Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Guinness Strips Billy 'King of Kong' Mitchell's World Records (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the justice-is-served dept.

In February, legendary arcade gamer Billy Mitchell was accused of cheating his way into the record books for high scores in Donkey Kong. As a result, he was stripped of his 1.062 million score on the Donkey Kong Forums. Today, Kotaku reports that "Guinness World Records will remove Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores, as well as his records for Pac-Man, from their database following Mitchell's disqualification from the Twin Galaxies leaderboards yesterday." From the report: Mitchell is one of the world's most famous arcade game players, at one time holding world records in Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, and Pac-Man. Yesterday, all of Mitchell's records were removed from the leaderboards at Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks video game records and high scores. The decision came after a lengthy arbitration process determined that Mitchell used the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) to achieve some record scores that had been said to be performed on arcade machines, a violation of Twin Galaxies' rules. In light of this, Guinness World Records will also remove his records.

"The Guinness World Records titles relating to Mr. Mitchell's highest scores on Donkey Kong have all been disqualified due to Twin Galaxies being our source of verification for these achievements," a representative of Guinness told Kotaku via email. Mitchell did not return request for comment. Guinness continued, "We also recognize records for First perfect score on Pac-Man and Highest score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies was the original source of verification for these record titles and in line with their decision to remove all of Mr. Mitchell's records from their system, we have disqualified Mr. Mitchell as the holder of these two records. Guinness World Records will look to update and find the appropriate holder of these records in the next few days."

58 comments

  1. Timely by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 2, Funny

    I see Slashdot is right on top of the important things in tech!

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Timely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      On the bright side, this definitely IS news for nerds.

    2. Re:Timely by Tsolias · · Score: 1

      slashdot hosts news for nerds and the majority of speedrunners are nerds.
      lately it started being a safe place for something-gender-something, but those who are still thinking outside of their gender are mostly nerds.

    3. Re:Timely by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is timely, actually. Competition for these kinds of records has really heated up in the last decade or so, with the rise of video streaming and communities and events.

      Tech has got better too. A lot of the games have been disassembled and understood, enabling players to develop new techniques.

      It's been there since the 80s but the popularity and rate at which records have been broken is at an all time high.

      And now one of the biggest names from the old guard has fallen, thanks to advances in fraud detection.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Timely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      News nerds can relate to. A nerd has been publicly humiliated , exposed for the fraud he is, people point at him and laugh. His world is now nothing but pain and rejection. Sounds familiar? :)

  2. Good, now I can post my high scores... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cause I beat PacMan high-score by a factor of 10... and practically every esoteric Atari 2600 game that nobody has on-hand, etc.

  3. Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Serious question, why is it always the Americans who cheat, lie, meddle, and get caught in this kind of thing?

    1. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Because there are more Americans than there are Germans and that's how statistics works. You can make similar statements about China.

      But I do think there is a cultural difference between some Europeans and typical Americans. I've had Scandinavians express surprise when I stated that most Americans don't report everything on their taxes and generally skip anything they think the IRS doesn't already know about. Like the voluntary reporting and payment of sales tax for internet purchases for California State tax is kind of a running joke.

      I think Americans take a certain pride in being scofflaws. Or at least tolerate such behavior in others.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    2. Re: Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Itâ(TM)s what lord Hillary would want

    3. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I for one welcome our new I.T. closet cleaner overlord.

    4. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, not all Americans are corrupt morons. You're rationalizing justifying being a criminal apologist, aren't you Trumpy?

    5. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      Serious question, why is it always the Americans who cheat, lie, meddle, and get caught in this kind of thing?

      Why is it always the AC who overgeneralizes?

      Protip: it isn't... that just how it seems.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    6. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 2

      Serious question, why is it always the Americans who cheat, lie, meddle, and get caught in this kind of thing?

      I'm going to guess it's because you have selective attention.

      It's not like a bunch of Russian Olympians got banned from the last Olympics. Or a German auto maker got caught cheating on diesel emissions. No members of the EU fudged their financial numbers in order to get admitted into the EU. Do I need to keep going? There are plenty of liars and cheats in most countries. In many cases we elect them as our leaders, sadly.

    7. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Corruption is not indicative of nationality. It's indicative of SPECIES.

    8. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually the Americans don't have a cheating culture, so cheaters are outliers and exactly because there is no cheating culture they are not caught easily. I can give you an example. I am European myself, so call me an independent third-party. I was at a US state university with a good CS postgrad program. About 1/3rd of the postgrad students at the time were from India, and this is how I found out what "cheating culture" and "world class bullshitting" means. Examples:
      - I was hiring for tech support (I was a GA), so I was receiving resumes. Every single Indian had won a mathematics olympiad in a place I had not heard of. Some of them had done a major project, designing an airline reservation system. I recognized those guys from my intro db class, where one homework project was a simple program with origin/destination fields that gave you flights with intermediate stops as results (the sql being the point of the exercise). And similar "significant projects" from other simple class homework.
      - In the aforementioned homework, I had a small, rather cosmetic issue in the UI and got 98 or 99% instead of 100. I was a bit annoyed because that was not the point of the exercise (it was about the sql). I gave a try to the (Indian) TA's home directory on the CS grad server and, sure enough, it was world readable (it was for some reason the default, so you could tell who was familiar with unix systems from just an ls -l), and had an excel sheet with all the grades. Opening it, I found he did give several 100% grades to Indian-looking names. The first of those 100% students who had a world readable home directory and also had her homework stored there, was an Indian girl I knew. I checked her work... NO SQL. She had actually HARDCODED the results of the correctness test examples the homework specified. It was obvious to anyone glancing at the code, so the TA knew. But, the Indian cheating culture also seems to include collusion in its arsenal. So, 1/3rd of Indian students means about 1/3rd of TAs Indian (in reality more like half, the other large group of students - Chinese - had more RAs than TAs) and they helped their fellow Indian students. The professors (apart from a couple who were Indian) were not familiar with the concept of blatant academic dishonesty, so they never seemed to suspect anything.
      - Which brings me to the most interesting example, which happened a year after I graduated. An Indian student was caught cheating in an exam and got a warning. He tried cheating again and the Professor took his sheet and told him he will get an F in class. The student responded "why do I get an F in class, when all the students submitted the same course project?". I assume at this point the professor's eyes might have opened wide, both figuratively and literally, and he checked the homework that the (Indian) TA had graded. Sure enough, almost all the Indian students had submitted the same project. There was talk about expulsions, but in the end they gave the people involved an F for the class if I remember correctly.
      Now, I've also known a few great Indians who were not cheaters (you don't really need to cheat if you are great), but they did know about the culture and they even showed me videos of exams in India with parents climbing to the windows of the exam centers to pass solutions to their children.
      So, I'd say, compared to other cultures, Americans are fine.

    9. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except it turns out the Russian thing never happened with is why the Olympic Committee had to sheepishly let them back in while pretending that they never screwed up by demanding they perform under the Olympic flag and not the Russian flag, and it turns out the VW thing was lead by US engineers.

      But nice try.

    10. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Actually the Americans don't have a cheating culture, so cheaters are outliers and exactly because there is no cheating culture they are not caught easily. I can give you an example. I am European myself, so call me an independent third-party. I was at a US state university .

      But apparently you didn't take any English classes so you could write something that doesn't read like a Borat comedy routine.

    11. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I like how you refer to someone who is presumably from California as being a "Trumpy."

    12. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me guess, this is Trumps fault as well.

    13. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Killing a mod

    14. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Funny you should mention students. Is Adderall cheating? How about those web sites that you pay to write your essays for you?

      Maybe the ones who get caught are just not as good at cheating, or can't afford the undetectable methods.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    15. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, even if your English is better than mine, I can still speak at least 2 other languages better than you.

    16. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cheaters are everywhere. We are talking about cheating cultures, i.e. cultures that actively promote cheating (either through parents or the school system).
      No, I wouldn't consider Adderall cheating, I would consider it unhealthy.

    17. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you have seen how East Indian are raised, you will understand. They are treated like gods who can do no wrong. They are taught nothing of discipline, and the women do all the heavy lifting. Cheating is the only way such dullards can get anywhere.

      Like yourself, I'm not saying all are cheats or duds. But it is a cultural problem to be overcome, for sure.

    18. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 2

      Except it turns out the Russian thing never happened with is why the Olympic Committee had to sheepishly let them back in while pretending that they never screwed up by demanding they perform under the Olympic flag and not the Russian flag,Â

      Um, no. The Olympic committee decided it wasn't fair to ban all of the athletes due to what others had done, but would not let the Russian flag in the opening or closing ceremonies. Nor will Russia be credited for any of the metals that they won. 44 athletes and 2 coaches were still banned from competition. Which was roughly a quarter of their athletes.

      and it turns out the VW thing was lead by US engineers.

      Do you have a citation for that one comrade? Preferably one that's not in Russia.

    19. Re: Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're deeply confused. Citizens of major EU countries such as France and Italy make a sport of not paying taxes.

      In the US the vast majority pay every pay check and are happy when they get a refund.

      In short, you're an idiot.

    20. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "She had actually HARDCODED the results"

      I thought that was something programmers only joked about doing.

    21. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL you're a faaggoot. VW fucked over the world, and none of the people who greenlighted the software mod were US engineers.

      Heinz-Jakob Neusser, head of brand development at its core VW brand;
      Ulrich Hackenberg, the head of research and development at its brand Audi who oversees technical development across the VW group;
      Wolfgang Hatz,

      In March 2017, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the ACCC had taken Audi and Volkswagen to federal court and that a voluntary recall for affected cars for software updates and in some cases hardware updates had begun in December 2016.[170] As of January 2018, several class action suits were under way against Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda

      As of October 2015, Volkswagen Brazil confirmed that 17,057 units of its Amarok mid-size pickups produced between 2011 and 2012 and sold in Brazil were equipped with the emissions cheating software.

      In June 2016, documents leaked to the press indicated that in 2010, European Commission officials had been warned by their in-house science team that at least one car manufacturer was possibly using a NOx-related defeat device in order to bypass emission regulation.

    22. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe things have changed in 30 years, or maybe that's the product of a state university? When I was CS in the late 80s, my private US university—also in the south— would have issued nearly immediate expulsions for any type of cheating in any class. An F for the class? You'd pray for that.

      It was not just idle threat, either. This was undergrad. In my 2nd year I was still living on campus in the dorms. My next-door neighbor was lazy, young and dumb. Spent too much time partying and let a big project sneak up on him. He ended up stealing code from a study partner and submitting some of it as his own. There was a 2-week enquiry. She failed the class even though she was not complicit in the plagiarism. He was expelled.

    23. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      GP will probably claim that this was photoshopped.

      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    24. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Peter+P+Peters · · Score: 2

      Every single Indian had won a mathematics olympiad in a place I had not heard of.

      I'm a hiring manager and 80% plus of the resumes across my desk are Indians and 80% of them are worthless. They all have tonnes of degrees and certs etc but when most get to an interview they don't know shit.
      Maybe it's only an IT thing, but the market is flooded with tonnes and tonnes of useless people of Indian descent, so it's hard not to feel racist.

    25. Re:Why is it ALWAYS the Americans? by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      We once had a client tell us they didn't like the length of some pull-down bars in the demo version of the software, and demanded that we take out the actual pull-down and replace it with an image of a shorter pull-down.

      "But when you get the final version, it's going to have to be bigger to fit the real contents."

      "Oh, we know, but it looks messy now, so just fudge it until the design phase is over with."

      --
      The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
  4. throwing out the baby with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    seems appropriate in this case :)

    BTW, a FRIEND gave me a bottle of his hot sauce once. I rubbed it on my pecker and fucked him up the ass with it :) He says it "hurt like a sumabich" :-o

    1. Re:throwing out the baby with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What possesses people to post garbage like this. Projection?

  5. Sounds like a sequel in the making by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps this is all planned drama so there is enough new material for a sequel to "The King of Kong" movie. Frankly, nobody would have heard of this guy or Twin Galaxies if not for the international sucess of that film.

  6. Not sure if I want to "Be Like Billy" by mrsam · · Score: 2

    The top achievement in the PacMan android app happens to be titled "Be Like Billy!".

    Something tells me this app might be updated soon...

  7. That's not the big picture. by Tsolias · · Score: 2

    Twin galaxies have been giving settler to both Billy and Todd for over 20 years. Now that the truth is out TG is treated as if nothing has happened.
    Those two were helping each other to have their records verified without any proof for so many years and nobody from TG suspected anything.
    Billy and Todd have milked the cow that they were offered by those fake scores, they earned money, they f'ed itches, and they had a good life.
    What about TG? TG is still here, they have taken no blame from various famous speedrunners so far and we are just waiting for the next Todd or Billy to be born.
    I'd suggest the speedrunners to form a different platform and separate ways with TG and their business.
    Speedrunning for a lot of people is a hobby and when business is involved, wild Todds and Billies appear.
    Just my two shekels, I don't speedrun... I am just a fan.

    1. Re:That's not the big picture. by gman003 · · Score: 1

      Twin Galaxies is part of the high scores community, not the speedrunning community. There's actually less overlap than you'd think - partially because TG was widely seen as not up to the standards of the speedrunners. (Other reasons are just the different game eras - TG/highscores tend to be pre-NES while speedruns are primarily NES and later)

      The new crop of management at TG definitely seems to be headed the right direction, but I don't think most people have forgiven them yet. It's been a common criticism that TG took way, way too long with their "investigation", and was far too willing to entertain the theories of Billy's defender club. The general mood appears to be "guarded optimism".

      There's been talk of trying to replace TG but so far nothing's come of it, and I think it even less likely now that they're actually purging the fraudulent records.

    2. Re:That's not the big picture. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's been talk of trying to replace TG but so far nothing's come of it, and I think it even less likely now that they're actually purging the fraudulent records...

      ...when they're not busy reinstating fraudulent records, scores with no proof whatsoever because they're literally impossible, and then demanding that the previous legitimate record holder prove them wrong. It gets even better when you realize that they were the ones who verified the legitimate #1 score that they just bumped, via video submission years earlier.

      TG is a complete crock of shit, and the "new crop of management" and their brain dead community verification system that encourages witch hunts and mob rule are the causes of it, not the solution.

    3. Re:That's not the big picture. by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Twin Galaxies is part of the high scores community, not the speedrunning community. There's actually less overlap than you'd think - partially because TG was widely seen as not up to the standards of the speedrunners. (Other reasons are just the different game eras - TG/highscores tend to be pre-NES while speedruns are primarily NES and later)

      The new crop of management at TG definitely seems to be headed the right direction, but I don't think most people have forgiven them yet. It's been a common criticism that TG took way, way too long with their "investigation", and was far too willing to entertain the theories of Billy's defender club. The general mood appears to be "guarded optimism".

      There's been talk of trying to replace TG but so far nothing's come of it, and I think it even less likely now that they're actually purging the fraudulent records.

      You have to remember that Twin Galaxies started as an arcade. They starting recording down the high scores done in their arcade which lead to them being the go-to source for arcade high scores. And back then, if you wanted to submit a high score, you had to travel to their arcade and perform it on their machines.

      Of course, then the consoles happened and like most arcades, they shut down and their high score table was the lone survivor. Now they do demand video evidence of high scores which must be done on a real machine with real settings (I believe you must film the settings used). They don't typically do NES and later games because well, they have an arcade heritage and arcades fell out of favor in the late 80s. That doesn't mean there weren't good arcade games, but most of the arcade high scores died out as well as games stopped scoring people and arcade games moved away from the "arcade game" genre.

      Now, the reason to defend the scores is simple - it's way too easy to be good and be accused of cheating - ask anyone decent who's played an FPS and getting aimbot accusations. This is especially true of old records which have been around a long time - it's not like you can ask someone to replay the game, and if the video is only standard def, it can be hard to make out details.

      So it's really best to err on the side of caution unless it can be proven there was a cheat involved. I believe in this case, they had to rely on the very slight difference between how MAME and the real hardware drew graphics. For that, you'd need to prove it in hardware and MAME, and also prove it in the video (which takes a long time - if it's poor quality video (say, standard def), it can be very hard to make out the drawing differences). It probably involved lots of people reviewing the footage frame by frame trying to see if that weird blink counts. And as long as the debate rages and certainty isn't assured, the prudent thing is to let the records stand.

      And heck, you probably want to contact the guy and ask him to defend the accusations as well.

      It's a very fine line - I'm sure Guinness themselves go through a lot of processes in case one of their records is questioned. (And for a lot of them, they are personally witnessed, but even then you can try to pull a fast one. It's one of those things where cheating will always be prevalent - if not for money, then the prestige. And a lot of the time, the records get beaten by bending the rules.

  8. Pac-Man by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 2

    He beat Pac-Man on camera at Funspot. That record is not in doubt.

    1. Re:Pac-Man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't think any of this is official. Or any of it matters. At all.

    2. Re:Pac-Man by gman003 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Some of the faked DK runs were *also* on camera - but they were indisputably faked. It seems that Billy was recording runs in MAME (editing either recorded inputs as in a TAS, or just splicing the video) and then playing them back on a screen while pretending to be playing. There's no proof the Pacman runs were faked but there's also no proof they were legit, since Billy is clearly not above cheating. Given the nature of the contest, it seems prudent to err on the side of caution and revoke all his records.

    3. Re:Pac-Man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But did he beat it *first* on camera at Funspot? Or has someone else had their perfect game recorded and verified earlier?

      His achievement of being the first to beat Pac-Man is the one that's been stripped.

    4. Re:Pac-Man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except he wasn't the first to beat Pac-Man. That feat was first performed by John Birkner, 17 years before Billy Mitchell beat the game.

      https://www.digitpress.com/library/books/book_vmg_pac-man.pdf

    5. Re:Pac-Man by Purity+Of+Essence · · Score: 1

      Billy Mitchell's Pac-Man claim to fame is being the first to achieve the so-called "perfect game" which is the highest possible score, 3,333,360 points, achieved on the last playable level, 256. Whether or not he was the first or not, he was the first recorded by Twin Galaxies. John Birkner may have been the first to reach level 256, the book does not make this claim.

      --
      +0 Meh
    6. Re:Pac-Man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funspot was the first time it was recorded and documented. The darn video is played on loop there.

  9. Have ANY of these losers ever fucked a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What was it like?

    1. Re:Have ANY of these losers ever fucked a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kind of like jerking off, but with lube that smells like a can of tuna fish. It's kind of awkward because I had to use a condom and it was hard to get my penis in her vagina and it kept falling out. She went on top for a while and she was crushing me so much I couldn't breath. I was in pain for a few days afterward, like that time I tried exercising.

      3/10, would not recommend.

    2. Re: Have ANY of these losers ever fucked a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot to suck her boobs, 7/10 would do it again.

    3. Re: Have ANY of these losers ever fucked a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's up with fat chicks with small boobs? Christ, my boobs were bigger than hers.

  10. He's a phony! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A big fat phony!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGZo5gn_tc

  11. fucking stoopid.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    This is fucking lame. over done, and OLD as FUCK.
    BEAU you DINK
    Why not report on Why movies all SUCK these days?

    Or

    Why shashdot cont report on anything of any real intelligence?

  12. Pixels movie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is reminded of the character in movie Pixels that was found to have cheated on PacMan??

  13. Earth shaking event. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop the presses! Retard cheats at retarded game! Other retards outraged!

    Meanwhile the NWO leads the way to WW3.

    1. Re: Earth shaking event. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lol

  14. So sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like this is going to be a huge loss to mankind.

  15. Mitchell's first public response by Donkey+Kong+Cluster · · Score: 1

    He didn't reply in detail, but promised proofs in the future.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...