(NOTE: This post is outdated. While the core MAME evidence still applies, this post does not reflect the many new lies and misrepresentations exposed in Billy's later legal threats and court filings.
An updated edition of this post can be found here. This entry is preserved as an archive.)
One year ago today, Twin Galaxies announced the verdict in Video Game Trial of the Century #2. Disgraced "Video Game Player of the Century" Billy Mitchell was found to have fabricated evidence, as his first two submissions of over one million points on original Donkey Kong (1,047,200 in 2005, and 1,050,200 in 2007) were found to be fraudulent. Twin Galaxies decided there was insufficient evidence to make a definitive ruling on the third million point score (1,062,800 in 2010), but the evidence against the previous scores was clear cut. As is the fate of any cheater,
all of Billy's scores were stripped from the Twin Galaxies scoreboard and from Guinness.
This anniversary gives us a chance to
beat this dead horse one more time I mean, to collect the evidence and arguments in one place, including material that emerged after the official dispute's conclusion. Billy Mitchell's denials and recriminations have been fervent and assertive, inspiring confidence in some and leading bystanders to believe perhaps the evidence is ambiguous, when in fact the evidence against him is crystal clear. Of course, people who refuse to fairly weigh the evidence cannot be helped. However, I can provide a simple resource anyone can point to, to help settle the matter for anyone who simply wants to know the truth. 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: In the interest of cutting down wordiness, sources below are not named outright. In-line links provide attribution and further reading. Very little of what follows represents my own original research.
MEANS, MOTIVE, AND OPPORTUNITYBefore getting to the actual evidence, prosecuting any crime requires establishing means, motive, and opportunity. As described below, the means was MAME, the emulator of choice for arcade games. Emulator tools like save states allow a player to redo levels as many times as they want until a desired outcome is achieved. Additionally, regular MAME allows these segments of recorded inputs to be replayed in whole, giving the illusion of uninterrupted play without the need to resort to video editing. In addition to the usual cheater's motive, the question of who would be verified as the first million point player of Donkey Kong (primarily a contest between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe) had yet to be resolved. And lastly, the opportunity was Billy's ability to submit tapes and scores to Twin Galaxies with little scrutiny compared to his competitors.
MAME SIGNATURESWhile there had for years been speculation within the competitive Donkey Kong community that Billy's tapes were not authentic, it lacked the proverbial smoking gun. This changed when
an evidence package was finally published by Jeremy Young "xelnia" on Feb 2, 2018, proving that Billy's world record tapes could never have been 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 original counterpart, the ways 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 unique transition screens and identifiers on each of the four level "boards". Above is just one example of a transition screen that identifies MAME apart from arcade.
THE GIRDER FINGER - The most noticeable MAME identifiers appear on the iconic "barrel" board. The third girder is captured halfway through rendering, which depending on MAME's settings results in this unique pointing figure
which came to be called the "Girder Finger". The girder finger screen is seen
multiple times on each of Billy's two available submission tapes (1.047m and 1.05m), as well as on what little footage we have from Billy's 1.062 million score
as shown at the "Big Bang" event in 2010. 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 girder finger on original hardware.
BARREL WITHOUT KONG - During the dispute, it was observed that when original hardware loads the barrel board,
the blue 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 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 an original direct feed, 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.
In Billy's submissions, the barrel is loaded before the timer. This is 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.
RIVET RAMP - When the rivet board is completed, the blue girders underneath Kong collapse into a neat pile. On MAME, this stacking is instantaneous. However, on arcade,
there is a transitional screen where portions of girders are rendered in the form of a crude ramp. This arcade signature frame is never observed in Billy's submissions.
SCREEN ORIENTATION - Earlier MAME output at the wrong screen orientation from arcade direct feed, requiring a television to be tilted the wrong way. Billy's first two tapes are output in this incorrect fashion. In the dispute, this was acknowledged as proof that, no matter what else,
an undisclosed computer had to have processed the video. Billy's third submission from Big Bang was oriented in the correct fashion, but since it shows other MAME signatures, it is believed the error was since caught and
corrected with a simple line command in MAME.
GRAY BORDER - When the original submission tapes were tracked down by Twin Galaxies,
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 technician, Rob Childs, had 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 disclosed.
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 has an option for audio output. Billy's other technician, Carlos Pineiro, defended the lack of audio by saying
it was trickier to include and not as important as the video capture.
INCORRECT LOADING SCREEN - As with the incorrect sound effects, an incorrect 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.
OTHER TECHNICAL ODDITIES - A number of other assorted oddities have been observed in Billy's tapes. They actually 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, most noticeably on the elevator stage.
The flashing "1UP" also desyncs from Wiebe's tape, even though both are started at the same time. Speaking of the flashing "1UP",
the flashing does not appear to be as consistent as it should be. While this was strange,
it was not as conclusive as the other MAME identifiers.ARCADE SIGNATURESNo arcade signatures, definitive or conditional, needed to be explained away. Each of the indicators present pointed toward MAME. In fact...
BILLY'S OWN TECHNICIAN - During the course of the dispute, Billy had a small team of people 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 a former Gameworks technician named Carlos Pineiro. Pineiro and crew were able to establish some elements of the case, including
how to get the Two Bit Score converter to produce a color signal. However,
Pineiro's work with an actual Donkey Kong cabinet produced screen transitions consistent with established arcade transitions. No way was found to produce MAME transitions using authentic hardware. Thus,
Billy's own technician was forced to conclude the tapes could not have originated from original Donkey Kong hardware.CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCEThe objective nature of the MAME evidence was what finally brought the matter to a close, relatively speaking. However, a number of other items had aroused suspicion over the years. While none of these are as definitive as the MAME evidence, they help illustrate the extent to which this hoax was perpetuated.
FAKE BOARD SWAP - Part of the package of public evidence for Billy's 2010 score included a YouTube video allegedly of his technician friend Rob Childs swapping the circuit boards between games of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. However,
both circuit boards shown are of DK Junior (likely the same board both times), with no original Donkey Kong board present. When this discrepancy was pointed out,
Childs replaced the audio with royalty free music to cover his own narration in the video. Thankfully,
the original version was saved and re-uploaded later. Billy's
only explanation for this was that the board swap video
along with two
other videos were part of a stunt, filmed hours later, but using the same machine at the same arcade. It was noted in the dispute that the cabinet, supposedly the same one Billy had just used that day to achieve his Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. records,
showed no indication of any direct feed setup.NO PHOTOS - It is often customary for arcade players, after great gaming achievements, to get a photo of themselves with the cabinet showing their score, or even just of the score itself. However, no such photos exist at the sites of Billy's achievements. In fact, no photos exist from any 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. Billy has claimed the existence of various photos and videos showing the crowds of onlookers, but none have been published as the staged videos were.
CHANGING STORIES - In a 2016 interview,
Billy claimed his 1.047m submission was done "at a convention". In 2018,
he claimed that same score was done "at Rob's arcade" (referring to Rob Childs). And 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.) 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.THE KONG OFF - Starting in 2011, several top Donkey Kong competitors were brought together to play in a high score tournament called the "Kong Off". Billy Mitchell, who over the years had been a four-time record holder, 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 hammer smashes, with Billy almost always getting the maximum values possible. The odds of getting his level of luck related to smash points was 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 actually backfired. Normally, the climb to the fifth girder directly under Kong (see:
"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. As with the luck, these all point to the ability to replay levels at will, nullifying the dangers honest competitors must account for.
VERIFIED WITHOUT REVIEW - Billy Mitchell's longtime connections to Twin Galaxies and its founder Walter Day afforded him privileged access to score adjudication. In 2004, Billy submitted a tape of 1.014 million (also a purported "direct feed") to counter a Steve Wiebe submission of 1.006 million. Before the score had been verified, while speaking to a crowd at a New York City event in his capacity as an affiliate of TG,
Billy announced that his was the new world record and the first score of over one million. That submission was later withdrawn, and the whereabouts of the tape are unknown. In 2006, Wiebe's 1.049 million (seen at the end of King of Kong) was
subjected to scrutiny due to a break in continuity between the game play and the filming of the circuit boards, whereas Billy's accepted tape of course showed 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.)
THE MAGAZINE - A complete issue of
Video Game Collector magazine was available at the "Big Bang" event in 2010, where Billy's two new records on Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. were announced.
This magazine featured the new records extensively, including a dedicated cover. 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 30, 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's incredibly short turnaround on laying out and printing a professional magazine. The magazine announcement was also authorized solely by Billy,
with TG officials having yet to weigh in on its verification status.VALID QUESTIONSBefore we get to Billy's rebuttals and deflections, let's address a few legitimate questions a curious bystander might have about this case.
"WHY ARE SOME OF THE TRANSITION SCREENS INCONCLUSIVE?" - One might wonder, if Billy's tapes originated from MAME, shouldn't all the screen transitions be from MAME? There are actually many reasons why a given screen transition would be inconclusive. First of all, the different pieces of equipment are not always operating at the same frequency (how many times they act per second), resulting in potentially lost frames.
Some formats and platforms, including YouTube, employ video compression which can blend different frames together in unique ways. Another effect to be wary of is called "rolling shutter", where pieces of different frames are captured together in one sweep of the camera.
Rolling shutter is introduced any time an external camera is aimed at a television or monitor, as is the case for early leaked copies of Billy's tapes available on YouTube. While many of the transitions on Billy's tapes are inconclusive due to these distortions, many others are precisely consistent with identified MAME screens, and none are indicative of arcade origin.
"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 scores and arcade scores together. The difference is largely a matter of preference, with some players opting for the purity of original hardware. 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.
Only certain versions of MAME are allowed, and input files must be sent as part of the evidence package. 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 achieved via playback 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.
"IF THE DISPUTE WAS ABOUT THE 2010 SCORE, WHY DID THEY FOCUS ON THE OTHER SCORES INSTEAD?" - The Twin Galaxies dispute process,
which rolled out in July 2017, allowed members with high credibility ratings to dispute scores in the database. However, only a player's current best scores were eligible to be disputed. This is why the entirety of the dispute was lodged under Billy's top recorded score of 1.062 million.
Jeremy Young opened the dispute in August 2017 on the basis that the board swap video allegedly authenticating that top score was faked. The MAME evidence pertaining to all three scores
would later be posted in the same thread. Twin Galaxies has maintained a policy of requiring an exceptional standard of proof, essentially to the point of certitude, before removing any previously verified score. The only remaining artifacts from Billy's 2010 score were brief clips filmed at his public exhibition at the "Big Bang" event, and while those did show evidence of MAME origin, Twin Galaxies decided those clips alone were not sufficient. However, the entire submission tapes of Billy's other two scores were available, and TG was able to rule conclusively that those were fraudulent, resulting in the removal of all of Billy's scores.
"WHY DID THEY 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 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. While Twin Galaxies administration did not feel comfortable outright labeling Billy Mitchell a "cheater" (for legal reasons if nothing else), their actions spoke louder than words. In removing all of Billy's scores, Twin Galaxies indicated their conclusion that the matter of falsified evidence was not simply an accident or mistake, but a willful attempt by Billy Mitchell to deceive adjudicators, i.e. cheating. Moral of the story: If you don't want your scores removed, don't cheat.
REBUTTALSAs 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 bullet point items are paraphrases, and not direct quotes.)
"THERE WERE WITNESSES." - In King of Kong, Billy was roasted for saying repeatedly that one should play live in front of witnesses, and then submitting a tape. With the movie out, and the expectation that by his own words he should have witnesses for his scores,
his next submission of 1.05 million featured witnesses in one room, watching a "direct feed" allegedly hooked up to Billy's DK cabinet in the other room. [NOTE: This account, while not disproven, has since come under dispute. See the
updated version of this post.] These "witnesses" would have no way of verifying if what they were watching was his actual live game play. With the actual submission tape having been proven fraudulent, it would seem this scenario was tailor-made to create the illusion of witnesses where no valid witnesses existed. For the 1.062 million score, Billy and his colleagues simply claimed witnesses were there with no evidence.
"IT WAS VERIFIED BY REFEREE." - 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, however, his later 1.05 million score
listed the verification method as "referee". That lone referee was Todd Rogers. Rogers, along with his girlfriend Morningdove Mahoney, would go on to act as referee for Billy's 1.062 million score in 2010. This deviation of adjudication processes did not sit well with top TG staff in 2010,
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. 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. As for Morningdove,
who was briefly seen avoiding the camera in one of the staged videos, she has yet to say anything publicly on the matter since the MAME evidence was published. Either way, the permanent objective evidence supersedes the word of partisan witnesses.
"THE BOARD WAS CERTIFIED BY NINTENDO." - For his 2007 score, Billy claims to have mailed the circuit board to Nintendo to have it verified by a technician, with arrangements to have it locked in place at the venue by a neutral third party. However these claims (along with associated evidence like shipping receipts) are irrelevant. There is ultimately no proof the board sent out was the same one used to produce the video tape. What we do know is that the video submitted could not have originated from a legitimate board, whether verified by a Nintendo technician or not.
"TWIN GALAXIES SAID IT WASN'T MAME." - You occasionally hear this
from some of Billy's supporters, but this is a misrepresentation. 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 original arcade hardware per the submission rules. 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 wholesale by video effects software. Lost on Billy's supporters is that there was a certain dry humor to that remark by TG, given that neither of those would exonerate Billy. Regardless, MAME is far and away the most likely tool one would have used, and is an exact match for the evidence we have, although on a fundamental level, the actual weapon is not as important as the crime itself.
"THE VERSION OF MAME THEY SAID I USED DIDN'T EXIST YET." - It is true there was a flaw in the original MAME evidence presentation, with regards to the "girder finger" screen seen in Billy's game play. At default settings,
the earlier versions of MAME available during Billy's earlier submissions show a slightly different transitional screen, one with three girders similar to the "girder finger" screen but without that specific artifact.
This has been presented by Billy himself as proof that his game play with the "girder finger" could not have come from MAME. Of course, his game play still does not resemble authentic hardware output either way. Regardless, more investigation was done as part of the dispute, and
versions of MAME going back to 2001 were shown to exhibit the girder finger under the correct settings. Specifically, this required changing the MAME refresh rate to match arcade, which one would likely do anyway if one was looking to pass MAME play off as arcade. Billy's tapes do indeed match earlier versions of MAME, and they still do not match original arcade.
"THE CONVERTER MUST HAVE MADE THE SIGNAL LOOK LIKE MAME." -
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." - Billy claims the tapes that were examined in the dispute, which are undeniably MAME, were not his actual submission tapes. This is an unsubstantiated claim coming from the accused and his colleagues. On the other hand,
Twin Galaxies administration claimed to have internal emails and documentation certifying those exact tapes as the same ones used to verify Billy's 2005 and 2007 scores at that time. As for who to believe, see the next item.
RECRIMINATIONSWith 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.
"DWAYNE RICHARD SAID IN 2009 HE WOULD MAKE FAKE TAPES TO FRAME ME." - 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 recently rediscovered, showing clips of Billy's 2005 submission (the one 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 show many of the same markings of MAME. 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.
"JACE HALL DID THIS ALL FOR MONEY." - As part of his "Road to Redemption" tour,
Billy did a presentation at Southern Fried Gaming Expo in June of last year. 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 CEO of Twin Galaxies. Unlike previous iterations of Twin Galaxies, Jace's administration has put a priority on transparency and accountability, requiring things like submission evidence be public. This emphasis carried through to
the new score dispute system, which required merely that
evidence be posted to the public dispute thread to be considered. The need to publish evidence in the proper venue was
dismissed by Billy as if it were some kind of unreasonable or exceptional burden. Billy went on to describe 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. Nevertheless, the dispute was handled according to the established rules.
Jace Hall and Twin Galaxies simply allowed the dispute to occur, and ruled according to the evidence. The dispute would have generated many fewer clicks for Twin Galaxies if Billy had simply confessed straight away.
"YOU CAN'T JUST BLAME ME, YOU HAVE TO BLAME THE TECHNICIANS AND DISTRIBUTORS, TOO." - The claim is that, if the scores are faked, then everyone tangentially related to those events must have been in on the misdeed and must share the blame with Billy. In reality, while some small number of people were certainly in on it 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. As happens, Billy throws other innocent people in the way of accusations.
"THE FAKE BOARD SWAP WAS ROB'S FAULT." - This one's amusing.
Billy threw his own friend Rob Childs under the bus for the obviously fake board swap video, despite Billy's own participation in it, and the fact that it was presented for years as genuine. Billy claims it was a stunt to build up Rob's YouTube channel. Of course, one may wonder if they would have been so forthcoming in 2018 about the video's inauthenticity had they actually used the correct circuit boards.
DEFLECTIONS AND DISTRACTIONSMoving 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.
"MY SCORE WASN'T EVEN 10TH PLACE WHEN THEY CHALLENGED IT." -
Billy presents this in a way to suggest his accusers are petty, that they choose 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 standing. Third, as for gaming history, 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.
"THEY MOVED THE GOALPOSTS, SO I WAS NEVER GOING TO WIN." -
This was a claim by Billy during his SFGE panel. The "goalposts" in the Twin Galaxies dispute were never moved, although some elements of the technical analysis were explored and later abandoned. For instance,
TG staff were unable to produce a color signal using the "Two bit score" converter, until
a method was later discovered using a different VCR. This was all a standard part of evidence-based investigation; not every hypothesis will be proven valid. However, the real focus of the dispute never changed. The goal was always to see if genuine arcade hardware could be used to produce the MAME screens 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.
"THIS STACK OF SECRET PAPERS WILL EXONERATE ME." - At his SFGE presentation, Billy waved around a stack of papers, claiming it to include everything from
proof people were out to slander Steve Wiebe, to
evidence that his tapes had been stolen, to
proof that people planned to frame him starting in 2009, to
documentation of harassment against himself and his family. Obviously, harassment is not acceptable, and his accounts of that are not seriously being questioned. He is under no obligation to publish those items. However, harassing emails do nothing to answer the question behind the dispute: Did Billy Mitchell cheat? In fact, none of other material cited affects the preponderance of the evidence against him, outlined above. More to the point, the purpose of this show was to get people who want to believe Billy to buy into the idea that exonerating evidence exists. Aside from flashing brief glimpses toward the camera, none of this allegedly exculpatory evidence has been published. This was after Billy, in the immediate aftermath of the TG verdict, had assured the public
"Everything will be transparent. Everything will be available. I wish I had it in my hands right now. I wish I could hand it to you." Had this evidence actually cleared Billy's name, it certainly would have been published before the verdict resulting in his scores' permanent removal, yet here we are a year later, and it still has yet to be shared. If Billy wishes to actually publish evidence to support his case, that evidence can be considered at that time.
"BUT BILLY JUST REDID THOSE SCORES, SO HE'S PROVEN HE'S LEGIT." - After the dispute, Billy began streaming Donkey Kong on Twitch. Over the course of months, he eventually scored an even one million, before "duplicating" his 1,047,200 and 1,050,200 scores. First, it should be pointed out that neither score was actually "duplicated". The first score actually overshot the target by 300 points due to a stray fireball, and an untimely death caused the second score to come up 100 points short. This is noteworthy in that
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). It should also be pointed out that, unsurprisingly, the game play used was significantly different than in Billy's MAME submissions, relying now on proven strategies rather than the hope of getting absurd luck and never dying in live arcade play. But more to the point, as with all advancements in video game play, scoring one million in the modern era of 1.2 million scores says nothing about one's ability to score one million back when that would have been a world record, back when the game and its strategies were less understood. This is an attempt to reframe the question to one of talent: "Why would Billy cheat if he's good enough that he doesn't have to?" The answer to that is that the cheating is simply proven, as explained above. Perhaps, as indicated by his bizarre game play, he didn't know how to score one million at the time without chicanery. Perhaps he knew the secrets but was unable to execute on them. Or perhaps he was merely unable to dedicate the time and focus fairly required of his competitors to grind out a valid score. Only Billy can explain why he chose to cheat. All we can do is prove that he did.
"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 truth,
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 recent discovery of the Mruczek interview described above.
"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.
"THEY'RE JUST WHINY CRYBABIES / KEYBOARD WARRIORS / JEALOUS HATERS / ETC." - Does this even need to be responded to? There are many more famous people and more accomplished gamers to "tear down", if this were a matter of jealousy. This is simply journalism, and 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 would be defending Billy if the evidence supported him. We continue to stress the fact of Billy Mitchell's guilt because, despite incessant denials, deflections, and recriminations, all substantial evidence confirms it.
IN CONCLUSIONWe have established the means, we have established the motive, 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. 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 - Billy's tapes were MAME, and yes, they were his real tapes. Billy Mitchell is a cheater and a liar. He will tell you he's not, but that is what a cheating liar would say.
