(The current up-to-date version of this post has been migrated to
perfectpacman.com. This version was last updated on October 14, 2020.
The original shorter version of this post can be found here.)On April 12, 2018, disgraced "Video Game Player of the Century" Billy Mitchell was removed from Twin Galaxies' leaderboards. This was the result of a lengthy investigation into the claim that surviving videos of two of his past achievements could not have been produced by an actual arcade machine as Billy had claimed.
This post is intended to collect evidence and arguments in one place, to serve as a resource, and to help interested parties understand what exactly the dispute was about. Billy Mitchell's denials and recriminations have been fervent and assertive (if often misleading), inspiring confidence in some and leading many bystanders to believe perhaps the evidence is ambiguous, when in fact the evidence against him is quite clear. 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.
This post incorporates historical material, discoveries made during the 2018 dispute, material from
Billy's September 2019 legal threat, and currently released court filings from the active legal cases Billy Mitchell has filed against Twin Galaxies and others. This post is not meant to be comprehensive (if you can believe that), but rather a reflection of important points and pieces of evidence identified from the publicly available record, which is more than enough to establish Billy's guilt. Note that what follows is the result of a lot of community effort. In the interest of cutting down wordiness, sources below are not named outright. In-line links provide attribution and further reading. While I've obviously done a fair amount of work examining and compiling these discoveries, I'd like to make clear that only a small portion of what follows represents my own original discoveries. (Also note that Billy's pals at Southern-Fried Gaming Expo removed the video of Billy's 2018 presentation, so items citing that panel currently link to a post explaining that a transcript will be provided soon.)
THE SHORT VERSIONIn early 2018, a discovery was made which added fuel to a preexisting score dispute on the Twin Galaxies website. While the emulator MAME is intended to run arcade games as accurately as possible, the way the program draws Donkey Kong level boards to the screen is noticeably different from the way the original arcade machine does it. The process happens in a fraction of a second, but when slowed down, the differences are identifiable, creating what we call "MAME signatures" (as well as a few "arcade signatures"). These "signatures" are not accidents, but direct and inescapable byproducts of the fact that MAME and arcade function differently. Unfortunately for Billy Mitchell, surviving footage of three of his scores showed several indicators of MAME origin, and showed no indications it was produced from a real Donkey Kong arcade cabinet, as he and his friends had always claimed.
Rigorous examination and testing by a number of parties at Twin Galaxies and elsewhere concluded Billy's tapes could not have originated from authentic arcade hardware as claimed. Even techs working in Billy's defense could not demonstrate a way to produce the MAME transition screens seen on his tapes from a genuine arcade machine. To this day, no one on any side has been able to explain why three different tapes of Billy's, allegedly produced on three different Donkey Kong cabinets with different capture setups several years apart, all show dozens and dozens of MAME signatures throughout, and exactly zero arcade signatures. No one has been able to replicate the phenomenon, nor has anyone been able to show why this phenomenon apparently happened to only Billy Mitchell and not literally anyone else ever.
Rather than tackle the scientific evidence which proves his guilt, Billy's defense has been to throw anything and everything at the wall and see what sticks. He claims the tapes being examined are forgeries (which is a lie). He claims someone named Dwayne Richard made fake MAME tapes to frame him (which was hilariously implausible, even before it was outright disproven). He claims to have impartial witnesses for his scores (many of whom turn out to be personal friends). He claims he has all sorts of ancillary media, video and photographs (which of course he's never published). He did publish three videos allegedly from the site of his 2010 score (and those videos were laughably fake). He claims that being able to post big scores on Donkey Kong today proves he didn't cheat 15 years ago (which it doesn't). And when he doesn't get his way,
he literally sues the Internet for saying mean things about him.If you are left with further questions, or would like to see any of these points elaborated on, please continue reading, as that topic is probably addressed below.
THE LONG VERSIONBefore we get to the evidence, let's do an overview of the situation. This matter concerns the following four Billy Mitchell tape submissions for Donkey Kong, all "direct feed" recordings showing nothing but the game screen:
- 1,014,400, allegedly achieved in May 2003 at his friend Rob Childs' workshop in Fort Lauderdale;
- 1,047,200, allegedly achieved on either
June 7,
2004, or
"on or about December 28, 2004," also at Rob Childs' workshop;
- 1,050,200, allegedly achieved on
July 13 or 14, 2007, at a mortgage brokers convention in Orlando;
- 1,062,800, allegedly achieved on July 31, 2010, at Boomers arcade in Dania Beach, Florida.
One of these (2007) was staged around an actual event, the annual convention of the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers. A good deal of effort was put into giving this spectacle a sense of legitimacy. There are stories of a circuit board sent to Nintendo for verification, of a mysterious Game Stop manager padlocking the board in place at the event. A few FAMB members (some of whom were personal friends of Billy) have said they saw him playing Donkey Kong there. Todd Rogers was on hand as an official referee (in accordance with Twin Galaxies adjudication rules at the time), and at least at the time his word was worth something. This is basically the extent of evidence in Billy's favor for any of these scores, and it does sound very nice and reassuring, until you discover the tape allegedly produced at that event could not have been produced by an actual Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. Then one starts to ask how many of these assurances were as genuine as they seem. (We'll get more into this FAMB event below.)
The later 2010 score was allegedly performed during a one (or was it two?) day session at Boomers arcade. The story is that Billy broke the Donkey Kong world record, took a dinner break, then came back to beat the Donkey Kong Junior world record the same day. Much less effort was put into this charade, with the only ancillary evidence being three short YouTube videos, which (as explained below) were hilariously faked. While we no longer have a complete copy of this game play, Billy did play tapes of his DK and DK Junior records on tilted televisions during a presentation at an event called the "Big Bang" in Ottumwa, Iowa the following weekend. Footage of this presentation from spectators is the only surviving evidence of the score we have access to.
The previous two scores didn't even bother with that much pretense, with the tapes simply appearing one day with no public explanation. TG referee Robert Mruczek did a detailed level-by-level score analysis of the 1.014m tape, but after Steve Wiebe's competing 1.006m score was disqualified (something about a gummy substance), Billy withdrew his 1.014m submission. The whereabouts of that tape are unknown. A copy of the submission tape for the 1.047m score did survive, and it, along with the submission tape for the mortgage brokers score, were later uploaded to YouTube. During the 2018 dispute,
Jace Hall uploaded clean copies of both tapes, providing us with a complete look at Billy's game play. Note: We typically refer to Billy's "three" scores, meaning the two complete tapes and the one filmed at Big Bang, because there simply is no relevant evidence for the 1.014m.
Prosecuting any crime involves 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, which could be detectable. The opportunity in this case was Billy's ability to submit tapes and scores to Twin Galaxies with little scrutiny compared to his competitors.
The motive is a little trickier, in that none of us can truly get inside Billy Mitchell's head. Was he incapable of reaching these scores without cheating? Was he unwilling to invest the time required of his competitors to sit and legitimately grind out a score? Did he just want the accolades without the work? Was he an otherwise good player who simply decided the game owed him a favor (or four)? Did he prefer the spectacle of achieving scores at a certain time and place of his choosing? It should also be remembered that these weren't just world records. The 1.014m (later withdrawn) and the 1.047m were on track to be recognized as the first ever million point games of Donkey Kong. Did Billy want the assurance of locking up recognition for that milestone without leaving the matter up to chance? We can list many viable motives, but we can only guess which is most likely. Ultimately, only Billy can tell us why he chose to cheat. All we can do is show that he did.
With that out of the way, let's get to some evidence!
MAME SIGNATURESThe big breakthrough in the Billy Mitchell case came with
an evidence package published by Jeremy Young "xelnia" on February 2, 2018. This presentation was the result of the ways in which MAME and arcade draw "boards" (level screens) differently, resulting in what came to be known as "MAME signatures," identifiers which could never be 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 arcade counterpart, the ways in which these screens are drawn are substantially different. The original arcade cabinet draws in a left-to-right sweep, while MAME draws in snapshots.
(See a demonstration here.) This results 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. As you see, arcade draws portions of five girders down the right side (a result of that left-to-right sweep), while MAME draws complete girders one by one, with MAME's snapshot coming halfway through the third. Of course, Billy's three scores each match MAME screens, and do not match arcade.
(When confronted with the above image, Billy likes to say those tapes were fabricated and don't belong to him. He's a liar. But we'll get to that later.)
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" (or sometimes "girder tail"). The girder finger became something of an unofficial mascot for the investigation,
a big reddish flag that could be easily understood and latched on to. In truth, the initial MAME evidence presentation was much more concerned with how the levels were drawn to the screen than with that specific artifact. (That becomes relevant later.) In other words, what's important is
not that "a" girder finger was found, but rather that that specific girder finger on that three-girder screen appears.
The girder finger itself appears several times in Billy's 1.047m and 1.05m tapes. While a clear shot of that small finger is not seen in available footage of the 1.062m score, the three girder screen is (as seen above). While the girder finger screen is not the only MAME signature, it has still proven too much for Team Billy to address. 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 particular girder finger on original hardware.
BARREL WITHOUT KONG - During the dispute, it was observed that when original hardware loads the barrel board,
the blue oil 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.
While there is a lot more evidence to cover, I want to stress that these loading screen discrepancies have never been explained by Billy, despite earnest attempts to do so. From a technical perspective, it's already "Game Over" for Billy's claims that his tapes were produced from an original unmodified Donkey Kong PCB. But we shall continue.
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 by Jace Hall as proof that, no matter what else,
an undisclosed computer had to have processed the video. Billy's 2010 score displayed at Big Bang was oriented in the correct fashion, but since it shows other MAME signatures, it is likely the error was since caught and
corrected with a simple line command in MAME.Billy's June 2020 legal filings attempted to address this by way of an "Orientation assessment" written by Billy's latest technician, Neil Hernandez. This filing included the above dual-image as an example. (Hi Neil! Hi Billy!) In this write-up, Neil lists a few things which could have possibly caused the vertical output to be flipped, such as internal cables being reversed or the monitor being installed upside-down,
suggesting that perhaps two of these unlikely events happened simultaneously (canceling each other so Billy could play his game right-side up) while the direct feed could have been installed between the two manufacturing errors. (Note of course these dual faults would have had to happen on both the different machines Billy used for his 1.047m and 1.05m, while neither could have happened for the 1.062m score, which was recorded right-side up.) Neil also casually suggests that
maybe the engineer at Nintendo changed a bunch of parts on Billy's game board without ever disclosing it, causing the board to work improperly (which, again, magically reversed itself for the later score).
ARCADE SIGNATURESIn addition to MAME signatures, there also exist a small number of "arcade signatures" - things which should only be observed in games played on an original arcade board. In the investigation into Billy's tapes, none of these arcade signatures, definitive or conditional, were observed. Each indicator pointed toward MAME. In fact, a few key elements which could have established arcade origin were conspicuously absent from the provided tapes.
RIVET RAMP - When the rivet board is completed, the blue girders underneath Kong collapse into a neat pile. On MAME, this stacking is instantaneous, providing no special "identifier" screen. 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.
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.
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 ODDITIESA few other oddities were observed about Billy's tapes.
GRAY BORDER - When the original submission tapes were tracked down by Twin Galaxies,
TG head custodian 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 longtime technician friend, 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. (Ironically, Billy's defense tries to suggest this is proof someone came along and edited his tapes later, as if someone drew little MAME signatures over his otherwise valid game play.)
RECORDING IN COLOR - One issue that came up during the dispute was the inability to record a VCR tape in color using the method described by Rob Childs. The signal out from the Donkey Kong cabinet, running through the Two Bit Score converter, was not up to VCR specifications,
resulting in a semi-monochrome recording. Attempts by multiple parties, including Twin Galaxies, could not produce the desired color signal to match Billy's tapes. During the original dispute, Carlos Pineiro, a volunteer technician assisting "Team Billy" in researching the case,
announced that he was able to produce a color signal after replacing some dried out components on the Two Bit Score board. But what was not disclosed until much later was that, in order to record in color,
someone had to press their finger down on the converter chip the entire time of the recording (possibly increasing electrical resistance). Jace Hall rightly considered this a
"modification of the claimed process used", and reiterated their confidence that the process described by Rob Childs could not have produced a full color recording without modification.
GAME SPEED - Billy's tapes 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.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCEThe objective nature of the MAME-versus-arcade evidence was the proverbial smoking gun, proving to the public what many had already known. 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 perpetrated.
FAKE BOARD SWAP VIDEO - Part of the package of public evidence for Billy's 2010 score included three YouTube videos allegedly taken the day of his achievement at Boomers. Unfortunately for Billy, there's no getting around the fact that these videos are poorly staged and misrepresentative. For instance, in one video, purporting to occur just after Billy achieved his DK Junior score,
Billy quickly backs up to block the arcade cabinet which should be showing his high score.The most egregious of the three was the "board swap" video, depicting his technician friend Rob Childs swapping the circuit boards between Billy's 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 first pointed out,
Childs replaced the audio with royalty free music to cover his own narration in the video. The unedited version was saved and later re-uploaded, but amidst all the legal threats in 2020,
both versions were later set to private. As to what's seen in the video, Billy was forced to admit
the board swap video was a stunt, filmed hours later, using the same arcade cabinet he claims he had achieved his scores on earlier. It was noted in the dispute that the cabinet
showed no indication of any direct feed setup.
The problems with these videos didn't end there. The September 2019 evidence packet included signed statements from both
Billy Mitchell and
Rob Childs saying that the board swap video was done at the conclusion of Donkey Kong Junior (the latter of Billy's two claimed world records that day). Billy's statement adds that the DK Junior score ended some time around midnight. The problem is, the third video features Billy talking about having already broken the records: "It was a little slow getting started, but when the records came, they came." That's fine, except that this video was clearly filmed during full daylight, with
bright exit doors visible behind Rob. They don't expect us to believe they all reconvened the next day, all wearing the same clothes as before, all to film a video which (based on the title "moments after breaking the Donkey Kong record") they would have to admit was staged anyway, do they?
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 have been published 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 repeatedly claimed the existence of various photos and videos showing the crowds of onlookers, but none have been published as the staged videos were.
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, star of King of Kong, had been recognized as the on-and-off record holder over the years, and thus 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 blue barrel smashes, with Billy consistently getting values higher than the average. The odds of getting his level of luck related to smash points were 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 for Billy. 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. An unusual strategy is also employed on the rivet boards,
with Billy aggressively accumulating hammer smashes in situations most players find too hazardous. 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, while speaking at a New York City event in his capacity as an affiliate of TG,
Billy announced that his 1.014m was the new world record and the first score of over one million points. This came as a surprise to TG staff,
who had not received any such submission from Billy. All this
despite the fact that Wiebe had submitted his million point game first, and despite the fact that Billy himself would later withdraw his submission after a reason was found to disqualify Wiebe's. In 2006, Wiebe's 1.049m (seen at the end of King of Kong) was
subjected to scrutiny over a break in continuity between the game play and the filming of the circuit board, whereas Billy's tape was accepted despite showing 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 - This item's a bit odd, but certainly enough to raise an eyebrow. 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 (although they did get Billy's DK Junior record wrong). 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 with seven internal pages and three alternate covers dedicated to the Billy Mitchell / Steve Wiebe / Twin Galaxies theme. The magazine announcement of "new world records" was also authorized solely by Billy,
with TG officials having yet to weigh in on the scores' verification status. For whatever it's worth,
Video Game Collector Magazine was published by Shawn Paul Jones, Billy's
longtime manager/agent. While this magazine is not solid proof of anything, it adds to the notion that Billy's inner circle were aware of his new "world record" scores before he allegedly achieved them.
THE DISPUTE PROCESSWe'll get into the bulk of Team Billy's rebuttals in a moment, but for now, let's talk about the TG dispute process. Since Billy's people have been woefully unable to address the objective MAME evidence, or to provide a reasonable explanation for why the only ancillary media from these supposed events was completely fake, Billy has instead taken to portraying the Twin Galaxies dispute process as unfair, or even biased against him personally. While this is not actually relevant to the question of whether Billy cheated (hence why he likes to focus on it instead of the evidence), it's worth discussing briefly.
"HOW TRANSPARENT WAS THE PROCESS?" - While the final "verdict" was decided by a unanimous vote among TG administrative staff, the process along the way was very open and informative. The dispute discussion was conducted on a public Internet thread, which anyone with a registered site account could immediately post to.
Evidence had to be posted to the public dispute thread to be considered in TG's decision. In other words, TG was not basing their decision on secret evidence withheld from the public. Also important was that any technical assertions had to be replicated and verified by other parties. Someone couldn't just claim to have produced the "girder finger" on arcade hardware; they had to explain how they did it and show others how to replicate it themselves. (Of course, under those terms, nobody stepped up to claim they had done it.)
TG held a standard that the scores would only be removed if it could be objectively proven the evidence supporting them was not authentic, which is exactly what happened. Note that this is in contrast to other Twin Galaxies score disputes, most notably the infamous Todd Rogers Dragster dispute, which was allowed to drag on for months too long after Todd's record was proven impossible. For all of Billy's complaints of unfair treatment, his dispute was the most thoroughly examined and the most professionally administered. He was found guilty because the evidence was conclusive.
"WAS BILLY ALLOWED TO PRESENT A DEFENSE?" - The position of Twin Galaxies was that Billy's presence was not required, as his scores would only be removed if it could be proven conclusively that the evidence used to authenticate them in the first place (the tapes) were proven to be fake. That said, Billy was still allowed to submit anything he wanted in his defense, as long as he post it to the public dispute thread so it could be evaluated by the community. Billy did try to submit things (like witness statements) to Jace privately, but
afterward complained that the requirement to post evidence to a public forum presented too big of a burden."DID TWIN GALAXIES SUPPRESS EVIDENCE IN BILLY'S FAVOR?" - Given that the evidence was collected in a public Internet thread, being watched at all hours of the day and night by various interested parties, which any registered user could immediately add to without preemptive moderation,
it would have been very hard for Jace Hall to suppress Billy-favorable evidence without people seeing it."WAS TWIN GALAXIES LOOKING FOR A REASON TO REMOVE BILLY'S SCORES?" - This is another allegation coming straight from Billy's mouth. It's hard to take it seriously, given that the dispute was opened in August 2017, strictly on the basis that the corroborating board swap video was faked. The dispute sat open for months, with no action by TG administration. They only opened an investigation when the damning MAME evidence was published in February, 2018.
"DID TWIN GALAXIES MOVE THE GOALPOSTS?" - During a presentation at Southern Fried Gaming Expo in 2018,
Billy gave this elaborate description of how Twin Galaxies allegedly moved the "goalposts". In reality, the dispute goalposts never moved. Some elements of technical analysis were explored and later abandoned, such as
some unusual behavior of the flashing "1UP" which was
deemed inconclusive. There were also discussions on whether the Two Bit Score converter could record in color. However, the core of the dispute never changed. The goal was always to see if genuine arcade hardware could be used to produce the MAME screens or MAME signatures 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 on any side.
"WHAT BROUGHT THE DISPUTE TO A CONCLUSION?" - During the course of the dispute, Billy had a small team of friends and volunteers 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 Carlos Pineiro, a former Gameworks technician. At the time, Pineiro believed Billy and sought to produce evidence to exonerate him. However,
Pineiro's work with an actual Donkey Kong cabinet still produced screen transitions consistent with established arcade transitions, and not consistent with the transitions seen on Billy's tapes. Eventually,
Billy's own volunteer technician was forced to conclude the tapes could not have originated from authentic Donkey Kong hardware. While Twin Galaxies and
interested third party Chris Gleed each did tests on Donkey Kong arcade equipment to verify the dispute assertions as well, as Billy's representative, this conclusion by Pineiro (posted two days prior to the verdict) featured prominently in
Twin Galaxies' decision announcement.
The Carlos Pineiro story does get more complicated a year later, when he was coerced into signing a brief statement retracting his conclusion.
However, Carlos later explained this statement was not presented in good faith. After
hours of contention, Carlos signed the statement despite his objections and misgivings, in a misguided attempt to exempt himself from any potential lawsuit
(which he says Billy was actively threatening him with), and under
the belief that the statement would never be made public. Once that statement was immediately made public without his consent, he met with his lawyer and with Billy, signing a second such statement, which he also now disavows.
Carlos has since clarified, including in
recent court filings, that he does, in fact,
stand behind his original conclusion.(Billy is also now claiming Carlos never represented him in the first place, but as we show below, that's another lie.)
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 definitively from MAME? There are actually many reasons why a given screen transition would appear 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, as well as some early misguided attempts to verify the dispute claims. Experts can often tease apart how these different distortions affect one another and the original images, but without that expertise, the garbled mess simply appears inconclusive. While many of the transitions on Billy's tapes appear 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 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, recorded via playback, achieved 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.
"BUT ISN'T BILLY A GOOD PLAYER?" - I'm not normally in the habit of praising cheaters, but sure, Billy is very good at Donkey Kong. The point of the dispute was not to assess whether Billy Mitchell was a talented player. The point was to assess whether he cheated (which he did).
There's a misconception that only bad players cheat. Therefore, if someone cheats, it must be because they're bad at the game. In truth, there are many reasons players cheat. Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were certainly good at their sports, but they still cheated. Some great players cheat because being great isn't enough to them; they can only accept being (seen as) the very best. Other times, competitors cheat not due to talent but because they aren't willing to put in the necessary work and make the necessary sacrifices. What gives one player the right to skip the months of score-grinding fairly required of their competitors? While the early days of competitive video gaming were a wild west of myths and lies, I struggle to imagine a modern day scoreboard that operates on the basis that someone need only show they're very good at a game before they can lay claim to any current and historical achievements they want.
This is an attempt by Billy and his supporters to reframe the question away from the objective examination of evidence, and toward a more subjective and malleable question of talent. Instead of asking "Did Billy lie and fabricate evidence to put a claimed score on the scoreboard?", Billy wants us to ask "Why would Billy cheat if he's good enough that he wouldn't have to?" The answer to that question is that the cheating is simply proven. Perhaps, as indicated by the bizarre game play on his tapes, he didn't know how to score one million at the time without chicanery. Perhaps he knew the secrets but was unable to consistently execute on them. Or maybe he was simply impatient and unwilling to dedicate the time and focus required to grind out a valid score. Only Billy can explain why he chose to cheat. All we can do is prove that he did.
"DIDN'T BILLY RECREATE ALL HIS CONTESTED SCORES?" - This is a more specific variation of the last item, so all the general arguments still apply. But there are more problems with this claim.
The first, most obvious one, is that none of his scores were "recreated", no matter how many times Billy and his supporters say otherwise. Yes, since the 2018 dispute Billy has streamed games on Twitch, which appear to be genuine, and yes, he has scored over one million a few times. But his "recreated" scores leave a lot to be desired. He never attempted to recreate the 1.014m score, the 1.047m score he
overshot by 300 points due to a stray fireball, an untimely death caused the 1.05m attempt
to come up 100 points short, and after two years of attempts
he didn't even bother "recreating" the 1.062m score, zooming past it when he finally had the opportunity. (The above image from Billy was meant to commemorate his "redoing" his 1,050,200 score.) One might say "Well, it's close enough," except that Billy himself is out bragging about how he showed up his detractors by hitting his contested scores, in his own words,
"exactly on the head".But this is about more than just misrepresenting approximate recreations as exact.
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), before flippantly killing off his multiple remaining lives, something which actual game luck has prevented him from so effortlessly doing. It should also be pointed out that, unsurprisingly, the game play Billy uses for these million point scores now is significantly different than in Billy's MAME submissions, relying on proven strategies (and more advanced knowledge of the game) rather than the hope of getting absurd luck and never dying in live arcade play.
But the biggest indictment of this claim has to do with something called score pace. Think of score pace like timing splits for a speedrunner.
A comparison of Billy's 1.092m score of June 2020 to his contested 1.05m and 1.062m scores of yesteryear shows the old scores to be significantly ahead going into level 21. His 2007 tape was 5,200 points ahead at that point, and his 2010 score (from the footage seen at Big Bang) was 29,600 points ahead. Of course, Billy killed those scores off almost immediately, wasting multiple lives both times, with neither of those games even passing the first board of level 21, whereas in his 2020 score, Billy kept playing through to the kill screen. The only way in which Billy has "recreated" his contested performances is in attempting to arrive at the same final score, regardless of how he got there or how long it took, and he couldn't even do that right.
"WHY DID TG 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 in some way. Moral of the story: If you don't want your scores removed, don't cheat.
"WHY DID GUINNESS REINSTATE BILLY'S SCORES?" - Why, indeed? The evidence to substantiate the scores was proven fraudulent, the corroborating evidence was also staged, witnesses were caught demonstrably lying (we'll get to that below), and the only competitive gaming scoreboard who still recognized his scores, a longtime partner with Guinness, disqualified him and no longer recognized his claims. So why did Guinness choose to ignore all that and forge their own path?
The honest answer to this question is, we don't entirely know. What we do know, as asserted by Billy's court filings, is that A)
Guinness was supplied with evidence only
under threat of lawsuit if they didn't arrive at Billy's preferred decision, and B)
Guinness was supplied with the same September 2019 evidence packet
that was supplied to Twin Galaxies (which TG chose to publish in the dispute thread). In stark contrast to TG's open dispute process and evidence collection,
Guinness didn't highlight specific
pieces of evidence, nor did it elaborate on how it reconciled vague witness statements with the evidence proving the submission tapes could not have been produced from a genuine arcade cabinet. While some have construed Guinness' statement to mean they conducted hardware tests (and that these mysterious closed door tests were somehow nearly as competent and as exhaustive as the tests publicly documented by multiple parties in the TG dispute thread), it is quite doubtful Guinness conducted any such tests with any arcade equipment at all, with the statement likely referring to Billy's own "hardware verification" included in his evidence packet. (More on that below.) Guinness also didn't reconcile Billy's and Walter Day's claims that the 1.047m score was never intended as a score submission with the fact that Billy now sought recognition for that score as the first million point game of Donkey Kong. (I'll get more into that later.) Guinness also didn't seek out any dispute participants (including the knowledgeable author of this lengthy post) for rebuttal to Billy's claims in the evidence packet, some of which were blatant and provable lies and many others of which are easily addressed. Naturally, in his legal briefs,
Billy's lawyers talk up Guinness' supposedly superior investigative powers while disparaging Twin Galaxies' dispute process, when in reality, the latter was infinitely more transparent.
It's possible Guinness simply deferred to the judgment of former TG owner Walter Day, who has worked with Guinness going back to the '80s. Day still stands behind his longtime friend Billy (even being nice enough to
lie to the court on his behalf). It's possible they caved simply because didn't want to be sued. It's possible Guinness decided Billy would be a better friend than Jace. It's possible Billy simply paid for Guinness' recognition (a not uncommon practice). It could have been
Guinness' natural affinity for narcissistic con men. But it certainly was not on the basis that Billy's evidence was that compelling - not unless the people at Guinness really are that gullible.
(Also disturbing is that Guinness coordinated their announcement with Billy and may have even assisted in his attempts to sue a gaming scorekeeper,
but that's a whole 'nother story.)[CONTINUED BELOW]
