Twin Galaxies has found that Billy Mitchell cheated to gain his reigning Donkey Kong records. Mitchell, the "King of Kong" and first person to hit one million points, used emulator software instead of authentic hardware. Twin Galaxies, an Iowa institute that tracks these records, found that Mitchell was running a software called MAME. They conclude that the scores
"were not produced by the direct feed output of an original unmodified Donkey Kong Arcade PCB."
The key piece of evidence was that certain frames of video were impossible to obtain on arcade hardware. Jeremy Young (Xelnia) made the original dispute back in February, questioning the authenticity of an arcade-board 'swap' video. Despite the community often questioning Mitchell's records, Young felt it was time to make an official dispute. While the video should give legitimacy to the record, the audio on YouTube was muted and all comments questioning the authenticity were removed. As this seems suspicious, Young further questions referee Todd Rogers, who has a history of score tampering. His final argument is the lack of witnesses to these scores and Mitchell's inability to recreate them live.
Twin Galaxies' scrutiny and review found that the dispute was valid. Two other 3rd parties, including Mitchell's own defence investigation, came to a similar conclusion. The official statement reads,
"On 02-02-2018 Twin Galaxies member Jeremey Young (@xelnia) filed a dispute claim assertion against the validity of Billy Mitchell's historical and current original arcade Donkey Kong score performances of 1,047,200 (the King of Kong "tape"), 1,050,200 (the Mortgage Brokers score), and 1,062,800 (the Boomers score) on the technical basis of a demonstrated impossibility of original unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware to produce specific board transition images shown in the videotaped recordings of those adjudicated performances."
Twin Galaxies also note they "cannot definitively conclude that what is on the tapes is MAME."
Twin Galaxies has since stripped Mitchell of all three record scores and notified the Guinness World Records. They have also banned him from further competition and score submission. The 2007 documentary "The King of Kong" documents one of the high scores in question. The film follows rival Steve Wiebe as he tries to dethrone Mitchell's score. As fans of the film will know, Mitchell proves too great a King to dethrone. Wiebe now holds the record high score for Donkey Kong.
