Later, at 20:50, White attributes similar motivation to his own decision to submit faked runs as well.
Also, at about 13:40 in this video, the late Apollo Legend discussed another example of a cheater confessing to having used the internal excuse of “I could’ve done it”. Apollo then offered his own opinion that many cheaters enter the community with good intentions, and then after experiences with frustration or bad luck, decide to cheat to get the recognition they feel they rightfully deserve:
Unfortunately, while many competitive gamers have been caught cheating, relatively few have chosen to be contrite and sincere about their motivations after the fact.
[S73] On the subject of Billy declining to show any photo of his claimed 3,333,360 score from 1999, there was an interaction at CGE UK in 2005 which in hindsight is dripping with irony. You can watch it starting at 39:00 here:
First, Billy calls a guy up from the audience who’s wearing a t-shirt showing the split screen. Billy of course has to make it all about himself, commenting that that’s what his screen looked like. (Again, this was well before he retconned in a story about doing a second perfect score in Japan, so this would only be in reference to Funspot in July 1999.) Then, just to make it clear, Steve Sanders points out that the game image on the t-shit has the perfect score. Finally, Billy jokes:
I’m supposed to have a copyright on that photo, but I don’t know what happened to it.
Obviously the reference to a copyright itself is a joke, and I’m not trying to frame it otherwise. But it’s unintentionally hilarious for the guy who has never shown his big game’s final score, even though he almost certainly has the proof, to even jokingly claim he has personal dominion over a screen with that score he won’t show you.
[S74] You may ask yourself about these few presentations where a portion of the final tape has been shown – the Mall of America event, for instance. Surely, no one watched that presentation thinking “Here comes an avalanche of baloney.” They were excited to see what they could. And if Walter Day said “Well, that goes on for a lot longer”, or “We don’t quite have time to show the whole thing”, most people would shrug their shoulders and say “Welp, I guess that’s all we get to see.”
To quote Walter himself, from King of Kong, at 50:20:
When the man says “I want to see your papers”, and Obi-Wan Kenobi goes “You don’t need to see our papers”, and suddenly the guy says “You can go, I don’t need to see your papers.”
Also, if the final score was shown, wouldn’t attendees like Tim Balderramos distinctly remember there being a big drum roll and lead up to the record-breaking moment?
You could also ask about the alleged provision of the tapes to Namco. Keep in mind, however, the story that Namco requested Billy’s tapes comes solely from Billy and Walter, who as we’ve seen both make up spurious details to emphasize their stories. But let’s say for the sake of argument it did happen. Namco wasn’t “adjudicating” the score. While Namco programmers did know the ins and outs of the game up to and including the split screen several years prior to these events, their staff in 1999 were not qualified to judge a competitive gaming tape. And as we’ve established, that wasn’t their interest in the score anyway. They wanted promotion for their brand, as well as their new Playstation game. The “perfect Pac-Man” story was already out in the news. Unlike an actual scorekeeper, Namco was never going to say “Sorry, we have to disqualify you because you sent us an incomplete tape.” All they looked at was the veneer of legitimacy (provided by “official scorekeeper” Walter Day), Billy Mitchell’s confidence in his lies (of which he has no shortage), and who Billy Mitchell was as a media-friendly personality.
[S75] Someone will undoubtedly cry foul if I don’t make this clear. In that collage, the center panel and the bottom right panel are from the same long clip. I used them to represent two key items: The cheap overlay with the score, and the final fadeout to Billy’s face, which (aside from possibly the Nours photo) is the deepest we ever see in Billy’s game. Along with the clip showing the start of Billy’s split screen, that’s three of the seven unique clips from G4, meaning I left four other unique clips out altogether. In other words, there’s no padding of the numbers in that collage. The other five are unique photos from different sources (with three of those sources being at the Mall of America event).
[S76] It is acknowledged that Twin Galaxies at one point had copies of Billy’s perfect score tapes among their VHS archive. Thus, it is reasonable to believe the current “Tape 2” in the possession of the current administration of TG is likely that same “Tape 2” from before, held over, while the other two tapes have been separated from it.
As far as a sincere attempt to answer the question of where those specific copies have gone, or how they were separated from “Tape 2”, there are rumors, including that they could be in possession of the Cram family (who took possession of other TG tapes over the years) but nothing is confirmed.
The late Joel West did recall going through a tape stash belonging to Twin Galaxies (although maybe not the same stash) before it was sent to Jace, picking out items that were specifically Walter Day’s personal property. You can hear him in this 2015 interview, at 22:30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Xd_DlCGH4
To be clear, I don’t wish to cast aspersions on the dead. I’m just reporting facts. I never met Mr. West, and have no reason to think he would consider Billy’s perfect score tapes to be Billy’s or Walter’s personal property, but I also have no reason to think he would not consider those as such. It’s possible Mr. West took the tapes out for Billy or Walter without even believing he was doing anything wrong. As to why “Tape 2” was left behind, that’s a good question. Since somebody removed the other two tapes, the most likely explanation was that it was just missed.
[S77] For starters, the given segment from Billy’s legal declaration is part of a longer sequence attempting to paint Jace Hall as a malicious party who is spitefully withholding the tape to hurt Billy:
Note that the tape in TG’s possession would not be able to “refute” any Twin Galaxies allegations (much less in an “undisputed” fashion), because the tape does not verify Billy claim of a perfect score, and because Twin Galaxies made no such allegations about Billy’s claimed Pac-Man score. That score was simply wiped from the leaderboard when other scores by the same player were found to have been fraudulent. (That is my choice of word, not TG’s.)
It’s also odd for Billy to speculate that Jace Hall, personally, withheld this tape to “avoid any public relations nightmares for Twin Galaxies”, knowing that the tape proves nothing either way. This is especially silly in light of the fact that Twin Galaxies did indeed provide a digital copy to a member in good standing such as myself. Maybe some people respond more positively to polite requests than legal demands? Or maybe Billy is used to surrounding himself with people who simply take orders without question.
[S78] I would make a quip about how it’s only to be expected that someone would be inclined or even advised to withhold media perceived to be of benefit to a party who is threatening and suing them. However, the core essence of Team Billy’s allegation against Jace is that he has been withholding this tape since before the documented threats and litigations began (although it’s not clear how early in the process Billy was alluding to legal action in direct communication with Jace). At any rate, I wouldn’t want to be accused of stepping into a Dwayne Richard time vortex.
[S79] There was another similar phone session between Billy Mitchell and Allen Staal on December 28, 2015:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/32378833
While there is nothing particularly relevant to our Pac-Man topic, at 11:30, Billy begins telling stories of the Donkey Kong tape seen in King of Kong:
It’s absurd to think that a tape was accepted that wasn’t crystal clear. Now, for the sake of the movie, it can be done anyway, because it’s a movie. It’s not real. But the fact of the matter is, it added… it added to the drama. But the tape itself, and the original tape, which went to the possession of Twin Galaxies, was absolutely crystal clear.
Billy goes on to say that the game seen on that tape was played in a room with crowds and crowds of people, and that he never had access to that DK circuit board. (This was before the publication of the MAME evidence made custodianship of the circuit boards such a publicly contentious issue, although Billy’s attempts to overemphasize the legitimacy of what were later discovered to be fraudulent tapes stretches back many years before this interview.) Billy then casts aspersions on Steve Wiebe by suggesting there must be some unstated reason Wiebe had multiple DK boards at his house, or that he had an advantage playing on a “Double Donkey Kong” board which, in Billy’s opinion, runs slower than a normal board.
Later, at 1:18:50, when asked if he holds a grudge against Robert Mruczek, Billy responds:
Oh no… Robert’s a good guy. We’ve had a lot of fun together. Yeah, I mean, a lot. And… I look forward to seeing him again when I go to… When I go to New York, I’m not just gonna… I’m not gonna call him, I’m gonna walk into his office so that way he can’t escape me, you know. I’ll, you know, take him to lunch or whatever I do.
This seems to run counter to the characterization offered by the author of Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, which painted Mruczek as a loose cannon, who (according to the author) entered Billy’s King of Kong score without his consent simply to spite Steve Wiebe and the King of Kong filmmakers:
[S80] Another similar admission comes courtesy of Billy’s “Road to Redemption” panel at Southern-Fried Gaming Expo in 2018, which (after having been temporarily removed) can once again be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGrAnBM30-U
During the presentation, Billy talks about different caches of old submission tapes, which are now property of Twin Galaxies. Specifically, Billy alleges that Dwayne Richard (though not by name) arrived at one of those locations and stole his and Chris Ayra’s perfect score tapes for inclusion in his documentaries (at 45:20):
And the person who’s a caretaker of one of those libraries, said “Yes, they were here. And yes, when my brother was here… Yes, they came here, and they took a…” Donkey Kong tapes, the perfect Pac-Man tape, which has been missing for more than eight years. About ten years now. They took my friend’s perfect Pac-Man tape. Both of those tapes showed up in a movie, an Internet movie. Both of them were edited. What you see on the screen is different from what we have.
“What we have”.
Also, it’s hard to think this is just an innocent verbal slip-up, as Billy would have had no frame of comparison to judge the two without having a copy of his own to review. Unless he’s simply referring to the subtitles added by Dwayne in his documentary The Perfect Fraudman, which appear to be the only meaningful difference between that clip and the “Tape 2” provided by Twin Galaxies. But I suppose that’s justification enough for Billy to say his footage was “altered”, which does sound way more nefarious.
Back to the SFGE panel, Billy earlier made a remark that his recordings are for his own benefit, since he claims to always have referees present to authenticate his scores (at 41:30):
I don’t have to record the game. I’m recording the game for my purpose. So when we do a movie, I got it. It’s a better movie. And just so you know I’m not that nice of a guy, yeah, I got more leverage. I want the money. I got kids.
Again, this despite the fact that various scores of his were either attributed to a videotape submission or were otherwise adjudicated on the basis of tapes, or the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of this game footage in movies if that is indeed supposed to be the sole purpose of the recording.
At any rate, this must be why he hasn’t yet published all the evidence he claims to possess proving his scores are real after all. Nobody’s offered to pay him what he’s asking for that evidence, so instead he’s pouring money into lawsuits filled with lies, while keeping the exonerating evidence a secret, as any normal, honest, innocent person would do.
[S81] It would also be interesting if the “Tape 3” recording ended significantly shy of the two hour mark. On one hand, this could be explained by the camera itself running out of battery, as opposed to the tape itself running to the end of its reel. (Note that it hasn’t been identified whether this camera was operating on battery power or through a wall outlet.) However, it’s also interesting to consider the possibility that Billy could later record static over the end of a failed game, in the hope of giving the appearance that the recording ceased prematurely on its own.
[S82] Also, check out the six signatories on that poster. Walter Day, of course, along with Brian Kuh as a DK referee, and TG ref Brien King. Remember John Hardie? He’s back! Along with two other CGE organizers. Seems that crowd loves slinging out “of the century” awards every few years.
[S83] Robbie Lakeman is currently recognized by Twin Galaxies with a score of 1,272,800, 100 points higher than McCurdy’s top score. However, Lakeman’s score was disqualified by Donkey Kong Forum on the bases of explicit stated attempts to cheat by altering game voltages:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/donkey-kong
http://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=2866.0
It should be noted that those with technical expertise have been very clear that this method of cheating cannot work the way Lakeman thinks it does, that the game will either function normally, exhibit many very obvious problems, or will not function at all. However, the stated intent to cheat is a violation of the community’s trust, and is sufficient grounds for disqualification. (In other words, players have to at least pretend to play fair, which Lakeman for his own personal desires has chosen not to do.) I do not control the Twin Galaxies adjudication process which rubber-stamped his submission, but I decline to recognize Lakeman’s claimed 1,272,800 score for the same reason DKF does not recognize it.
[S84] Notably, Funspot manager Gary Vincent chose not to submit a signed statement for Billy’s legal threat. Read into that whatever you will.
[S85] To the topic of Billy outsourcing his authentication, on the East Side Dave Show, at around 12:30, Billy has the audacity to brag about being on Walter Day’s #1 trading card ahead of Ralph Baer, who was featured on card #2 (although Billy misattributes card #2 to Nolan Bushnell):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLxh9Yi5Dc
https://thewalterdaycollection.com/collection/collection-checklists
Note that Morningdove Mahoney, who participated in the board swap videos, was on card #3, for no discernible reason.
On the subject of trading cards and outsourced attribution, check out this gem:
Even Rickey’s Hot Sauce thinks Billy Mitchell is the “Video Game Player of the Century”. Who could argue with that!?
[S86] And of course, the objections over Wiebe’s “Double Donkey Kong” board were just a prelude to “All them people that submit stuff off MAME don’t count” (heard at 4:00 in this video), with Billy attempting to diminish legitimate MAME competitors while he himself was using the platform’s recording and playback tools to cheat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN_0ZfeWv00
[S87] As for those first 20 boards, we know objectively that Fothergill did that at a live event (an actual TG event, and not a secret excursion), a month before Billy. And thanks to magazine photos, we know Randy Tufts did the first 18 boards (including all the difficult blue time boards) without missing a ghost or a fruit all the way back in 1983. (Okay, the magazine photo had Randy one small string of dots away, but that’s a much simpler matter than six lives worth of hidden dots among split screen chaos.) And while there is no photo from Bill Bastable’s 1982 score that compelled Bally-Midway to send him a congratulations letter for a “perfect score”, such a score would certainly involve mastering all the blue time boards.
[S88] To the topic of Billy’s advantage being based on a discovery of money, during his 2019 Pac-Man sessions with Free Play Arcade, Billy gave a brief nod to the first time he saw the split screen. First, at 5:52:20, the host asks Billy when the split screen was discovered, with Billy offering the convenient answer “Some time after 1980”. (Being printed in books before Billy even began playing competitively was indeed “some time after 1980”.) Billy then continued:
First time I saw it was on a rack advance, not… not an actual game. So then it… then it became a… you know, a project to want to get to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrwhcConqs
[S89] The mystery first perfect scorer predating Bill Bastable also deserves that honor.
[S90] Ironically, Billy’s own choice to switch to playing Pac-Man on the “20 Year Reunion” cabinet, which has one extra hidden dot and grants an extra key on the final board, only affirms that there are perfect scores to be done on any setting, and that the settings aren’t what make the player. (One could imagine how it may go over if someone played on one of Pac-Man’s many re-releases where the split screen bug is fixed, and then declared they beat the “perfect” score with a score of four million.)
[S91] In light of our evidentiary analysis, I have decided not to go through a comprehensive list of people who do and do not believe in the July 3 score, both because they can speak for themselves, and because they are allowed to change their beliefs in the face of the evidence we have accumulated. You’ve seen the evidence. You can make up your own mind.
[S92] Regarding the first deathless completion of Kaizo Mario World, note that Wikipedia was until recently incorrect. The citation used to justify the claim that Ben DeMario (and not dram55) was the first to complete KMW deathless in 2008 linked to a TAS by Ben on YouTube:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaizo_Mario_World&diff=next&oldid=950734638
This is not misrepresentation by Ben. It’s probably just a case of some over-eager Wikipedia editor not knowing what a TAS is. The error was rectified only five days before the initial publication of “Dot Nine”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaizo_Mario_World&diff=next&oldid=1046267377
It’s always fun when details and sources change right before your project goes live. At any rate, note that the incorrect Wikipedia text does unfortunately live on via various sites that copy Wikipedia text wholesale.
[S93] The two-player, one-controller blindfolded Tyson run by sinister1 and zarrald1 is infinitely more impressive a gaming achievement than anything Billy Mitchell has ever farted out. If you don’t believe me, you can see that GDQ run for yourself here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4HnZ4-_HzI
[S94] For more on Guinness’ tenuous gaming adjudication, and on Rodrigo Lopes:
https://old.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/hgclgq/why_speedruncom_should_disassociate_themselves/
[S95] Another noteworthy thing about Walter Day’s quote is that he’s basically citing himself. Billy is, in Day’s words, “the only person to have a full page that recognizes his status as ‘Video Game Player of the Century’”. But it was Walter Day’s book! What’s more, if you look through the book, there are several player profiles which appear designed to come just short of the full-page length of Billy’s:
(Apologies as usual for the highlights in my book.)
Was this a deliberate measure just to make sure that Billy and only Billy got a full page dedicated to himself? Well, it would be odd if it wasn’t, as Day himself was the one to point this out and make a big deal out of it.
Additionally, the book does include some full-page profiles, some of which appear at a glance to be player profiles, but which actually focus on organizations. Perhaps this was some kind of technicality in Day’s mind?
[S96] The two given quotes (“Here’s Billy Mitchell, you don’t know who he is, but I assure you he’s famous” and “This guy was just named Player of the Century”) are my own paraphrases and not direct quotes from Walter Day.
[S97] At 62:40, this interviewer doesn’t even know the name of the person or organization who disqualified Billy’s scores:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3PQuOk4cblJAD8UsyWRaum
He then goes on to say “If you believe you’re the top, then you’re the top, at what you’ve done,” which sounds cute, and likely assists people buying into Billy’s charisma, but that doesn’t exactly work in directly competitive endeavors, now does it? And since Billy was proven to have cheated in competition, that seems like something a responsible host should take into consideration, should it not?
[S98] Recall also Billy’s and Walter’s appearance in the film Chasing Ghosts, which is centered around their trip to Washington D.C. to collect historical coverage of gaming, making for a nice “We love gaming history” photo op. None of that was accidental. Also, notice how the guys who enjoy being regarded as treating the preservation of gaming history as their top priority never seem to think of preserving anything objectively corroborating any of their tall tales.
[S99] Here’s that fantastic Karl Jobst video on the Todd Rogers Dragster controversy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrH7aPmO61w
[S100] For an example of journalism trusting sources, see this 2002 profile on Steve Wiebe in his local Eastside Journal in Bellevue, Washington:
https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=2878.0
The author lists Wiebe’s Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior scores, names Billy Mitchell as a previous record holder, discusses Wiebe’s history as a pitcher and basketball player for Newport High School, repeats his stories of playing at his fraternity and hitting the kill screen twice before selling his cabinet in 1995, and various family stories of his. Note that the piece doesn’t quote Wiebe in his own words to convey these things; they are simply reported by the author as true. The point isn’t whether these things are true, as they are all considered to be. The point is that, surely the author did not fully investigate each of these claims before writing this fun profile of a local gaming champion. We could get into the ethics (or perhaps lack thereof) of this sort of journalism, but one must admit, truthfully, content creation would grind to a halt if one could never trust sources, or never risk responsibly reporting something that might later turn out to be unexpectedly wrong. What is required of a journalist is to recognize red flags when they do show up, to engage in healthy inquiry of claims and stories (especially those that don’t seem to add up with each other), and to recognize when that basic trust is being broken. And that’s what has lacked from Billy’s many softball interviews over the years.
[S101] Here were my dumb and misguided (and, if you’ve been paying attention, factually inaccurate) words, from a Reddit thread in February 2018:
Never met Billy Mitchell, but I actually like him. (Downvote away!) I saw King of Kong, like everyone else, and from the movie I thought he was a major asshole who took himself too seriously. But after watching it I looked up more about the actual events, and I watched interviews of him. I was really disappointed that so much got misrepresented in that movie. He actually seems like a genuine good guy, who doesn’t treat anyone like he’s better than them. He’s way overly confident, which puts off some people, but which I don’t really care about. He loooves to troll people (the whole U.S. flag necktie thing started as a troll of a competitor who called himself “Captain Canada”), but just trolling people doesn’t make someone an asshole. I’ve always heard people talk about him being a big bad cheater, but I’d never seen anything I considered proof, just hearsay. He’s given top performances in legit live runs (unlike some people I could mention), and his talent is undeniable. I kinda figured, among the “old guard” full of cheaters and self-verifiers, he was the one who actually took his word seriously and actually achieved what he claimed.
[S102] Some will say Billy was exposed with King of Kong in 2007. Certainly, the movie showed that Walter Day’s TG bent and broke the rules on Billy’s behalf, but King of Kong was also misrepresentative in parts. Eager fact-checkers, such as myself, were able to read Day’s rebuttals and say “Oh, I guess Billy really did face off against Wiebe” and “Oh, I guess TG already recognized someone else as beating Billy’s record before Wiebe did it.” While the movie was highly entertaining, and told the story it wanted to tell well, it left enough room for reasonable doubt among many, including myself. The cheating scandal emerging in the last five years has changed all of that.
[S103] If one is looking for a great example of more recent coverage of the Billy Mitchell story, from someone who was unafraid to ask and answer difficult questions (rather than simply giving Billy and friends a platform to amplify lies), check out Josh Harmon’s feature “The Split-Screen Man” for EGM (online):
https://egmnow.com/the-split-screen-man/
A full breakdown of the profile is beyond the scope of this project, but I would like to go over a few examples of what makes this coverage constructive. First and foremost, Josh went to the effort of simply verifying what he was being told:
Occasionally, he’d bring up his specific scores or those of other players from the ’80s, and while these weren’t always digit-perfect when I later checked them against official records, they were close enough to impress.
Harmon made note of when there were discrepancies in different accounts, or when Billy and his cohorts were evading important questions:
Rogers told me he did not remember whether the tapes were in the bag. More broadly, when I asked Mitchell, Childs, and Rogers whether the other two videos were staged or falsified like the board swap video, they told me they could not recall or did not directly address the question. The evidence package, it’s worth noting, only treats the board swap as falsified in any way.
Harmon actually explains what the evidence against Billy’s Donkey Kong scores is, in his own words, rather than relying solely on Billy to describe the case against him himself. At one point, Harmon calls up an old video of Billy, asking him to reconcile his new claims with what he said at the time. And through this diligence, Josh was able to dig up new details that had not been publicly available, such as old text messages from Rob Childs, and an important detail about Carlos’ recording tests.
This isn’t to say Harmon is exclusively critical of Billy in his coverage (nor does anyone else covering this story have to be). Harmon noted that nobody was particularly disputing Billy’s more recent game scores streamed on Twitch. He also published unflattering quotes from Dwayne Richard, one of Billy’s longest standing critics. However, all of it was in service of telling the truth, and in offering readers an accurate illustration of the story, rather than simply opening the mic for anyone to say anything.
The point of this aside is to offer guidance to anyone who still is intent on covering the Billy Mitchell story, who wants to do so constructively, and who hopes to involve Billy himself in that coverage. It is possible to do so without falling victim to the narcissistic ego. But unfortunately, you do have to do the work of educating yourself on the facts of the case. That knowledge becomes the foundation for your vigilance against being bamboozled by either side, which is true of any dispute over anything. And if something seems odd, don’t be afraid to pry. You’re just looking for the truth.
With that said, don’t be surprised if your vigilance discourages Billy’s involvement.
[S104] David Race, who had previously defended Billy and attempted to find evidence exonerating him in the Donkey Kong dispute, came around to accepting Billy’s guilt in part because of statements relating to competitive Pac-Man history made in Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, statements which David knew were not true:
David was also swayed by the discovery of the MTV interview with Robert Mruczek, which included footage of one of Billy’s Donkey Kong tapes (including MAME signatures) dating back to 2006. This footage shot down what he considered to be the last remaining theory of Billy’s innocence, that the footage was somehow altered later on:
[S105] There are always so many things I want to do and to write, and that’s in addition to actually playing video games. So I can’t make any commitment on when we’ll see a “Dot Ten”. But I can say with certainty that it will be after all the current legal battles are concluded (and related discoveries revealed). It was important to me that I get what we had accumulated out into the world in a reasonable timeframe, but as far as writing the concluding chapter goes, there’s no point in trying to write a story when the story’s not yet finished.