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Billy Mitchell, the old Donkey Kong and Pac-Man best score champion made famous in the 2007 film King of Kong, threatened to bring a lawsuit against the sanctioning bodies that canceled all of Mitchell's high scores in April 2018 after finding that two of them were illegitimate.
This week, Mitchell's lawyers sent a letter to Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records asking them to "retract" against the charges against Billy Mitchell and restore the scores to their world record chart where Mitchell was since the beginning of the 1980s. The lawyers have made the same request from Guinness World Records, which uses Twin Galaxies as a source for recordings of high scores in the video game that it recognizes.
At issue is the conclusion by Twin Galaxies of April 12, 2018, after an investigation and a process of deliberation of three months, that the game of two million points claimed Mitchell Donkey Kong have not been produced with unmodified arcade hardware. The implication in this conclusion is that Mitchell used an emulator running the game to produce scores, emulators allowing different control schemes, display configurations and even ways to cheat or manipulate a score or performance .
Among the two scores determined by Twin Galaxies that were not defined on original arcade hardware, one was the 1,047,200 shown in the decisive moment of King of Kong, when Mitchell snatches the world record from rival Steve Wiebe with a recorded video sent at the last moment. One of the scores, even though Twin Galaxies did not determine its source platform, was a game of 1,062,800 on July 31, 2010, which had already been recognized as the first one-million-point game. Donkey Kong history.
The challenge of the authenticity of Mitchell's performance began in late 2017 in the Donkey Kong forum, which also offers several rankings for the game. An analysis conducted in this framework has highlighted several technical disparities between the images broadcast on the tape. of Mitchell and the operation of a game rendered in image, image by image. According to Donkey Kong Forums, Mitchell would have used an emulated version and a retransmission sequence to represent a continuous and authentic attempt. Twin Galaxies began its own investigation in January 2018.
The letter to Twin Galaxies alleges that it has defamed Mitchell, both in its findings and in subsequent publications on its website. In banning Mitchell, Twin Galaxies also released records that were not in question and banned Mitchell from continuing to participate in their rankings. One of Mitchell's records was a "perfect score" in Pac-Man (reaching the maximum points available on his 255 levels) / Mitchell's lawyers say that Twin Galaxies implied that the score was also tainted by fraud.
According to the lawyers, Guinness cited this exclusion in its 2019 report Gamers Edition compilation of documents stating that "notes submitted by Mitchell were obtained using [the emulator] MAME ", which lawyers consider to apply to all of Mitchell's scores from 1982 to the present day. They say it's factually incorrect and also impossible, since MAME was created in 1997. "Guinness World Records has never conducted any investigation on Billy Mitchell's Pac-Man registers", says the letter.
The letter also alleges that Twin Galaxies "did not provide Billy Mitchell with a fair opportunity to provide evidence to prove his innocence," and that "specific evidence was accepted, while evidence of equal stature was rejected. ". counterclaims, signed statements and other documents presenting Mitchell's thesis. Documents can be found via a feed posted in the speeddit community of Reddit.
Mitchell's lawyers gave Guinness and Twin Galaxies two weeks to issue a declaration of withdrawal, "or we will have recourse to a judicial remedy". Guinness "is hiding behind its partnership with Twin Galaxies will be perceived as a refusal of this request for retraction," write the lawyers.
Polygon has contacted representatives of Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records and will update it with any response or comments received.
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