What follows are the supplemental notes for the “Dot Three” 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] Walter Day had eyes on moving Twin Galaxies to Florida even before the Iowa arcade had closed, as evidenced by this segment we found on page 158 of the December 1983 issue of RePlay:
[S2] Here’s the full article from the August 23, 1987 issue of the Des Moines Register:
[S3] Here’s some coverage of TG’s 1985 “Video Game Masters Tournament” series, courtesy of Vending Times:
[S4] Here’s the full article from the August 1, 1987 issue of the Ottumwa Courier:
… I hope Billy didn’t tell that poor reporter he created Centipede.
[S5] You can read the full text of Steve Harris’ letter to Guinness here:
At 3:00 here, Dwayne Richard and Jeff Peters talk about the sale of TG and the Guinness rights:
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/26.ThePerfectFraudmanPart2eye-candyCut.webm
And further discussion at 14:30 here:
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/27.ThePerfectFraudmanPart3eye-candyCut.webm
Lastly, Dwayne shows off a copy of this Steve Harris letter and recounts some of the story behind it here:
[S6] Here are the Usenet posts from Walter Day (now hosted by Google Groups), in May and June of 1995, announcing TG’s goal of acquiring old arcade games for its new arcade/museum:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/faJ8hRvQso4/m/YFRQYTUqV3cJ
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/MFjUJxS1Uvw/m/TSzLjcLYi1oJ
By November, Day was looking to cut down on this collection and sell some off:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/c/RQWSDbfQPbs/m/Paju1WRSdzMJ
[S7] Sometimes Walter’s quote about his new arcade being “the capital of the universe” is qualified as being the “video game capital of the universe”, and sometimes not. Judge for yourself:
[S8] The direct link to the document is super-long, but you can find it by going here and searching for a business named “North American Amusement Auction”, business number 194125:
https://sos.iowa.gov/search/business/search.aspx
The company was unceremoniously dissolved in 2006.
Also, while Mr. Mullet is technically “William III” and not a “Junior”, he does often refer to himself as “Bill Mitchell, Jr.” in legal matters, such as in the signature above. Furthermore, that is a match for Mr. Mullet’s signature, and not his father’s. Many copies of the younger Mitchell’s signature are available, although for publicity he usually signs under the name “Billy” and without the suffix:
The elder Mitchell’s signature can be seen on annual business reports for “Rickey’s Restaurant and Lounge” in the late ’90s (available on the Florida Department of State business search site), while he and Barbara Mitchell (Mr. Mullet’s mother) still oversaw the family restaurant:
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ByName
[S9] One might ask if this local Fairfield venture, Sunstar Publishing, was connected to the Maharishi International University (formerly Maharishi University of Management). A quick search turns up a number of adjacently themed works published by Sunstar:
https://www.truthabouttm.org/SocietalEffects/Rationale-Research/
Indeed, a Rodney Charles served as President and Managing Editor of Sunstar, and also (according to his LinkedIn) had a visiting professorship at MIU:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodney-charles-0aaa636
Rodney went on to found 1stWorld Publishing, which would later publish the following two editions of the TG record book.
[S10] I’m very particular about how I represent other people’s words, as I’m sure my anonymous research partners would attest to. I don’t want to misrepresent people, either intentionally or accidentally. For obvious reasons, my typical policy is to quote people directly, while reasonably and respectfully working around various “um”s and “uh”s. Billy himself peppers in many “um”s and “uh”s, and while I could easily make that reflect poorly on him in the conversion of his words to print, I’ve simply replaced those utterances with ellipses, as I want the focus to be on his many outrageous claims and bald-faced lies, and not his vocal tics.
That said, Rick Fothergill says the word “like” a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Sometimes more than others. It’s basically Rick’s version of “um”. I don’t say this to judge or to make fun, but just to be clear on this point, that the quotes from Rick throughout this series are not strictly “direct quotes”. In his case, I have chosen to remove these “like”s altogether, with no ellipses or anything in their place, as the number of such ellipses would also be disruptive. Aside from that clarification, the words printed and ascribed to Rick are still his words as intended.
[S11] The relevant article from the National Post in Ontario can be read here:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/514394174/
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/514394175/
[S12] In a 2005 forum post, Neil Chapman (under the username “nrc”) wrote about Rick Fothergill’s research into Pac-Man patterns in the early ’80s, including using patterns printed in gaming magazines. Specifically, Neil credits a player from Tennessee who corresponded with them for originating many of the patterns they would go on to use. Sadly, the identity of this Tennessee player has been lost to time.
The description of this YouTube upload of a perfect score from Neil also goes into detail on the origins of each pattern used:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33TF79b5uhY
In that same thread, longtime Billy supporter Darren Harris offered his impression that it was Neil and Rick who learned from Billy Mitchell and Chris Ayra:
Keep in mind, Darren was likely conveying what he was told by his friends Billy and Chris, which he accepted in good faith. Later, on Christmas Day in 2008, Darren spoke to his confusion on the matter, acknowledging that the information he was receiving from both sides was “mired in contradiction”:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,940.msg16004.html#msg16004
At any rate, we do know that Rick had already broken Ayra’s standing Ms. Pac-Man score, prior to his making contact with Twin Galaxies. Nothing Team Billy can say will change that.
[S13] In Exhibit C, at 38:40, Billy uses the words “Blow the guy away”:
Then this guy calls, him and his friend, and says “Oh, we can do a perfect score from Canada.” So I says to Walter, I go “Alright, well, we’ll do a call, and I’ll just blow the guy away.”
When talking to After 2 Beers, we get another variation (at 58:30):
Once in a while, somebody would call Walter and say “Oh, I can get a perfect score.” And Walter would put me on the phone with him, and I ask him questions that they’d have to know, and they didn’t know it. Psh. Get rid of ’em. But in 1999, the call came from… the Canadians. And I says “Alright, put the guy on the phone, I’ll get rid of this guy.”
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3PQuOk4cblJAD8UsyWRaum
Note that Billy sometimes offers direct quotes, and sometimes does not. In his 2017 interview with Triforce, he starts by describing the hordes of people attempting to fool him into thinking they can do a perfect score on Pac-Man in the ’80s and ’90s (at about 6:00):
I’d ask them a half a dozen questions that nobody in the world knows the answer to. Nobody. And absolutely just blow ’em out of the box, and they were done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9EYBfhJIB8
While “blow ’em out of the box” is not presented as a direct quote, Billy continues to describe his first interaction with “the Canadians”, offering a direct quote (at 6:40):
And I said… I said to Walter, I says “Yeah, okay Walt, put ’em on the phone. I’ll take… I’ll take care of this.”
Similarly, in Exhibit A, Billy offers an unspecific recollection of his interactions with all the other naysayers (at 3:20):
And I’d get on the phone and I’d ask him a half a dozen questions, and just blow the guy away.
But then later, at 3:50, he describes the interaction with Fothergill in particular with another direct quote:
And I says “Put ’em on the phone,” we do a three-way call, “and I’ll get rid of ’em.”
None of those are “blow ’em out of the water”, and only a couple are “get rid of ’em” (and those two alternate in the same interview with other variations). Again, not a huge deal. It just seems odd not to say the exact words that you are so sure you used.
There is one other instance of Billy using the phrase “blow them out of the water”, from his profile in Oxford American in 2006:
https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-53-spring-2006/the-perfect-man
The Oxford profile also gives a sample list of the types of questions Billy claims he would ask potential Pac-Man contenders:
[S14] Billy told another iteration of this story during a 2018 Twitch stream, this time attempting to give a list of the sorts of questions he would ask Pac-Man players. I would show you the clip itself, but earlier this year Billy issued a copyright strike to have an upload removed from YouTube. (Billy Mitchell hates evidence.)
Billy started with the basic set-up of the story:
So I said, “Alright, well, I’ve got a few questions for you.” And so I fired about a half a dozen questions at ’em, that nobody knows the answer to. Nobody. Chris and I know. Walter doesn’t even know the answer, because he doesn’t remember it. And he doesn’t understand it. He just knows that this is what we do to trip people up and get rid of ’em. So I fired a half a dozen questions at ’em that… that nobody knows.
Billy’s son asks if one of the questions was “What is the perfect score?” Billy continued:
Yeah. “What is it? How do you get it? Where are they? What are the dots? What… What happens? How do you get there?”… You know, “What happens with your first, second,” on and on and on. And “What do you finalize?” Nobody knows the answer to those questions.
Note how, of the questions that aren’t just time fillers, each one appears to be a basic iteration on “What are the hidden dots, what’s special about them, and how many are there?” If you separate those into three questions, I suppose that’s at least a half a half a dozen.
[S15] Billy has also said the phone call occurred in 1998, such as here at about 9:10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGJGEo9I7B0
[S16] Billy refers to there being five people on the phone call in Exhibit D at 49:20, and on this panel at Free Play Florida 2014, at about 1:08:30:
We have five people on a phone call, and I fire a half a dozen questions at ’em, just to get rid of ’em.
Billy referring to the phone call as a “three-way” happens at about 4:20 in this video from Minnesota, right before an edit clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbacFcdqw5k
He also refers to a “three-way” call in Exhibit A, at 3:50:
I says “Put ’em on the phone, we do a three-way call, and I’ll get rid of ’em.”
[S17] So here’s a chronology on Fothergill’s and Ayra’s dueling Ms. Pac-Man records of the late ’90s. First up, Fothergill achieved his score of 910,350 in the early hours of July 20, 1996:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/feed_details.php/6139/when-rick-fothergill-made-history-twice-over/25
This broke the then-standing record of 874,530 by Ayra, attributed to Johnny Zee’s arcade in Victoria in 1985. After making contact with TG, Rick submitted his tape for recognition. It was recognized by TG on September 8, 1998, albeit too late for inclusion in TG’s most recent printed book:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000818050635/http://www.twingalaxies.com/press_releases98-96.html
In January 1999, Stephen Krogman (another longtime member of Team Billy) teased that, according to Billy, Chris Ayra had already beaten Rick’s Ms. Pac-Man record:
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?t=671
Krogman said that Billy was mum on exactly what the new score was, adding that they would wait to submit it so it can be a “surprise” for the next printed TG book. Perhaps Ayra shares Billy’s disdain for competition.
Since this new score was not announced, Canadian papers continued listing Fothergill as the Ms. Pac-Man champ in early 1999:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/feed_details.php/6139/when-rick-fothergill-made-history-twice-over/25
Ayra’s new score was eventually submitted, appearing on TG’s breaking news page dated April 16, 1999:
http://web.archive.org/web/19990423170317/http://www.twingalaxies.com/Breaking_News.html
As for the date Ayra allegedly achieved this score, this 2005 profile on Pac-master Abdner Ashman includes this clarification from Robert Mruczek:
After Chris beat Bill Mitchell’s record, then Rick Fothergill surfaced and achieved a 910K score in 1996, Chris would take it back around 1998 (8/16/98 as per Bill Mitchell) and would hold the record until Abdner’s performance in 2004.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051112215919/http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=19&id=1165
As noted in today’s main narrative, TG officially cited Fothergill’s 1996 score as August 17, 1998, one day after Ayra’s higher score:
This timing doesn’t seem to coincide with Chris Ayra’s characterization from the Back in Time webcast in June 2000, starting at about 1:02:30:
When we were challenged by Rick and John and them, the Canadians, a couple years back, that motivated us, and inspired us to higher levels, in which we… we knew we could accomplish, but we never did, cuz… like Bill said earlier, we never had any competition except one another. And there was other heights on, like Pac-Man, for example, Ms. Pac-Man that we never quite reached. But once this rivalry came about a couple years ago, it inspired us and motivated us enough to finally achieve the perfect game, which Bill was first at it, and then later on I achieved it myself. And same with Ms. Pac-Man, you know, Rick himself came from Canada, took the Ms. Pac-Man crown away, and we responded immediately and took it back.
https://archive.org/details/bit06152000h
At any rate, by the time of the second Twin Galaxies book in 2007, Abdner Ashman had claimed the Ms. Pac-Man crown, which he still retains to this day. In that book, Ayra’s score is still attributed to August 16, 1998, but Fothergill’s score is restored to its original date of July 20, 1996:
(Apologies for the highlights in my book.)
[S18] While there was apparently debate for some time as to what Pac-Man’s default settings were, it has long since been settled as 3+1. Here is just one example:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/forums/index.php/topic,4980.0.html
Those settings are also reflected near the end of this TG rules sheet from 1983, out of alphabetical order:
http://www.videoparadise-sanjose.com/tg-rules-3.htm
[S19] Per this MARP thread, Neil Chapman seemed to lack confidence in why exactly the rules were changed, framing his guess with the words “I think”, suggesting he was not involved in pushing for this rule change:
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?t=11636&start=15
[S20] To the point of players being inclined to set Pac-Man to maximum possible lives, the January 1983 issue of Joystik featured a photo of the split screen on page 70 (as seen in “Dot Two”) with maximum five lives in reserve, meaning at least someone out there had changed this setting of their own accord (even if only for research purposes):
http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/joystik/joystik_jan83.pdf
[S21] Tim reiterated what he was told about the rule change, that it was “so nobody could score a higher score”, in the 2018 Donkey Kong dispute thread, on comment #2700:
[S22] Billy has made the argument (in a now deleted Twitch stream) that the setting change is irrelevant, because playing a 5+1 perfect score is equivalent to playing a 3+1 perfect score plus maintaining that maximum score on two additional lives. In this way, Billy reduces the question to “What is the optimal settings for a perfect score on Pac-Man?” Again, as stated in today’s installment, since the perfect score is so specific and dependent on number of lives, it makes sense to allow for submission of literally the highest score achievable on the most favorable settings, something which today would likely be done as a separate score track. However, the argument fails to address a number of other questions related to the settings change. It fails to resolve the appearance of favoritism, or of TG’s signaling to competitors for years that only scores done on 3+1 can be accepted. It also would invite a controversy should it ever be discovered a player had achieved a perfect score with hidden dots on 3+1 on a machine where the arcade owner was unable/unwilling to change settings, though we are unaware of such a documented score. (Bastable’s early perfect score was before he learned of all the hidden dots, and his later score was on 5+1 and used the pause switch.) Also, this argument would be quite ironic coming from Billy if, hypothetically, it was discovered that Billy’s tape did not record all the way to the end of his game…
[S23] The first public notification of the change to TG’s rules for Pac-Man came by way of this forum post, the same day as Billy’s score:
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1317
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0012Ht
One may notice that the post is timestamped 12:30 p.m. on July 3, 1999 (i.e., prior to Billy’s score). However, a quick search shows all MARP posts of that era are given the same time of day.
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewforum.php?f=14
[S24] Lest someone suggest the TG rules page used a non-American date format such that “8/2/99” is intended to mean “February 8”, the page lists rules for Hydro Thunder, an arcade game released in March 1999.
In fact, Pat Laffaye, who had attended the May tournament, posted to the MARP forum in July indicating he was unaware any settings had been changed for that event at all, believing the current Pac-Man settings were still 3+1:
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?p=1247#p1247
[S25] Note that these more favorable settings are not just about the hidden dots on the split screen. As a result of the way TG went about the rule change, classic Pac-Man scores achieved with a total of four lives are now commingled with newer Pac-Man scores achieved using a total of six lives, all on the same score track. This has a significant impact on scores further down the leaderboard.
[S26] As an example regarding the split rules for Pac-Man scores, one forumgoer was very confused what settings they should be playing at:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/136317-Pac-Man-Official-TG-Settings
More discussion at MARP here:
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11636
Arcade settings were listed as strictly 5+1 on the TG website as early as 2006:
Thus, it seems the aberrant MAME settings in the later printed TG books were an oversight, with arcade rules already having been unified under a single rule set (albeit one that handicapped previous scores done under 3+1 settings).
[S27] One of these early TG-sanctioned events at Funspot was a California vs New England Playstation contest, hosted in April 1999, and announced in February by Ken Sweet on the TG message board:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991112174551/http://www.twingalaxies.com:80/wwwboard/messages/12.html
[S28] In this interview with Retroware TV, at 2:50, Walter Day tells a similar story of Ken Sweet and Gary Vincent coming up with the event, leading up to Twin Galaxies’ involvement:
Ken Sweet, a local video game player, was involved in a contest at Aladdin’s Castle locally. And he talked to Gary Vincent, the manager of this place and told him Twin Galaxies would like to see people going for records in this area. So those two cooked up this event, and we came to it.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/88.WalterDayInterview-FunspotArcade.webm
Oddly, in Exhibit A (at about 43:10), Walter Day alternatively tells the story as though it were Twin Galaxies who sought out Funspot for an event TG already had in mind:
In 1998, I organized a contest at the Aladdin’s Castle in Concord, New Hampshire. One of the people who was running that, who’s management of Aladdin’s Castle in Concord, after the event was over, it was a real nice event, I said “I want to do a big arcade contest. I want to do it on the northeast region. Where can I find an arcade full of a lot of games?” He said “Well, there’s one called Funspot, but all their games are old, and they’re not really doing much with them, and I don’t know if they’d be interested.” So we went and talked to the management at Funspot, and then somehow we interacted with them. I said “We want to come and do our big arcade championship there.”
[S29] An earlier hint for this upcoming Funspot tournament was posted to MARP in February by Billy’s friend Stephen Krogman:
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=707
Krogman’s post includes a link to the Funspot website. However, despite Krogman’s wording, there’s no sign of a formal announcement of the Funspot tournament on TG’s “Breaking News” page quite that early:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990423170317/http://twingalaxies.com/Breaking_News.html
No archive capture of that page is available from February 1999, making it difficult to determine whether this was in reference to an early notification of the Funspot tournament, or something relating to one of the other New England area events around that time, with perhaps the details of the Funspot event being conveyed to Krogman in his private conversation with Walter.
[S30] Note that by the language used by both Foster’s and the Concord Monitor, they seemed to think it was Billy holding the Pac-Man record going into that weekend. Twin Galaxies only had one scoring track for arcade Pac-Man, and officially Chris Ayra had held that record since 1986. (Not counting all the individuals like Bill Bastable whom TG declined to recognize.)
[S31] You can see those similar-looking Pac-Man machines at Funspot here:
[S32] In our conversations, Pat Laffaye reiterated his recollection that Rick and Billy were taking turns on Pac-Man prior to Rick’s world record of 3,333,270.
[S33] Billy does consistently say that he died at 1.7 million during the May tournament, although it’s not something we corroborated. In addition to the Exhibit A quote, you can hear him in Exhibit C at 39:30, Exhibit D at 53:20, and Exhibit E at 4:10.
[S34] Rick’s recollection that his Pac-Man game finished around 12:15am on Friday night / Saturday morning was relayed to us via David Race. He also relayed Rick’s recollection that the following day’s Ms. Pac-Man game was started right after Funspot opened, around 10:00 or 10:30am, and that that game took about six hours and fifteen minutes.
[S35] It should be noted that hogging the machine serves the dual purpose of putting in one’s own score attempts while also denying other players the opportunity to do the same. However, there have been no indications that Rick sought another attempt that weekend. Indeed, in speaking with current Pac-Man champion David Race, David conveyed the following:
I know from experience, that sometimes. after getting all the way to the split screen, the last thing on my mind was wanting to make another attempt.
[S36] The photo of Rick Fothergill’s Ms. Pac-Man kill screen looks like one strange board. It’s hard to tell how much the photography mangled the actual image, but you do see the fruits in the top left corner, indicating an upside down board.
In this interview Dwayne did with Ms. Pac-Man champion Abdner Ashman, starting at 4:10, Abdner recalls some of the varied and strange effects he’s seen on the Ms. Pac-Man kill screen:
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/01.DwayneRichardInterviewingAbnerAshman.mp4
He also shows off some of these effects here:
[S37] The original Associated Press text for the May tournament can be found here, in the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont, and in the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/548742091/
https://newspaperarchive.com/nashua-telegraph-may-10-1999-p-6/
Upon closer inspection, you’ll notice the Concord Monitor coverage (or at least the page preserved on the Internet) was mangled by an eager editor, with much of the later part of the article doubled up:
Interestingly, it seems the AP was using the printed TG book as a guide for what the perfect score was, listing it as 3,333,180 (under 3+1 settings), while simultaneously acknowledging Fothergill’s new score as 3,333,270.
A hub for links to coverage of the May tournament, before and after, was posted to the Funspot website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000527090215/http://www.funspotnh.com/tourny6.htm
[S38] As with the Asbury Park Press seen in “Dot Two Supplemental”, the Boston Phoenix coverage incorrectly cited Ms. Pac-Man’s kill screen as board 256. Since this error is not attributed to anyone, it’s surely a case of the author getting the sequel mixed up with original Pac-Man. Ms. Pac’s kill screen starts at board 134:
http://donhodges.com/how_high_can_you_get3.htm
Boston Phoenix also incorrectly reported that Fothergill got within 900 points of his personal best on Ms. Pac-Man. The actual margin he got within was 9,000 points:
http://weeklywire.com/ww/05-24-99/boston_feature_1.html
[S39] Pat Laffaye also recalled the “gentleman’s agreement” in this 2008 chat with Dwayne Richard, at about 7:00 (in footage that was later included in Dwayne’s documentaries):
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/81.PatLaffayeAndDwayneRichardChatting.webm
And at 8:10, Pat recalls showing up to Funspot the day after Billy’s claimed score in July, and discovering that Billy had been playing that weekend in violation of that agreement.
[S40] To be more specific, Rick Fothergill (as conveyed via David Race) recalled that both the agreement and the announcement were made on Sunday, May 9th, between 5 and 6 p.m., with 20-25 people present. It was also relayed that Fothergill was aware of Pat Laffaye’s account, in which Pat was inclined to recall the agreement itself happening on Saturday. Rick agrees with Pat’s recollections of the agreement aside from the question of whether it was on Saturday or Sunday. It’s also possible there was a proposal for or discussion of such an agreement on Saturday, which Pat remembers, even if the actual agreement came on Sunday.
Interestingly, a Saturday agreement would have explained why Rick chose not to make any further attempts that weekend, but that is not what Rick recalls. It also conflicts with the characterization of Billy’s friend Stephen Krogman, who as quoted in today’s installment, recalled Billy making “numerous attempts” at the perfect score “throughout the weekend”.
http://forums.marpirc.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=871
[S41] We also found a reference to this planned Ms. Pac-Man tournament, which may have inspired Rick’s suggestion of the gentleman’s agreement, in a March 1, 1999 profile in the Hamilton Spectator:
What’s next for Ms Pac-Man’s top gun? Twin Galaxies is talking about a tournament of the world’s top seven players sometime soon in Chicago, and Rick and Neil would likely go if invited.
[S42] Billy’s supporters (and yes, he still has some) will sometimes acknowledge the gentleman’s agreement, although not very seriously. In this 2016 presentation, starting at 46:00, perfect score player and current Billy supporter Jon Stoodley gives an overview of the situation, while getting some details wrong (such as saying Billy and Rick agreed in 1998 to play in 1999, rather than agreeing in 1999 to play in 2000). Jon then acknowledges that “Bill changed the rules a little bit”, and then… sort of laughs it off, I guess?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKq0zvGHT8
[S43] Here you can see Oxford American refer to Billy’s son as “Little Billy”, along with a story from dad that his son cleared DK’s elevator board at the age of three:
https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect-man
[S44] Another possibility is that, at the time Billy entered into the agreement, he expected to honor it, thinking that sufficient practice would bring out the superior skill he believes himself to have. The subsequent practice over the next month may have been what introduced doubts that he could actually execute a perfect score consistently, especially in light of Rick’s impressive performance at the May tournament. It’s possible that his decision to cheat his rivals out of the agreed upon competition came after having to accept the reality of how outmatched he was. But of course, it’s also possible he entered into the agreement knowing full well he intended on violating it. It’s doubtful we will ever know for certain.
[S45] We were not able to determine exactly when this passage claiming both Rick and Billy would be attempting new world records at CGE was first posted:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000127221138/http://www.twingalaxies.com/CLASSIC_GAMING_EXPO.html
The issue is that different elements of the page appear contradictory. These is a prominent reference to Billy attempting “another” perfect score on Pac-Man, as well as references to news coverage relating to Billy’s claimed score in July, but that brief section could have been added later. Notably, down the page, it says:
Billy Mitchell will be bringing his own Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man machines to use for new world records: Mitchell on Pac-Man and Fothergill on Ms. Pac-Man.
Either the author just completely screwed it up, or that segment was recorded before Billy claimed to have maxed out Pac-Man’s score. Granted, one could argue perhaps Billy was already eyeing a speedrun attempt at a perfect score, but other references to CGE only indicated a desire to do a perfect score regardless of time. (The subject of speedrunning a perfect score of Pac-Man will be a subject for “Dot Eight”.)
[S46] It appears Billy owned the Pac-Man cabinet he practiced on (as opposed to borrowing it), and continued to own it in 2003. During an interview with Retro Gaming Radio, when asked if he owned a Pac-Man machine at his house (at about 1:09:30), Billy answered:
Yes, I do. And actually, the games that I own are usually… I like to have ’em in my house, but usually they’re out being loaned to a friend’s house somewhere. Right now, Pac-Man’s at a friend’s house. So… Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior I have at my house. Burgertime… Another friend has Space Invaders… Let’s see, another friend, he and I together, we have Pole Position, Berzerk, Centipede, Millipede, Ms. Pac-Man, another Burgertime, and a Crystal Castles.
https://archive.org/details/rgry6/06+Episode+2004-08+Part+01.mp3
Billy then clarifies that only two of those are at his house at that moment.
Note that this interview was published in 2004, but at 1:04:40, host Shane R. Monroe specifies that the interview was recorded at Classic Gaming Expo 2003.
In 2001, Billy offered a similar list of arcade games either in his possession or out on loan to friends, including Pac-Man:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011026233825/http://hub.ngenres.com/pacman_interview2.html
He and his friends were also seen wheeling in a Missile Command cabinet into an arcade room in his house in a 2003 episode of MTV’s True Life. A Pac-Man cabinet was not seen, but you do get a couple shots of Billy playing on Ms. Pac-Man, both at his house and at the family restaurant, Rickey’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg7JugTcVRk
Obviously, these statements appear to contradict a story Billy often tells of having zero video games at his house, which he offers as an odd way of trying to emphasize how little video games have to do with his life (while collecting gaming convention fees and trying to pass himself off as an “ambassador” of gaming). However, those claims of having zero games at his house are made in the aftermath of the movie King of Kong, at which point the claim may possibly have been true. (Aside from console and handheld games his children had, which apparently don’t count.) And perhaps his portrayal in King of Kong, and the perception that video game scores were all that mattered to Billy, had something to do with this change in his answer.
[S47] In Exhibit E, starting at about 7:20, Billy claims to have figured out the split screen park spot, and I quote, “the night before the perfect game”:
And it was funny, because the night before I was going there to do it, I’m like “Jesus, this last board is so hard, it’s unbelievable. I think I’m gonna get all the way up there and I’m just gonna blow it.” And I thought “Wait a minute, maybe I can trap these guys.” And it was something that had just never been done before. But I had this idea that it would work. And literally, the night before the perfect game, I did it. And when I did it, it worked, and I thought “Oh wow, I just gotta get there. Once I get there, it’s easy.”
I could believe Billy trying out split screen techniques on his machine at home, where he can freely use rack advance. But are we supposed to believe Billy tried out split screen techniques on the Funspot machine, either sitting around waiting for rack advance each time, or playing all the way through 256 boards on non-perfect pace, all while he’s supposed to be trying for his big perfect score? Was this before or after the fabled kid unplugged the machine that same night?
We’ll come back to this technique, and what exactly it was, later on in “Dot Nine”.
[S48] TG’s initial press release of Billy’s score quoted Funspot manager Gary Vincent to the effect that Billy’s alleged arrival on July 1 was deliberate:
“Mitchell purposefully arrived on July 1st — Canada’s Day — and won the title in time for the Fourth of July. He even wore a red, white and blue, Star-Star Spangled Banner tie to emphasize the patriotic sentiments behind his efforts.”
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
Note that the immediacy of this press release indicates this quote was dictated to Walter Day over the phone the same day of Billy’s score, possibly even in the same phone call in which Day was notified of the score in the first place.
To be frank, it’s only fair to treat the claim that Billy arrived at Funspot on July 1 with some skepticism. Note the discrepancies with the reporting of the “kid unplugged the machine” story. Recall also how, for the May tournament, one reporter was told Billy arrived on a Thursday, while another believed he’d arrived on a Wednesday. Recall also Billy’s more recent attempts to get a maximum score on the 20-year “Reunion” machine, which began on “Guinness World Record Day” (November 18, 2020) and then dragged on for ten more days. Given his pattern of behavior, it would be entirely possible that Billy intended to get his “perfect game” on Canada Day itself, and to that end may have arrived on a previous day.
Whether Mr. Vincent would go along with such a misrepresentation (in perhaps the same way he went along with Billy’s violation of the publicly announced gentleman’s agreement) is another matter. While I have no particular desire to cast aspersions on Mr. Vincent, he would not be the last arcade facilitator to spread misinformation (unwittingly or otherwise) about one of Billy’s stunts on his behalf. While Mr. Vincent’s role in this situation is not adequately defined, it’s worth keeping in mind that he has had every opportunity these past twenty years to correct other falsehoods Billy tells about his July visit, and has chosen not to do so.
It’s a shame there was no actual media coverage of Billy’s July visit we could use to assist in narrowing down the window of Billy’s arrival.
[S49] Billy will occasionally joke in different ways that the kid who allegedly unplugged the machine was Canadian, but in Exhibit A, at 9:20, he clarifies that those are just jokes:
And what’s not true, but we say it’s true, when I do stories, they say “Who was it?” “I don’t know, some little kid! He’s a Canadian kid, he ran off runnin’ saying ‘I did it! I did it!’.” But none of that’s really true, it’s just a little kid who made a mistake.
I’m not going to criticize Billy for telling little facetious stories that are properly labeled as such (as opposed to earnest attempts to plant falsehoods into the community’s perception of history). But despite his wording there, I did not find one instance, prior to that panel or otherwise, of him deadpan telling anyone the kid was Canadian. It was always presented as a joke.
[S50] While assembling this project, a new Billy interview with The East Side Dave Show was posted, with yet another iteration of a “someone unplugged my game” story, at 51:20:
I’ve actually had the plug hit a couple times, once I can think of on accident, and once on purpose. So… the… like, the one who hit it on purpose, the most insulting thing I could’ve done was look at him, push the start button, and play again. And I hit a perfect score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fxcYX48OOk
East Side Dave loved Billy’s hollow braggadocio, of course. Billy gives no context as to when exactly this supposedly happened, only saying that it was just prior to a “perfect score” (which, among games he plays, would narrow it to Pac-Man). If Billy does intend this to mean the July 1999 score, that would conflict with his other stories, both of the unplugging being an accident, and of not hitting the perfect score until the next day. (Or was it two days later?) Also, in his dramatic retelling, he left out the part where he bent over in front of his antagonist to drop another coin in the machine before hitting start. (This wouldn’t apply if Funspot had set the machine to free play, which they could have done, but as we’ve seen Billy has also made references to dropping quarters and/or tokens for his games.) Also, did somebody promptly plug the machine back in so Billy could have this little action movie moment, or did he have to run over and plug that in, too? Also, if Billy just stared down this stranger and started another game without hesitation, what exactly was there to stop this sinister saboteur from simply unplugging his game again? And did the guy just stand around for six hours, waiting for Billy to deliver his sick burn? (Gosh, I hope Billy’s not just making up stories to sound cool!)
Hopefully the other example of someone unplugging Billy’s game wasn’t this nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxGaWi1dFdw
[S51] Here’s the exact language from Tampa Bay Times, describing the aftermath of the “kid unplugged the machine” story:
Note that, regardless of the date on the web page, this article first appeared in their print edition on August 13, 1999.
Alternatively, during a 2019 appearance at Retropalooza, Billy specifies the incident happened on July 2 (at 2:23:40 here):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrwhcConqs
[S52] Billy himself attributes his choice to allegedly go without food for days to the circumstance that everything was closed any time he went get food. Here he is in Exhibit A, at about 8:30:
So I get there… I get there on the Fourth of July. You’ll read how I denied myself food, but I got there late on the first. I went to the hotel room, and I went to sleep, cuz there’s nothing open. It’s worse than Denver. Nothing’s open. So then, I wake up on the second, and the snack bar’s not open yet. So I go “Well, I’ll start playing, and then I’ll eat later.”
Obviously Billy misspoke when he said he arrived on the fourth. Billy then tells the story about the kid unplugging his machine, before adding:
And once again, the place closes. It’s midnight. “Man, I haven’t eaten all day. I didn’t eat yesterday.” So I once again go out into the [air quotes] world of New Hampshire, and there’s nothin’ open. There’s like Dunkin’ Donut maybe or something. I’m like “That’s alright, I’ll eat in the morning.”
And once again, as his story goes, he arrived in the morning to find the snack bar closed, so back to the game he went.
Billy tells a similar story in Exhibit D, at about 59:30.
For what it’s worth, Funspot’s summer hours in 1999 were from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m.:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990418014829/http://www.funspotnh.com:80/genlinfo.htm
So Billy could not have been playing until 9:00 a.m., by which time surely a McDonald’s or something was open for breakfast, should Billy really desire to eat. I mean, the snack bar surely was not the only game in town.
That said, it is a story that Billy infrequently tells, and he does not contradict himself on it. So I leave it to you and your common sense to decide whether to believe him.
In Exhibit D, at about 1:04:40, Billy tells a rare story of finishing the perfect score, walking out of the arcade to get something to eat, going “down the hill” and “across the street” and finding a barbecue place. In his story, his phone dies just as the waitress brings his food, allowing him to eat his dinner in peace. (Aw, such a nice story.)
[S53] As to the claim that the Pac-Man machine was moved at all after the alleged unplugging incident, aside from Billy himself, only one of the signed witness statements from his September 2019 legal threat – that of Funspot floor manager Tom Fisher – includes any reference to this:
[S54] Corey Sawyer’s brief recollection of being present the day of Billy’s perfect score can be heard in part 2 of 5 of their interview, posted to YouTube in 2009 (at about 3:20):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdd3uS-7NOE
Notice that in Corey’s signed statement, he says he was present for the majority of Billy’s run, but does not say he actually witnessed the final score.
Also, if you have some strange desire to see Corey Sawyer chug Billy’s hot sauce, you’re in luck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMD3PIDoZI
Two times!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0U_yCPVSsA
[S55] As stated in the last supplemental post, the NGenres interview does not appear to have been perfectly transcribed. However, it’s hard to imagine it was mangled so badly as to confuse the meaning of Billy’s words about only dropping “two quarters”. The interviewer even asks a clarifying question:
The author of a 2003 profile of Billy in the Broward Palm Beach New Times also seemed to be under the impression that Billy called it a day after the alleged unplugging incident:
https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/arcade-king-6320646?storyPage=2
Yes, the author also seemed to be under the impression that Fothergill was present for Billy’s July attempts, but that will be a topic for later.
In Exhibit A, at about 10:00, Billy says it was his “second game”, with the context suggesting he meant it was the second game of July 3:
And now I come back the next morning, and they have it in a more secure area. They have it roped off better. It’s plugged in better. And everything’s the right way. And once again, the snack bar’s closed. I go “Well, I guess I’ll eat… shortly.” So I sit down, and I start playing. It wasn’t that… I think it was the second game.
[S56] There are a lot of problems with this Billy story about being distracted and going off-pattern because of the reporters bugging him with questions. First, as we’ve discussed, there’s no evidence any Boston reporters were present for his July 3 score. Second, prior to the given quote, Billy asks Walter Day for the reporter’s name, and Walter was not present for Billy’s attempts on July 3. If there is any kernel of truth at all to the story, it’s much more likely that it happened during one of Billy’s many score attempts at the May event, and not during Billy’s return trip. However, if you watch the clip, at about 4:08, he unambiguously attributes this story to his claimed perfect score in July:
When I did the first perfect Pac-Man, I was playing, but there were people around me, and without lyin’ to ya, unlike today, we were fighting for every bit of media we could get. Walter would remember the guy’s name there from the Boston Phoenix…
In Exhibit A, at 18:30, when a panel attendee asks why his July 3 game took so long, Billy gives the following answer:
Well, first of all, remember I said I continually went off-pattern. And I was continually fighting to survive. So that… drew out… questions.
[S57] In Billy’s answer as to why his perfect score took so long (Exhibit A, 16:50), he paints a picture as though he was, at the time of his answer, participating in “trying to have fun seeing how fast we can do it” (in contrast to the July 1999 attempts where time was not a factor). Maybe he was looking at faster techniques, but there’s no report of him doing a subsequent perfect score on Pac-Man until two decades later, on Twitch. (He has a phony story about doing one in Japan, but we’ll address that in a later installment.)
[S58] The question of how long his game lasted might be a sensitive topic for Billy. When asked in a quick 2005 Q&A at 2005 CGE (starting at 2:40), and I quote, “And how many hours straight were you playing Pac-Man?”, Billy evaded the question:
Well, Pac-Man… You put in a quarter, you start the game, every dot, every energizer, every prize, all four blue men on every energizer, every board, 256 boards, between five and six hours of play, and you couldn’t die one time. And that was a perfect game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIbF3mLyd_I
Note that he didn’t actually say that’s how long he played. He just gave an illustration of how long a perfect score would typically take someone.
In the 2003 interview with Retro Gaming Radio (published in ’04, starting at 1:05:40), when faced with a similar direct question, Billy did say “It took almost six hours”, while claiming he could do it in under four hours (that is, I guess, if he really wanted to):
https://archive.org/details/rgry6/06+Episode+2004-08+Part+01.mp3
[S59] In his 2017 interview with Triforce, at 9:20, Billy put the largest number of people present for his July 3, 1999 score at about a hundred:
There was a crowd that continued to gather. It was upwards of about a hundred people at the largest point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9EYBfhJIB8
In his 2018 interview with X-Cast, at 7:20, Billy said:
There were scores of people there to congratulate me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSzpjo8Oe0
And later that year, Billy told the following account to the Gen X Grown Up podcast (at about 23:00):
When I did a perfect score on Pac-Man, which was considered the world’s largest classic arcade, yes it was there, on a holiday weekend. There was a zillion people, okay. There was media. There was everything.
https://genxgrownup.com/se-podcast-01/
[S60] Billy told a similar story during his botched perfect score attempt at Retropalooza 2019, with the hosts of Free Play Arcade, at 5:55:50
On the original… the original perfect game, you know, the crowd was back, they weren’t allowed forward… The crowd was back, they weren’t allowed forward. And I remember feeling bad, because everyone’s tryin’ to look. There’s no screens and monitors. And I… I had two boards to go, and I motioned towards the guy, the attendant, he’s like a marine, I went [motions] to let the crowd forward. That was almost a mistake. I’m playin’, it’s some of this stuff, people… like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrwhcConqs
Billy finishes the quote mimicking getting jostled by the crowd around him, as if he was being pushed up into the game he was playing.
Again, no word on why, a board later, he had to call for a kid back behind the ropes to make his phone call to his friend Chris Ayra, when any of these strangers surrounding him were available.
[S61] Billy himself, on other occasions, says nobody will stand around for hours watching him go for a high score. Here he is, at a promotional press conference for the movie Pixels, at 18:20:
But the fact of the matter is, when I go somewhere to play… there’ll be… a small group of people will gather, and they’ll be fascinated for a short time. But the idea that you would stand there, trying to look at the screen, just see me, and you stand there for four or five hours while I play one game, would make a lousy contest. So… there’s different ways it has to be broke up. I mean, I’ve gone to New York before, I’ve been in a movie theater where the guy says “Ooh, I want you to play in front of all my patrons,” and it only took one time that I went there, with my back to the audience for… four or five hours. I turned around, almost nobody was there, and all they were saying was “That arrogant son-of-a-gun wouldn’t even talk to us.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7L_1tCi53Q
[S62] It should be noted that phone calls aren’t by themselves necessarily disruptive to Pac-Man play. For one thing, the only control for Pac-Man is the directional joystick, making it a one-hand game. Also, a common approach to the split screen is to immediately hide in a safe spot on the garbage side, typically trapping some of the ghosts in an inescapable tunnel in the process. This indefinite pause gives a player plenty of time to operate a phone. For an example of this approach to the split screen (minus any phone calls), see Jamey Pittman’s perfect score game on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoH0vz3Mqk
Furthermore, by going to such a spot in this manner, the score entering the split screen is preserved indefinitely, giving this alleged bystander plenty of time to read the score from the screen as told in Billy’s story.
Thus, what’s odd about the story is not that he took phone calls while playing, it’s that he treated the score as a given when it was not yet complete.
[S63] Billy gave yet another account of Chris Ayra reporting on Billy’s score-in-progress in his 2017 interview with Triforce (starting at about 9:30):
When I reached the split screen, I pulled out my cell phone and I said “Chris, I’m at Funspot.” And I said, “I’ve just reached the split screen.” And he said “No you daren’t.” He thought I was kidding. I handed the cell phone to a kid. I don’t know who he is, his name, or who, anything. He took the cell phone, and Chris says “Where you at?” The guy goes “I’m in an arcade, at Funspot.” And he says “You’re watchin’ Bill play?” “Yeah.” “It’s the start of the split screen?” He goes “Yeah, it’s a crazy screen man, it’s all like… crazy.” And he said “What’s the score?” And the kid goes “326,600.” Nobody knows that, that that’s the score you would start on the split screen, except for a hardcore player. And that’s how… And so Chris began pounding his keypad, explaining that Billy Mitchell was at Funspot, and he was doing the perfect score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9EYBfhJIB8
(I have listened to that clip several dozen times. Billy definitely, definitely says “daren’t”.)
Chris relayed his own version of events in his signed statement, as part of Billy’s September 2019 legal threat:
(The odd distortion along the third horizontal line of text is in the original document.)
No evidence for this Internet post by Ayra has been found. While it has not been made clear if this was supposedly posted to the Funspot forums, those forums experienced a technical failure in 2001, resulting in the loss of their archive:
Billy’s impression that Fothergill called because he saw Ayra’s alleged Internet post can be heard in Exhibit A, at 12:30:
Chris says “Yeah? What’s his score? What’s the screen say?” Nobody knows that answer. Kid says “Well,” he goes, “I don’t know how many millions he has, but it’s 326,600.” Chris goes “Wow. That is true.” And that’s when Chris knew. And Chris went online, and posted it, and that caused Rick to call.
[S64] While Rick did not communicate this with us directly, David Race did relay from Rick that his phone call was after Billy’s claimed perfect score was completed.
The timing of Fothergill choosing that day to call Billy is indeed odd. (Of course, this would have been during the window in which Rick understood there was an effective cease-fire in perfect score attempts.) While it may indeed just be a random coincidence, Fothergill does recall visiting his Pac-Man friend John Ning’s grave earlier that same day (at 5:20):
He gets the perfect score on July 3, 1999. And… which has an interesting significance to it… The thing I was doing on that day, I was at John Ning’s gravesite. Cuz it was his anniversary of his birthdate.
https://archive.org/details/DwayneRichardVideoGameVideos/27.ThePerfectFraudmanPart3eye-candyCut.webm
One might wonder what would have happened if Rick’s out-of-the-blue phone call had occurred on July 2. Would Billy have picked up the phone at all? Would he have parked his game, ran around the corner away from the audible arcade machine, and simply told Rick he was busy? Would Rick have gotten wind of Billy’s sneak attack and rushed to his nearest arcade to do his own perfect score?
[S65] Walter Day told something similar to Oxford American:
As he played the final board, having now gone without food for nearly two days, Mitchell called Day on his cell phone. Day recounts, “He was telling me, ‘I’m going here, now I’m going here,’ and then he said, ‘I did it.’”
https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect-man
Notably, in Chris Ayra’s signed statement with Billy’s 2019 legal threat (as seen above), Chris refers to having himself, Billy, and Rick all on the line, as they “relished the moment”. One could take this as a reference to being on the phone for the moment of the final score, although given their statements, this would not preclude a conference call including each of Chris, Rick, and Walter.
[S66] The ending time of 4:45 p.m. is interesting, in that it is listed on the Funspot page, which is a repost of MameWorld, which itself is a repost of the Twin Galaxies press release. However, while both Funspot and MAMEworld cite the 4:45 p.m. time, it’s absent from the earliest Internet Archive capture of the TG press release as posted to their own website:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009154624/http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-Pac-Man_World_Record.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20020830044731/http://www.mameworld.net/pacman/mitchell/mitchell.htm
https://www.funspotnh.com/-Articles/pc-billymitchell.htm
It’s unknown if this was added by someone at MAMEworld, or by someone prior in the chain between MAMEworld and TG, or if TG did a later edit on their press release to remove the 4:45 p.m. time.
[S67] Around the same time as that forum post, Pat Laffaye posted a similar recollection to the official TG dispute of Billy’s Pac-Man score, adding that “Gary said he provided recording equipment, and basically left him alone for three days, checking in once in a while”:
[S68] To be clear, we don’t know for sure the Tom Fisher photo seen on the Weirs Times was even taken the same day as Billy’s claimed score. This is an assumption we’re making, although it’s a fair one, given Pat Laffaye has never mentioned seeing such a photo being taken when he arrived at Funspot the following day. (Though it would be hilarious if Billy had the photo taken days earlier as he began his attempts.)
On the subject of the Weirs Times, there was an amusing note recently. In April of this year, on his Twitter, Billy (or whoever runs his social media) pretended to come across his copy of Weirs Times again:
https://twitter.com/BillyPacman/status/1388159849289109506
But the photo he posted was the same photo Billy had used with his evidence packet in September 2019:
[S69] While Tom Fisher says he used Billy’s camera for the photo, in his X-Cast interview, at about 7:50, Billy says he didn’t own a “camera”:
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSzpjo8Oe0
The “again” seems to be a reference to an earlier statement that Funspot set up the recording for his game. Note that while Billy does say the word “camera”, it’s possible he meant camcorder, and not a still photography camera. (Obviously someone had a camera for Tom Fisher to take a photo with.)
[S70] The crisp copy of the Roger Amsden photo used in today’s installment was included with a November interview with videogames.com (thus the brand mark in the corner):
The site does not attribute this photo to Amsden. However, page 14 of the September 1999 issue of Canadian magazine Computer Paper does:
https://archive.org/details/issuu_dougalder_1999-09_the_computer_paper_bc-ocr/page/n13/mode/2up
The photo was also hosted on the now defunct site First Church of Pac-Man, linked by the text “Click here for a picture of Billy Mitchell”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200221022617/http://www.flamingmayo.com/firstchurchofpacman/index2.htm
The Twin Galaxies website offered this photo (or what we believe to be this photo) for journalistic use. Sadly, the photo on that TG page was not archived, but it was attributed to Amsden, and the given description matches the above photo:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000127192003/http://www.twingalaxies.com/Billy_Mitchell_Photo.html
(For the super-pedantic, the dimensions of the non-archived TG image do not match the available copy of the Amsden photo. The picture hosted on videogames.com is 400×244, whereas the page source for the archived TG page has their photo displayed at 299×197. But this is easily explained by either poor TG site design, or either site otherwise trimming a larger original copy obtained from Amsden’s employer Weirs Times directly. While the dimensions don’t match, the file name “mitchell-day.jpg” is the same on both sites.)
Notice how that TG caption sure dances around the origin of that photo. Sure, nothing they said was strictly inaccurate (if you believe Billy got the perfect score in July). Walter Day and Billy Mitchell were at the tournament in May, where the photo was taken, and Walter did watch Billy attempt TG’s first official perfect score by their brand new rules. And yet, when paired with the story of Billy’s July visit, the photo is framed in such a way as to tell a wholly inaccurate story. You need only look at the caption included in the Canadian magazine to see how this intentional framing pays off with an invented narrative:
[S71] The Weirs Times had a website in 1999, where you can again see the Twin Galaxies press release text:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000530185553/http://www.weirs.com/w_times/99archiv/07/15/frontpg.htm
To be fair, it does look like someone at Weirs Times did write a two-sentence synopsis for their July 15th online edition, so I guess that’s something:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000606173917/http://www.weirs.com/w_times/99archiv/07/15/thisweek.htm
[S72] Note the contrast between the Tom Fisher photo, where all the playing and recording peripherals are gone, and this photo of Fothergill at a later event, with recording equipment all over the place:
[S73] Here’s a cleaner version of the Tom Fisher photo, as seen in Chasing Ghosts:
For comparison, this could possibly be the exact moment in Pac-Man’s attract mode seen in Tom Fisher’s photo:
At any rate, it’s definitely not showing the split screen. Pac-Man will go into attract mode following a perfect score (as seen in the still above, taken from Jamey Pittman’s perfect score game), but not only would the top score be shown as 333,360, and not only would the banked high score be just under 1,000,000 (depending on when the score rolled over), but you would also still see the mangled fruit display in the corner. Note also that Billy would not have needed to kill off his last life and send the game to attract mode to take a photo. Simply parking on the split screen with the perfect score would have sufficed.
As for Billy playing on a stool, we first found mention of Billy playing on a stool in Der Spiegel‘s coverage later in July (albeit through translation):
https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13981285.html
We later found another reason to think Billy played while sitting on a stool, but (at the risk of sounding like a broken record) that will be covered in a future installment.
[S74] Here are the four photos again:
The Tom Fisher photo was definitely taken at Funspot. For one, that’s where Tom works. Second, notice the poster hanging above Pac-Man:
The poster appears to be a mash-up of two Bally pinball games, Monte Carlo and Bon Voyage, from 1973 and 1974. It can be seen in many photos from Funspot over the years, including behind the Twin Galaxies table in this photo from the magazine Tips & Tricks, taken at the actual tournament in May:
https://archive.org/details/tips-tricks-issue-053/page/n97/mode/2up
Another decent view of the poster can be seen looming over Pong’s shoulder in this 2019 interview with Gary Vincent:
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2019/02/15/arcade-museum-gary-vincent
It can also be seen in three photos in an album that originally accompanied this 2009 Gary Vincent interview:
The photo on the bottom right of the Billy collage was taken by Joe Rimkus of the Miami Herald. A larger version of it can be seen with this Dallas Morning News article on Billy’s lawsuit against Cartoon Network:
It obviously wasn’t taken at Funspot, and a closer search confirms it was at Rickey’s. Compare it to this photo from a blogger in 2009:
http://grubscoutsofamerica.blogspot.com/2009/07/rickey-world-famous-restaurant_29.html
The wall was painted a different color by then, and that’s not the same Coke sign. Heck, even the Ms. Pac-Man machine itself is noticeably different (or perhaps was excessively beaten down over those ten years). But the wood paneling on the walls matches in both photos.
You can also see footage of the inside of Rickey’s and of the Ms. Pac-Man machine in Billy’s 2003 profile with MTV (at 3:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg7JugTcVRk
The restaurant sure appears the same as in the Rimkus photo. The vicinity of the Ms. Pac machine is also a complete match for the blogger photo, at least from one direction. However… if you look closely in that footage… it looks like the Ms. Pac machine was moved to two different spots for the two different angles. (The crisp blogger photo helps us confirm that.) Or maybe there are two Ms. Pac machines there for some reason?
Most importantly however is the sticker for “J.C. Vending”, a small outfit that operates out of Fort Lauderdale.
The photo in the bottom left was taken by Mike Stocker of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
A higher resolution version can be found here:
While it’s hard to say for certain the Stocker photo was taken at Rickey’s, the wall color appears to match the Rimkus photo, and obviously the home location of the photographer indicates it was in the Florida area. Alternatively, a photo caption in the Ottawa Citizen indicates the Stocker photo may have been taken at Dania Beach, Florida, which would almost surely have involved Billy’s old arcade, Grand Prix Race-O-Rama (though the newspaper caption could be mistaken):
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/466540158/
The photo in the upper left was carried by German newspaper Der Spiegel. We weren’t terribly confident in guessing where this photo was taken, although we were curious if the Pac-Man overlay was used to hide some sign or something:
https://magazin.spiegel.de/EpubDelivery/spiegel/pdf/13981285
The Stocker photo was used as (pun always intended) a stock photo of Billy to go with many subsequent newspaper articles about the score (which are a topic for “Dot Four”). However, we did not find any instances of these Rickey’s photos explicitly being passed off as having originated from Funspot. Whether the choice to keep dressing up the same way for each photo shoot was part of some sneaky, underhanded attempt to manufacture the illusion of there being many media reporters with many cameras at Funspot on the day of his score, or whether Billy just got some photos taken, as one does, and for whatever reason insisted on wearing the exact same thing down to the belt clip each time, we’ll let you decide.
If you’re interested in Billy’s silly stories, he claims to receive many ties and to give many of them away as gifts. But at about 3:10 in this brief interview, he claims to have never given away the tie he wore in his July 1999 photograph at Funspot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ide1ZoYcvSg
Whether the tie from his Funspot photo is the exact tie he wore in each of these publicity photographs, or whether he has a set of such ties that look identical, we couldn’t say.
[S75] The caption on this 2004 photo by CAGDC’s Mark Alpiger notes the thumbs-up as Todd Rogers’ “patented” gesture:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Jun2004/pictures/FS2004-13.htm
Another photo caption from the same series notes that someone mentioned Billy (not present) also uses the same gesture:
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Jun2004/pictures/FS2004-05.htm
http://www.classicarcadegaming.com/contests/Jun2004/pictures/index.htm
[S76] If you’re curious how Rick Fothergill feels about Billy breaking the gentleman’s agreement, an obscure Dwayne Richard video includes a very personal email from Rick, which Dwayne was allowed to share. The following passage starts at about 7:50:
The Bible says, judge not lest you be judged. When you point your finger at someone, you have always three pointing back at you. I have been praying for the good of the video game community that we stop making accusations towards one another. We have fallen in this trap and keep digging ourselves in deeper and deeper. I remember though that this was some kind of righteous retribution. I truly believe in all my heart that Bill Mitchell should be recognized for having the first perfect Pac-Man score. Anything less in my opinion is sour grapes and is destructive. I know we had a [inaudible] agreement. Bill’s conscience, not mine. And he in a way has already paid, and so, he lost his most prized possession, the Donkey Record. Life is too short to hold on to the hatred. It will end up consuming you. So, I have decided to follow the example of Christ and forgive and not keep anger in my heart.
I fully respect Rick’s decision to let the matter go. I can also understand the pain that can be involved in being cheated out of something, and then watching the wrongdoer ride their deeds to praise and income. When one has a personal stake in such a thing, it’s certainly healthier to just let the matter go and focus on one’s own life and circumstances, in accordance with one’s faith. That said, I am not religious, and I have no qualms about continuing to pursue this matter and report on it, both for the sake of settling this piece of gaming history, and also because the person who cheated Fothergill out of his rightful opportunity also went on to cheat others out of their rightful recognition, and is continuing to bully and sue people in an effort to force proven lies onto the community.