Former Donkey Kong champion threatens to sue Guinness for record



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<img src = "https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/mitchell-800×600.jpg" alt = "Mitchell rides an oversized Donkey Kong machine in the Citrus Bowl parade. "/>
Enlarge / Mitchell rides an oversized Donkey Kong machine in the Citrus Bowl parade.

Billy Mitchell threatens "legal recourse" against Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies' bulletin board if they do not withdraw "defamatory statements" against him and do not restore his world records high scores of the video game in the next two weeks.

Last April, in response to a dispute raised by Jeremy Young of the Donkey Kong Forum, Twin Galaxies determined that a number of Donkey Kong The partition strips submitted by Mitchell were not made on an "unmodified original DK printed circuit board". [printed circuit board] in accordance with the rules of competition. "The management of the scoreboard has decided to remove all of Mitchell's scores from his lists, including Mitchell's highly publicized record for the first time. Pac-Man Goal. Guinness, which partners with Twin Galaxies to decide video game recordings, has followed suit.

At the time, Mitchell had announced his intention to provide witnesses and documents that "would show that everything was done professionally, in accordance with the rules". Mitchell has now attempted to do this, sending Twin Galaxies a 156-page document outlining his differences through a collection of screenshots, witness statements, and "technical evidence."

Who judges the judges?

The somewhat disorganized and disjointed set of evidence represents an almost overwhelming amount of information to assimilate, including data from the chain-of-custody strips used in the Twin Galaxies investigation, a discussion on Nintendo technicians certifying Mitchell's cards as authentic, and obscure technical details of how an arcade game (and emulator) can be captured on a video. Jace Hall, Chief Curator of Twin Galaxies, said that the organization had "not had the time to thoroughly review all the documents sent to us, so we must take a little time to digest them ".

But the heart of Mitchell's most legalistic claims is summed up in a four-page letter sent on Monday to Twin Galaxies on Manning & Kass's letterhead, Ellrod, Ramirzer, Trester LLP. In the letter, Mitchell suggests that "it was not provided" a fair opportunity to provide evidence to prove his innocence.Throughout the investigation, Twin Galaxies used a double standard. Specific evidence against Mitchell was accepted, while evidence of equal size was rejected. "

Hall has challenged this claim several times, most recently this week in the Twin Galaxies thread that led to the removal of the partition. "Mr. Mitchell and Walter Day have been offered the option (but no obligation) to provide any information that they have found useful on many occasions.This information is well documented in this thread, in e-mails and text messages, there was no "double standard" proposed by Mr. Mitchell or Walter Day, and no evidence was ever removed from the thread of the dispute. "

Mitchell presents a video of his alleged performances in Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. in 2010.

But in a 12-page letter provided by Mitchell, Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies and head of the dashboard until 2014, says that the format of the thread made "difficult the deposition" because it created " an environment that "screamed" for Billy.Blood and whoever issued a statement that even vaguely supported Billy was attacked and publicly humiliated. "The day goes on to suggest that the information he's provided to Hall in a phone call was not taken into account, and that Hall "went ahead without considering any information that did not automatically call Billy a culprit."

Hall responded to this charge further in the thread of the dispute over TG: "Until now, I have noticed that throughout the evidence file presented, there appears to be a fundamental and false fundamental assumption. according to which I was a man dedicated to the agenda against Billy, challenging a claim for any reason and therefore trying to support my personal claim against the score.That makes no sense and is totally false. "

Day, for its part, hinted that the current administration of Twin Galaxies did not have the power to reconsider its own confirmation of the record. "I would like to remind Guinness World Records that I am not the current administration of Twin Galaxies, but that I am the original source of verification of all Billy Mitchell's world records, including Donkey Kong and Pac-Man"Day says." Since [Twin Galaxies’ decision] That's why Guinness World Records has erased these scores. As a true original source of adjudication and partner for 36 years, I hope that Billy Mitchell's achievements and reputation will be restored on this basis. "

<img alt = "Mitchell stands behind the images of his 1.06 million points claimed Donkey Kong game at a press conference in 2010 (click here for a slow motion recovery that seems to indicate a MAME screen transition) "src =" https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/ 02 / jgEy8NJ-640×360.gif "width =" 640 "height =" 360 "srcset =" https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/jgEy8NJ-1280×720.gif 2x "/>
Enlarge / Mitchell stands behind images of his 1.06 million points claimed Donkey Kong game at a press conference in 2010 (click for a slow motion replay that seems to indicate a MAME screen transition)

Mitchell also suggests that Jeremy Young's involvement of the Donkey Kong Forum in the Twin Galaxies dispute represents the involvement of an "overtly incendiary third party" and "a biased third party" who "has expressed his support for the deletion of the points from the first day of the dispute, was not impartial in it.This, along with other examples, testifies to a substantial level of constitutional malice ".

Hall also challenges this qualification, writing in the common thread that Young simply initiated the claim of the dispute and asked Twin Galaxies to rule on its evidence. "Twin Galaxies has absolutely not generated litigation nor chosen a third party investigator for this case," he writes. "Once the litigation claim justified it, Twin Galaxies began its own direct investigation with its own Donkey Kong equipment and technicians. TG's internal investigation did not involve any third party. "

"It's important to understand the difference between a person making a claim and an entity that has to verify the truth of the claim," Hall wrote later in the thread. "These are not the same things."

Find the real bands?

In his letter, Day also supports Mitchell's contention that his submission of a registration of 1,047,200 Donkey Kong performance, as recorded in the King of kong documentary, was shot solely "for entertainment purposes", and has never represented an official Twin Galaxies submission. This is an important point, because there is ample evidence that the gameplay presented on this tape was indeed produced by the emulation of MAME (a fact that Mitchell himself partially reluctantly acknowledged in the past ). Mitchell now says that he has never submitted scores to Twin Galaxies via a tape and only uses live performances as official evidence.

Former Twin Galaxies referee Robert Mruczek challenges Mitchell and Day's claims about this video evidence, writing in the Twin Galaxies thread that "several months after the event"[montrédansle[showninthe[montrédansle[shownintheKing of kong]I finally received in Billy Mitchell's mail the band "mistress" of this performance … Billy Mitchell absolutely used this video recorded performance as the basis of his score of the world record of 1,047,200 … If need be, I swear in court that I've received this "master tape" from Billy Mitchell directly for the purpose of viewing and listing this partition in the Twin Galaxies database. "

Mruczek's statement is corroborated by an interview with MTV in 2006, which includes a video of Mruczek projecting Mitchell's tapes.

In the midst of these exchanges, Hall said Mitchell's new legal threats could actually undermine his ability to share some of the evidence publicly. This includes the contents of an unsolicited voicemail Hall had previously received from Mitchell (and which, according to Hall, has no relevance to the judgment, anyway). "Voicemail and other correspondence that I've [from Mitchell] can become relevant in a legal proceeding to demonstrably demonstrate things like character, state of mind, proof of Twin Galaxies' scope, interactions with me personally, "Hall writes

We'll see later this month how Twin Galaxies decides to officially respond to Mitchell's new information and if it will respond to its threat of lawsuits if it does not comply. For the moment, however, it is clear that Mitchell does not intend to leave his story as one of the best scores of the classic game, to be erased without a fight.

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