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HA! The 2007 documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" is my favorite movie of all-time, I must have watched it at least 40 times. Trailer: https:/

• sh33mp 9y ago
  Here's a no-nonsense video chronicling the progress of the Donkey Kong world record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAQ2vEHq2N4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAQ2vEHq2N4 This guy has also made videos chronicling similar speedrun records for other games, and they're fascinating to watch.
  • dlbucci 9y ago
    I just discovered this guy, Summoning Salt, this week and I cannot stop watching his videos! Super fascinating stuff :)
    • bobbean 9y ago
      I made an account purely to express how strange it is that I just found this guy no more than a week ago, and now I'm seeing people talk about him somewhere that I never would have expected. It's weird.
      • bochengkor 9y ago
        reddit probably?
      • maaaats 9y ago
        The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon?
  • ordinaryperson 9y ago
    Great video, except it ends too early. Robbie Lakeman has twice now beaten Wes Copeland's high score, presented at the end of this video. But still, great watching.
  • Endy 9y ago
    Summoning Salt is one of the best gaming youtubers I've run across. He describes what he's talking about in both a technical and end-result sense, and really makes a viewer understand the passion for games that these players have.
    • mrguyorama 9y ago
      I do wish he had a little more passion in his voice about the subject. It's obvious he is thoroughly involved and cares from the material, but it sometimes sounds like a recording of the absolute worst teacher you've ever had
• userbinator 9y ago
  and the Donkey Kong levels render the way MAME does them, not the actual arcade hardware Then I guess that's another bug for MAME to fix...
  • ordinaryperson 9y ago
    It's not a bug per se, it's just different from the real thing. An actual arcade board renders the levels with a "sliding door" effect, while MAME builds entire chunks of a level at once and then displays them as a complete screen buffer (depending on the version). It's just evidence Mitchell's score is not what he says it is.
    • userbinator 9y ago
      It's not a bug per se, it's just different from the real thing If you agree with the premise that an emulator should strive to... emulate the real thing as closely as possible, then it is most certainly a bug.
      • ordinaryperson 9y ago
        Then yes. Although graphic loading sequences that can only be detected in slow motion seem a low-order bug -- in my book, anyway.
      • laumars 9y ago
        I don't think that is a fair statement. Often writers of emulators have to take low level shortcuts because the alternative is emulating the physical hardware in software - which is extremely slow. A "bug" implies that a behavior is unintended or undesired where as sometimes these kinds of emulator facets are deliberately implemented for the sake of simplifying the emulator design or just being about to use modern hardware to offload some of the processing (like a hypervisor would) rather than having to emulate every single transistor in a now defunct chipset.
        • icebraining 9y ago
• cabaalis 9y ago
  That is also a favorite documentary of mine. My shortlist of inspiring documentaries for people with startup/gaming mindsets: - Indie Game - Startup.com - American Movie (Mark Borchardt has a thing or two to teach all of us about working hard to make dreams become reality) - Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters
  • eps 9y ago
    Heh... startup.com is the exact opposite of an inspiring movie. It's basically the "How not to do it" manual.
    • cabaalis 9y ago
      At least inspired by their enthusiasm :) I've been on their side of the table raising money before, of course not to their level, but it brings those feelings to the forefront again for me.
• Sniffnoy 9y ago
  > The video gets fuzzy and looks suspicious but Mitchell's toadies in the group immediately accept the score, despite refusing to previously accept a VHS tape from the contender Steve Wiebe. TwinGalaxies seems fairly shady in general. At least they recently revoked Todd Rogers's completely fake high scores.
  • ordinaryperson 9y ago
    The founder, Walter Day, ran it from 1982-2010 (post King of Kong) when he sold it to focus on his music. It's changed hands a couple of times since the but since 2014 it's been owned by Jace Hall, a video game producer in San Fernando Valley, CA. If you believe Reddit gremlins he's the Worst Person In The World, but I have some sympathy for him, it's tough to adjudicate all of these disputes that can get super technical. Who has the time for it? Even now that Jace is charging for refereeing, it's not a lucrative endeavor. But he had to know what he was getting when he bought it.
    • Sniffnoy 9y ago
      Huh, why is it the new owner that people are complaining about? Total outsider, but it seems to me that if anything the place is finally cleaning up a bit.
      • ordinaryperson 9y ago
        One example is the Todd Rogers case (he's briefly featured in The King of Kong). Todd claimed to take a polaroid of a score of 5.51 seconds on Dragster that Activision later "verified" (i.e. acknowledged). Recently several independent gamers running simulation software demonstrated the score was impossible, that 5.57 is the lowest limit achievable. But despite the mounting technical evidence Jace initially refused to take action, saying he'd wait a few months before deciding. Then 5 days later, after Rogers' friend and former TG referee Robert Mruczek (featured in KoK) wrote a long blog post basically saying Rogers was a cheater, Jace stripped Rogers of his scores and banned him from competition. The criticism is that he wasn't fast enough to act on technical evidence but then arbitrarily relies on testimony from one person. But again, I sympathize with the guy. To overturn a 37-year-old record based on what an algorithm says and what Activision itself said in 1981 is tough. If he acted right away that would have p* off others. It's a thankless job, IMHO. But he had to know that when bought it.
• Reedx 9y ago
  Love that documentary. Have you seen Chasing Ghosts? It's along the same lines and worth checking out -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJz8KIlEq7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJz8KIlEq7I
  • Y_Y 9y ago
    That link didn't work for me. I bet it's because I'm not in the US. Anyway the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it[0], here's a link that should work anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-RgSvWJOos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-RgSvWJOos [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore
  • daodedickinson 9y ago
    Chasing Ghosts >>> King of Kong imo The hardest I have laughed in my entire life was at the line "This is Christopher Lambert". That moment is absolute bonkers.
    • JansjoFromIkea 9y ago
      That was an early cut that leaked. Apparently the official cut removed that scene. Understandably considering it overwhelms the whole documentary.
      • daodedickinson 9y ago
        It IS one of the best scenes in film history. But the whole film is great... did they really cut it? I know there are multiple versions, I never got to see the one that supposedly has a way better soundtrack, and I've seen it available on modern streaming services but never checked to see what version they had.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• tootie 9y ago
  Wasn't that doc heavily criticized for very selective editing?
  • ordinaryperson 9y ago
    When the movie came out, Billy Mitchell claimed the tournament in Florida was edited to make him look bad. Specifically, Billy had been conspicuously avoiding playing Steve in a head-to-head matchup in Donkey Kong, afraid he'd lose. When Billy does appear, he walks by, ignores Billy's greeting, then whispers to his wife, "There are some people I don't want to spend too much time with." Here's the accusation from Billy and the rebuttal from one of the producers, Ed Cunningham: https://film.avclub.com/the-king-of-kong-continued-donkey-kong-champ-billy-mi-1798213302 https://film.avclub.com/the-king-of-kong-continued-donkey-ko... "Ed Cunningham: Yeah, no, that didn't happen there. It didn't. At that moment, what we show is exactly what happened."
  • hitekker 9y ago
    Yes, criticized by the person who has been exposed as a fraud and lost all credibility in the gaming community. A.k.a. the subject of the article.
    • jowsie 9y ago
      There are many things that can be disputed without having to believe a word he says. For instance they played head to head at an arcade a year before the documentary started filming.
• titanix2 9y ago
  I watched it yesterday and the part about the video tape is unbelievable. How can a record like that be approved so quickly when it contains obvious flaws? Also not letting Steve watch it was a disgusting move. Anyway the movie was really interesting.
  • Pxtl 9y ago
    Am I the only one who watches this movie and can't root for Weibe but instead am just crushed by the appalling sadness of it all? The guy's kids napping on the floor of the arcade, "kill screen coming up" and nobody cares....
    • sneak 9y ago
      The cringey nature of the entire documentary is why it’s wonderful. “Kill screen coming up!” was a punchline in my house for years after we watched that. :D
• daodedickinson 9y ago
  I don't like King of Kong at all. It's one of those documentaries that tries to ramrod reality into a feature film arc. Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, from the exact same year, which also features Silly Bitchell but a lot of other interesting characters who play other games from the same era, is my favorite documentary of all time, though. Highly recommend that one, especially if you like King of Kong, but also if you are interested in MAME / arcade history.
• at-fates-hands 9y ago
  > For those who haven't seen the film, the contender Steve Wiebe sets a new record live at an arcade tournament in Funspot (NH) but reigning champ Billy Mitchell sends in a VHS tape with an even higher score. In the Reddit thread about Todd Rogers, someone pointed out how pissed they were when they would submit a score to TG for verification and then one of the guys there would say someone else just submitted an even higher score. As if every time a new high score was submitted by a newer player, the TG toadies would immediately put "their" guy's score up in an effort to keep newer players out. Just all around shady stuff.
• Endy 9y ago
  You'd do well to look up SummoningSalt's video on the World Record Progression of King Kong. He actually discusses the issues with KoK, and several other concerns - and all of it with a genuine passion for gaming.
• msla 9y ago
  The King of Kong is a seriously flawed work: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1303 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1303 > Too bad it’s loaded with falsehoods. And by loaded, I mean packed, and by packed I mean like the last Japanese subway car before they have to shut down the line. I have seen both the screener and the final work of this film, and then I spent a lot of time listening to a lot of people, people who should know about the events portrayed in the flick. [snip] > What I’m saying here is that a good percentage of what makes the documentary “good” are made up conflicts, inaccurate reporting, smoothed-over narratives that are meant to make you root for one side or hate the other, when in fact reality doesn’t hold up to these allegations. The post goes into detail on specific things the movie got entirely wrong.
  • ordinaryperson 9y ago
    I have to disagree. Maybe this is too much detail, but I want to wade into each one of the points of the post you reference: > A core theme is that Billy Mitchell is an asshole, one who doesn’t even deign to spend time in the same location as Steve Wiebe and won’t even come in to eat lunch at the same table as him. In fact, Billy came in and paid for lunch. One, the entire plotline about Doris setting a Q-Bert record was included to show some of the selfless things Billy does. Two, Steve Sanders makes it clear in the restaurant scene that Billy "didn't want anything to do with Steve" and that he came "unexpectedly and uninvitedly." This is Billy's best friend saying this. The fact that Billy comped everyone's meal does not contradict these facts -- besides, it was his own restaurant. Is Billy an a-hole? That's hard to say. But if the reporting in this ArsTechnica article is correct, Billy is at least a cheater and liar. > Billy denies Steve the satisfaction of playing one-on-one on Donkey Kong. They’d played Donkey Kong one-on-one a year before the documentary was filmed at a previous championship. The reason Steve wanted to play Billy publicly wasn't to play once and be done with it, it was to repeatedly show Twin Galaxy doubters that Steve was a consistently better player than Billy. If they wouldn't give Steve his score at least he wanted to show as many people as possible that he could play at or above Billy's level. I think Steve would have loved to play Billy 20 times because no one believed he was a million-point Donkey Player. Could the film have added, "We played once but I'd still like to play him again in front of everyone so the world can believe me?" Sure. But it's not some falsehood that compromises the film. > It seems like Steve Wiebe finally gets a chance to top Billy and that same day, a videotape arrives and Billy tops Wiebe. Steve Wiebe already had the top spot in Donkey Kong, having achieved the record before the documentary started. The videotape that Billy sends in has a suspicious glitch. The videotape was a copy and the original was sent in with no glitch. The point of this article is that Billy's videotape was indeed a fraud, so this "no glitch" defense doesn't hold up so well. Plus the bigger issue is that they denied the validity of Steve's tapes but blindly accepted Billy's tapes, an unfair double standard. > Two representatives of Twin Galaxies arcade forced their way into Steve’s garage and looted the machine. Two members of the same social scene as Twin Galaxies and Steve were let into his garage by his grandmother, and asked Steve for permission to photograph the circuit board. The movie makes it pretty clear what happened was disputed and tried to present both sides of the story. But at no point does the movie claim they "forced" their way in or somehow broke into Steve's garage. > A number of insiders constantly appraised Billy on what was going on at the competition and took suggestions from him. Multiple times, the conversations being shown from both sides are not the same conversation. What's the proof? Billy has made claims of selective editing but the producers deny them: https://film.avclub.com/the-king-of-kong-continued-donkey-kong-champ-billy-mi-1798213302 https://film.avclub.com/the-king-of-kong-continued-donkey-ko... Instead, this author says he is bitter that the King of Kong coopted his own efforts, now he can't make a documentary on a similar subject because people are afraid of being made out to be the bad guy. I quote, "And by doing this, he f* me, too. Doors that were open to me and my production are slammed shut." If you have other arguments why KoK is a "seriously flawed work" then let's hear them, but the above points are not compelling, IMHO. (I have no affiliation with the filmmakers, just a fan)