The evidence against Billy Mitchell

(This post is subject to occasional updates and additions. The last update was October 28, 2023.)

On April 12, 2018, competitive high score claims of disgraced video gamer Billy Mitchell were removed from the leaderboards of scorekeeping organization Twin Galaxies. This was the result of a lengthy investigation into a score dispute proving that surviving videos of two of Billy’s past claimed achievements could not have been produced by an actual arcade machine as Billy had always claimed.

Billy Mitchell’s denials and recriminations have been fervent and assertive (if often misleading), inspiring confidence in some and leading many bystanders to believe perhaps the evidence is ambiguous, when in fact the case against him is quite clear. What follows is an accumulation of much of that evidence, which includes historical documentation, discoveries made during the 2018 score dispute, more recent investigative findings, material from Billy’s September 2019 legal threat, and testimony and evidence made available through court filings in various ongoing lawsuits. (Video games are serious business!) If you can believe it, this post is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather a reflection of important points and pieces of evidence identified from the publicly available record, which is more than enough to establish Billy’s guilt. These discoveries are the result of a lot of community effort from many people. In-line links provide attribution and further reading. Yes, there is a lot of evidence to go through. That’s because Billy Mitchell is super-duper-guilty of having pulled one of the biggest cons in gaming history.

Note that this post focuses on the controversy around Billy’s cheated Donkey Kong scores. If you’d like to read more about the many, many lies surrounding his claims to Pac-Man greatness, see our nine-part series “The Video Game Fraud of the Century”.

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THE SHORT VERSION

Billy Mitchell had made a number of audacious high score claims over the years, which were accepted without serious question by Billy’s longtime business partner Walter Day (then owner of Twin Galaxies). These scores had long been doubted by some in the community due to circumstantial observations, however the claims had been allowed to stand on competitive leaderboards for several years due to the lack of objective evidence refuting Billy’s claims.

This changed in early 2018, when a discovery was made which added fuel to a preexisting score dispute on the Twin Galaxies website. While the emulator MAME is intended to run arcade games as accurately as possible, the way the program draws Donkey Kong level boards to the screen is noticeably different from the way an original arcade machine does it. The process happens in a fraction of a second, but when slowed down, the differences are identifiable, creating what we call “MAME signatures” (as well as a few “arcade signatures”). These “signatures” are not accidents, but direct and inescapable byproducts of the fact that the visual outputs of MAME and arcade function differently. Unfortunately for Billy Mitchell, surviving footage of three of his Donkey Kong scores showed several indicators of MAME origin, and showed no indications it was produced from a real Donkey Kong arcade cabinet, as he and his friends had always claimed. (This is relevant because a MAME score submitted without an input file would be susceptible to casual gaming features like save states, which in a competitive environment would be considered cheating.)

Rigorous examination and testing by several parties at Twin Galaxies and elsewhere concluded Billy’s tapes could not have originated from authentic arcade hardware as claimed. Even techs working in Billy’s defense could not demonstrate a way to produce the MAME transition screens seen on his tapes from a genuine arcade machine. To this day, no one on any side has been able to explain why three different tapes of Billy’s, allegedly produced on different Donkey Kong cabinets with different capture setups several years apart, all show dozens and dozens of MAME signatures throughout, and exactly zero arcade signatures. No one has been able to replicate the phenomenon, nor has anyone been able to show why this phenomenon apparently happened to only Billy Mitchell and not literally anyone else ever.

Rather than tackle the scientific evidence which proves his guilt, Billy’s defense has been to throw anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks. He claims the tapes being examined aren’t his actual submission tapes (which is a lie). He claims someone named Dwayne Richard made fake MAME tapes to frame him (which was hilariously implausible, even before it was outright disproven). He claims to have impartial witnesses for his scores (many of whom turn out to be personal friends). He claims he has all sorts of ancillary media, video and photographs (which of course he’s never published). His technician did publish three videos allegedly from the site of his 2010 score (and those videos were laughably fake). He claims that being able to do big scores on Donkey Kong today proves he didn’t cheat 15 years ago (which it doesn’t). He keeps adding new lies any time his old lies are exposed, and even produces fake evidence to justify these new stories. And when he doesn’t get his way, he sues the Internet for saying things he doesn’t like.

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THE LONG VERSION

Before we get to the evidence, let’s do an overview of the situation. This matter concerns four Billy Mitchell tape submissions for Donkey Kong, all of which were presented as “direct feed” recordings from an authentic arcade machine. To define the term, “direct feed” means the recording device was connected such that the video only shows what was originally sent to the display monitor. In other words, by watching the tape, you see exactly what was shown on the screen. This is in contrast to something like an over-the-shoulder camcorder, which shows the game monitor, the bezel, the player, the overhead lights reflected off the monitor, etc. (The above examples are both from Chris Gleed.) A direct feed can also be set up to capture the original audio, but this was not done on Billy’s tapes.

The four contested scores are as follows:

• 1,014,400, allegedly achieved in May 2003 at his friend Rob Childs’ workshop in Fort Lauderdale;
• 1,047,200, allegedly achieved on either June 7, 2004, or approximately December 28, 2004, also at Rob Childs’ workshop;
• 1,050,200, allegedly achieved on July 13 or 14, 2007, at a mortgage brokers convention in Orlando;
• 1,062,800, allegedly achieved on July 31, 2010, at Boomers arcade in Dania Beach, Florida.

We’ll get to the shifting dates in a moment. One of these scores (2007) was staged around an actual event, the annual convention of the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers. A good deal of effort was put into giving this spectacle a sense of legitimacy. There are stories of a circuit board sent to Nintendo for verification, of a mysterious GameStop manager padlocking the board in place at the event. A few FAMB members, some of whom were personal friends of Billy, have said they saw him playing Donkey Kong there. Todd Rogers was on hand as an official referee, in accordance with Twin Galaxies adjudication rules of the era, and at least at the time his word was worth something. This is basically the extent of evidence in Billy’s favor for any of these scores, and it does sound very nice and reassuring, until you discover the tape allegedly produced at that event could not have been produced by an actual Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. Then one starts to ask how many of these assurances were as genuine as they seem. (We’ll get more into this FAMB event below.)

The later 2010 score was allegedly performed at Boomers arcade. The story is that Billy broke the Donkey Kong world record, took a dinner break, then came back to beat the Donkey Kong Junior world record the same day. Much less effort was put into this charade, with the only ancillary evidence being three short YouTube videos, which (as we’ll see later) were hilariously faked. While we no longer have a complete copy of this game, Billy did play tapes of his DK and DK Junior records on tilted televisions during a presentation at an event called the “Big Bang” in Ottumwa, Iowa the following weekend. Footage of this presentation from spectators is the only surviving evidence of the score we have access to.

The previous two scores didn’t even bother with that much pretense, with the tapes simply appearing one day with no public explanation. TG referee Robert Mruczek did a detailed level-by-level score analysis of the 1.014m tape, and a copy of it was shown briefly at a 2004 event in New York. However, after Steve Wiebe’s competing 1.006m score was disqualified (something about a gummy substance), Billy withdrew his 1.014m submission. The whereabouts of that tape are unknown. A copy of the submission tape for the 1.047m score did survive, and it, along with the submission tape for the mortgage brokers score, were later uploaded to YouTube. During the 2018 dispute, Jace Hall uploaded clean copies of both of those tapes, providing us with a complete look at Billy’s game play.

Again, just so we’re clear about the scores in question:

• 1,014,400 (The lost tape): Later withdrawn, no surviving video;
• 1,047,200 (The “King of Kong” score): Full video;
• 1,050,200 (The “mortgage brokers” score): Full video;
• 1,062,800 (The “Boomers” or “Big Bang” score): A portion of a replay was recorded by spectators at the “Big Bang” event.

It is also important to remember that the 1.014m was on track to be recognized as the “first million point game of Donkey Kong” before it was withdrawn. Billy later claimed that title (illegitimately) with the 1.047m tape. Since we only have footage of three of these games to work with, people typically refer to Billy’s “three” contested scores, which also happen to be the three which were allowed to stand on the leaderboard. Twin Galaxies ultimately disqualified Billy on the basis of the two complete tapes (1.047m and 1.05m), choosing not to make any ruling on the incomplete footage of the 1.062m score seen at the “Big Bang” event.

As we’re about to see, all available evidence confirms the three contested scores, including the one with limited footage, were actually done using MAME or an equivalent emulator, and not using an original arcade machine as was claimed. (In this light, Billy’s choice to present these tapes as “direct feed” made this misrepresentation much easier to accomplish.) As if the existing score dispute evidence was not already overwhelming, in September 2022, hardware engineer and DK expert Tanner Fokkens published a detailed technical analysis, examining the Donkey Kong ROM program and MAME source code, dissecting and explaining exactly why the different transition screens appear the way they do on both arcade and MAME. There is simply no basis left, technical or practical, to argue that Billy’s tapes were not misrepresented.

Not only does Billy’s dishonesty itself cast doubt on the veracity of these scores, the dispute evidence raised a bigger question of how the game play seen was actually produced. While the topic of MAME versus arcade will be fully hashed out below, a player recording a MAME score and passing it off as an arcade “direct feed” could employ any number of MAME features intended for casual gamers, gaining a massive unfair advantage. In extreme cases, an entire session could be stitched together using save states, producing a single MAME input file which could then be replayed and recorded under the claim that it was achieved live in a single playthrough. Thus, honest players would be forced to compete against something resembling a TAS. Indeed, while the mere act of falsifying a submission is tantamount to cheating, oddities observed in Billy’s recorded game play indicate such a wholesale manufacturing of an entire play session may have been exactly what was done. Add in the trove of circumstantial evidence detailed below, demonstrating intent to deceive, and there can be no doubt in any reasonable person’s mind that Billy Mitchell cheated.

With that out of the way, let’s get to some evidence!

MAME SIGNATURES

At this point, the MAME evidence itself has become almost trite, so feel free to skip ahead to the juicy lies, but we are here to cover everything. On February 2, 2018, Donkey Kong Forum moderator Jeremy Young published an extensive series of screen comparisons, examining differences in how MAME and original arcade draw the game differently. This presentation revealed what came to be known as “MAME signatures” – visual identifiers which could never be produced by original Donkey Kong hardware.

TRANSITION SCREENS – Donkey Kong draws level screens in a fraction of a second, too quickly for the human eye to observe the process. While much of MAME Donkey Kong resembles its arcade counterpart, the ways in which these screens are drawn are substantially different. The original arcade cabinet draws in a left-to-right sweep, while MAME draws in snapshots, resulting in different visual artifacts on each platform. This can be seen in the following four comparison animations, which show the video buffer contents on the left, and the different outputs on the right:

Barrel board

Conveyor board

Elevator board

Rivet board

Again, see Fokkens’ analysis for detailed technical explanations for why these screens generate the way they do. The differences between arcade and MAME are most noticeable on Donkey Kong’s iconic barrel board. An original arcade machine draws portions of five girders down the right side, as each girder is caught by the left-to-right sweep. MAME, on the other hand, draws complete girders one by one, with MAME’s snapshot coming halfway through the third girder. Despite extensive efforts, no method has been found to force an unmodified arcade machine to produce the three-girder MAME screen. As you see above, barrel board transitions from Billy’s available score tapes resemble that MAME screen, and do not match arcade.

THE GIRDER FINGER – The third girder seen in MAME’s barrel board transition screen can be captured at different points, depending on MAME’s timing settings. In some cases, this results in this unique pointing finger which came to be called the “girder finger” (or sometimes “girder tail”). The girder finger became an unofficial mascot for the investigation – a big reddish flag that could be easily understood and latched on to. In truth, the initial MAME evidence presentation was much more concerned with how the levels were drawn to the screen than with that specific artifact. (That becomes relevant later.) In other words, what’s important is not that “a” girder finger was found (since random girder fingers can be found through other means), but rather that this specific girder finger on that three-girder screen appears.

The girder finger appears several times in Billy’s 1.047m and 1.05m tapes (often as part of a mangled frame, which we’ll get to later). While a clear shot of that small finger is not seen in available footage of the 1.062m “Boomers” score, the three girder screen is, as seen above. Although the girder finger screen is not the only MAME signature, it alone has still proven too much for “Team Billy” to address. Despite numerous attempts by multiple parties, and despite a $1000 bounty offered by DK competitor Wes Copeland, no method was ever found of producing this particular girder finger screen on original hardware.

BARREL WITHOUT KONG – During the dispute, it was observed that when original hardware loads the barrel board, the blue oil barrel in the bottom corner is never rendered separately from Donkey Kong in the upper left. In several instances on Billy’s tapes, the barrel is rendered before Kong, as is consistent with some versions of MAME. Note that this identifier is not always definitive, in that a camera’s “rolling shutter” effect (more on that below) has produced these frames from valid game play, but only when pointing an external camera at a TV or monitor. The frame depicting the barrel without Kong should never appear in a direct feed from an original arcade machine, as Billy’s submissions are supposed to be.

BARREL BEFORE BONUS – On original hardware, the “Bonus” timer in the upper right is always rendered before the barrel in the bottom left. On earlier versions of MAME, the opposite is true: The barrel is loaded before the timer. Again, this is not an accident, but rather a result of MAME using snapshots while arcade uses a left-to-right sweep, which causes elements on the right side of the screen to appear before elements on the left. In Billy’s submissions, the barrel is loaded before the timer, as is consistent with MAME. Even on a non-direct feed, this would be much less likely to be caused by camera distortion, given that the barrel side of the screen would have to be a full two frames ahead of the timer side.

While there is a lot more evidence to cover, I want to stress that these loading screen discrepancies have never been explained by Billy or his colleagues, despite earnest attempts to do so. Meanwhile, Tanner Fokkens’ September 2022 analysis (backed up by other experts in the field) provides a detailed explanation for why MAME’s snapshot display (as opposed to original arcade’s left-to-right sweep) cannot be replicated by an original, unmodified Donkey Kong PCB (printed circuit board). From a technical perspective, it’s already “Game Over” for Billy’s claims that his tapes were produced in the way he claims. However, we shall continue.

ARCADE SIGNATURES

In addition to MAME signatures, there also exist a small number of “arcade signatures” – things which should only be observed in games played on an original arcade board. In the investigation into Billy’s tapes, none of these arcade signatures, definitive or conditional, were observed. Each indicator pointed toward MAME. In fact, a few key elements which could have established arcade origin were conspicuously absent from the provided tapes.

RIVET RAMP – When the rivet board is completed, the blue girders underneath Kong collapse into a neat pile. On MAME, this stacking is instantaneous, providing no special “identifier” screen. However, on arcade, there is a transitional screen where portions of girders are rendered in the form of a crude ramp. (Once again, this is due to the left-to-right sweep, which MAME lacks.) This arcade signature frame is never observed in Billy’s submissions.

NO AUDIO – The versions of MAME available at the time had incorrect sound effects for Donkey Kong, which would have been a dead giveaway. Instead, the submissions simply lack audio, despite the fact that the “Two Bit Score” converter which Billy’s technician claimed to have used has an option for audio output.

INCORRECT LOADING SCREEN – As with the incorrect sound effects, a unique loading screen would have been a dead giveaway for MAME. Original arcade produces a chaotic and semi-randomized mess which has come to be known as a “rug pattern”, whereas MAME shows a grid of discolored zeros. Again, like the sound effect issue, the matter is avoided in Billy’s tapes by simply never showing the loading screen, with the tape beginning with the game already running. While the absence of the loading screen and the audio are not conclusive proof of anything, it’s such a shame that these obvious differences which would have helped settle the matter right away were somehow left off the tapes. (Unless of course this was done intentionally, which it was.)

OTHER TECHNICAL ODDITIES

A few other irregularities were observed about Billy’s tapes, some of which provide us with additional indications of MAME origin.

SCREEN ORIENTATION – In addition to the different screen transitions, earlier MAME output at the wrong orientation from arcade direct feed. In other words, while the output to a standard television was still sideways, older versions of MAME required that TV be tilted the wrong way compared to genuine arcade output. Billy’s first two tapes are output in this incorrect fashion. In the dispute, this was acknowledged by Jace Hall as proof that, no matter what else, an undisclosed computer had to have processed the video. Billy’s 2010 score displayed at Big Bang (seen on the right) was oriented in the correct fashion, but since it shows other MAME signatures, it is likely the rotation error was since caught and corrected with a simple line command in MAME.

Billy’s June 2020 legal filings attempted to address this by way of an “Orientation assessment” written by Billy’s latest technician, Neil Hernandez. That filing included the above dual-image as an example. (Hi Neil! Hi Billy!) In that write-up, Neil listed a few things which could have possibly caused the vertical output to be flipped, such as internal cables being reversed or the monitor being installed upside-down, suggesting that perhaps two of these unlikely events happened simultaneously (canceling each other so Billy could play his game right-side up) while the direct feed could have been installed between the two manufacturing errors, all without the technician noticing anything unusual. Neil also casually suggested that maybe the engineer at Nintendo changed a bunch of parts on Billy’s game board without ever disclosing it, causing the board to work improperly. Of course, all of this would have had to apply only to Billy’s 1.047m and 1.05m scores, and then magically reverse itself for the 1.062m score which was recorded right-side up. Who knows, maybe space aliens from the future can also be worked into this somehow?

GRAY BORDER – When the original submission tapes were tracked down by Twin Galaxies, TG head custodian Jace Hall noted that the 1.05m score included a partial gray border, visible only with a VCR capable of showing the “overscan” area outside the normal television boundary. It would appear to be a digital frame, overwritten partially on one side by the actual game play window. The border was not present on Billy’s previous submission of 1.047m. While Billy’s longtime technician friend, Rob Childs, had originally claimed the only piece of equipment involved in their direct feed capture (other than the DK cabinet and the VCR) was a converter produced by Two Bit Score, this border suggested at the very least a computer capture which was not initially disclosed. (Ironically, Billy’s defense tries to suggest this gray border is proof someone came along and edited his tapes later, as if someone took the time to draw little MAME signatures over his otherwise valid game play.)

EXTRA CREDIT – Another peculiarity of Billy’s 1.05m tape is that it begins with a single credit (which is used to play the game), then ends with another credit, which would have to have been added during Billy’s game. This was supposed to be an original, unmodified Donkey Kong cabinet, right? Did Billy accidentally reach down and drop a quarter in the coin slot while playing? Did someone sneak up under him just to drop a quarter in for no discernable reason? Most likely, whoever produced the tape on MAME accidentally hit the “insert coin” hotkey while conducting their save state shenanigans, and did not catch the error until the game was complete.

PHANTOM PAUSE – Yet another oddity about the 1.05m tape is that the attract mode seems to start out on pause. Normally, when the game enters the title screen, the words “DONKEY KONG” are immediately flashing blue and red exactly 24 times before stopping on blue. (The copyright text also flashes between two colors.) However, on Billy’s 1.05m tape, the title begins on solid blue, then flashes red only 15 times. Obviously, such a pause would be impossible on original arcade, however it would be simple to pause a playback on MAME and then resume it shortly after starting an external recording. (Note that it is possible to disable on-screen notifications in MAME.) Someone defending Billy suggested that perhaps this was the result of a VCR playback being unpaused. However it was pointed out that pauses on commercial VCRs cause visible distortion, the likes of which are not seen as the words go from solid blue to flashing red. (There is a VCR “Play” graphic on screen as the tape starts, but it is present before even the game play appears, well before the phantom pause.)

GAME SPEED – It has been observed that Billy’s tapes run at 30 frames per second, rather than the 60 fps that should be expected from a genuine arcade direct feed. As for overall game speed, Billy’s tapes also run a tiny bit slower than genuine Donkey Kong game play when paired side by side. For instance, on the King of Kong DVD extras, when paired against Steve Wiebe’s tape, Billy’s bonus timer ticks down slightly more slowly. (This is most noticeable on the elevator stage, since hammers on other stages can pause the timer, and since the bouncing springs coincide with the timer.) The flashing “1UP” also desyncs from Wiebe’s tape, even though both are started at the same time.

RECORDING IN COLOR – One question that came up during the dispute was whether a full color recording could be produced using the capture setup described by Rob Childs. The signal out from the Donkey Kong cabinet, running through the Two Bit Score converter, was not within tolerance for most VCRs, usually resulting in a semi-monochrome recording. During the original dispute, Carlos Pineiro, a volunteer technician assisting Team Billy in researching the case, announced that he was able to produce a color recording using the Two Bit Score converter. However, what was not disclosed until much later was that, in order to record in color, someone had to press their finger down on the converter chip the entire time of the recording (possibly increasing electrical resistance). Jace Hall rightly considered this a “modification of the claimed process used”. In later testing, David Race was able to produce a color recording without this added procedure, however, he reported that the color does not match Billy’s tapes “as closely as one should expect”. No one has been able to produce a recording with color matching Billy’s tapes using the claimed capture process. (Note: A previous iteration of this post incorrectly implied that no color recording of any kind had been produced using a Two Bit Score converter, however that was inaccurate.)

In a later legal filing, Billy’s new technician Neil Hernandez showed what he claimed was a demonstration of the Two Bit Score converter signal displaying in full color on a commercial television. (This demonstration was in MAME orientation, for some unidentified reason.) However, the question was never about whether the signal could be shown on a television or monitor, which each of the parties involved in testing were able to do. This was about whether a VHS recording of that signal could match the color (not to mention the clarity and signal stability) seen on Billy’s tapes, which Neil fails to demonstrate. Team Billy has also claimed that the issue of color recording was solved by replacing old components on the Two Bit Score converter board, however Carlos Pineiro was clear that this refurbishment did not make any difference.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

The objective nature of the MAME-versus-arcade evidence was the proverbial smoking gun, proving to the public what many in the Donkey Kong community had already known. However, a number of other items had aroused suspicion over the years. We’ve already discussed the exclusion of the audio and loading screens, which circumstantially indicate that the misrepresentation of the tapes was deliberate. While none of the following items are as definitive as the MAME evidence, they help illustrate the extent to which this hoax was perpetrated.

FAKE BOARD SWAP VIDEO – Part of the package of public evidence for Billy’s 2010 score included three YouTube videos allegedly taken the day of his achievement at Boomers. Unfortunately for Billy, there’s no getting around the fact that these videos are poorly staged and misrepresentative.

The most egregious of the three was the “board swap” video, depicting Billy’s technician friend Rob Childs swapping the circuit boards between Billy’s games of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior while he talks his way through the procedure. However, both circuit boards shown are of DK Junior (most likely the same board both times), with no original Donkey Kong board present. When this discrepancy was first pointed out, Childs replaced the audio with royalty free music to cover his own narration in the video. The unedited version was saved and later re-uploaded, but amidst all the legal threats in 2020, both versions were later set to private. When this question was raised during the original dispute, Billy was forced to admit the board swap video was a stunt, filmed hours later, using what he claims was the same arcade cabinet he had achieved his alleged scores on earlier. However, even this new story was undermined by the fact that none of the crowd control measures Billy describes are seen in those videos, and that there is no indication of any direct feed setup in the arcade cabinet.

The problems with these videos didn’t end there. Billy’s September 2019 evidence packet included signed statements from both Billy Mitchell and Rob Childs saying that the board swap video was done at the conclusion of Donkey Kong Junior (the latter of Billy’s two claimed world records that day). Billy’s statement adds that the DK Junior score ended some time around midnight. This would mean the third video would have been filmed late at night, with Billy himself talking about having already broken the records, saying “It was a little slow getting started, but when the records came, they came.” The problem is, this video was clearly filmed during the daytime, with full daylight pouring in through the exit doors visible behind Rob. They don’t expect us to believe they all reconvened the next day, all wearing the same clothes as before, all to film a video which (based on the title “moments after breaking the Donkey Kong record”) they would have to admit was staged anyway, do they?

While Billy has attempted to downplay the significance of these videos, relying on a weak variation of “It wasn’t my idea, so it doesn’t count”, the intent to deceive in the videos is clear. The angles being filmed seem chosen to show as little of the surroundings as possible. In one video, purporting to occur just after Billy achieved his DK Junior score, Billy quickly backs up to block the arcade cabinet which should be showing his high score. Later that same video, a bag is shown which video participants claim contain the newly recorded world record tapes; Carlos Pineiro recalls being told privately by Todd that the bag actually contained tarantulas Todd had just purchased. Even the fake board swap video itself has ironically been cited by Team Billy as proof that there was a Donkey Kong Junior circuit board present which Billy could have theoretically played on. Oddly, when speaking to Josh Harmon of Electronic Gaming Monthly, both Billy and Rob avoided discussing whether the other two videos were also staged. Do they still intend on cherry-picking minor details from these videos while claiming the overt messaging was somehow unintentional?

THE MORTGAGE BROKER PHOTOS – While Walter Day’s Twin Galaxies offered much publicity about Billy’s claimed score at the 2007 mortgage brokers convention, this coverage notably lacked even a single photo of the scene where it allegedly happened. This was probably not an accident, given that a series of photos from that convention did finally emerge in 2023, and they added to the already overwhelming body of evidence against Billy’s scores.

For starters, Billy and his referee friend Todd Rogers both testified that a television sat on top of Billy’s DK cabinet showing his live game play – and yet, no such television is seen in any of the photos. However, more notably, the Donkey Kong cabinet Billy and Todd were seen posing with was fitted with a large red replacement joystick. It’s dubious whether any top player could break a world record on demand using such nonstandard controls, given the excessive movement which would be required using such a tall stick. Also, while it’s impossible to tell for certain going by only the photos, it’s possible that joystick was not 4-way restricted, allowing the player full 8-way movement (something which is banned in competitive DK, since it gives the player a game play advantage not available on a stock configuration).

This bogus joystick alone would cast Billy’s claimed record into doubt, and would disqualify the score on the basis of Twin Galaxies rules around that time. (While older TG rule sets are not always clear what they mean when they say scores “must be set on the original machine”, surely a player can’t simply swap in any custom controls they think will alter the competitive playing experience to their liking.) This nonstandard joystick would also disqualify Billy’s claimed 2004 score which his technician friend claimed was done on the same machine. However, this joystick becomes a much bigger problem when paired with Billy’s and his friends’ testimony. Billy himself has attested many times that he only ever submits scores achieved on original, unmodified hardware. In fact, during his January 2023 deposition, before being shown these photos, Billy arrogantly claimed he would have made them change out a nonstandard joystick, adding “I know I would’ve ran away from it” if the controls weren’t original. Todd Rogers also supplied a sworn statement claiming the game was done on “original unmodified Donkey Kong hardware”, as well as another statement asserting “This was an original Nintendo Donkey Kong Arcade machine as I have known since 1981”. Todd’s girlfriend Kimberly “Morningdove” Mahoney, who was allegedly also present, submitted a signed statement of her own claiming “the machine was a legitimate Donkey Kong arcade machine with original unmodified hardware”. Did none of these people have eyes, or are they just saying whatever they think will help Billy’s legal case? (Lest you think “hardware” in this case refers strictly to the PCB set, read the segments on witnesses and referees below.) At any rate, this testimony from Billy and his colleagues elevates this discrepancy from a simple mistake to a more serious charge of misrepresentation, which can be considered cheating if that misrepresentation is found to be intentional. Thus, these photos provide grounds for modern Twin Galaxies to ban Billy and remove all of his scores, even if you set all of the MAME evidence entirely aside. No wonder we never got to see these photos in 2007!

NO OTHER PHOTOS OR VIDEOS – Aside from the staged Boomers videos, and the incriminating mortgage brokers pictures, no photos or videos from the alleged sites of Billy’s achievements have ever been provided by anyone. This includes any media from random bystanders, despite claims that these feats were witnessed by large crowds who cheered and clapped. 2010 in particular was the era of the iPhone, and yet not one person thought to pull out their phone and photograph the occasion, nor to post it to social media? Members of the competitive gaming community had always found this lack of media odd, given how customary it is for arcade players who have just achieved arcade greatness to get a photo of themselves with the cabinet showing their score. Billy himself had a similar photo taken following his claimed perfect Pac-Man score in 1999, albeit with the score obscured on a machine that appears to have been reset. With regard to his contested Donkey Kong scores, Billy has repeatedly claimed the existence of various photos and videos showing the game and the crowds of onlookers, but none have been published as the staged videos were.

NO TAPES – An easy way to settle the question of whether or not Billy’s tapes are MAME would be to analyze his own personal copies of those tapes. However, conveniently enough, Billy has a stated practice of not keeping any copies of his own record scores. This is occasionally contradicted by Billy’s own words (including that he retains a copy of his 1999 Pac-Man score), as well as his ability to send in alternate copies of his tapes when necessary (as we will see an example of later). It’s also incongruent with his and his friend Chris Ayra’s documented practice of maintaining an extensive archive of their video game notes and research. In a 2019 profile, Josh Harmon of EGM recalled speaking with other arcade competitors who saw Billy’s claims of not keeping copies of his scores as, in Harmon’s words, “extremely unusual”.

DAMNING TESTIMONY – We’ll discuss Billy’s supposed witnesses more later. But even the few who have responded to Billy’s call to testify have mostly hurt his case. One of these witnesses was Josh Ryan, the once-unidentified GameStop manager who set up the padlocked Donkey Kong cabinet at the FAMB convention. Under oath, Ryan testified that he did not connect any direct feed recording equipment to the game, and that with the way the machine was secured, there’s no way anyone else could have done so. Also, Valerie Saunders (one of the FAMB event organizers) testified that Billy’s score was announced within the span of about fifteen minutes – much quicker than the two-and-a-half hours reflected by the tape that was submitted to TG. Both of these accounts support the belief that Billy produced that tape elsewhere, ahead of time, and simply used the FAMB convention and related theatrics as a way to give this score the appearance of legitimacy.

Then you have Billy Mitchell’s own deposition, full of too many lies to reasonably address them all. We’ll refer back to some of these lies during the relevant topics throughout this compendium, but one of the most stunning of these falsehoods related to the sale of Twin Galaxies to “HD Films” (i.e., Jace Hall). At 5:20:20, Billy swore under oath he received none of the money from the sale of TG. However, in Walter Day’s deposition, Walter testified that Billy was given $30,000 of that money, and that Billy asked Walter to keep that a secret. This deposition was apparently so damning toward Billy that he’s undertaken extensive effort to have it scrubbed from the Internet, despite Billy’s assurances in 2018 that his evidence and testimony will all be made transparent and available.

THE KONG OFF – Even before the 2018 MAME evidence and ensuing court battle, the competitive Donkey Kong community had found cause to doubt Billy’s score claims. Starting in 2011, several top DK competitors were brought together to play in a high score tournament called the “Kong Off”. Billy Mitchell, co-star of King of Kong, had been recognized as the on-and-off record holder over the years, and thus was naturally expected to play. However, his Kong Off performances never resembled his tape submissions, either in game play style or in scoring potential, raising yet more suspicion in the DK community.

EXCESSIVE LUCK – One might ask how the same person who was trailing the pack in live competition was able to produce world records allegedly at the drop of a hat. A careful analysis of Billy’s 1.05m game revealed an astronomical string of luck pertaining to points from blue barrel smashes, with Billy consistently getting values higher than the average. The odds of getting his level of luck related to smash points were calculated to be in the 99.7th percentile. While a world record will always be a statistical outlier, world records by other top players were found to have middling luck with regards to hammer smashes, with a previous record of Robbie Lakeman’s being as low as 21st percentile. Billy’s “strategy”, such as it was, would appear to have been getting as many of these smashes as possible, while relying on absurdly lucky yields from these smashes throughout the game. This luck is the kind of feature an emulator could provide, allowing a player to replay a level over and over until the desired outcome is achieved.

SUSPICIOUS GAME PLAY – In addition to the absurd luck, Billy’s tapes also exhibited suspicious strategies and game play indicating a likely reliance on save state use. In some cases, deaths were needlessly risked deep into a world record run (such as by jumping into an approaching fireball). In other cases, strategies were employed which normally risk backfiring, either by death or by loss of points nullifying the strategy’s gains, but which rarely backfired for Billy. Normally, the climb to the fifth girder directly under Kong (described here as the “Danger Zone”) is precarious and requires careful timing, due to Kong’s tendency to throw wild barrels while the player is on a ladder. However, Billy takes these moments casually, with these needless risks again never backfiring. An unusual strategy is also employed on the rivet boards, with Billy aggressively accumulating hammer smashes in situations most players find too hazardous. As with the luck, these all point to the ability to replay levels at will, nullifying the dangers honest competitors must account for.

Note that, along with the September 2019 legal threat, Team Billy supplied a “Gameplay Analysis” (originally 82 pages, later padded to 85 pages), which was presumably written by the same author of the main evidence packet (Billy’s son). The point of this analysis was to attempt to undermine the claim that the game play seen on the tapes is unusual for world record play. However, on page 35, the author is forced to admit that Billy’s strategy on rivet boards was indeed far more “aggressive” (“reckless” might be a better word) than other players. As I noted in the dispute thread, this analysis “seems to be an exercise in asserting Billy’s game play is not an aberration while simultaneously explaining why it’s an aberration.”

VERIFIED WITHOUT REVIEW – Of the three elements of a crime – means, motive, and opportunity – this would be the opportunity. Billy Mitchell’s longtime connections to Twin Galaxies and its founder Walter Day afforded him privileged access to score adjudication. In 2004, while speaking at a New York City event in his capacity as an affiliate of TG, Billy announced that his claimed 1.014m score was the new world record and the first score of over one million points. This came as a surprise to TG staff, who had not received any such submission from Billy. All this despite the fact that Wiebe had submitted his million point game first, and despite the fact that Billy himself would later withdraw his submission after a reason was found to disqualify Wiebe’s. In 2006, Wiebe’s 1.049m (seen at the end of King of Kong) was subjected to scrutiny over a break in continuity between the game play and the filming of the circuit board, whereas Billy’s tape was accepted despite showing no peripherals whatsoever. Lastly, Billy’s 1.062m was accepted by a vote among TG staff, none of whom had actually watched the submission tape. (More on the verification of that score and the referees involved below.) Had Billy’s tapes been subjected to the kind of scrutiny seen in score adjudication today, or even just the proof standards his competitors were held to at that time, Billy would never have had the opportunity to pass these bogus scores off on the trusting community.

THE MAGAZINE – This item’s a bit odd, but certainly enough to raise an eyebrow. A complete issue of Video Game Collector magazine was available at the “Big Bang” event in 2010, where Billy’s two alleged new records on Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. were announced. This magazine featured the new records extensively, including a dedicated cover (although they did get Billy’s claimed DK Junior score wrong). Inside was an interview with Billy, alluding to a major feat he had achieved “last week”, to be announced at Ottumwa. The problem is, allegedly, those scores were literally achieved “last week”. The alleged date of the Boomers score was July 31, while the date of the announcement in Ottumwa, complete with magazine, was Saturday, August 7. Even if the achievement was the day before Billy spoke in that interview, that is an incredibly short turnaround on laying out and printing a professional magazine with seven internal pages and three alternate covers dedicated to the Billy Mitchell / Steve Wiebe / Twin Galaxies theme. The magazine announcement of “new world records” was also authorized solely by Billy, with TG officials having yet to weigh in on the scores’ verification status. For whatever it’s worth, Video Game Collector magazine was published by Shawn Paul Jones, Billy’s longtime manager/agent. While this magazine is not solid proof of anything, it adds to the notion that Billy’s inner circle were aware of his new “world record” scores before he allegedly achieved them. (We’re going to revisit that theme again later. Yes, foreshadowing about foreshadowing.)

THE FAKE PAC-MAN PLAQUES – While this item doesn’t directly pertain to Billy’s Donkey Kong scores, it does demonstrate the lengths Billy is willing to go to fabricate evidence to justify his wild claims. For two decades, Billy has claimed that Namco gave him the title “Player of the Century” during his brief appearance at the Tokyo Game Show in 1999. (This despite that the title objectively originated from Billy’s friend and business partner Walter Day one month before that event.) In order to justify this lie, during his deposition, Billy claimed he was given two awards from Namco – the plaque everyone had seen over the years, which just talks about his claimed perfect score and Namco’s new Playstation game, and a secret second one, supposedly justifying Billy’s “Player of the Century” claim. During the course of the legal battle, Billy’s side disclosed a photo supposedly showing these two distinct plaques. However, there’s no getting around the fact these are poorly made reproductions, with neither resembling the single plaque that was shown off for years, or the one Billy was photographed with on stage in 1999. An elaborate and dubious story was then concocted for why Billy no longer had access to the plaques, and why they thus couldn’t be produced for inspection by TG’s lawyer. (This story included Billy claiming at 25:20 in his deposition that he was never a director for the International Video Game Hall of Fame – a claim which was contradicted by current Hall president Jerry Byrum and by Walter Day.)

This is an appallingly elaborate level of dishonesty, added to an already overwhelming mountain of evidence against Billy’s achievement claims. Again, while this is not conclusive evidence of anything in the Donkey Kong case, circumstantially, this behavior is certainly consistent with someone who would produce entire cheated Donkey Kong tapes and then pass them off as genuine, in the hope of justifying high score claims of which there would otherwise be no proof.

THE DISPUTE PROCESS

We’ll get into the bulk of Team Billy’s rebuttals in a moment, but for now, let’s talk about the TG dispute process. Starting in 2017, Twin Galaxies instituted a system allowing site members to contest standing records on the scoreboard. Dispute verdicts are rendered only by TG administration, and only if the evidence against a score meets an exceptionally high burden of proof. Since Billy’s people have been woefully unable to address either the objective MAME evidence or the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, Billy has instead taken to portraying the Twin Galaxies dispute process as unfair, or even biased against him personally. While this is not actually relevant to the question of whether Billy cheated (hence why he likes to focus on it instead of the evidence), it’s worth discussing briefly.

“HOW TRANSPARENT WAS THE PROCESS?” – While the final “verdict” was decided by TG administrative staff, the process along the way was very open and informative. The dispute discussion was conducted on a public Internet thread, which anyone with a registered site account could immediately post to. Evidence had to be posted to the public dispute thread to be considered in TG’s decision. In other words, TG was not basing their decision on secret evidence withheld from the public. Also important was that any technical assertions had to be replicated and verified by other parties. Someone couldn’t just claim to have produced the “girder finger” on arcade hardware; they had to explain how they did it and show others how to replicate it themselves. (Of course, under those terms, nobody stepped up to claim they had done it.)

TG held a standard that the scores would only be removed if it could be objectively proven that the video tape evidence originally used to verify them was not authentic. In the end, that is exactly what happened. Note that this is in contrast to other Twin Galaxies score disputes, most notably the infamous Todd Rogers Dragster dispute, which was allowed to drag on long after Todd’s record was proven impossible. For all of Billy’s complaints of unfair treatment, his dispute was the most thoroughly examined and the most professionally administered. He was found guilty because the evidence was conclusive.

“WAS BILLY ALLOWED TO PRESENT A DEFENSE?” – The position of Twin Galaxies was that Billy’s participation in the dispute was not required, as his scores would only be removed if it could be proven conclusively that the evidence used to authenticate them in the first place – in this case, the actual videotapes – were proven to be falsified. That said, Billy was still allowed to submit anything he wanted in his defense, as long as he or an associate of his posted it to the public dispute thread so it could be evaluated by the community. Despite the fact that dispute participants were happy to repost any relevant material they found into the TG thread (including offsite material that was intended to help Billy), Billy later complained that the requirement to post evidence to a public forum somehow worked against him in some unspecified way.

“DID TWIN GALAXIES SUPPRESS EVIDENCE IN BILLY’S FAVOR?” – Given that the evidence was collected in a public Internet thread, being watched at all hours of the day and night by various interested parties, which any registered user could immediately add to without preemptive moderation, it would have been very hard for Jace Hall to suppress Billy-favorable evidence without people seeing it.

“WAS TWIN GALAXIES LOOKING FOR A REASON TO REMOVE BILLY’S SCORES?” – The score dispute gained widespread attention with the publication of the MAME evidence in February 2018. However, the dispute was actually opened in August 2017, strictly on the basis that the corroborating board swap video was faked. The dispute then sat open for nearly half a year, with no action by TG administration. If Twin Galaxies was out to defame Billy, they certainly were in no hurry to do so.

“DID TWIN GALAXIES MOVE THE GOALPOSTS?” – During a presentation at Southern Fried Gaming Expo in 2018, Billy gave an elaborate description of how Twin Galaxies allegedly moved the “goalposts”. In reality, the dispute goalposts never moved. Some elements of technical analysis were explored and later abandoned, such as some unusual behavior of the flashing “1UP” which was deemed inconclusive. However, the core of the dispute never changed. The goal was always to see if genuine arcade hardware could be used to produce the MAME screens or MAME signatures seen on Billy’s tapes, whether through the converter they claimed to have used, or through any means. No such method was ever found by anyone on any side.

“WHAT BROUGHT THE DISPUTE TO A CONCLUSION?” – During the course of the dispute, Billy had a small team of friends and volunteers working to establish the legitimacy of his submission tapes, which he was simultaneously claiming weren’t his tapes after all. (More on that below.) Among them was Carlos Pineiro, a former Gameworks technician. At the time, Pineiro believed Billy and sought to produce evidence to exonerate him. However, Pineiro’s work with an actual Donkey Kong cabinet still produced screen transitions consistent with established arcade transitions, and not consistent with the transitions seen on Billy’s tapes. Eventually, Billy’s own volunteer technician was forced to conclude the tapes could not have originated from authentic Donkey Kong hardware. Twin Galaxies and interested third party Chris Gleed also each did tests on Donkey Kong arcade equipment to verify the dispute assertions, receiving the same results. Since Pineiro was Billy’s representative, his conclusion (posted two days prior to the verdict) featured prominently in Twin Galaxies’ decision announcement.

The Carlos Pineiro story does get more complicated a year later, when he was coerced into signing a brief statement retracting his conclusion. However, Carlos later explained this statement was not presented in good faith. After hours of contention with Billy and Billy’s wife, Carlos signed the statement despite his objections and misgivings, in a misguided attempt to exempt himself from any potential lawsuit (which he says Billy was actively threatening him with), and under the belief that the statement would never be made public. When that statement was immediately made public without his consent, Carlos met with his lawyer and with Billy. Once again under threat of legal reprisal, Carlos signed a second modified statement, which he also now disavows. Carlos has since clarified, including in later court filings, that he does, in fact, stand behind his original conclusion. (Billy is also now claiming Carlos never represented him in the first place, but as we show below, that’s another lie.)

VALID QUESTIONS

Before we get to Billy’s rebuttals and deflections, let’s address a few legitimate questions a curious bystander might have about this case.

“WHAT EXACTLY IS BILLY ACCUSED OF DOING?” – There is often confusion from casual observers regarding what community experts believe Billy actually did in the process of fabricating his scores. This is understandable, as it was generally known that Billy would not take kindly to any accusations, necessitating a focus on the evidence demonstrating misrepresentation rather than open speculation on the finer minutiae of that misrepresentation. It’s also true that we don’t necessarily know all the details of how exactly Billy’s hoaxes were pulled off, and likely will never know for sure without contrition from the involved parties. For instance, we can’t say for certain exactly which version of MAME was used, or the exact method used to stitch the game play together (whether it was done using save states or some other method), or whether Billy himself produced the MAME tapes or had a friend do it for him.

However, the available evidence illustrated above and below points to the conclusion that Billy (or an associate) produced complete games of Donkey Kong on MAME or an equivalent emulator, using emulation tools to gain an unfair competitive advantage, resulting in game play likely exceeding his ability at the time. (Alternatively, even if Billy was capable of reaching these scores at that time, this cheating would have allowed Billy to skip potential months of score grinding other competitors like Wiebe had to endure.) These MAME tapes were then distressed to varying degrees, in what would seem to be a deliberate attempt to obscure their emulated origin. (Obviously, the transition screen evidence was not known until years later.) Billy then submitted these scores to the Twin Galaxies leaderboard, knowingly misrepresenting these tapes as valid, uninterrupted gameplay. This constitutes a level of cheating far beyond some mere technicality or misunderstanding, exceeding the wrongdoings behind even many notorious sports cheating controversies. Additionally, while Billy historically relied on favorable statements from witnesses, most of whom have turned out to be personal friends of his (more on them below), these witnesses have proven unreliable in the face of the continuing deluge of evidence against Billy’s claims. Indeed, things like the board swap videos and mortgage broker photos, taken in the presence of a potentially functional Donkey Kong cabinet (which would be incapable of producing the MAME tapes without significant alteration), show an intent to fabricate entire scenarios legitimizing these bogus scores, with perhaps some innocent individuals caught up in what they were led to believe they were present for.

Billy is not simply accused of either intentionally or unknowingly playing on MAME instead of arcade. Nor is he accused of being misinformed about the aberrant nature of a random Donkey Kong machine he otherwise legitimately played on. He is also not accused of being an untalented player. (More on those items below.) Billy Mitchell is accused of fraudulently presenting cheated game play as a legitimate score submission – i.e., cheating. And Billy is accused of cheating because the evidence says he did.

“WHY DO SOME OF THE TRANSITION SCREENS APPEAR INCONCLUSIVE?” – While it would certainly be helpful if each screen transition from a single recorded play session was consistently identifiable as being from either MAME or arcade, in reality, there are many reasons why a randomly selected transition could appear inconclusive to the untrained eye. For starters, some formats and platforms, including YouTube, employ video compression which can blend different frames together in unique ways. Different pieces of equipment can also be operating at different frequencies (how many times they act per second), resulting in additional lost or mangled frames.

The most discussed form of distortion comes from a phenomenon called “rolling shutter”, where pieces of different frames are captured together in one sweep of the camera. Above you see an example of a screen recorded from genuine arcade, wherein the camera caught the monitor partway through different drawing cycles, blending three frames together. Even garbled as it is, that game play can be identified as originating from arcade due to the remnants of the five girder screen along the right side, which MAME cannot produce. Rolling shutter is introduced any time an external camera is aimed at a television or monitor, as was the case for early leaked copies of Billy’s tapes available on YouTube, as well as some misguided attempts to examine the dispute claims. However, rolling shutter should not affect true direct feed captures, where the capture device receives the signal without an external camera lens as an intermediary.

Tanner Fokkens’ analysis examines both rolling shutter, and a form of vertical screen tearing present on Billy’s tapes (as seen above). This screen tearing results from the MAME program and the computer running that program operating at different refresh rates, and is only visible because MAME’s “waitvsync” option was not enabled. Unlike the distortions introduced through external recording or video compression, this form of screen tearing is not possible on direct feed from original, unmodified arcade hardware, which uses a single refresh rate. (Vertical tearing on arcade could be possible with a capture using an additional framebuffer, but the Two Bit Score converter lacks such a framebuffer.) Note once again, the above combined frame can be identified as originating from MAME, due to the right portion matching the MAME three girder screen.

Experts can often tease apart how these different distortions affect one another and the original images, but without that expertise, the garbled mess can appear indecipherable. While many of the transition screens on Billy’s tapes appear inconclusive due to these distortions, many others are precisely consistent with identified MAME screens, and none are indicative of arcade origin. In other words, Billy’s tapes are still awash in MAME girder fingers, and still lacking even a single arcade signature.

“ISN’T MAME LEGAL?” – For many years, emulators like MAME have been legal in competition. Some score tracking organizations like Twin Galaxies have separate leaderboards for emulation, while Donkey Kong Forum lists MAME and arcade scores together. Some players consider scores done on original hardware as carrying higher prestige; thus, even if Billy’s MAME scores were otherwise genuine in terms of actual game play, the act of passing them off as original arcade would still be cheating, by claiming an added accolade Billy didn’t earn. However, in the eyes of much of the competitive Donkey Kong community, the difference between MAME and arcade is largely a matter of personal preference.

What aren’t a matter of preference, however, are the strict protocols involved in verifying emulator scores, due to the myriad ways emulators can be manipulated and abused. Only certain versions of MAME are allowed, and input files must be sent as part of the evidence package. The exact version of MAME used must also be disclosed. One cannot simply move Billy’s scores over to the MAME leaderboard, as some of his defenders have suggested. There is no resolving or verifying a score, recorded via playback, achieved on an unknown version of MAME, with many red flags and no supporting evidence, which the submitter insists was never done on MAME in the first place.

“BUT ISN’T BILLY A GOOD PLAYER?” – I’m not normally in the habit of praising cheaters, but sure, Billy is good at Donkey Kong. The point of the dispute was not to assess whether Billy Mitchell was a talented player. The point was to assess whether he cheated (which he did).

There is a misconception that only bad players cheat. Therefore, if someone cheats, it must be because they’re bad at the game. In truth, there are many reasons players cheat. Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were certainly good at their sports, but they still cheated. Everyone who ever cheated in the Olympics was a world-class athlete. Indeed, in some cases it’s the most talented players who have the most motivation to cheat, and who also possess the knowledge necessary to avoid detection. Sometimes, great players cheat because being great isn’t enough to them; they can only accept being (seen as) the very best. Other times, competitors cheat because they aren’t willing to put in the necessary work and make the necessary sacrifices for legitimate records. What gives one player the right to skip the months of score-grinding fairly required of their competitors? While the early days of competitive video gaming were a wild west of myths and lies, I struggle to imagine a modern day scoreboard that operates on the basis that someone need only show they’re very good at a game before they can lay claim to any current and historical achievements they want.

This line of argument is an attempt by Billy and his supporters to reframe the question away from the objective examination of evidence, and toward a more subjective and malleable question of talent. Instead of asking “Did Billy lie and fabricate evidence to put a claimed score on the scoreboard?”, Billy wants us to ask “Why would Billy cheat if he’s good enough that he wouldn’t have to?” The answer to that question is that the cheating is simply proven. Perhaps, as indicated by the bizarre game play on his tapes, he didn’t know how to score one million at the time without chicanery. Perhaps he knew the secrets but was unable to consistently execute on them. Maybe he was simply impatient and unwilling to dedicate the time and focus required to grind out a valid score. Or maybe, in the case of his first two tapes, he had his eyes on the mantle of “First player to score one million at Donkey Kong”, and didn’t want to leave the matter up to chance. (Similarly, Billy had an expressed interest in holding the Donkey Kong record when the film King of Kong was released in 2007. His 2010 DK and DK Junior tapes also featured prominently in his induction into Walter Day’s new “Video Game Hall of Fame”.) There are many possible motives here, explaining both why Billy would cheat and why he would do so at those specific times. Only Billy can describe his true motivation for choosing to cheat. All we have to do is show that he did.

“DIDN’T BILLY RECREATE ALL HIS CONTESTED SCORES?” – This is a more specific variation of the last item, so all the general arguments there still apply. But there are more problems with this particular claim.

The first, most obvious one, is that none of his scores were “recreated”, no matter how many times Billy and his supporters say otherwise. Yes, since the 2018 dispute, Billy has streamed games on Twitch, which appear to be genuine, and yes, he has scored over one million a few times. But his “recreated” scores leave a lot to be desired. He never attempted to recreate the 1.014m score, he overshot the 1.047m score by 300 points due to a stray fireball, an untimely death caused the 1.05m attempt to come up 100 points short, and after two years of attempts he didn’t even bother “recreating” the 1.062m score, simply skipping past it when he finally had the opportunity. But that didn’t stop Billy from tweeting out the above image as commemoration for having “matched” the 1,050,200 score.

Scoring over one million on Donkey Kong is certainly no easy feat. So one might say, “Well, it’s close enough.” Except, Billy himself is out bragging about how he supposedly showed up his detractors by hitting his contested scores, in his own words, “exactly on the head”. In one interview, Billy spun a completely fictitious narrative about one of these games he streamed from an Indianapolis arcade. If these scores supposedly vindicate Billy the way he claims they do, then why would he need to tack on excessive lies about them and how they were achieved? And why, when he’s trying to clear his name, would he lie so brazenly about things that can be so easily disproven? At what point must one accept that this guy will just lie to your face about anything?

To be clear though, this is about more than just misrepresenting approximate reenactments as exact. The original scores were meant to be demonstrations of overwhelming prowess, including the ability to hit exact scores on demand (such as getting exactly 100,000 more than Steve Wiebe), before flippantly killing off his multiple remaining lives, something which actual game luck has prevented him from so effortlessly doing. It should also be pointed out that, unsurprisingly, the game play Billy uses for these million point scores now is significantly different than in his MAME submissions, relying on proven strategies (and newer, more advanced knowledge of the game) rather than the hope of getting absurd luck and never dying in live arcade play.

But the biggest indictment of Billy’s claim has to do with something called score pace. Think of score pace like timing splits for a speedrunner. A comparison of Billy’s 1.092m score of June 2020 to his contested 1.05m and 1.062m scores of yesteryear shows the old scores to be significantly ahead going into level 21. His 2007 tape was 5,200 points ahead at that point, and his 2010 score (from the footage seen at Big Bang) was 29,600 points ahead. Of course, Billy killed those scores off almost immediately, wasting multiple lives both times, with neither of those games even passing the first board of level 21, whereas in his 2020 score, Billy kept playing through to the kill screen. The only way in which Billy has “recreated” his contested performances is in attempting to arrive at the same final score, regardless of how he got there or how long it took, and he couldn’t even do that right.

And yet, even if you set all of that aside, this distraction still has no bearing on the case that was presented. Only casual observers were suggesting Billy could refute cheating allegations by playing to those scores today. The inability to “recreate” the score was never an expectation of the score dispute, no matter what Billy says. Again, there are several reasons why a competitor could choose to cheat. The dispute was strictly about determining whether Billy had cheated, which he absolutely did.

“WHY DID TG REMOVE ALL OF BILLY’S SCORES, EVEN PAC-MAN?” – When it comes to striking cheaters from any scoreboard, there are two schools of thought. One approach is to try to remove only the bogus scores while preserving any valid ones for the historical record. For instance, when Donkey Kong Forum removed Billy’s cheated scores, they reverted his best score to 933,900, which was achieved live at Midwest Gaming Classic in 2004. Donkey Kong Forum is organized by experts in the Donkey Kong arcade franchise, and they felt confident the 2004 score was historically legitimate. The other approach taken by many leaderboards is to simply remove all of a cheater’s scores entirely. This achieves a few things: It reduces the number of bogus scores from known liars that are allowed to stand simply because there’s not enough proof against those particular scores, it saves the moderators’ time and energy trying to tease apart which of a cheater’s runs are valid and which are not, and it serves as a penalty to discourage cheating. The current iteration of Twin Galaxies has for years had a policy that deliberate cheating warrants a lifetime ban, and Billy Mitchell has not been the only player to see all their scores removed on the basis of cheating. While striking potentially valid runs can be considered anti-historical in a sense, the same could be said of banning a player from future submissions. A line simply has to be drawn somewhere for the sake of scoreboard integrity, lest a cheater continue to submit bogus runs in the hope some of them cannot be proven illegitimate. And in drawing such a line, there is no reason to give proven cheaters the benefit of the doubt. Trust is critical, and if someone has shown themselves capable of falsifying a submission, without the offender’s contrition, there is no reason to believe that any of their other submissions, also based on trust, are not also falsified in some way. Moral of the story: If you don’t want your scores removed, don’t cheat.

“WHY DID GUINNESS REINSTATE BILLY’S SCORES?” – Why, indeed? The evidence to substantiate the scores was proven fraudulent, the corroborating evidence was also staged, witnesses were caught demonstrably lying, and the only competitive gaming scoreboard who still recognized Billy’s scores, a longtime partner with Guinness, disqualified him and no longer recognized his claims. So why did Guinness choose to ignore all that and forge their own path?

Given that Guinness’ sudden reversal only came when Billy threatened them with a lawsuit, and given that Guinness was given the exact same evidence package that was given to Twin Galaxies (which TG chose to publish in the dispute thread), and given that their announcement of Billy’s reinstatement offered no new revelations, people correctly guessed that Guinness simply wished to avoid a legal battle by offering Billy whatever he was demanding. However, that was a difficult thing to prove… until Billy’s lawsuit against Twin Galaxies moved into “discovery”. Since TG is defending their integrity in court, Billy was required to provide a trove of relevant documents to the opposing party. This included seven new-to-the-public letters of legal banter between Billy’s and Guinness’ lawyers, as well as personal emails between Billy, Walter Day, and Craig Glenday (Guinness Editor in Chief, seen in Billy’s reinstatement video). In this exchange, literally none of the evidence was discussed, with Guinness’ lawyer simply offering Billy a continually escalating package of honorifics until Billy agrees not to seek monetary damages, which he eventually agreed to.

While this reinstatement did not confuse knowledgeable dispute participants, who recognized that nothing substantial had been presented to counter the MAME evidence, Guinness’ decision did persuade some more casual observers to believe that maybe there was some undiscovered basis for Billy’s claims of innocence. Billy himself took the opportunity to tout his Guinness reinstatement, describing their process with words like “substantial due diligence” and “ridiculously thorough”, while Billy’s lawyer touted Guinness’ “sterling reputation” and “longstanding leadership […] in the gaming community.” Of course, as previously documented, this supposed “investigation” by Guinness did not involve seeking input from any dispute participants we could identify (including the knowledgeable author of this post), who would have easily pointed out many lies in the “evidence” Billy sent to Guinness. There had also been no indication Guinness had done any tests on Donkey Kong hardware whatsoever, much less ones rivaling the exhaustive and competent tests publicly documented by multiple parties in the TG dispute thread. Regardless, the Guinness letters simply proved what informed observers already understood – that Billy’s Guinness reinstatement was just another narcissistic sham, and that Billy’s story of an exonerating secret investigation was yet another lie he made up.

REBUTTALS

As these things go, there were many attempts to shift the discussion into something other than a look at the objective evidence, or to get people to buy into unsubstantiated claims. (Note: The following bolded headlines are paraphrases, and not direct quotes.)

“THERE WERE WITNESSES.” – Out of all of Billy’s lackluster rebuttals, the first and most important to address are the first-hand witnesses (both real and imaginary). Since witnesses are the only thing Billy really has going for him, his approach has been to promote them above everything else. In a presentation at Southern-Fried Gaming Expo in 2018, Mr. Mitchell dismissed the prospect of scientific evidence, declaring “Both sides always have scientific [evidence]. It always comes down to eyewitness testimony.” This was a rhetorical trick to mask the fact that he does not, in fact, have any compelling scientific evidence on his behalf of any kind. Billy has continued with this strategy in his lawsuit, with his defense team repeatedly suggesting that witness testimony itself is enough to prove authentic arcade hardware can produce the MAME screens seen on his tapes.

With the movie King of Kong on its way to theaters in 2007, along with Billy’s repeated proclamations that one should achieve competitive scores live in front of witnesses, the tape submissions weren’t going to cut it anymore. But rather than choose a gaming convention or tournament at which he most certainly would have been welcome, he chose the yearly convention of the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers (or “FAMB”). Aside from the designated referee (who we’ll get to in a moment), none of these mortgage brokers were qualified to adjudicate competitive video gaming. If I attended a sumo wrestling competition, I could certainly say I saw what happened and that a sumo contest did indeed occur, but I’d be hard-pressed to identify any improper procedures or fouls or records achieved by either competitor. (One could argue that Billy’s decision to stage this FAMB score at a private non-gaming event with an entry fee was a deliberate attempt to exclude a more informed gaming public from witnessing the scene for themselves.) Even if these non-gaming witnesses were impartial and totally honest, their testimony is not reliable when placed against a scientific examination of the objective permanent evidence – hence why Jace Hall was much more interested in studying the tapes.

If you want an even more on-the-nose example of how uninformed witnesses can be misled, consider the incident at the Music City Multi Con in October 2021. Billy played Pac-Man at the convention, having announced his intention to do a perfect score on Pac-Man’s “jumper” revision. Billy told event organizers he had a perfect score in progress. He told the media he had a perfect score in progress. He declared to the crowd at the conclusion of his game that it was a “perfect game”. He signed game marquees commemorating the occasion, for podcasters who believed they had just witnessed a perfect score. And yet… it was objectively not a perfect score. Prior to all those statements, Billy had already lost one life and missed a key, which resulted in his game coming 5,090 points short. And yet you still have attendees, actual gaming enthusiasts, laughing at the notion that they didn’t see what Billy Mitchell told them they saw. (Why Billy would hand us such an obvious and well-documented example of himself lying about a gaming achievement to a crowd of trusting spectators, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe he’s been lying to people for so long, he doesn’t expect anything to come of it?)

Getting back to the contested Donkey Kong scores, it’s also fair to ask what these alleged witnesses’ personal relationship was to Billy, or how trustworthy they actually are. In his lawsuit filings, Billy included a statement from Richard Mallion, a witness to his 2007 score. The statement seems nice and impartial, until you discover that Richard Mallion and Billy Mitchell went to high school together, even appearing opposite each other in their yearbook. (Oh, and whatever you do, don’t google “Richard Mallion Florida”. Don’t do that.)

Recall also the story of Carlos Pineiro above. He was badgered into signing a statement he didn’t agree with, and was even threatened with a lawsuit if he didn’t comply. We only know the whole story of his signed statement due to his connections in the gaming community. Were these mortgage brokers similarly “impartial” when presented with prepared statements for them to sign?

And then there’s this little problem that, when people go to court, both parties get to question everyone’s witnesses, and find out what was left out of their initial recollections. As we discussed earlier, Billy’s own witnesses have been hurting his case. Josh Ryan the GameStop manager testified that there’s no way any direct feed recording equipment could have been connected to the Donkey Kong machine at the FAMB event, while Valerie Saunders testified that Billy’s game was over in the span of about 15 minutes (a rather important detail that was left out of the statement Valerie signed for Billy in 2019). One could argue that witness recollections after 15 years are unreliable… but is that not the point? Why would anyone’s recollection, either 15 years or 15 minutes later, be given weight over hard, scientific evidence?

Beyond old friends willing to claim they witnessed Billy’s incredible achievements, Billy likes to cite crowds of people, all gathered behind him, watching, cheering him on, filming, and taking pictures. Somehow, none of these pictures or videos from parties unrelated to Billy have ever emerged, despite earnest attempts to track them down. Random people who filmed Billy’s replay presentation at the Big Bang event did provide their footage, but no photos or videos have emerged of Billy’s actual game play from these supposed crowds at the events where Billy claims these scores were actually achieved. Did nobody have camera phones at Boomers in 2010?

There’s a reason Billy sweepingly dismisses scientific evidence in favor of malleable witness statements from friends. Ultimately, the surviving objective evidence of the submitted video tapes, and the fact that those tapes conclusively could not have originated from authentic arcade hardware, trumps what Billy’s friends think they saw or are willing to say they saw.

“IT WAS VERIFIED BY REFEREE.” – This brings us to the designated referee(s) present for the 2007 and 2010 scores. The submission rules were a bit murkier under previous iterations of Twin Galaxies. The website only offered advice on how to submit scores by videotape, however allowances were granted to certified TG referees to adjudicate scores at live events, under the assumption that such events would be legitimate. Billy’s 1.047 million was verified by video (more on that later), however his later 1.05 million score, allegedly achieved at the FAMB convention, listed the verification method as “referee.”

Historically, Todd Rogers was the only live referee indicated for this score. (That linked TG article does reference two expert referees who would later verify the submission tape.) Former TG head referee Robert Mruczek, that same month, suggested in multiple ways that Todd was the only referee for this event. Heck, even Todd himself offered an account (seen above), trying to emphasize the extent to which Billy went to authenticate this score, while only citing himself as the referee.

While Todd used to be an official Twin Galaxies referee, his credibility has since fallen on hard times. In 2017, many of his former records were found to be either highly implausible or outright impossible, with the most famous being his claim of a time of 5.51 seconds on Dragster. Days before the MAME evidence package was published in this case, all of Todd’s scores were removed from Twin Galaxies and Guinness on the basis that he had fraudulently self-entered scores. In other words, Todd lied for years about video game achievements, which makes his testimony in defense of his longtime friend fairly worthless.

It’s perhaps for this reason that more recent witness statements have attempted to place a second referee at the site of the FAMB event, that referee being Todd’s girlfriend Kimberly “Morningdove” Mahoney. In her signed statement, Mahoney claims to have been a TG referee from 2003 to 2012. However, further research shows that Mahoney was not added to TG’s referee list until August 2008, even though the list was regularly updated over the years. Her presence at the event had also never been cited prior to these legal challenges. Maybe it’s possible she was present at the event with Todd, but with all contemporary documentation emphasizing Todd alone as the score’s authenticator, and with Mahoney’s absence from the official referee list at the time of this 2007 FAMB event, her supposed role in official adjudication of this score has all the signs of being a retcon.

Regardless, even if we take Mahoney at her word, both her and Todd submitted signed statements testifying that the FAMB score was done on “original unmodified” hardware. It’s unclear how either would know this, given that both Josh Ryan and Billy Mitchell himself have sworn that the machine was padlocked and inaccessible to anyone without Josh’s key. In other words, Todd and Morningdove appear to be testifying to things they would have no direct knowledge of. Their testimony was also contradicted by the later revealed mortgage broker photos showing the obviously nonstandard joystick. Perhaps Billy’s “expert” referees had never actually seen a Donkey Kong cabinet before?

Billy’s 2010 score, featuring the faked videos filmed at Boomers (in which you can briefly see Morningdove dart away from the camera), involved the same stunt of simply having friends act as referees to spot-verify the score. However, by then, Donkey Kong submission rules had changed. This deviation of adjudication processes did not sit well with top TG staff, who reportedly wanted Billy’s score to be subjected to the same review process as his competitors. However, after threats from Billy (as reported by multiple parties), the score was accepted by secret ballot among TG staff, who had not actually been allowed to review the tape prior to their vote.

So a referee who may not have been a referee at the time, and another referee with a severe credibility problem, both swear they saw their friend (who likes to threaten adjudicators with retaliation) achieve a Donkey Kong world record, while the surviving objective evidence says otherwise. These circumstances already don’t instill much faith in the adjudication of these scores. Either way, as before, the permanent objective evidence supersedes the word of partisan witnesses.

“THE BOARD WAS CERTIFIED BY NINTENDO.” – One of Billy’s responses to the MAME evidence has been to emphasize that he only plays on authentic hardware, and thus the MAME signatures must have some other mysterious explanation. For his 2010 score, all we are really offered in the way of hardware verification are witness statements from his friends who swear there was a real Donkey Kong cabinet at Boomers that day. But for his 2007 score, Billy claims to have mailed the PCB (printed circuit board) to Nintendo to have it verified by a technician. No formal certificate of authenticity has ever been provided, nor has any other documentation of this alleged hardware verification process. However, Billy did publish photos of a shipping label on the box he claims to have used. (Yes, this guy wants us to believe he keeps shipping boxes for over a decade, just in case they might be useful in authenticating his Donkey Kong records, but doesn’t keep any copies of the actual tapes of those claimed world records he insists be historically recognized.)

While the story of a Nintendo-certified board sounds reassuring, the story of how that board arrived at the FAMB event has changed over time. In 2007, MTV reported that the board was sent to Billy, who brought it to the FAMB event, while someone filmed its installation and removal. In later retellings, the board was sent directly to a mysterious local GameStop manager (later identified as Josh Ryan), who installed it and padlocked the cabinet without the board ever touching Billy’s hands.

While the general story of the padlocking has more-or-less been corroborated, and while we do now have photos from the FAMB event showing a Donkey Kong cabinet present, the board itself is not observable in any surviving evidence. It was locked away inside the machine for the duration of the event, and the alleged videos of the PCB installation have never been provided. Again, with no third party certification, the board may have been genuine, or may have been modified, or bogus altogether. What we do know, thanks to both the scientific MAME evidence and to Ryan’s testimony, is that the video on the surviving submission tape could not have originated from a legitimate arcade board, whether that board was “verified” by a Nintendo technician or not.

“WHAT IF BILLY PLAYED ON A MODIFIED OR BOOTLEG BOARD?” – This defense does not come from Billy himself, who always bristles at the notion that his competitive games were played on anything but original, authentic arcade hardware. But you occasionally hear this from Billy’s surrogates, in an apparent attempt to throw possibilities at the wall to see what sticks. (Oddly, those same Billy defenders will at other times stress that the board Billy allegedly used was certified as authentic by Nintendo. Billy’s defenders sometimes have a hard time making up their minds.)

The question is, is it possible Billy simply walked up to an ordinary, legitimate looking Donkey Kong cabinet that had something other than an authentic arcade PCB hooked up inside? If so, it could be argued, the games Billy played could be legitimate one-time playthroughs, even if the product resembles MAME through no fault of his own.

To be clear, despite what Walter Day puzzlingly claimed in his letter to Guinness on behalf of Billy, there have been emulation arcade cabinets for decades. Some of these have even been installed in cabinets built for original games. And cabinets running MAME do produce the same non-arcade transition screens that MAME on the computer does – understandably, as that is the process MAME uses to draw level boards. (Recall again that MAME draws from the video buffer in snapshots, while original arcade draws in a left-to-right sweep, thus creating the unique artifacts and signatures the community has identified.) However, because a direct feed would have been involved, this gets much more complicated than at first blush. For this “bootleg board” defense to hold water, you’d have to have a theoretical impostor PCB, which has architecture different enough from arcade to draw boards in a completely different fashion from the real thing, while at the same time being similar enough to original arcade to fool the technicians hooking it up to direct feed, assuming it was even capable of being hooked up to that feed in the intended fashion at all. You then have to remember the screen orientation issue. Were the monitors on the 2004 and 2007 cabinets Billy used installed upside-down, accommodating an upside-down signal from this “bootleg” board, but then the 2010 monitor was right-side up, and at the same time something magically happened to this bootleg board to make the 2010 direct feed output right-side up as well? Obviously, no examples of such a board or setup are ever provided, so it becomes an exercise in wild speculation, akin to dreaming of finding a rainbow unicorn on a snowy summer day. And even if such a board was found, this theory would still be incongruent with Billy’s stories of sending his board to be verified by Nintendo’s own technician. This theory also couldn’t be reconciled with the aforementioned revelation that any direct feed recording from the machine at the FAMB event was impossible, regardless of the PCB’s condition. Lastly, while straw-grasping speculation of this sort might hypothetically trick people into disregarding some of the technical MAME evidence above, it does nothing to address the mountain of circumstantial evidence, including the many lies in Billy’s testimony, which also indicate deliberate deception. (Keep reading to see more examples.)

“TWIN GALAXIES SAID IT WASN’T MAME.” – You occasionally hear this from some of Billy’s supporters, so I feel compelled to address it, but this is just a lie. Twin Galaxies did not say the tapes weren’t MAME; they said they couldn’t prove it was MAME, but that they could prove the tapes did not originate from authentic arcade hardware, which was all they needed to prove to verify the dispute’s claim. What’s more, the reason TG said they weren’t comfortable declaring the tapes were MAME was because they would have to rule out other emulators, or even the possibility that the video was created out of whole cloth using video effects software. Lost on Billy’s naïve supporters was the dry humor behind that remark by TG, given that neither of those possibilities would exonerate Billy any more than if it was MAME, and the latter theory would be a hilarious stretch. Regardless, Billy had the means to carry out this deception, in the form of widely available software and technical assistance from friends. It’s also doubtful that any emulator independent of MAME was capable of running the arcade version of Donkey Kong at the time Billy’s earlier tapes were submitted, and even if such an alternative platform did exist, it would likely exhibit entirely different signatures unique to that platform. While it was not necessary to prove the tapes were strictly and specifically of MAME origin, and not from some functionally identical emulator, MAME is far and away the most likely tool one would have used, and is an exact match for the evidence we have.

“THE VERSION OF MAME THEY SAID I USED DIDN’T EXIST YET.” – Remember earlier how I explained that the “girder finger” was not considered a critical part of the original MAME evidence package when it was first published? What was important was that MAME drew complete girders one by one, with the snapshot cycle interrupting the third girder halfway through being drawn, while arcade drew portions of five girders along the right side. What would come to be known as the “girder finger” was present, but was not identified as a critical element until later. (It has, of course, confounded Billy’s techs all the same; it just wasn’t the singular linchpin some observers made it out to be.)

Billy’s 1.047m and 1.05m tapes had the girder finger screen appear multiple times. However, halfway through the original dispute in 2018, a flaw was identified in the original MAME evidence presentation. That particular screen only appears by default when MAME is set to a refresh rate of 60.6hz. The versions of MAME available when Billy produced his earliest tapes instead ran at 60hz by default, displaying a slightly different transition screen on those settings. As seen above, both of these default transition screens appear similar, with three girders, but in the 60hz screen from earlier MAME the third girder is more fully drawn, lacking the tiny “finger” or “tail”.

Once this discrepancy was identified, it took less than a day for dispute participants to track down the cause, and to show how a simple change to MAME’s refresh rate does produce the exact girder finger screen on versions of MAME going back to 2001. Without contrition from whoever recorded Billy’s tapes, we can’t say for sure if this was a deliberate attempt to match the refresh rate of arcade Donkey Kong, which also runs at 60.6hz, or whether this was an incidental detail carried over from a previous MAME player’s preferences. (Note that the girder finger does not appear in the limited footage we have from Billy’s Boomers score, indicating the MAME settings used were not always consistent.) Either way, the discrepancy was easily accounted for. Earlier MAME absolutely does show the girder finger, just not when run at default settings.

While it was a technical oversight in the original evidence presentation, Billy and his defenders seem more interested in harping on this peculiarity as a way of dismissing the totality of the MAME evidence outright. In interviews, Billy tells the story without even mentioning the refresh rate discovery at all, simply asserting that his scores predate “that version” of MAME. In legal filings, Billy has claimed that Jace Hall and dispute participants were “fabricating explanations”, while one of Billy’s exhibits claimed the TG community were attempting to “tamper” with MAME. Regardless, technicians still haven’t been able to reproduce the three-girder screen from original Donkey Kong hardware, with or without the girder finger. Billy’s tapes are still an exact match for MAME, including versions of MAME available at the time he declared his scores, and they still do not match arcade either way.

CHANGING STORIES

A number of Team Billy’s stories have changed over time, a phenomenon that got even worse when legal threats started flying. (Again, bolded examples are paraphrases, and not direct quotes.)

WHERE DID THE 1.047M HAPPEN? – In a 2016 interview, Billy claimed his 1.047m submission was done “at a convention”. Starting in 2018, he claimed that same score was done “at Rob’s arcade” (referring to Rob Childs’ arcade repair business). This was echoed in later legal filings, wherein Billy also claimed to have “witnesses nonetheless”. In a December 2015 Twitch interview, Billy claimed this game “was actually played in a room in front of, you know, crowds and crowds of people”. And yet, of that same score, in the movie King of Kong Billy said “I’m doing it just for the fun of it. When I do an actual score, I’ll do it in person.” (That was before choosing to submit it, anyway – more on that in a moment.)

On the topic of location, Walter Day’s trading card #471 commemorates Billy’s claimed 1.062m score (the “Boomers” score) by incorrectly citing it as a kill screen game, before asserting that the score was done “at his home”. However, that last part was probably more accurate than Billy’s story.

WHEN DID THESE SCORES HAPPEN? – There have also been changing stories regarding what day some of these scores occurred, or how many days of game play these events involved. FAMB organizer Valerie Saunders recalled in detail that Billy’s 2007 score was reserved for Saturday, July 14. Billy also testified that the score was on Saturday. However, FAMB’s post-convention newsletter announced Billy’s score as having happened on Friday July 13, while another source reported it as “Friday July 14” (a nonexistent date in 2007).

The mysterious King of Kong tape is a bigger offender, having had no public event associated with it. The date was acknowledged as June 7, 2004 on posters and the scoreboard. However, when it came time to file lawsuits, Billy changed his mind and claimed the score was done “on or about December 28, 2004”. (You know, June, December, basically the same thing.) Lest you think this was just a case of other people misreporting things on Billy’s behalf, Billy himself gets in on the juggling act in his January 2023 deposition, starting at around 38:50. First, Billy struggled to recall the month the score was achieved, before being reminded that he signed a statement claiming it was done in December. Billy then said he was wrestling with whether the score was in December or January, but does now recall the score was done around Christmastime. Later, at 1:51:00, Billy was shown a video of a presentation where he himself told an audience that the 1.047m score was done in June 2004. In the deposition, Billy tried to gloss this over by saying he meant June 2005, and that he meant that was when the score was shown at Funspot, not when it was achieved. However, this would have made no sense as an answer to the question that was actually asked of him at the presentation, which was “How long did you have the tape of your one-million 47-thousand score?”

Most sources report the Boomers scores (both Donkey Kong and DK Junior) as having been achieved on Saturday, July 31, although Billy’s close friend Chris Ayra initially announced them as happening on Friday, July 30. Aside from that, there have been inconsistent stories about how long Billy played, or what time of day his claimed scores were achieved. In the past, this stunt had been portrayed as a one-day event. A press release at the time quoted Billy as saying “I wanted to set two significant world records in a single day. Fortunately, luck favored me on that day.” A text from Rob Childs to a friend earlier that week also indicated that Billy intended to take back the DK and DK Junior records “on Saturday”. However, when it came time for written testimony, Billy added an extra day of failed attempts on Friday, July 30. Other versions of the story are that the alleged plan was to do two records in one weekend, or alternatively, that Billy had to be convinced to play DK Junior at all. Todd Rogers’ story has also waffled between challenging Billy to an impromptu challenge at blindfolded Donkey Kong which later became spontaneous world record attempts, to getting roped into Billy’s attempts which were already underway.

Probably the most damning element was Billy’s claim that his Donkey Kong Junior score ended “around midnight”, and that “most people had gone home since it was late at night”. (Recall that this was their attempt to gloss over the bogus board swap videos, in which Billy talks about already having achieved the “records”, plural.) However, per the “Split-Screen Man” profile by Josh Harmon, Rob Childs had texted a friend at 7:24 p.m. saying that Billy “took back both records today”. Indeed, three minutes later, that friend tweeted out the news, giving us a permanent reference to Billy’s “new” records hours before he himself claims they were completed. (Note that Twitter timestamps are time zone dependent. The linked tweet was published at 7:27pm U.S. Eastern time.) As with the magazine, all of this points to the idea that Billy’s inner circle knew about these scores before they were allegedly achieved.

WHERE WAS PETE? – Another changing story regards the presence of then-owner of Twin Galaxies Pete Bouvier for the 2010 score. In 2010, Billy said multiple times that Bouvier was not in attendance. However in 2018, after Bouvier’s passing, the story from Billy and his team became that Bouvier was there for the million point rollover as well as to shake Billy’s hand at the conclusion of his game.

WHO SET UP THE DIRECT FEED? – In February 2018, with the score dispute gaining traction, Billy’s longtime friend and technician Rob Childs posted a technical analysis, describing himself as “a witness to the event and technician who performed the game/equipment set-up for Billy Mitchell”, while giving a detailed description of the specific setup used. So confident was Childs in his work that he offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone willing to come to his shop and prove his described setup does not produce the intended results. A year and a half later though, Rob changed his tune. When called to provide written testimony for Billy’s legal threat, he now knew “very little” about the direct feed setup, which apparently his technicians (who can’t be located) set up on his behalf. He now claims he “did not have a part in the set-up of these performances, because my employees had already done it,” while lamenting that Twin Galaxies “twisted” his previous statements to suggest he knew more about the setup than he did. Childs has also offered competing descriptions of this capture setup. His initial post asserted that the Two Bit Score converter signal “is sent solely to the VCR”, with no reference to any other equipment. However, when it came time for others to test this process, Childs added a laptop and a Gigaware brand converter to his description. Neither method produced results matching what is seen on Billy’s tapes.

“JOEL WEST AND CARLOS PINEIRO NEVER REPRESENTED ME.” – Billy probably wasn’t happy with the legal threats of his now deceased friend Joel West, and he certainly wasn’t happy with Carlos’ conclusion that Billy’s tapes could not have been produced by authentic arcade hardware. And so Billy has attempted to disavow both of them. Specifically, in his court filings, Billy now says that he denied to Jace Hall that others spoke on his behalf, going so far as to call TG defense statements to the opposite effect “a lie”. Billy also says he never provided Pineiro “equipment or compensation of any form”, that he never asked for a deadline extension during the TG dispute, and that there never was a “Team Billy”.

Unfortunately for Billy, the permanent record disagrees with him. Above, you can see Billy telling Jace that Joel West absolutely was speaking for him, and clarifying that Carlos was heading up his technical efforts, while also confirming that they were indeed asking for more time. (More on that text in a moment.) Here was the late Joel West, in his capacity as Billy’s spokesperson, announcing recent findings of, in Joel’s words, “Team Billy”. Here’s Billy providing Carlos with a television for his testing. Here’s Steve Kleisath, a former friend of Billy’s who assisted Carlos in his work, testifying that Billy was “an integral part” of their testing efforts, and that he and Carlos were provided the exact equipment Billy had allegedly used in his “direct feed” recording setup. Here’s Carlos testifying the same thing. You can read Carlos’ declaration yourself, which includes 22 pages of text messages between him and Billy just during the time span of the original dispute alone, most of which were discussing the dispute and their defense strategy. Here’s Billy forwarding a message confirming their possession of the same equipment Billy claims he’d used for these scores. At 3:19:50 in his deposition, Billy denied ever assisting Carlos with his testing, before being shown a video of him doing exactly that. (Billy countered by claiming he was just hanging out playing Donkey Kong, on the machine Carlos happened to have connected to testing equipment, and that any use Carlos may have had for this game play footage was entirely coincidental.) Lastly, here’s Carlos testifying that Billy paid for his plane flight and hotel to an event in California where Carlos gave a presentation on his efforts to exonerate Billy. (Billy and his allies now dispute that Billy himself had any hand in Carlos’ accommodations or appearance at that event, once again in an apparent attempt to distance Billy from Carlos’ later conclusion.)

The above text message, which is disastrous for Billy’s case, has since become a nexus of increasingly implausible and laughable lies. Billy’s first response was to claim that Joel West (who has since passed away) wrote the text to Billy asking him to forward it to Jace, and that Billy “accidentally” forwarded it without ever reading it first. However, this fable was belied by the fact that A) Billy sorta gives himself away by saying he, quote, “re-read” the message, B) Billy deleted the signature Joel had written and added his own, C) Billy didn’t just send it to Jace but also forwarded it to Carlos and back to Joel, suggesting he understood the message’s contents, and D) Billy sent a different text to Joel and Carlos two minutes later asking them to coordinate with him on their request to Jace for – guess what – a deadline extension. Billy’s next lie was to say he called Jace on the phone later that same day and told him verbally that he meant the exact opposite of that text message. Of course, there would be no recording of this call, so it would be Billy’s word versus Jace’s. Once again, Billy would have us believe the permanent evidence is all lies and his word is the truth. However, even unrecorded phone calls show up in phone records. After being asked to present proof of this alleged interaction, the “phone call” (as Billy had described it) became a Skype conference call, conducted through Billy’s friend. (As if Skype calls don’t also have records?) Billy also offered nonsensical explanations for why this call, and not other calls he made to Jace, was conducted in such a contrived fashion. Naturally, all of this came up in Billy’s deposition (at 2:51:30), at which point Billy changed his story yet again on when, how, and why this phantom phone call allegedly occurred. You can explore this rabbit hole of lies further here if you’d like, but the bottom line is that no such phone call happened. Billy may regret telling Jace Hall that Carlos represented his technical efforts, but that is exactly what he did.

As for Steve Kleisath’s attempts to investigate the dispute on Billy’s behalf, Billy attempts to paint Steve as some unaffiliated stranger acting of his own accord. But in doing so, Billy glosses over their long-standing working relationship, including their collaboration on a series of “Retro Arcade Night” events in their home area in Florida. In a 2014 interview with New Times, Billy lavished Steve with praise for his work in organizing this event, hosted at the professional shop owned by Billy’s old friend, Rob Childs. Billy would have you believe his failed defense was conducted entirely by randos off the street whom Billy had nothing whatsoever to do with, despite them having access to his close friend’s professional shop and all his equipment, and despite Billy’s material support and frequent communication with them. (I suppose if they came to the conclusion Billy had wanted, they would have been his star witnesses.) Even their attempts to claim that a “Team Billy” never existed are undercut by their own “Gameplay analysis”, supplied with the 2019 legal threat, which originally concluded with a signature from – you guessed it – “Team Billy”. (That signature has since disappeared from the active document, probably around the time they decided it would be more convenient if “Team Billy” never existed. You can still see a contemporaneous reference to the “Team Billy” signature in the TG thread when that document was first made public.)

Going back to the topic of witness statements, one might ask, “Are people really willing to commit perjury over this?” Well, I don’t know about Billy’s friends, but Billy himself certainly seems to be willing to. Narcissism: It’s a hell of a drug.

“I NEVER SUBMITTED THOSE TAPES BECAUSE I NEVER SUBMIT TAPED SCORES.” – I know the last item was pretty crazy, but this one has to be the most preposterous walk-back (and then double-walk-back) yet. Put your seatbelts on for this one.

In their September 2019 legal threat, Billy introduced the claim that his 1.014m and 1.047m tapes were never intended as official score submissions at all, regardless of how Twin Galaxies staff chose to treat them. This was emphasized not only by Billy himself in his own signed statement, but also supported by Walter Day in a personalized letter to Twin Galaxies and to Guinness.

Let’s make no mistake about how ludicrous this claim is. It is an utter, bald-faced lie.

First, assuming you’ve seen King of Kong and this makes actual literal no sense to you, set aside the lie itself and consider its purpose. From Billy’s perspective, the point of this argument is to disavow the videotape evidence entirely. The idea is, the tape of the 1.047m cannot be scrutinized, because it was never a “submission”, while the 1.05m and 1.062m were verified live by his referee friends, and thus (as Billy would argue) the tapes in those cases were merely incidental. In other words, he wishes to put all the videotape evidence in a special box and send that box to some state of exile where none of it can be used against him. Thus, only the word of his friends who helped organize these charades can be considered. The problem is, he can’t disavow the tapes unless he disavows the 1.047m score altogether, as that score was only entered on the basis of a tape. (Same for the 1.014m score, but there is no surviving tape for him to disavow.) Billy’s September 2019 evidence submission included a 14-page section titled “1,047,200 Was Not A Score Submission”. The only piece of corroboration offered is a claim that Brian Kuh, in announcing the 1.047m tape at Funspot, declared to all that the tape was not a submission and was for entertainment purposes only. Team Billy claims to have video proving this declaration, but of course yet again no such video is provided. (And of course, such a declaration would not prevent Billy from later submitting the score anyway, which is exactly what happened.)

Regardless, this ridiculous claim is shot down in so many ways. First, while the later two scores were officially verified by referee, the tapes were presented as part of the evidence package substantiating those scores, making them fair game for scrutiny. Of the mortgage brokers score, Day’s announcement said the score was “backed up by video tape of his gameplay,” while adding that the tape itself was going through a verification process. Billy himself, at the “Big Bang” event, stood over a TV playing his 1.062m submission, complete with MAME signatures, claiming it to be an authentic representation of his score. There is no rule, technical or moral or even legal, which compels anyone in TG or in the public to consider this evidence “out of bounds” for scrutiny.

But more to the point, Billy’s earlier taped scores (the ones without any referee present) were absolutely intended as official score submissions to Twin Galaxies. In a 2004 interview with Retro Gaming Radio, Billy and Steve Wiebe both acknowledged their early tape submissions, with Billy saying “They’re both being verified now.” In 2007, when discussing the later tape seen in King of Kong, Walter Day told MTV that Billy’s answer to the question of whether he was officially submitting that score was “Yup”. The following year, Walter clearly stated that “Billy requested recognition for the score over the phone, asking that it be viewed as an official submission”. (This contradicts statements Walter now makes on Billy’s behalf in the lawsuit, such that he “chose to input the score for The King of Kong‘s entertainment purposes.” Walter now claims he removed the score himself after the event, something again contradicting his past self as well as documented statements of others.) Additionally, in 2007, the Guinness Book of World Records published the 30 greatest “arcade game scores of all time, as chosen by Twin Galaxies”, with Billy’s 1.047m on the list. How could this be on the list if Billy did not submit it? Why would Billy (a close friend with Walter) allow a score he disavows as a submission to continue to be recognized?

As if this wasn’t already laughable enough, after the dispute closed it was discovered that, in March 2006, Billy Mitchell himself commissioned a poster commemorating a “Coronation Day” event hosted in his family’s Florida restaurant where he crowned himself “Donkey Kong Champion of the World” based on his 1.047m score “achieved on June 7, 2004 as verified through videotaped documentation.”

This strategy apparently didn’t go so well for Team Billy, as they’ve totally abandoned it in their actual lawsuit filings. This has, however, left us with some entertaining discontinuities. Along with the legal threats in 2019, Walter Day sent a letter to Guinness, urging them to reconsider their initial decision to remove Billy’s scores. This letter, which was also included in Billy’s evidence packet sent to Twin Galaxies, went all in on the “1.047m was not a submission” angle, which was Team Billy’s strategy at the time. But in later court filings, Walter packpedaled by adding a lengthy footnote within the document, clarifying that Billy really did “vacillate” back and forth between submitting and not submitting. (In other words, Walter is now attempting to dance on the fence of whether Billy submitted the score or not, without fully falling on either side.) Oddly though, Walter never identified this footnote as having been added later. It was simply presented to the court as part of the original document. The willful misrepresentation of evidence to a court of law is… an interesting strategy. Maybe one day they’ll make up their minds?

Much as I would love to end this here, one last thing must be pointed out. Billy’s two “direct feed” submissions of 1.014m and 1.047m were his only submitted scores over one million prior to Wiebe’s 1.049m seen at the end of King of Kong. Recall that, at the time of their September 2019 legal threat to TG and Guinness, Team Billy was all in on the “1.047m was not a submission” argument, claiming that the tapes were strictly for “entertainment purposes”. Interestingly, Guinness’ second settlement offer included reinstating Billy’s later two claimed scores only, and not the tape score from King of Kong. Perhaps this was an attempt by Guinness’ attorney to reconcile Billy’s reinstatement demand with his assertion that the King of Kong tape wasn’t an intended submission? However, Billy’s lawyer fired back, making clear that his client expected reinstatement of all his claimed scores, including the ones Billy was simultaneously claiming didn’t count. Walter Day was also urging Guinness to award Billy the “First Million-Point Game on Donkey Kong” on the basis of a score he was also now claiming was not official. Whatever attempts Guinness may have been making to make sense of this nonsense were obviously short-lived.

“THE CONVERTER MUST HAVE MADE THE SIGNAL LOOK LIKE MAME.” – Getting back to the technical evidence, this was an early argument put forward by Billy’s tech Rob Childs. The idea is that the direct feed equipment itself somehow altered the signal composition to give it MAME signatures that weren’t present in the original. While this sort of thing is the domain of the experts, this explanation was roundly rejected by experts not affiliated with Billy. Also, as the dispute ran its course, no method was ever shown to replicate this alleged phenomenon, despite multiple parties using the same equipment Childs claimed to have used to set up Billy’s direct feeds. This argument was later abandoned by Billy and his colleagues, in favor of the following, more convenient explanation.

“THOSE AREN’T MY REAL TAPES.” – While Billy and his supporters have expended great energy trying to prove why his tapes aren’t MAME and why they do represent his legitimate game play, Billy also likes to run with the wholly unsubstantiated claim that those aren’t his actual submission tapes at all. Rather, we are to believe these tapes are elaborate forgeries, produced at great effort by some malicious malfeasant for no other purpose than to make Billy Mitchell look bad. As seen in the September 2019 evidence packet, one former member of Team Billy, in their attempt to find any explanation whatsoever that didn’t involve Billy lying, went so far as to suggest that someone may have unwound Billy’s VHS tape and used some sort of magic tool to draw little MAME signatures on each transition frame, or perhaps ripped the video to a computer and digitally altered each transition screen without any noticeable change in variable VHS quality of the surrounding image or the rest of the tape, then rerecorded it to that VHS tape without any subsequent loss in quality, all while never missing a single arcade transition screen or arcade signature anywhere throughout the two-and-a-half hour tape. Such a person of course would have to have had extensive knowledge of minute MAME irregularities many years before the community at large stumbled upon them, and yet for some reason decided to sit on this knowledge and never tell a soul. Oh, and this same procedure would have to have been done to every last copy of Billy’s tapes out in the wild, lest an unaltered copy be discovered which contains even a moment of footage which does not resemble one of these elaborate forgeries. (Either that, or Billy cheated.)

For what it’s worth, Twin Galaxies administration cited internal emails and documentation certifying those exact tapes as the same ones used to verify Billy’s 2005 and 2007 scores at that time. If you prefer not to take former TG staffers at their word, and if you’re still not convinced of the ludicrous impossibility of what Team Billy are suggesting, see the next item below.

RECRIMINATIONS

With the evidence laid out and all substantive rebuttals addressed, the fact of Billy’s guilt has heretofore been proven. However, rather than take responsibility for their actions, Billy and his colleagues set up others to take the blame instead. (Again, all headlines are paraphrases.)

“DWAYNE RICHARD SAID IN 2009 HE WOULD MAKE FAKE TAPES TO FRAME ME.” – While “I never submitted tapes” was the most ridiculous of Billy’s attempted defenses, this has to be the most offensive. First of all, to be clear, what Dwayne said was that he was interested in making fake direct feed videos using MAME to see if TG referees were apt enough to tell the difference. Both parties stipulate this happened in 2009.

However, long buried in the MTV website, a 2006 video interview with Robert Mruczek was rediscovered, showing clips of Billy’s 1.047m submission seen in King of Kong. The video observed in the interview is the exact same tape Mruczek used to verify Billy’s score one month earlier, which he recalls receiving from Billy himself. The clips in the interview are identical to the tape examined in the dispute, and (surprise, surprise) they show many of the same MAME signatures previously observed, and no arcade signatures. By Billy’s and his colleagues’ own admission, Dwayne did not speak of his desire to pull any ruse with MAME until 2009, years after Billy had already successfully passed MAME play off as arcade. (It is not believed at this time that Dwayne Richard has a time machine.) And even if you set the smears against Dwayne Richard aside, and even if someone did somehow possess the magical means and knowledge and motive to forge fake copies of Billy’s tapes filled with MAME signatures, this MTV footage proves that they would have had to conduct this preposterous caper in 2006, in time for that MTV interview, and then all over again for Billy’s new claimed world record in 2007. Oh, and this magical malfeasant would have had to have access to the 2010 tapes Billy showed off at “Big Bang” as well.

Rather than come up with any coherent explanation for why Billy’s tape was documented with MAME signatures all the way back in 2006, or at least dropping the “Dwayne tried to frame me” angle altogether, they’ve instead chosen to ignore the evidence and continue repeating this opportunistic lie, over and over. It was a major theme of the September 2019 legal threat, months after the MTV interview discovery, and it appeared again in Billy’s later court declaration. (Note also that the MTV interview was publicly available when Guinness chose to reinstate Billy, making this one more thing they didn’t bother to reconcile.)

“ROBERT MRUCZEK SUBMITTED MY TAPE AGAINST MY WISHES.” – You might be asking, if Mr. Mitchell doesn’t submit tape scores, how did the 1.047m find its way onto the scoreboard? (Setting aside that he very much did submit that tape and others, as he acknowledged many times.) Team Billy’s answer, courtesy of the September 2019 evidence packet, was that Robert Mruczek submitted the tape against Billy’s wishes! This fantastic claim includes the suggestion that Mruczek effectively stole the tape shown by Brian Kuh at Funspot in June 2005, and then chose months later to process it as a score submission strictly to spite Steve Wiebe. The evidence packet author suggests (while conveniently not saying outright) that Billy couldn’t have sent Mruczek another copy because there didn’t exist another copy to send him.

Of course, the notion that the tape seen in the MTV interview above is the same as the Funspot tape actually bodes worse for Billy, as it’s well documented in the movie that that tape came directly from him, and thus MAME signatures on the tape are even more easily attributable to him. But in truth, Brian Kuh left Funspot with that tape, and the tape Mruczek reviewed was a cleaner copy of the same performance, sent directly from Billy himself at a later date.

As if this claim wasn’t already silly enough, it was even further debunked by yet another discovery of lost footage, this time from the Classic Gaming Expo in the United Kingdom in August 2005, wherein Billy Mitchell (along with Brian Kuh and others) play the same tape from Funspot (incorrect rotation and all), still in their possession two months later.

Notably, this claim has since disappeared from Billy’s later court filings.

“JACE HALL DID THIS ALL FOR MONEY.” – When needing to address the question of why Twin Galaxies would rule against him if he’s supposedly innocent, Billy laid the blame for that strictly at the feet of Jace Hall, the current head custodian of Twin Galaxies. Billy described the increased number of website clicks related to the ongoing dispute, suggesting Jace saw the entire venture as a way to generate money at Billy’s expense. Noteworthy is that clicks do not necessarily equate to money, and that traffic directly to the dispute thread generated no ad revenue because ads did not load on the dispute page at the time of the active dispute. It should also be noted that, contrary to Billy’s portrayals of a Twin Galaxies using controversies to generate site traffic, this score dispute has been a public relations disaster for TG, which has a vested interest in its legacy scoreboard being seen as legitimate. If anything, Jace Hall would have been biased toward finding a way to exonerate Billy’s scores, as demonstrated by the fact that TG staff expended considerable time and resources attempting to do just that. Nevertheless, the dispute was handled according to the established rules. Jace Hall and Twin Galaxies simply allowed the dispute to occur, investigated and confirmed the findings for themselves, and ruled according to the evidence. The dispute would have generated many fewer clicks for Twin Galaxies if Billy had simply confessed straight away.

“DAVID RACE IS TRYING TO SEEK REVENGE BY LYING ABOUT ME.” – Billy’s longtime friend David Race, current world record holder for the fastest perfect score on Pac-Man, tried to defend Billy longer than most. Even as Billy assembled evidence for his September 2019 legal threat, David assisted with some material, including his interview with Josh Harmon of Electronic Gaming Monthly, restating his position that the dispute claims had not been sufficiently proven. (This was based on what he considered to be a remote possibility of someone adding MAME identifiers into Billy’s game footage.) However, the publication of the legal threat led to David learning about the rediscovered 2006 MTV footage, which shot down Billy’s claims that the tapes had been doctored years later. David was also disturbed by many other dubious claims in the legal threat, especially relating to Billy’s 1999 Pac-Man stunt (a topic David was familiar with). This led to David conducting more research, changing his conclusion, and eventually assisting Twin Galaxies with testimony and evidence in their defense.

Billy’s response was to outright slander David in subsequent legal filings, saying he “sets forth these lies in an act of revenge toward me”. Billy continues to say that “Race has only now decided to attempt to retroactively rewrite history for his own malicious motives.” The only basis Billy cites for David’s alleged “immeasurable hatred” is Billy’s decision to sue TG, which in reality David had previously provided material on behalf of. Billy’s son also filed a declaration, repeating many of the same claims about David as his father. These lies were followed with a retaliatory lawsuit, once David supplied Twin Galaxies with legally recorded phone calls between himself and Billy, which happen to undercut Billy’s claim that David was never formally a part of Billy’s defense. (More on the legality of this recording below.) This sort of retaliation seems to be what happens when Billy no longer considers someone useful and needs to explain away their change of conclusion.

“YOU CAN’T JUST BLAME ME, YOU HAVE TO BLAME THE TECHNICIANS AND DISTRIBUTORS, TOO.” – The implication here is, if you accuse Billy of lying and fabricating evidence for his scores, you must then also accuse everyone tangentially related to these stunts, including the person who brought the machine to the venue, anyone who saw Billy hanging around that day, maybe even the guy who validated Billy’s parking. To that end, Billy’s lawyer has characterized the allegations against him as “a conspiracy nearly as broad (and untenable) as the Kennedy assassination”. This wild misrepresentation then comes full circle, as Billy’s defenders attempt to address strange theories of MAME systems installed in arcade cabinets – theories which nobody familiar with the evidence was seriously alleging in the first place.

In reality, while some small number of people were certainly in on the scam along with Billy, most of those involved in the logistics likely trusted Billy to be honest. A DK cabinet supplier would have no way of knowing if Billy’s submission tape came from his cabinet or if Billy created it through other means. Attendees of the mortgage brokers convention surely assumed Billy and Todd knew what they were doing. The actual number of people implicated with Billy is quite small. As happens, Billy throws other innocent people in the way of accusations. (Don’t forget that none of this is an accident. Billy knows what he did.)

As for what actually did happen at these stunts, while there’s not enough evidence to say with complete certainty, the fact that the board swap videos appear to have been filmed on a random weekday afternoon, yet were presented as though they were filmed late at night after a long day of intense gaming, suggests that minimal effort was put into giving these charades a veneer of legitimacy, with the actual tapes likely having been produced ahead of time. (In other words, it’s not necessary to pipe MAME play into a monitor when you can simply stand next to a DK cabinet and claim you got a world record when no one was watching.)

“THE FAKE BOARD SWAP WAS ROB’S FAULT.” – This one’s amusing. Remember the obviously fake board swap videos? Billy threw his own friend Rob Childs under the bus for those videos, despite Billy’s own participation in them, and the fact that they were presented for years as genuine. Billy claims they were a stunt to build up Rob’s YouTube channel, which did not appear to be the focus of any other such “building” efforts at any other time. Of course, one may wonder if Billy would have been so forthcoming in 2018 about the inauthenticity of these videos had they actually used the correct circuit boards in the first place. Lest one think Billy’s involvement in the now-deleted video featuring the actual board swap was incidental, his exchange with Rob showed a clear intent on his part to misrepresent the sequence being filmed. At one point Billy remarks “It’s a good thing we got Rob here, because as good as I can play this game, I couldn’t switch a board out, or switch a board in.” Then, when Rob is struggling to install the board in a timely fashion, Billy asks “Do I need to call in a more knowledgeable tech?” As one dispute participant put it, “Billy Mitchell made that video at his own peril.”

And yet, even still, if you did want to entertain the notion that Rob Childs’ videos should not be taken seriously, and that Rob was lying about knowing the capture setup, and that Carlos Pineiro and Steve Kleisath were not working on Billy’s behalf (despite evidence to the contrary), and that the late Joel West did not represent him, and that there never was a “Team Billy”, and that David Race has nothing to contribute, and if we even go one further and assume that the words of Walter Day or Neil Hernandez or Billy Junior or the whole September 2019 evidence packet do not reflect negatively on him, Billy has still never provided any explanation for why every iteration of the tapes authenticating his multiple DK scores, from several sources (including straight from himself), going all the way back to 2005, are all exclusively of MAME origin. Disavowing the inconvenient statements and actions of his current and former colleagues will never change that.

DEFLECTIONS AND DISTRACTIONS

Moving well beyond the boundaries of reasonable discourse, there were many attempts by Billy Mitchell and his defenders to mischaracterize events and to reframe the matter as something else entirely. (Again, the following headlines are paraphrases.)

“BUT WHY WOULD BILLY LIE?” – For money? For attention? Because some people still choose to believe him? I’m not Billy Mitchell’s psychiatrist (I feel great pity for whoever is), and it’s not my job to figure out what’s going on in his crazy head. All I can do is point out Billy’s proven lies, and note that he has yet to face any real consequences for his poor behavior.

“BILLY’S SCORE WASN’T EVEN 10TH PLACE WHEN THEY CHALLENGED IT.” – This was an early response from Billy, presented in a way to suggest his accusers are petty for choosing to go after him, despite his relatively lower standing on the scoreboard at the time. First, this does nothing to actually address the evidence, which proves him a cheater. Second, it’s proper to remove any cheater from the scoreboard, regardless of their current standing. Third, as for gaming history, (aside from Guinness’ blunder) this resolved a legitimate question of who to verify as the first one-million point player on Donkey Kong, even if that score has since been surpassed. Billy himself promoted each of these as major achievements in their day. The historical significance was likely why these scores were fabricated in the first place.

“MY SECRET EVIDENCE WILL EXONERATE ME.” – Mere days after the 2018 dispute concluded, Billy professed that the exonerating evidence was on its way. This was followed that summer with Billy at SFGE waving around a stack of papers which he assured people would exonerate him. The first version of this evidence compendium lamented the lack of provision of these papers, adding: “If Billy wishes to actually publish evidence to support his case, that evidence can be considered at that time.” Billy did finally begin providing this “evidence” by way of his legal threats and lawsuit filings. While dispute participants were excited to actually have Team Billy material to take into consideration, as far as affecting the body of evidence, each of these releases from Billy has been a complete flop. Outside of witness statements from his friends, these submissions were filled with proven lies, ever-changing stories, wacky conspiracy theories, and more slander against Dwayne Richard, Wes Copeland, Robert Mruczek, and whoever else has been added to Billy’s revenge list. And yet, even still, you hear suggestions from Billy’s colleagues that the “real” evidence, the “real” bombshells, are on their way. If Billy does actually have exonerating evidence which somehow explains all of this, he’s free to publish it for our consideration at any time. (Besides, who knows, maybe Dwayne Richard really does have a time machine?)

“I’LL PLANT BOGUS EVIDENCE AND I’LL MAKE EVERYONE IN THE DISPUTE LOOK FOOLISH!” – This one is so hilariously misguided. In October 2020, Twin Galaxies submitted to the court a legally recorded phone call between David Race and Billy Mitchell wherein Billy outlines his “Top Secret” plan. He would produce a new tape of 1,062,800 on arcade, allow it to surface as the long lost Boomers tape, wait for everyone to declare it was MAME, and then show a wider room shot proving it was a new score done on arcade. Thus, in Billy’s mind, Twin Galaxies and dispute participants would all be discredited. This whole scheme is bananas in so many ways. Billy seems to think the MAME evidence is speculation and guesswork, and that people would not have identified the tape’s platform of origin immediately. Billy also seems to forget that we do have some footage of the Boomers score to compare any “resurfaced” tape to. While others have tried submitting bogus runs to Twin Galaxies or Speedrun.com as a way of generally testing adjudication, this is much more pernicious in that it’s a direct attempt by Billy to delegitimize a scorekeeping community which was in the process of putting his scores under scrutiny. (But I guess when you don’t have evidence supporting your scores, this is the kind of stuff you resort to.)

As an aside, to address the question of the legality of phone recordings, Billy is claiming it was illegal for David to record Billy’s outbound phone call to him. However, David resides in Ohio, where such a “one party consent” recording is perfectly legal. Federal law governing the recording of interstate phone calls also supports David. In contrast, it would be illegal for a Florida resident to record another Florida resident without consent, which is exactly what happened when Billy’s new technician Neil Hernandez recorded former Billy colleague Steve Kleisath during the aftermath of the score dispute. These recordings have not been made public, however Neil was dumb enough to provide them to Josh Harmon in advance of his profile on Billy in 2019, in an apparent attempt to discredit Kleisath’s criticism of Billy. While one may not be able to tie Billy directly to Neil’s choice to record those phone calls illegally, or his decision to send those recordings to a journalist, it should be noted that Neil also provided a voice mail Kleisath had left on Billy’s phone (which Neil somehow had access to), and that Neil had Harmon’s phone number despite Harmon never providing it to him. While Billy may cry foul over David Race recording phone calls in Ohio, it appears that Billy had no qualms about his own friends secretly recording his critics illegally in Florida.

“MY DOCTOR WOULDN’T SEE ME BECAUSE I CHEATED AT DONKEY KONG.” – Again, obviously Billy words his lies a bit differently, but this is what we’re talking about. As part of his defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies, Billy has to claim damages, most of which come in the form of alleged losses in convention appearance fees. (Shocking that reputable outfits wouldn’t want to do business with a lying bully who cheats and sues people.) Billy also claims that lost sales for his Rickey’s Hot Sauce business are attributable to TG’s conclusion, and not the fact that his website was non-operational for two years. Additionally, as part of these “damages”, Billy claims that he went to a scheduled appointment with his doctor of 30 years, that the doctor refused to see him, and that some unnamed assistant told Billy this was because of the cheating allegations (and not some normal reason like refusal to wear a COVID mask or failure to pay his bills). As for the Donkey Kong cheating, this doesn’t really count as evidence toward that, unless you suspect this story may have been falsified in some way, in which case it would be one more lie to throw on the pile.

“YOU SAW ME PLAY DONKEY KONG, SO THEY’RE CALLING YOU A LIAR, TOO.” – This plays back into the “I’m good at Donkey Kong, so I couldn’t have cheated” bit from before. Billy opportunistically plays into that misconception, misrepresenting the dispute as “They said I couldn’t do it,” touting above all else the fact that he’s demonstrated talent at Donkey Kong. In some cases, Billy even goes so far as to charismatically suggest to eager interviewers that dispute participants are calling these bystanders liars just for having witnessed Billy play Donkey Kong. In the end I can’t stop anyone from being a sucker for this sort of rhetorical sleight-of-hand. I would just remind readers that the fact that you exist, and saw Billy play some Donkey Kong on Twitch or in person in 2019, does nothing to affect the non-existence of his claimed performances from 2010 or before, nor the non-existence of his claimed witnesses for those scores.

“WHEN I SCORE ONE MILLION, THEY HAVE NOTHING TO SAY.” – There are a lot of silly variations on this theme. The idea is that Billy’s critics vanish into thin air when forced to acknowledge inconvenient circumstances that don’t fit their narrative, only to reemerge later as if nothing ever happened. In reality, it’s just the opposite. Much was said at the time of Billy’s one million scores on Twitch, and why they bore no relevance to the question of his fraudulent scores a decade earlier. It is Billy who fails to address key pieces of evidence as they emerge, such as the discovery of the MTV interview or the footage from CGE UK.

“I’VE KNOWN BILLY FOR 30 YEARS, HE LOOKED ME IN THE EYE AND SWORE TO ME HE DIDN’T CHEAT.” – Good for you. The evidence says he did.

“I’LL SUE YOU, TOO!” – While the full details of Billy’s many lawsuits are beyond the scope of this write-up, Billy has filed six lawsuits relating to his cheating and community commentary on it. In addition to the lawsuit against Twin Galaxies in California (still ongoing), and another lawsuit against TG in Florida (apologetically dismissed by the judge), and the aforementioned retaliatory lawsuit against David Race (currently awaiting appeal), Billy also filed a lawsuit against the late YouTuber Apollo Legend (settled out of court), issued a lawsuit threat against Carlos Pineiro, and filed a lawsuit against Jeremy Young, the late JC Harrist, and the Donkey Kong Forum website (later voluntarily withdrawn). YouTuber Karl Jobst received legal threats from Billy simply for discussing Billy’s case in a video about Guinness. While Billy did not follow through on that threat, he has since sued Karl in Australia claiming a different video of his was defamatory. (That case is also ongoing.) Again, without getting into all the details, Billy is unlikely to win any of the current defamation lawsuits, given that they’re based on protected speech which is either provably true or at minimum was justified based on the available evidence. Billy may even find himself financially exhausted by these multiple lengthy legal battles in two countries. However, these lawsuits do have the effect of chilling public commentary on his cheating, by exhausting the resources of his critics and dissuading others from producing similar critical media. Meanwhile, as Billy uses the courts to silence his critics, some misguided individuals continue to provide Billy positive media and appearance invitations, allowing him to present the appearance that he’s still a respected member of the community when, widely, he is not.

“IT’S GOOD TO HAVE A VILLAIN.” – If I were to interpret this sentiment as charitably as possible, it’s that the spectator’s experience is enhanced by having a bad guy to root against, and thus this “bad guy” is actually kind of a good guy… I guess? Often this archetype is referred to as a “wrestling heel”, although I hope people don’t actually think competitive Donkey Kong has the same level of integrity as pro wrestling. When encountered in the wild, this perspective is consistently paired with a lack of understanding (or concern) for what Billy actually did, with some people seemingly under the impression that people are criticizing him based on hearsay, or because he was merely rude or unlikeable, or because someone on YouTube told people to hate him. Similarly, some people seem to believe Billy only violated some competitive technicality (the equivalent of jaywalking), as opposed to something more serious like fabricating entire evidence packages for wholly bogus scores. The purpose of this post is to assist interested parties in dispelling exactly that ignorance. The sort of cheating documented here simply cannot be tolerated in any competitive environment, much less for the benefit of someone who tries to threaten and litigate their way out of having to offer contrition. Getting back to the “wrestling heel” argument itself, without getting sidetracked into discussing Billy’s role as a “movie villain”, or the boost competitive DK received following King of Kong, even if these ancillary outcomes did somehow factor into our conclusions, none of that would excuse Billy’s choice to continue cheating after post-movie players like Hank Chien began sustaining competition, nor would it excuse Billy’s choice not to simply confess once the MAME evidence was published, and it certainly does nothing to address the several potentially life-altering lawsuits Billy has filed against his critics who speak the truth. In this case, when fully unpackaged, this “wrestling heel” argument translates to “I find it more enjoyable to watch when honest competitors are forced to deal with proven liars who fabricate evidence and who bully scorekeepers and sue innocent people, because I find their wasted time and energy and added stress to be personally entertaining.” And honestly, if you sincerely do believe this, then you are a terrible person, and you can go fuck yourself.

“BUT BILLY WAS NICE TO ME.” – First of all, believe it or not, sometimes “nice” people choose to cheat, and that still has to be addressed in a competitive environment (preferably without the “nice” cheater defaming and suing everyone). Second, do you think conmen go around being rude to everyone they wish to take advantage of? And third, if you want an idea of how “nice” Billy truly is, scroll back up and look at how he treats former friends and colleagues who he no longer has any use for.

“WHY WON’T PEOPLE LEAVE BILLY ALONE?” – Apparently this is a thing some people say? Those of us reporting on Billy’s cheating want to close this matter more than anyone. But it’s hard to do when Billy’s suing individuals and scorekeepers to get his scores reinstated, and when he continues to disparage and defame his critics as well as his former colleagues who gave up trying to defend him. Since isolating the bully with his target is obviously not the answer, the story keeps getting reported, unfavorable to Billy as it may be. If he had simply come clean in the first place, we wouldn’t still be sitting here rehashing this, and Billy would not have wasted a lot of peoples’ time and resources.

“THEY’RE JUST WHINY CRYBABIES / KEYBOARD WARRIORS / JEALOUS HATERS / ETC.” – Does this even need to be responded to? First of all, there are many more famous people and more accomplished gamers to “tear down”, if this were a matter of jealousy. If one wishes to find jealousy or insecurity in this story, one need only look at the person who lied about a video game score, fabricated evidence to back up his lie, compelled colleagues to lie on his behalf, slandered those who refused to lie for him, and sued the Internet for saying mean things about him, all while ceaselessly and grandstandingly taking credit and honors for accomplishments he knows he didn’t earn. Second of all, while Billy likes to say his critics “hide” behind keyboards (as if online journalism is somehow shameful or that the research or work is of less merit because it was typed), Billy has a notable habit of suing the people who actually do seek out public confrontations with him. Again, unsurprisingly, issuing public threats and filing baseless lawsuits tends to make others less inclined to confront you.

At any rate, reporting on this story is simply journalism, a matter of setting the record straight on this piece of video gaming history. While Billy has certainly antagonized some people over the years, most involved in this (including myself) would have been defending Billy if the evidence supported him. We continue to stress the fact of Billy Mitchell’s guilt because, despite his incessant denials, deflections, and recriminations, all substantial evidence confirms it.

IN CONCLUSION

We have established the means, we have established several plausible motives, we have established the opportunity, we have an actual mountain of circumstantial evidence indicating intent to deceive, and most importantly, we have objective scientific evidence proving that such a deception was indeed carried out. While Billy was involved in various media promoting Donkey Kong competition to the world, he turned around and leeched off that competition, stealing other peoples’ rightful glory for years. And when caught, rather than simply admit what he did and ask the community’s forgiveness, he doubled and tripled down, lying, changing his stories, accusing innocent people, litigating observers into silence, and compelling others to lie on his behalf. He has even taken a scorekeeper to court to attempt to force them to recognize his lies as legitimate. The only things that have kept this from being a consensus open-and-shut case are Billy’s assertive denials, and the decision by some to ignore the evidence and believe Billy’s word. Don’t fall for con artists. You’re better than that.

TL;DR: Read “The short version” near the top of this page.