What follows are the supplemental notes for the “Dot Seven” 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] You can find that CGE UK plaque photo in its original album here:
There’s another quality photo of the plaque from the same event, as well as a good shot of TG’s “Player of the Century” certificate, here:
http://www.jammajup.co.uk/classic-gaming-expo-2005.html
[S2] The Pac-Man graphic on the plaque does, however, appear very similar to the one used years later on TG’s stars-and-stripes shirts worn at CGE UK in 2005:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/CGEUK2005/images/aw/02.htm
[S3] The first aid kit in Pac-Man’s house points to a blurb about an injury called “Pac-Wrist”, which reads as follows [GT]:
The wrist that went crazy due to Pac-Man’s overdoing was called this. I’ve heard of tennis elbows, but it’s unheard of for a game to become a disease name?!
But what really caught my attention is the fact that this malady, by that particular name, appears to have gone completely unremarked in the English-speaking world. A Google search for “Pac-Man” and “Pac-Wrist” (both in quotes) brings up fewer than 20 unique results, many of which are about Pac-themed wrist watches. Literally no reference in English to a game-playing injury called “Pac-Wrist” – that is, until now!
[S4] Here’s more on the advertising tie-in with Pac-Man and Pizza Hut in Japan:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000817223605/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9910/05/news01.html
[S5] If you’re curious, here is the vertical text on the red background from the Nours segment, courtesy of Google Translate:
As the people who filled the game space and the TV camera stared at me, I went to eat the last cookie on the 256th page. It’s a success. At that moment, the venue returned to achieving perfection for the first time in history.
“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.”
In Japan, people tend to get angry when they play games, but in the United States, adults like Billy challenge the record and are respected. It’s a children’s hero if it’s on Guinness or if it’s perfect.
“That’s right. I’m also called Mr. Pac-Man locally, and I really like being called that.”
Billy is not only a master of the game, but also a young owner of a source company. What is the secret to becoming a successful person in the business world?
“It’s the same as the game. I really hate losing. And I’ve got a lot of things from Pac-Man. I can’t get good results in this game without judgment and concentration. I’ve honed it for many years. That is also useful for business. I would like to thank Pac-Man and President Nakamura.”
A word of ripper if you come here. Why don’t you use Pac-Man to improve your cool judgment and concentration?
Obviously “source” should be “sauce”, but we have left the translation as it was provided.
[S6] The caption under the Bally-Midway photo reads [GT]:
Midway, which had the right to sell game consoles in the United States, was delighted with the sales beyond imagination. I shook hands with Pac-Man like this.
[S7] Note that Billy’s tie in his photo with Walter Day and Masaya Nakamura looks to be identical to the one(s) he wore at Funspot and in his photo shoots.
[S8] You get a couple more sights of Mr. Nakamura having fun on pages 186 and 189 here in RePlay Magazine:
[S9] To be clear, neither the Nours photo nor the Vending Times photos of the backstage encounter between Walter, Billy, and Mr. Nakamura received any attribution.
[S10] To the question of Masaya Nakamura’s role (or lack thereof) in the design of Pac-Man, on the Pixels panel, Toru Iwatani told a story of one change Mr. Nakamura suggested (as told through the translator, at 23:50):
During the development, I asked Nakamura to test play the game. And I asked him to judge it. Now, there were four different colorful ghosts, because it’s a game for women, designed for women. But Mr. Nakamura said “No no no no no, they have to be red. They have to all be red.”
Professor Iwatani gives a shocked face, then continues. Again, via translator:
So I couldn’t tell the boss “You have no sense of style.” Because I would be fired.
So I took a survey amongst the forty people in the development team, and explained that, you know, women are our target. And forty people agreed that it should be four colors. So I handed the boss a piece of paper that said “Forty to zero”.
So, because Mr. Nakamura was in sales, for sales people, you have to give them data. So the fact that, after he saw that data, he realized… he gave the approval for the four different colors, which means that he was a fantastic salesman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7L_1tCi53Q
[S11] You can also see Nakamura’s “Father of Pac-Man” title represented in this 1982 photo from the Pac-Man collaboration with San Francisco’s cable car fundraiser:
https://asobimotto.bandainamcoent.co.jp/8681/
https://asobimotto.bandainamcoent.co.jp/8693/
https://asobimotto.bandainamcoent.co.jp/8697/
Note that, in the Pixels panel, Billy does appear to avoid calling Nakamura “Father of Pac-Man” when Toru Iwatani is in the room.
[S12] If you expand the search to include just “Masaya Nakamura” and “Godfather”, you see a few more results. One is a single, solitary reference by a forum user to Mr. Nakamura being “Godfather of Pac-Man”:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521463
The rest are reprints of Wikipedia text citing Namco as “the godfather of game developers” (with Mr. Nakamura’s name elsewhere on the page). Following the citation takes us to issue 46 of the Official Playstation Magazine in the UK from June 1999. (Interesting timing.) Flipping that magazine open to page 33 brings us the following feature:
A-ha! So the word “godfather” was printed near Masaya Nakamura’s name, even though the profile, part of a recurring feature on game developers (see “Who the hell is Konami” in issue 40, “Who the hell is Squaresoft” in issue 44) is very clearly discussing Namco the company, not any individual person.
So was Billy sitting around in the summer of 1999 misreading British home console magazines? Probably not.
As for the Wikipedia text, a closer look at edit history shows that the “godfather of game developers” reference was added to Namco’s Wikipedia page in… October 2020. Obviously Billy has told the “Godfather of Video Games” story many, many times prior to last year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Namco&diff=prev&oldid=981896270
[S13] Namco’s 50th anniversary was also recognized with a special page on their website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051104062339/http://www.namco.co.jp/50th/
Of all the anniversary highlights they included, they seem to have left out the time they allegedly declared some American the “Video Game Player of the Century”.
For what it’s worth, Namco was founded on June 1, 1955, and so it is admittedly a bit odd to be having their “50 years” celebration on June 1, 2004, as they hit the 49-year mark. Lest you think the year on the website was mistyped, they make clear the celebration was on a Tuesday, which indeed puts it in 2004. I’m starting to think there’s something wrong with Namco’s calendars.
[S14] You can see a reference to Masaya Nakamura’s 1986 decoration by Emperor Hirohito on page 112 of the December 1990 issue of RePlay Magazine:
[S15] The certificate seen in King of Kong was filmed at that CGE UK event. Unsurprisingly, it appears to be the same one on display at the event, as seen in the photograph. If you pause the movie at just the right moment (frame-perfect, if you will), you’ll see just enough of the ribbon to confirm it’s not the plain three-stripe ribbon:
As to the question as to whether this UK certificate is the exact same one Billy held in his photo alongside Walter Day and Masaya Nakamura in 1999, as opposed to a third copy of identical appearance, we cannot say for sure. But it would be surprising if it was not the same.
We never get to see the certificate Billy was given at Las Vegas in the context of that event, although we have enough other reporting connecting the origin of the certificate to Vegas. As for the one with the plain ribbon seen at “Coronation Day”, we did look for another photo of that certificate from that event, to see if maybe the text could be differentiated, but we were unable to find one. The April 2000 issue of Tips & Tricks did include some coverage of the event with unique photos, but nothing featuring the certificate:
https://hg101.proboards.com/thread/9387/magazine-scan-thread-share?page=9&scrollTo=245879
Some misguided Billy apologist (or perhaps Billy himself) may try to point to either variation of the “Player of the Century” certificate as the one Namco gave him, in an attempt to justify the lie that it was Namco who named Billy “Player of the Century”. (Of course, no matter how they spin it, this would have been after Walter Day declared Billy “Player of the Century” at CGE in Las Vegas, but Team Billy never lets facts get in the way of their theories.) However, as with most of Billy’s arguments, this would be another lost cause. First, we can see the text of the fancy-ribbon copy in the UK, and the word “Namco” doesn’t appear anywhere on it.
This hypothetical apologist may alternatively try to say it was the plain-ribbon certificate that somehow originated from Namco. Notably, the caption for the photo from “Coronation Day” in 2000 reads:
Billy Mitchell and Walter Day display the “Player of the Century” award that was given to Billy last year in Tokyo
However, this was surely the result of a mistaken impression from the Back in Time host, who made a similar reference during an interview at the event (as seen in today’s installment). Furthermore, while we can’t make out the text in that photo, we can clearly see the logo used by Twin Galaxies at that time, with no corresponding Namco logo anywhere.
The third alternative, that the certificate seen in Japan is different from the one seen at the UK, encounters the same pitfall. We can see (albeit barely) the Twin Galaxies logo in the Nours photo, and no corresponding Namco logo. It’s an exact apparent match for the certificate for which we have full text, with no “Namco” anywhere.
And of course, with each of these scenarios, the entire premise ignores the absurdity that Namco would be producing cheap certificates that somehow look exactly like the ones from Twin Galaxies’ printer.
[S16] At around 52:50 in this Q&A with Mohammed and Benji of Namco’s “Pac-Man Entertainment” channel, Billy makes a reference to giving an award to Professor Iwatani at the 2015 Pixels panel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0feW53grOI
We initially thought this could potentially be a reference to the alternate copy of “Game of the Century” seen on the wall next to Mr. Iwatani. However, the Internet Archive link in today’s installment shows that certificate was photographed at least as far back as 2012. Thus, both that certificate, and the one seen in the Nours photo, were provided to Namco at some earlier time, although it is not known whether both were presented during the Japan trip in 1999.
What this “award” is that Billy claims he gave to Iwatani during that 2015 Pixels panel is unknown.
[S17] The two certificates from which these Hardie signatures were sampled can be seen here:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=129966&d=1627532381
https://www.twingalaxies.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=131559&d=1632271292
More certificates with John Hardie signatures can be seen here:
[S18] With regard to the fake John Hardie signature, while none of us are handwriting experts and are not qualified for a full analysis, we did look into what each relevant person’s dominant hand was, just in case some obvious observation could be made. Billy is known to be left-handed, as seen here signing TG posters at 1:20:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6QCcxis_lA
Walter Day, on the other hand, is seen signing certificates with his right hand at exactly 18:40 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt02I3mYOT0
Unfortunately, we were not able to determine whether John Hardie is left- or right-handed, making it hard to establish an amateur baseline against which discrepancies could be compared.
[S19] Late in our editing process, we discovered the Edge Magazine upload we had used and cited at Internet Archive was no longer available:
https://archive.org/details/Edge078/page/n59/mode/2up
Our screenshots were taken from the Internet Archive upload.
[S20] The Namco coverage also included a page dedicated to Pac-Man World, with no mention of Billy or his score:
The Namco dancers, on the other hand, seemed to be a signature line on several pieces of Namco coverage:
The Namco Cybertainment site also did not carry any Billy coverage, however it’s hard to read too much into it, as the site was a business vehicle for events and game sales and rentals, with no apparent news coverage of any kind outside of an event listing:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991007142318/http://www.funcrafters.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/19991104010333/http://funcrafters.com/evs_9909.htm
[S21] Here was the first professional translation of the page we received:
In July, the world’s first perfect game of Namco’s “Pac-Man” was realized. To commemorate this event, the “Pac-Man in ’99 20th Anniversary” award ceremony was held at the Namco booth at the Tokyo Game Show to honor Billy Mitchell, who set the world record.
The award ceremony opened with a birthday song and dance to celebrate Pac-Man’s birthday. Billy Mitchell, who came to Japan to present the award, appeared on stage.
Mr. Nakamura, Chairman and President of Namco, also took the stage and congratulated Billy, saying, “I would like to thank Billy for this great achievement in this 20th anniversary year,” and presented him with a commemorative plaque.
In response, Mr. Billy said, “Thank you very much for this award. I believe I am receiving this award on behalf of the millions of users who have loved the game for almost 20 years. I’d like to thank you for bringing this wonderful game to the world,” he said.
To be clear, we would have settled on the first professional translation we acquired, if not for the very obvious mistake of saying that Billy “came to Japan to present the award”.
[S22] An astute reader might say “Wait a minute, that GameSpot Japan article is dated September 19, and the news blurb on the TG site is dated September 30.” And you’re right. But there was no corresponding September 30 article on the GameSpot Japan site:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991006051753/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/
In addition to the September 19 piece (which is part of a series of TGS news items, under a link on that page dated 9/19), there was also this 9/16 news item, covering Billy’s appearance at Wonder Park:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000305232413/http://www.zdnet.co.jp/gamespot/news/9909/16/news05.html
Note that TG’s “Breaking News” page was a bit disorganized around this time, with site admins apparently reassembling these items well after the fact for the new website:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000818044400/http://www.twingalaxies.com/Breaking_News.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20010816101012/http://www.twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/breaking_news.pl
Unfortunately, the original “Breaking News” page from late 1999 was not archived, with only a contest calendar in its place:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000407064338/http://twingalaxies.com/contestcal2_99.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19990423170317/http://www.twingalaxies.com/Breaking_News.html
A couple other amusing notes, with regard to TG’s “Breaking News” page archived in 2001: As much as Billy and Walter want to make Billy’s appearance at the Tokyo Game Show some big meaningful thing (“Billy was crowned Video Game Player of the Century”, and all that), a look at that page shows so much less media coverage for Billy’s Japan appearance than for Billy’s score in July. The “perfect score” was the nostalgic “Hey look, someone got a top score on an old game” story that hooked the mainstream media. TG’s boy wonder traveling to Japan, not so much.
Not only is there very little timely coverage of Billy’s Japan appearance, that page also has Namco being given “Game of the Century” for Pac-Man as a completely separate news item from Billy:
Gotta milk those media references for all you can, I suppose. The Pac-Man one is pretty interesting though. “Staff of Twin Galaxies initiated an extensive review of Japanese high-scores during their visit to Tokyo”? Is Walter Day writing about literally just himself? Or does he consider Billy also “Staff of Twin Galaxies”? It’s hard to keep track of when Billy is a referee and when he’s not.
I decided to follow up on this, to see what evidence I could find for this “extensive review” of Japanese scores for inclusion in TG’s next high score book (which was eventually printed in 2007). As these things had gone so far in this research project, I expected to crack open this book and find probably zero such scores. Imagine my surprise when I found a Japanese score nearly immediately in the alphabetical list, on page 7, for a game called “Afterburner II”:
However, that turned out to be the only one. In the whole arcade volume, not a single other classic arcade score was attributed to Japan. There was a Dance Dance Revolution score attributed to Takeo Ueki in Minami, Japan, however that score was from 2003.
As for our friend “November Kelly”, the one and only Japanese classic arcade player vetted for inclusion in the second TG book, their score of over 68 million no longer appeared in the third edition of TG’s book in 2009, nor does it appear on TG’s current leaderboard. The current recognized world record is just over 5 million, by David Hernly:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/after-burner-ii
[S23] This “Pac-Man at 20” piece was a standard wire item, reprinted in several newspapers. Here’s a closer look at the two segments of Billy-relevant text:
The Indianapolis Star printed the same piece, although cutting off the final portion of Billy’s references:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/107408520/
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/107408534/
An entirely different variation of “Pac-Man turns 20” was published in the Kansas City Star, seen here reprinted in the Orlando Sentinel:
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1999-10-29-9910280374-story.html
[S24] The Game Informer joke article reference to Billy’s supposed “domination of the ’80s gaming scene” was of course prompted by the TG press release being used as the basis for their facetious update:
[S25] You can find the joke article about Pac-Man being named “Game of the Century” among the daily updates listed here, dated November 9, 1999:
http://web.archive.org/web/19991129023208/http://www.gameinformer.com/news/news.cfm
The notice about the amendment, adding the Billy Mitchell angle, was posted (along with a link to the joke article) amidst their daily bulletin, two days later.
[S26] The November 9th date of the TG press release was retained on the site years later, even into the Jace Hall administration:
For what it’s worth, that version of the press releases lists the location as “Fairfield, Iowa” rather than the “Tokyo, Japan” seen in the original.
[S27] Here are the two sections of the Vending Times spread:
[S28] One may point out the irony of me decrying the lack of byline on the Vending Times spread, given that this particular project started out lacking a byline. In the interest of clarity, with regard to this project, the lack of byline was a technical snafu. This project was originally designed to be posted to my wall at Twin Galaxies, where such bylines are unnecessary, as self-authorship is implied:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/ersatzcats
The idea of developing the perfectpacman.com site arose later, and as an oversight, a byline was not added to “Dot One” until after publication began.
Someone may alternatively wish to make a deal of the fact that, while I do write using a well-established username “ersatz_cats”, I don’t write under my full legal name, as if pen names haven’t existed for a thousand years. Good luck with that, I guess.
[S29] This whole issue (pun always intended) with Vending Times publication dates can be very confusing, but here’s what we know.
First, here are other examples of Vending Times publishing stories about events that happened during the issue’s identified month. This October 2000 article described a court injunction issued on October 18:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010220073643/http://vendingtimes.com/fmg/fmg102500_2.htm
And their October 2001 issue, which circulated October 24th, included a story about the AMOA convention (of all things), held earlier that month:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020415050719/http://vendingtimes.com:80/fmg/oct01_mg_amoa.htm
https://www.multibriefs.com/briefs/amoa/amoa090911.php
These October articles are both in issues numbered 12 in their respective calendar volumes (volume 34 in 2000, 35 in 2001). However, there is some funny business with some of VT’s volume numbers. In short, the main VT publication has its own set of volume numbers, while “Music & Games” is a sub-publication, appearing within VT’s pages, and continuing the overall page numbers. As an example, “Volume 23, No. 12” of “Music & Games” appeared within the pages of the “Vol. 29, No. 12” issue of VT in October 1989:
https://archive.org/details/VendingTimesVOL29NO12October1989Clearscan/page/n29/mode/2up
So in other words, the volume numbers of the “Music & Games” subsection is six years behind the volume numbers for the main publication.
You still with me?
When these are transferred to the website, this sort of information is obscured, with only a “V/T Music & Games” header signifying the difference between these articles and the main publication pieces, giving the poor, flustered Internet researcher the confusing impression that each issue has different conflicting “volume” numbers.
The volume number of the November 1999 issue with the TG press release spread is volume 39, number 13 (per the library from which we acquired our scans), which would put it exactly one year and one month after volume 29, number 12, featuring the October 1989 earthquake. (That’s going by the main publication’s volume numbers, and not the “Music & Games” subsection.) Note that each volume, across a calendar year, consists of fourteen issues, twelve of which go monthly, plus two bonus issues (a buyers guide and an industry census):
https://web.archive.org/web/20010221012458/http://vendingtimes.net/about.htm
See for instance this editorial from December 25, 2000, which is attributed to “Vol. 40, No. 14”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010215153643/http://vendingtimes.com:80/ed/timed122500.htm
Or, perhaps more relevant to the point of this exercise, this article from “Vol. 34, No. 13”, dated “November 25, 2000 – December 24, 2000”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010215155603/http://vendingtimes.com:80/fmg/fmg112500_1.htm
That was exactly one year after the volume 39, number 13 issue, which based on what we’ve established would have included a “Music & Games” subsection labeled “Vol. 33, No. 13” (again, with the subsection volume numbers being six years behind), matching the volume and issue numbers seen on the webpages from 2000.
I know. It’s a little brain-melty. I’m just spelling out what we know, to establish that yes, at least at the time, Vending Times published at a date later in that same identified month, covering material from that same month. Note that this may have changed in later years, as seen with this “June 2010” article, with a posted date of May 14:
If you have any reason to believe the Vending Times piece predated the publication of the Twin Galaxies press release, please let us know! Note that, given that we’ve reasonably established the TG release as the original document, such a discovery would most likely be explained by Walter Day shopping around similar text prior to the dated press release. Indeed, as discussed in today’s installment, it does seem a bit odd that it took until November to publish a press release exclusively about events which were by that point a month old (unless of course the whole point was to allow the passage of time to clean the slate for the story they wished to tell). However, we found no indication of that press release in that form being circulated prior to the November 9th date.
[S30] The claim from the TG press release that CGE is “the industry’s only annual event that celebrates the history of electronic entertainment” seems to be selectively worded to exclude established expos like E3, which could be said to focus on new games rather than gaming history.
Even the CGE Wikipedia page notes the regional North Atlantic Videogame Aficionados convention, in which John Hardie and other CGE organizers took part before founding CGE as a pseudo-successor to the World of Atari conventions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Gaming_Expo
Again, the selective language may be indicative of Walter Day’s perception that World of Atari and CGE represent a single, unbroken chain of events, hence why this first CGE in 1999 is referred to as an “annual event”.
However, even if you interpret this as favorably as possible to the TG release’s author, it still represents a clear oversight of AdamCon, which enjoyed continual operation throughout the 1990s:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060610020940/http://adamcon.org/
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/269296-adam-computer-convention-pictures-and-stories-adamcon/
While Walter Day is ultimately free to say what he wishes, it is yet another mark against the Vending Times spread that this claim was repeated without question.
[S31] There’s no date on the GameSpot interview with Billy, but it appears it was posted November 10, as part of a larger, multi-page feature on Pac-Man:
While the Billy interview was never featured by itself on the site’s front page, the broader feature on Pac-Man was, with a date of November 10. Also, any doubts we might’ve had that the Billy interview was added to that feature later were assuaged by later captures, showing several more new items, with no mention of a new Billy interview added after the fact:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991127110336/http://videogames.gamespot.com:80/features/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000304100239/http://videogames.gamespot.com:80/features/index.html
This interview, along with the whole Pac-Man feature, was later added to TG’s list of news appearances, with a date of November 20:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010816101012/http://www.twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/breaking_news.pl
[S32] We spent some time discussing the possibility that Billy or Mr. Nakamura simply showed off Billy’s certificate on stage, leading to a situation where the given quote could, in one sense, be argued to not technically be a lie. As my research colleague explains:
Without seeing the entire video of the presentation, I guess we can’t rule out definitively that Nakamura placated Mitchell and Day by showing the award to the crowd before having it ushered off stage. The one thing that weighs against this moment in my mind is that Mitchell has never presented any photos of this interaction like he has with Nakamura and the Pac-Man plaque. I suppose if he did, some people back at CGE might go “hey, that’s the award that Day presented Mitchell during the Friday night dinner.” The physical “re-presentation” of the same award, I guess in that case, doesn’t really sell anything, does it?
[S33] The Dreamcast Magazine gives no true indication of when the actual interview was conducted. The page did include a reference to a recent Stephen Krogman record on Arkanoid, but that occurred back in June. On one hand, print media has longer lead times, but on the other, this extended quote on its own page is not a difficult piece. One page could have been set aside, then laid out in short order. It was most likely conducted before the November 9 press release, and before the November 10 GameSpot interview. It’s arguable whether we can entirely rule out that it was later, although it certainly was not much later.
[S34] Note that while there may have been an actual “Jim” working at Twin Galaxies at some point, this 2001 referee list attributes the “Jim” email to Walter Day, meaning (unless Walter inherited that contact from a previous staffer) he may very well have been the sole author of the November 9 press release:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010211090330/http://www.twingalaxies.com/listofreferees.html
[S35] The November 24, 1999 press release about the split screen bounty seems to have resulted in this piece on the bottom of the “Business” page of the Des Moines Register, on December 8:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/128078969/
It includes an acknowledgment of the rack advance test as the only known way to advance past the board:
The only way to get past the screen and back to the first screen is to have someone else open the back of the standing game’s console and manipulate the switches, Mitchell said.
The piece also illustrates Walter Day’s high hopes at the time for Twin Galaxies’ future, likely owing to their new investor money:
While Twin Galaxies has been a part-time business and hobby, Day plans to work at the home business full time next year. He wants to expand the Twin Galaxies’ Web site to include a searchable score database. The site will make enough money to allow him to quit his day job, he said.
[S36] With regards to Billy’s identification as supposed “Player of the Century”, the variety of terminology used is interesting. As we’ve seen, Billy and Twin Galaxies have primary leant on the word “crowned”, such as in Exhibit A (at 23:20), in Exhibit D (at 3:50), and in this press release for the 2005 CGE UK:
But over the years, TG also stretched out into “declared” and “proclaimed”:
https://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/07/prweb266416.htm
https://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/07/prweb266422.htm
If you look very closely, this 2001 poster for the first “Video Game Festival” uses the word “declared”:
Billy Mitchell – First Perfect Score on Pac-Man, declared “Player of the Century” at Tokyo Game Show
This blurb from Twin Galaxies says Billy Mitchell “received recognition as ‘The Player of the Century’” at TGS:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/content.php/792-Billy-Mitchell-honored-by-NAMCO-in-Tokyo
This sort of terminology has seeped out into reporting that used Twin Galaxies (the self-declared authorities on competitive gaming) as their source for everything. The Chicago Tribune in 2000 used the word “dubbed”:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/170533304/
In their July 2008 issue, Harper’s Magazine said Masaya Nakamura “named” Billy “Video Game Player of the Century”:
Also, now his appearance on that small Namco stage was “televised”? Sure, why not. At this point, just say anything.
[S37] There are some interesting background details in this Edge Magazine photo. Let’s see that again:
First up, you don’t really notice right away (at least I don’t), but there appears to be a woman standing behind Billy. Perhaps that’s his translator? Maybe that’s the woman who Billy referred to translating for his actual backstage meeting with Mr. Nakamura (instead of the whole boardroom story he concocted later)?
As for the video screen, that appears to be Billy’s face on the right side. Possibly, when he got those various publicity photos done, he also got bits of video shot, and perhaps these bits of video made their way to Namco along with whatever else they sent. As far as the left side of the screen, it’s not clear whether that’s a continuation of the same image or a mash-up with something else. We wondered if that was perhaps a still from Billy’s perfect score tape, with the two faint blobs in the middle perhaps being two Pac-Man icons printed on the control panel next to the two-player start button. Your guess is as good as ours.
[S38] Here’s a great extended example of how this crafting of the message takes place. In a 2020 interview with their friends from YouTube channel PARtv in Australia, Billy and Walter discussed what they felt was the greater relevance of Billy’s trip to Japan. First, at 6:20, after talking to Billy, the host asks Walter about the “Century” award:
I’m glad you brought up the player of the century. That was an award given to you by Namco… as the player of the 20th century, the greatest video game player of the 20th century. I wanted to ask Walter if… How did you feel about Billy getting that, and the criteria that was around identifying him as the greatest video game player? I believe it’s correct for a number of reasons, but… yeah… Would Walter, would you have any other notable people, or do you think Billy is just…?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mwoecTjBy0
Perhaps that question, asking Walter how he felt about Namco’s criteria for giving Billy the “Century” title, was a little too on-the-nose for him to answer. Instead, Billy answered the question, while Walter sort of pretended to not be there:
But don’t worry, Walter’s okay. He just disappeared for about seven minutes before returning with a cup of tea or something. Once the context has been sanitized and the palate cleansed, Walter was only too happy to talk about Billy being “Video Game Player of the Century”, and what he felt was the relevance of Billy’s appearance at the Tokyo Game Show (starting at 23:30):
You have to realize that when Billy was proclaimed “Video Game Player of the Century”, and he was honored, and he was honored in Japan, it was really a process of the actual video game industry, and not necessarily the video game industry that makes the games. Because there’s the game-making industry, and then there’s that part of the industry that is the players and the gamers. The players and the gamers have had very, very little say… they haven’t shared the stage properly in all those years, until now. Now, they are dominant, the players who are involved in esports. They’re dominant, and it’s almost like the designing part of the industry is hanging on the coattails of this huge, huge growing phenomenon of esports and gaming players who are successful, becoming superstars, who get big, big paychecks, okay. So, but in the old days, Billy being crowned the “Video Game Player of the Century” was one of the… was essentially the first big step in that side of the stage, which was occupied very rarely by the players, them having a champion, in a sense, or having an opportunity to establish a personality, an award, a stroke of recognition, and just essentially putting the gamer side, the gamer side of the equation on the map in a big, international way. And that’s why Nakamura and Namco were so behind it and so excited about it. And they took Billy all over the Tokyo Toy… the Tokyo Game Show, introducing him proudly to everybody, and proclaiming him, you know, essentially announcing him… see… The award process that recognized him as the “Video Game Player of the Century” was just completely adopted and embraced by Namco, and they honored him all over the place as the “Video Game Player of the Century”, put him up on the stage, and everybody’s flocking to him. It was really a big deal in Japan. Very, very, very big deal.
So first it’s “proclaimed”, then it’s “crowned”. But then Walter lets up a little, and it becomes “essentially announcing”. Then he gives himself away a bit by saying that the “award process” for it “was just completely adopted and embraced by Namco”. But at no point does he correct them and say “Well no, it wasn’t Namco’s idea…”
Also, was Walter obliquely referring to Twin Galaxies when he referred to “the actual video game industry, and not necessarily the video game industry that makes the games”?
Also, forget those Activision patches, forget The Wizard, forget the Nintendo World Championships, forget the Guinness Book of World Records (their many flaws aside). No no, this one trip to Japan, lightly reported on in some English-speaking media, that was what made gamers famous.
This isn’t the only time a question seems to be a little too on-the-nose for Walter. Sometimes he just… kinda pretends to not be there? Or avoids participation, or sits silently with a consternated expression. In this case, he just upped and left the room entirely. When he returned, he gave a stock answer, that completely avoided the original context (which implied that Walter Day was in a position to judge why someone else named Billy “Player of the Century”, when the title was of course Walter’s creation in the first place).
There’s also this video from “Dot Three”, when (at 4:10) Billy tells a bogus story of a Boston Phoenix reporter making him go off-pattern during his perfect score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US35ZSUPXv8
Billy then ropes in Walter, asking what the reporter’s name was. Of course, this story of Billy’s may have happened at the May 1999 tournament (which did have a Boston Phoenix reporter on hand), but Billy’s telling it as though it happened during his July 1999 score, which Walter wasn’t even present for anyway. So Walter freezes for a moment, acts like he wasn’t paying attention, and then asks “Back in 1999?” Suddenly, it’s now referring to any point in 1999, and Walter’s no longer on the hook for ascribing this story to Billy’s July score. See how that works?
One could maybe explain this with age, or a good old-fashioned brain fart. We all have them. (Although it’s worth remembering Walter Day is a lifelong performer, going from ragtime piano long ago to basically a career of speaking appearances.) But the “Maurice” clip from Exhibit A is even more odd. At 22:50, Billy tries to get Walter to confirm that the Namco representative’s name was Maurice. He even physically prods Walter, and Walter just flat out ignores him. It seems like it would be an easy matter for Walter Day to say “Yeah, Maurice, that was the guy’s name.” (Unless there’s some other story there to be avoided.)
[S39] To the point of the old Twin Galaxies rewriting their own history, an old list of media mentions carried over to the new website only reached up to July 1999, while the then-current news archive only went back to June 2000:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010204001700/http://twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/tg_archives_newslist.pl
This left a gap of almost a year, which would eventually be filled in by June 2001:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010628020913/http://twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/tg_archives_newslist.pl
However, this list was still lacking the established newspaper references to the Tokyo visit. Those would appear beginning with this capture, in August 2001:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010816101012/http://www.twingalaxies.com:80/cgi-perl/breaking_news.pl
Note that while these items are reflected in the August 16, 2001 site capture, we do not have a specific date for their inclusion. The April 17, 2001 capture of the same page shows it as non-functional at that time:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010417095346/http://www.twingalaxies.com:80/cgi-perl/breaking_news.pl
As my research colleague remarked, in reference to the investment money discussed in today’s installment:
What we’re witnessing through the Wayback Machine is that infusion of big money into TG, permitting a massive expansion on the website and its functionality. This included going back and researching into the “history” of TG, and updating the site to reflect this history.
Note also that even TG’s completed list lacked references to Billy’s interview with the Dreamcast Magazine, or the Vending Times spread, or Billy’s interview with English-language GameSpot later that year.
[S40] Historically, JAMMA was an offshoot of the Nippon Amusement Machine Association, founded in 1967:
You can see a nod to NAMA (alongside references to amusement machine manufacturer Sega and jukebox manufacturer Rock-Ola) in this October 1967 issue of Billboard magazine, years before video games began to proliferate:
Prior to 2012, the JAMMA acronym stood for “Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association”. Billy gets the acronym wrong either way.
[S41] Regarding Japanese players, Billy has a story he likes to tell about American players being consistently superior to Japanese players, and American games being more difficult. As heard on Retro Gaming Radio, at about 12:00:
And actually, if I understand correctly, and I don’t know that I do, but the games in Japan are set at a level of difficulty far less than the U.S. It’s more of a family fun type atmosphere, whereas here, the difficulty is greater, therefore more competitive, therefore people here get higher scores attempting to… It’s more vicious, I guess.
https://archive.org/details/rgry6/07+Episode+2004-08+Part+02.mp3
Billy gives a similar story at 16:40 here, adding that in Japan “the programs are a little easier”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fcJYFw4bmE
I can’t speak to differences in golden age arcade games that Billy would be more familiar with, and such a comparison is beyond the scope of this series. But I do find the suggestion laughable in the context of 8-bit and 16-bit home console games, some of which added an easy mode for Americans (Mega Man 2), or were dumbed down (Final Fantasy 4), or were packaged with extensive guides when published in the U.S. (Dragon Warrior 3), while other Japanese games (Final Fantasy 5, the original Super Mario Bros. 2) were deemed too difficult for Americans altogether.
[S42] The date on that Japanese Dreamcast Magazine is September 24, which admittedly does seem like short turnaround to be covering the Amusement Machine Show on September 11-12. However, the photos are there. It turns out, the Japanese Dreamcast Magazine was actually a weekly offering (and not a small one, either), indicating an editorial process that would enable shorter turnaround:
https://segaretro.org/Dreamcast_Magazine_(Japan)
[S43] While we were not able to determine a definitive answer to this question in time for publication of this series, we did find an indication that Mr. Nakamura had stopped being chairman of JAMMA for several years at the time of the Autumn ’99 Tokyo Game Show. This 1994 Los Angeles Times piece cites him as having been chairman of JAMMA from 1981 to 1992:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/157469170/
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/157469258/
If you know of a source closer to 1999 clarifying this point, we’d love to see it!
[S44] Billy makes a similar innuendo at 0:20 in this quick chat, when the interviewer asks Billy why he’s so tall:
The best way to answer that, is you remind me when I was in Japan.
[S45] On this page is an early example of Walter Day adopting the expanded “Video Game Player of the Century” moniker for Billy in this 2001 announcement for their upcoming “Video Game Festival” at Mall of America:
[S46] Billy similarly corrects the hosts of PARtv, at 11:00. One host refers to Billy being named “the greatest video game player of the century”, to which Billy interjects:
Well, it was video game player of the century.
But again, that’s a title he began using for himself later on.
Notably, not all of Billy’s inner circle are as invested in Billy’s grandiose self-proclaimed title. At 1:20 in this panel from GameWarp 2013, Richie Knucklez begins introducing Billy by listing a number of minor accolades, facetiously tiptoeing around his appearance in King of Kong.
Oh yeah, he wanted me to make sure that I mentioned that he’s the video game player of the century.
Richie then laughs, before teasingly adding:
I forgot, any time you mention Billy’s name, you have to add “video game player of the century.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uv2jU7ylcc
[S47] Funspot also gave an award of their own to Walter Day, at “Coronation Day” 2000. The photo no longer survives, but we have this caption:
Gary Vincent & Ken Sweet present Walter Day with a special award for all of his efforts over the years
https://web.archive.org/web/20010217220616/http://www.backntime.net:80/Events/CD2000/FrameAward.html
[S48] Let’s take another look at that big Billy poster at Funspot:
Something in particular caught one of my research partners’ eyes. Notice the words at the bottom:
Billy Mitchell – July 3, 1999
At Funspot, Route 3, Weirs NH
That’s a bit odd for a poster inside their facility, is it not?
My partner wondered if this might have also been used as billboard advertising or similar along the nearby highway. I remain skeptical, and we never did find any more concrete indications of this. But it’s possible. Funspot certainly did employ such advertising, as indicated by this profile, around the time of King of Kong’s theatrical release in 2007:
As we drive down Route 3 in Weirs Beach, we see the sign advertising the tournament. “The best in the world compete,” it says. “I just got a wave of nervousness,” Lori tells me. At the cabin we’d rented, she relaxes with our dog and plays a few more games.
http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/08/19/bizarro_world/
Funspot still had this poster up on their walls at the 2001 tournament, as seen here in RePlay Magazine:
In his 2009 interview with East Side Dave’s Special Delivery Show, we learn that Billy has a rather imaginative story about that display, starting at 7:20:
I realized that the situation, for lack of a better term, was out of hand when they actually had a six foot poster of me from when I… I did the perfect game, I turned around and I gave ’em the thumbs-up, and it just so happens a gentleman from the Weirs Times snapped a picture. And… I went back… the next time I went back, it was blown up six foot tall, and it was like… It was the only thing on the wall at the time, and it was amazing. And then, what happened was, people kept trying to steal it. And so they actually… Yeah, they actually framed it. I mean, they caught one girl actually had it already out in the parking lot. And… they actually framed it, and secured it in, and that’s when I thought “Man, this is… This is serious stuff.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIxnz8OPapQ
As for the smaller framed item that poster was later replaced with, upon closer inspection, it appears they got the date of Billy’s Pac-Man score wrong, listing it as July 1:
The Funspot Wall of Fame was eventually replaced with a digital kiosk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCa8moSI8s8
[S49] On the subject of Gary Vincent, we looked to find any comments from him relevant to the topics of this series. And what we found was a distinct desire to avoid the drama. Note that Gary did not supply a signed statement as part of the Pac-Man section of Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, as his colleagues Randy Lawton, Tom Fisher, Ken Sweet, and Corey Sawyer did (along with Chris Ayra, as well as Billy testifying on his own behalf). In a May 2020 interview with the Ted Dabney Experience, at 26:00, Vincent described his aversion to gaming drama as follows:
I tend to, in most situations… It’s the only way to be. Because some people… There are a lot of dynamic, yet incompatible personalities.
The host responds to this reference to “dynamic, yet incompatible personalities” by merely saying the name “Billy Mitchell”, as in the tone of a question. Gary immediately and sharply retorts:
No opinion. I don’t… I don’t get into it, because there… really, there’s too much drama, too many conflicting personalities. So my preference is just to stay out of it, and do my thing, keep the museum going, get old games going for people to enjoy, and stay out of the fray.
https://www.teddabneyexperience.com/episodes/tde-ep03-garyvincent
It’s admittedly tempting to want to read into this. Surely, if Gary knew something that would assist a supposedly innocent Mr. Mitchell, there should be no problem in publishing it, and letting the chips (and the drama) fall where they may. Facts are facts, after all. If, on the other hand, Gary knew something that would be inconvenient for Billy and his current case, suddenly the desire to stay out of the drama becomes a bit more understandable (given Billy’s retributive streak), and much more remarkable.
[S50] Notably, at the Pixels panel, Namco did not identify Billy with his claimed “Player” title, as seen here at about 34:20:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7L_1tCi53Q
[S51] It was also around this time, early 2000, that Twin Galaxies got a more serious presence in sponsored video game tournaments. At the top of this news page, you see TG’s announcement of its merger with Video Gamers League to form the Twin Galaxies Electronic Gamers League:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000511030325/http://www.twingalaxies.com/
[S52] A full examination of the Day vs Karp case was beyond the scope of this project. If you are interested in looking up more for yourself, go to the following site:
https://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/
Then do a case search in trial court for Day, Walter, vs Karp, Michael, case number 08511 LALA002783 in Jefferson county. (Hint: The juicy stuff is under the heading “Filings”.)
As for the reasons for TG’s and KJ Investments’ falling out, obviously this could be chalked up to the bursting of the “Dot-Com Bubble” around that time. But also, and this is just a wild guess, perhaps Walter Day’s inclination for disparaging more lucrative newer games in favor of the classics played a role. Here he is, on the Back in Time webcast in January 2000, at 20:10:
Classic gaming is the future of gaming, along with the new stuff. They’re going to go hand in hand. Classic gaming will not be a subservient, small brother to… to the new age gaming. Classic gaming is going to be monstrous, and I think it’s going to go neck and neck with modern new game development. And probably certain times it’ll head it out a little bit in popularity, other years it’ll be slightly behind. But it’s always gonna be completely up there on an equal footing with anything else that is new and current. That’s because the classic games are better games than the modern games. They are actually games that offer strategical significant game play, that when the players play it, presumably, it’ll… it’ll lead to a definition of score that’ll show who the best person was, or the second person was, third best… Right now, a lot of new games, they don’t really have score facilities, and not only that, they… they usually are a bunch of churning action in the middle of a bunch of fancy graphics with hardly any real game play substance to them, so that you can get in there and blunder your way around and not know how to play the game and get some awesome score that… that is not that far beneath someone else who’s played the game a lot. That’s because the structure of the game is not really hooked up to genuine strategical game play.
https://archive.org/details/bit01112000
[S53] Okay, you got us. That’s one more view of Billy’s “Player” certificate on the table at 2000 CGE. It appears to be the same fancy ribbon one displayed at CGE UK in 2005, as seen in King of Kong. (That would be the one with the fake John Hardie signature, unless of course all copies of Billy’s “Player” certificate have such a fake Hardie signature, as we could not identify one in which his signature matches other certificates.)
[S54] Here’s a look at www.perfectpacman.com, as it existed in 2002:
Note that while Billy is the only outwardly identified individual connected to the site, a look at the guestbook links suggests a connection to Jerry Byrum, Billy’s business partner from North American Amusement Auction LLC discussed back in “Dot Three”:
Excluding placeholder pages, the perfectpacman.com domain was never constructively used before it lapsed, eventually becoming a placeholder site with humorous porn-related headlines:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040612100749/http://www.perfectpacman.com/
Eventually it was registered and used by a Matt Janulewicz for some years:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080724232158/http://www.perfectpacman.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180125142246/http://www.perfectpacman.com/
Of course, we have since put it to good use:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210922084017/https://perfectpacman.com/
It appears that, after Billy allowed his web domain to lapse, he printed a new round of bumper stickers including the Twin Galaxies domain in place of his own (using white text on blue, rather than black on white):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lukeadelphia/2165968001/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lukeadelphia/2159887282/in/photolist-5YWeae-pmwyz-4hRZeU-kKhYrt-3L4Zj8
The change is a bit ironic, given that these days, that domain doesn’t bode much better for him.
One thing I found interesting in my research is that there was already a registered “pacman.com” at the time of Billy’s July 1999 score. Today of course it’s a high-production splash page run by Bandai-Namco, but in the early wild west days of the Internet (specifically, 1999), it had a different owner, one which followers of the Donkey Kong dispute should recognize immediately:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990224090600/http://www.pacman.com:80/
That’s right, “Two Bit Score Amusements”, the very same company who produced the converter board Billy Mitchell and Rob Childs claimed was used to capture Billy’s DK games as direct feed later in the decade. This could be a coincidence, but it may also not be. I would not be surprised if Billy first tried to see if he could register pacman.com, which served as an introduction to the folks at Two Bit Score. (This is not to say Billy genuinely used such a converter for his cheated DK games of course, as they are shown to have been produced using MAME or a MAME equivalent. But this equipment could be where Billy and his associates got the idea of how they could justify their ruse.)
[S55] In Exhibit E, at 11:30, Billy talks about how he had no personal interaction time with Professor [Iwatani] in 2007 (at 11:30):
But when I met him in New York, in 200…7…6… whatever it was… I didn’t get to spend any personal time with him. There was no personal interaction, no personal conversation.
Good thing he used what precious little time he had to get that photo with that bumper sticker!
[S56] Here’s an extended transcription of Billy’s conversation with Back in Time host Mike Stulir, from June 2000. First up, at 54:30, Mike comments on the wall display:
Next to the poster, you have a rather large banner up on the wall, which is identical to the bumper stickers that you’re selling here at the event this weekend, Billy.
Billy jokes:
Yeah, that’s the world’s largest bumper sticker.
Mike then continues into his question:
Why don’t you tell us about what the bumper stickers are all about, because you’ve got something really good going with the… with the sale of the bumper stickers. I’m sure… I’m sure all my listeners would love to hear about it.
To which Billy answers:
Well, what it is, is it’s a… the introductory piece to… the website, perfectpacman.com, which is really boring right now, so don’t look at it. But it’s gonna begin development. And the actual site, and what it’s gonna do is, it’s gonna sell different material, all the profits of which, and all the fundraising, whether it’s donated cash, credit card, whether it’s merchandise… all of it goes to the purpose of helping fund players from overseas to come here and compete in the U.S. Cuz there’s really good players from overseas. There’s a couple guys here from Finland right now. But there’s a lot of other players who, monetarily, it’s just cost-prohibitive for them to be able to come to the contest. And what we want to do is, we want to raise money to help them pay for the expense of coming here, to broaden the… spectrum of competition. It’s just sort of a… something we’re doing to give back to the industry. So, it… It’s something that I spoke to Chris about, something he liked the idea of, so we’re starting to do it. And that bumper sticker is the first step. It’s something that people are buying here. They’re buying it for $5. And again, that money’s gonna go into the fund.
Whether the money was actually applied as claimed, one can only guess. (Unless you want to ask people with severe credibility issues.)
Billy was still slinging around those bumper stickers at the Classic Gaming Expo in 2003, as heard at 1:04:50 in this later episode of Retro Gaming Radio (although no mention was made of them being for sale at that time):
https://archive.org/details/rgry6/06+Episode+2004-08+Part+01.mp3
(As mentioned previously, this episode was published in 2004, but the interview was recorded in 2003.)
This same event from 2003 was referenced by Joshuah Bearman in Billy’s 2008 profile in Harper’s Magazine, bumper stickers and all:
And of course, as seen in today’s installment, Billy still had one on hand in 2007 for his photo opportunity with Professor Iwatani.
[S57] Note that “Pac-Man Entertainment” is reportedly no longer an entity, with Namco reportedly having sold their U.S. operations to Enterrium:
https://gamerant.com/bandai-namco-arcades-north-america/
https://www.intergameonline.com/coin-op/news/genda-entertainment-plans-laid-out
https://trademarks.justia.com/906/00/enterrium-90600931.html
Reportedly (and unsurprisingly), this resulted in the restaurant removing all Namco and Pac-Man related branding:
https://mobile.twitter.com/segabits/status/1412778867190796293
[S58] You can find this list from Billy in his declaration exhibits, filed on June 22, 2020. It also includes a claimed $30,000 from a failed deal for a television show and $25,000 from a potential advertising deal with Old Spice, which would bring the year’s total claimed losses to $133,000. Those were not listed in the main article because it’s possible those were already-failed projects, which he is just using to pad his lawsuit numbers. (Indeed, we cannot attest that the convention losses are themselves not exaggerated. They are simply what Billy himself claims to be an ordinary year’s take.)