Jul 27 2007
The Real King of Kong: Mitchell reclaims title
Mere weeks before the national release of The King of Kong, a documentary on Steve Wiebe’s claiming of the Donkey Kong arcade record four months ago, former recorder holder Billy Mitchell has reclaimed the title with a score of 1,050,200 points. Wiebe had previously held the record at 1,049,100. Once Mitchell knew he beat the old score some two hours and 39 minutes into the game, he decided to keep the margin close by letting the clock run out.
“I’m not Steve Spurrier. I’m Billy Mitchell. I don’t need to run up the score. I just want to put one in the win column. I want to make it competitive. I didn’t want to make it too tough.”
In order to prevent any doubt of cheating, Mitchell had his eBay-obtained arcade board checked out by Nintendo of America and did not open the Nintendo packaging until he arrived at the location where he would install the board into a Donkey Kong machine in front of a security guard, a GameStop manager, and a healthy crowd of people. After beating the game, Mitchell left, and the GameStop manager removed the arcade board and sent it back to Nintendo, who again verified the board was clean.
There is a Classic Gaming Expo going on in Las Vegas this week. Mitchell is offering $10,000 to anyone who can beat his new record at the Expo. As for Mitchell, he’ll return to the spotlight once new pressure is on him to reclaim the record.
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