Billy Mitchell, aka King of Con, has been caught cheating - Also has ties with a previous cheater, Todd Rogers

[Slamerella]

This video goes into a good detail but a tl;dr


--Video and Audio editing tools showcase that Mitchell's video records are altered and even outright made into different cuts
--Yellow Cards, such as no audio from a video of a record, during a developmental Arcade platform emulator for arcade games that didn't have sound support, while also claiming he used no such emulator (M.A.M.E.)
--Ties with Todd Rogers who was previously caught cheating, and lost his Guinness World Record
--Donated to Twin Galaxies, a site mentioned in the previously linked videos with Todd Rogers, and had huge ties and was essentially their right hand
--According to higher ups, threatened them. What these threats are are unknown, but assumed to be pulling out the money
--Video footage from people proving that he has faked many more things such as swapping out Arcade Boards and also outright being proven to be using M.A.M.E.
--The only person who has ever seen evidence of him getting a WR in person is the aforementioned Todd Rogers

For those in the unknown, Billy Mitchell is a person who has been notorious for being an amazing Donkey Kong player, or so we think, with points that get high up into the millions. He's apparently so good, that he managed to get a documentary about himself. Unlike Todd Rogers who has outright lied about points, with obvious lies, and the only person to back him up as a referee is now in jail for raping a minor (that's not a joke either), Mitchell has had legitimate scores, however, people have started to accuse him of using M.A.M.E., an arcade emulator. Assumptions were made with a video where he uploaded a new high score but with no sound, and M.A.M.E. at this time had no reliable sound support. People noted that M.A.M.E. loaded from top down instead of bottom up like an actual arcade, and found that Mitchell's vid was doing as such.

Mitchell is also a bit of a cow (or at least, is probably gonna get up there), since he doesn't like anyone getting in the way of his fame. He sued Cartoon Network for his likeness in an episode of Regular Show, where a Billy Mitchell lookalike loses to Mordecai and Rigby in a motocross/Excite Bike looking game. He lost due to parody laws. He also doesn't like it when people bring up the cheating allegations in person or online.

 

[Kiwi Jeff]

Wasn't a character in Pixels based on this guy? Yikes.

 

[The Shadow]

Aww, too bad! This is why you don't waste your life obsessing around one single nerdy thing.

 

[The Manglement]

Wasn't a character in Pixels based on this guy? Yikes.

And the character in Pixels, played by Peter Dinklage, is revealed to have cheated at Pac-Man. I have the feeling one of the idiots who wrote that movie knew about this.

 

[Strewth]

He was shady as fuck in King of Kong, but I'm willing to accept that could be down to clever editing.

IIRC, he submitted a tape to beat Steve Weibe's score - something that is not normally allowed, it's supposed to be done in person with a judge - and the tape even had questionable glitches. But it was allowed to stand because he's somewhat of a celebrity in the competitive retro game world.

 

[Slamerella]

He was shady as fuck in King of Kong, but I'm willing to accept that could be down to clever editing.

IIRC, he submitted a tape to beat Steve Weibe's score - something that is not normally allowed, it's supposed to be done in person with a judge - and the tape even had questionable glitches. But it was allowed to stand because he's somewhat of a celebrity in the competitive retro game world.

That's actually brought up in the video.
Something I didn't mention is that there was a video of a guy replacing a Donkey Kong Jr. Board with a Donkey Kong Board except, it's was the same Donkey Kong board just taken out and then brought back in for show.

 

[Strewth]

That's actually brought up in the video.
Something I didn't mention is that there was a video of a guy replacing a Donkey Kong Jr. Board with a Donkey Kong Board except, it's was the same Donkey Kong board just taken out and then brought back in for show.

I didn't realise all the edits in his videos were quite so obvious, or about the M.A.M.E thing either.
So dodgy.

 

[Slamerella]

I didn't realise all the edits in his videos were quite so obvious, or about the M.A.M.E thing either.
So dodgy.

A few weeks ago, there was a tutorial on finding faked WR from splicing, and it suddenly caused a surge of cheats. There was one big Yoshi's Island runner who was found cheating.

 

[Super Collie]

Wow we've got three different threads on this now, haha. (The one, the "Twin Galaxies" thread in Community Watch, and the thread from a couple weeks ago in the news forum when these accusations first arose.) It's a good thing though, because there are three different kinds of Kiwis who frequent these sections of the forum.

I've been keeping an eye on the research and developments that have gone into these recent videos and exposés. Same thing applies that I mentioned in the TG thread -- Apollo Legend does a great job of getting into the meat of the details behind all of the questionable things Mitchell has done (and @Slamerella has also expanded upon a couple of them here), but if anyone's confused by the details or would like some additional explanation I'll be happy to provide what I know.

 

[Slamerella]

Wow we've got three different threads on this now, haha. (The one, the "Twin Galaxies" thread in Community Watch, and the thread from a couple weeks ago in the news forum when these accusations first arose.) It's a good thing though, because there are three different kinds of Kiwis who frequent these sections of the forum.

I've been keeping an eye on the research and developments that have gone into these recent videos and exposés. Same thing applies that I mentioned in the TG thread -- Apollo Legend does a great job of getting into the meat of the details behind all of the questionable things Mitchell has done (and @Slamerella has also expanded upon a couple of them here), but if anyone's confused by the details or would like some additional explanation I'll be happy to provide what I know.

A bit off topic, but I wasn't aware that there were already threads on here on the matter. Should this be merged or what?

And now on topic: I think Twin Galaxies has had some very shady shit before. TG had banned usage of emulators before, and also banned the use of skips and glitches and the like, which Speed Demos Archive, or SDA for short, usually does allow, and even has glitchless categories. I feel like they'll protect "the highest bidder" if you know what I mean, and once that highest bidder, that being Mitchell, gets the axe, TG might die off since he is pretty much the backbone right now.

 

[Kiwi Jeff]

Should this be merged or what?

Make a Talk To Staff thread and see what they think.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

Aww, too bad! This is why you don't waste your life obsessing around one single nerdy thing.

Wasn't not wasting his time practicing Donkey Kong the point of cheating? Depending on what he was out to do, he might have won anyway. Mitchell got attention, appeared in a movie, a cartoon (even if he got salty over that because it didn't massage his ego) and at least one parade. If he was just in it for the thrill, Brianna Wu style, he already cashed in. He might have even been able to leverage the exposure into a few hot sauce sales.

Still, it's always nice to see an imposter get exposed.

 

[Super Collie]

A bit off topic, but I wasn't aware that there were already threads on here on the matter. Should this be merged or what?

And now on topic: I think Twin Galaxies has had some very shady shit before. TG had banned usage of emulators before, and also banned the use of skips and glitches and the like, which Speed Demos Archive, or SDA for short, usually does allow, and even has glitchless categories. I feel like they'll protect "the highest bidder" if you know what I mean, and once that highest bidder, that being Mitchell, gets the axe, TG might die off since he is pretty much the backbone right now.

Nah I think we're good the way things are, each thread is slightly different enough and in a different part of the forum that they will likely spawn different discussions. The Twin Galaxies thread in CW is just for general sperging about the group, of which Billy just so happens to be a member of so of course this was going to get brought up in there, etc. It's sorta like how we had a thread for speedrunning in general (also in CW) as well as Awesome Games Done Quick. For the other 51 weeks out of the year the speedrunning thread reverts back into talking about randos from the community who don't have their own threads here.

Twin Galaxies did ban the use of emulators for a very long time largely because support of proper arcade emulation has historically been much rockier than something like a traditional NES or Genesis emulator. Like the video about Billy shows, Donkey Kong can be suitably emulated today but even in 2018 the emulation is not a perfect replication of the way the arcade cabinet actually works. At some point I think TG started allowing emulators to be used on certain games but these are treated as completely different versions of the game with their own separate leaderboards. The leaderboard for original hardware is obviously the most sought-after one which is why Billy originally chose to lie through omission and continue to submit his scores to that category when in reality he should have been the record holder for MAME. That's not as big of an accomplishment to brag about however, which is why he did what he did.

But yeah, Twin Galaxies is in for one hell of a bad time now that their poster child has just been irrefutably outed as a cheater.

 

[Gordon Cole]

lol.

Billy 'King of Kong' Mitchell's 'Donkey Kong' scores were a lie
Twin Galaxies proved his performances weren't recorded on arcade hardware.

It's over. Billy Mitchell (above, left), the "King of Kong," has had his long-contested Donkey Kong high scores stripped from the Twin Galaxies leaderboards and the organization has notified Guinness World Records of its decision. More than that, all of his records have been removed from the forums and he's banned from TG's competitive leaderboards wholesale. TG ran an independent investigation, in addition to having "at least" two third-parties perform their own, with other experts weighing in on the dispute as well.

The investigation resulted in confirming long-held suspicions: the provided evidence tape of the King of Kong score didn't come from actual arcade hardware. Same goes for his 1,050,200-point "Mortgage Brokers" score. TG said there wasn't enough evidence to comfortably make a definitive judgment on a third score of 1,062,800.

Previously the claim was that Mitchell recorded these scores using emulation software, because original hardware doesn't produce the board transition images that were recorded. But because proving emulation would be far more involved and take even more time, TG settled on proving that the scores weren't the result of playing on an unmodified Donkey Kong PCB.

"Twin Galaxies has endeavored to provide a fair opportunity and reasonable amount of time for all sides and interests to present their thoughts and evidence as it has evaluated this dispute claim," TG writes in a blog post. "Throughout every step of this investigation, Billy Mitchell had the opportunity to answer questions and contribute to the public dispute thread. However, he was under no obligation to participate in this dispute thread and as such he chose not to do so."

When I spoke with TG's custodian of records Jace Hall earlier this year, he said these types of investigations are proof of the verification system he helped build were working as intended. "This [scrutiny] is absolutely something that has been much needed and is part of our controlled process of making sure that the public can control and can trust the data that's in our database," he said.

After what seems like an eternity, Mitchell is no longer recognized as the first million-point Donkey Kong record holder. Now, that honor goes to long-time rival Steve Wiebe.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/12/billy-mitchell-twin-galaxies-scores-stripped/

 

[Secret Asshole]

The guy excludes greasy douche from his pores. Of course he cheated, just fucking look at him.

 

[Haramburger]

I never understood the fuff behind Donkey Kong's high score, the game has almost no difficulty ramp and it's just a repetitive test of patience and memory & feels slow to watch. By contrast, Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man's speed ramps well with the ghost's movement algorithm to make it at least watchable to a spectator & challenging for the player. King of Kong exists because a skeezy guy with greasy charisma tried to challenge a fucking granny to a high score, otherwise it would have been a better, different game.

 

[Coleman Francis]

I know they played up Billy Mitchell's douchiness for the movie to try and give it a "good guy vs villain" quality, but what bothered me most about the movie wasn't Billy Mitchell hamming it up, it was that whole Twin Galaxies clique, particularly Walter Day. Mitchell and Wiebe were both moderately successful guys in their ordinary lives, with nice families, careers, etc. but that Twin Galaxies clique was completely inundated by full-time losers, Walter Day being the absolute worse. It was clear that they were just a bunch of guys that had been knowing one another for the past 25-30 years (at the time King of Kong was made) and had no interest in any integrity for their "sport", like they claimed and convinced the Guinness World Records organization.

All they were interested in was keeping themselves in charge and on top of their weird hobby. That movie gave them attention, which I'm sure they really enjoyed at the time, but it also put them under much more scrutiny.

The movie Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_Ghosts:_Beyond_the_Arcade got into a lot more detail on Walter Day than King of Kong. Basically, he came from a very rich family, his dad was a guy that handled some high dollar government contracts, and he drifted along in life living off his parents wealth, spending something like 15 years in college and never really "finding" himself. When the arcade shit started to get big, he kinda wormed his way in, and it was such a new thing that there wasn't much competition to be the older guy that kinda manages/acts as an impromptu agent for these kids that play arcades really good. He found his niche and he protected the scores of these frauds for way longer than he should have.

I think he possibly might've felt that those two movies coming out so close together would put him and the Twin Galaxies people under scrutiny because in the "Chasing Ghosts" movie, he retires from that whole scene to pursue his "music career".

 

[MrTroll]

This man should be prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act.

 

[Scotsman]

There's this sad bumboy that's been defending Billy and claiming it's all a big conspiracy by the media. He's been putting up vlogs on YouTube recently, mostly with Billy trying to play nice. Turns out Billy probably payed for his flight tickets as well, according to bumboy's wife...

Some top notch deflection tactics from Billy by the way.

Edit: Didn't even notice, but this is the same guy who was defending Todd Rogers (and his paedophile referee) when he was exposed as fraud as well...