Billy Mitchell, AKA the “King of Donkey Kong”, has had his record-breaking high-scores returned to the history books after new evidence was shared.
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In 2018, a number of Mitchell’s Donkey Kong high-scores were called into question by a fellow gamer, who supplied a string of evidence on the Twin Galaxies forums suggesting Mitchell had used an emulator to break the records, rather than the official, unmodified hardware that’s typically required to keep things fair.
Following “an independent investigation” his hi-scores were removed from video game database Twin Galaxies as well as the Guinness Book Of Records, though the latter reversed the decision in 2020. Forensic analysts also accused him of cheating in 2022 but Mitchell has fought the accusations ever since.
In 2022, he claimed the stress of the legal battle had caused him to suffer from a hernia and atrial fibrillation.
However new evidence from Dr Michael Zyda, founder of the number one university games program in the world, has seemingly proven Mitchell innocent. The two-page document says [via PCGamer] that the suspicious anomalies reported in Mitchell’s record-breaking attempts could occur on unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware “if the hardware involved was malfunctioning likely due to degradation of components.”
Because of this, Twin Galaxies has reinstated three of Mitchell’s Donkey Kong high-scores into its historical database.
“In fair consideration of the expert opinion provided by Dr. Zyda on behalf of Mr. Mitchell and consistent with Twin Galaxies’ dedication to the meticulous documentation and preservation of video game score history, Twin Galaxies shall heretofore reinstate all of Mr Mitchell’s scores as part of the official historical database on Twin Galaxies’ website,” said a statement. Twin Galaxies has also removed the initial thread accusing Mitchell of cheating.
However, Mitchell’s scores won’t feature on Twin Galaxies continuously updated scoreboards.
Twin Galaxies’ lawyer David Tashroudian told Ars Technica that the company had all its “ducks in a row” for a legal battle with Mitchell but “there were going to be an inordinate amount of costs involved, and both parties were facing a lot of uncertainty at trial, and they wanted to get the matter settled on their own terms.”
In other news, Obsidian Entertainment has shared a deep-dive into the “flexible” combat system that’ll feature in “rich, weird and wonderful” RPG Avowed.
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