That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
While “Donkey Kong” is a relatively simple game of running and jumping (and occasionally smashing) whose board layouts start to repeat after level four, there’s no fixed number of points you can score in a game; a random number generator determines the value of many of the prizes you encounter and the path some of the obstacles take. But the game does crap out due to a malfunction on the start of level 22 — the infamous kill screen — making it possible to figure out the maximum number of points possible. Young has calculated that a player using optimal strategy and getting as many lucky breaks as possible would score 1,265,000 points. Saglio is 95.4 percent of the way there...
...Now, anyone who wants to be competitive for the record has to be embedded in Donkey Kong Forum, or else they won’t learn the point-grinding strategies needed to chase glory. Saglio points out that Wiebe still is interested in the game and plays regularly but has handicapped himself by never getting involved with the community. “He fell behind,” Saglio said. “He’s no longer capable of challenging for the record.”...
...Now, when Saglio plays — often late at night, when his wife and two young kids are asleep — he’s often joined by five to 10 other Donkey Kong Forum members who watch him play on game live-streaming service Twitch ...
...Despite his high score, Saglio is not considered the current “Donkey Kong” record holder, at least as far as gaming arbiter Twin Galaxies is concerned....
...Even though he’d have to successfully smash another 96 barrels to surpass Saglio’s score, Lakeman earned his record on an actual arcade cabinet, not an emulator,1 and thus his score is considered to be most legit. (It was the same machine Wiebe played in “The King of Kong.”) Although the software is identical in the emulator and the arcade, a keyboard is considered slightly more responsive than a joystick, and being able to sit in a comfy chair for the three-plus hours it takes to play a complete game on an emulator is considered easier than leaning over from a stool at an arcade. By studying the moves that emulator users are able to make that cabinet users can’t, Cunningham estimates that a keyboard gives Saglio about 10,000 extra points a game.
Still loved this movie.New Jersey Federal District Judge Anne Thompson threw out Billy Mitchell's lawsuit against the Cartoon Network on Friday, ruling that the "Regular Show" exaggerated his traits to make the character "cartoonishly evil" and that the show is protected by the First Amendment.
...
"The television character does not match the plaintiff in appearance: GBF appears as a non-human creature, a giant floating head with no body from outer space, while Plaintiff is a human being," Thompson wrote. "And when GBF loses his title, the character literally explodes, unlike Plaintiff."
Just days after video game high score champ Todd Rogers was stripped of his Dragster title for mathematically impossible times, the man who was the Donkey Kong king for almost 20 years has also come under scrutiny. Billy Mitchell's 2010 high score for Donkey Kong has been called into question on a Twin Galaxies dispute forum by Jeremy Young, the moderator of Donkey Kong Forum (DKF). Young has presented a wealth of evidence to show that Mitchell's performance was likely faked, and has thus removed the high score from DKF's leaderboard.
...
The issue is convoluted, though laid out with precision by Young in his explanatory post, which is accompanied by dozens of GIFs. "In summary," Young wrote, "these GIFs show that each of the Donkey Kong world record direct feed recordings presented by Billy Mitchell and verified by [Twin Galaxies] were generated in MAME and not by original Donkey Kong hardware."
According to Young, Mitchell claimed that the footage of his record-setting score was taken directly from the feed off a Donkey Kong arcade board. The investigation and analysis of comparable arcade feeds and MAME videos, specifically by a technically-inclined forum community member named Sock_Master, seem to show that Mitchell's footage comes from MAME, the open-source software that emulates arcade boards.
Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Billy Mitchell's scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards.
We have notified Guinness World Records of our decision.
With this ruling Twin Galaxies can no longer recognize Billy Mitchell as the 1st million point Donkey Kong record holder. According to our findings, Steve Wiebe would be the official 1st million point record holder.
Billy Mitchell, a pro gamer best known for making the numbers on an arcade machine get really big, is going to court. As spotted by Axios’ Stephen Totilo, a U.S. appeals court gave the green light yesterday for Mitchell to proceed with a defamation suit against Twin Galaxies, the popular gaming leaderboard site.
...
Record keepers, including Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records, affirmed Mitchell’s accolades. But evidence emerged that he may have used emulation devices—specifically, M.A.M.E. (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)—to achieve his scores, rather than the authentic arcade circuit boards that are required for competitive play. Guinness stripped his records in 2018, but un-stripped them last year. Twin Galaxies, meanwhile, which stripped the records as well, has yet to reinstate them.
Over the years, King of Kong star Billy Mitchell has seen his world-record Donkey Kong scores stripped, partially reinstated, and endlessly litigated, both in actual court and the court of public opinion. Through it all, Mitchell has insisted that every one of his records was set on unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware, despite some convincing technical evidence to the contrary.
Now, new photos from a 2007 performance by Mitchell seem to show obvious modifications to the machine used to earn at least one of those scores, a fascinating new piece of evidence in the long, contentious battle over Mitchell's place in Donkey Kong score-chasing history.
A loftier aspiration than domineering Donkey Kong…?McNutt wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 9:45 pm In King of Kong he had his goons bully their way past his competition's mom to examine his machine in an attempt to discredit him.
I repeat, Billy Mitchell actually has goons.
He also exposed a cheater, took him under his wing, and made him cry for joy at the idea of being his friend.
What more do you want from a villain?
Not gonna lie…having a pack of mom-bullying goons is a good start.
Competitive arcade gamer Billy Mitchell, known for his high scores on Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, has reached a confidential settlement in his defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies, the video game database that stripped Mitchell of his world records in 2018.
The settlement was announced in LA County Superior Court on Thursday morning — three months before the lawsuit was set to go to trial — during a hearing to determine whether Mitchell and an attorney for Twin Galaxies would face sanctions for misconduct during discovery.
...
The terms of the settlement have not been made public.
...
Twin Galaxies accused Mitchell of "deliberate and egregious discovery abuse throughout the course of this litigation by lying at deposition and by engaging in the spoliation of evidence with the intent to defraud the Court." The company asked the judge to impose monetary sanctions on Mitchell.
...
But Twin Galaxies' own lawyer, David Tashroudian, faced misconduct claims of his own after he improperly contacted two witnesses in the case — prompting Superior Court Judge Wendy Chang, who's overseeing the case, to consider referring him to the State Bar for discipline.