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Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong high-score case will move forward to trial
- jyriand 6y agoI hope this will lead into part two of "King of Kong" documentary. One of the best documentaries I have seen in a long-long time.
- ebiester 6y agoDepending on if you are more interested in the speedrunning or the characters, Summoning Salt has put together a compelling set of videos about the history of various speedrunning records on YouTube.
- winphone1974 6y agoThe games & records are the premise; the people and personalities were the movie IMO
- kyleashipley 6y ago+1 for Summoning Salt. I especially liked his Mario Kart Wii video, where he explains the mechanics of the lap counting system in detail.
- cabaalis 6y agoConsider "Ecstasy of Order" about Tetris, and a group of people who play it and have a tournament. It belongs in a top slot also.
- jccalhoun 6y agoEcstasy of Order is really great. After watching King of Kong I expected it to have a similar villain and was happy with how it turned out.
- tootie 6y agoThat doc took some criticism for distorting a few elements. They played fast and loose with the timeline, omitted a few details and insinuated some things happened that didn't. The main thrust of the story was still accurate, but they played up a few things for drama that weren't that dramatic in real life.
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- nxpnsv 6y agoHa, I made a track for a chip tune jukebox on the DVD menu, then they didn't even send me a copy so I never saw it. Perhaps I should see it...
- BeetleB 6y agoActually, King of Kong is my go-to example on why one should not trust documentaries[1]. There was so much deception by the filmmakers it is unreal. Some from memory: They painted Steve as this upstart who came out of nowhere who was going to dethrone Billy's score. In reality, Steve was well known in the community, and had been on the stage with Billy Mitchell some years prior. He had set the record in the past, and when he was setting out for a new record in the documentary, he was trying to beat his own record, not Billy's. Yes - at the time, the record was actually held by Steve. When Billy got his (new) record invalidated, it wasn't so that he could be on the top again - the record simply reverted to Steve's prior record. When Steve ate at Billy's restaurant, they made it seem like Billy avoided him. In fact, Billy did come out and meet Steve. They'd interacted in a friendly way multiple times over the years. When Steve took part in a competition, and everyone seemed upset that Billy didn't show up, they made Billy look like a real jerk. His defense (not in the documentary) was that the invitation to compete came out of the blue with very short notice, and he needs time to practice/train, so he declined. You can see Twin Galaxy's statements on the King of Kong here: https://www.twingalaxies.com/forumdisplay.php/406-The-King-of-Kong-Official-Statement https://www.twingalaxies.com/forumdisplay.php/406-The-King-o... [1] You need to be a bit of a subject matter expert to gauge the accuracy of a documentary. And if you already know the subject that well, the documentary isn't going to teach you much.
- gentleman11 6y agoThat’s a bit horrifying to be honest. King of Kong was my favourite documentary ever until 5 minutes ago. I feel so dirty now
- BeetleB 6y agoThat's usually the response I get from people when I point this out. It really is a fantastic documentary as far as production and storytelling goes. I felt the same when I watched it. And then everything crashed when I looked up the details. It went from "awesome" to "Man, how evil were those filmmakers?" My apologies.
- dimator 6y ago
- jccalhoun 6y agoThe documentary Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade is a nice companion piece to King of Kong. It has interviews with a lot of the same people.
- valuearb 6y agoI think Billy will do well at trial, given how honest, humble, and totally not delusional he appears.
- winphone1974 6y agoHa! Might want to explicitly indicate sarcasm; even here on HN people might think you're serious!
- radisb 6y ago> even here on HN people might think you're serious! Ha! Might want to explicitly indicate sarcasm; even here on HN people might think you're serious!
- acomjean 6y agoI think it was a /s. My sarcasm detector is broken..
- pessimizer 6y agoWhenever somebody compliments someone you don't know as appearing totally not delusional, it's going to be an /s.
- a1369209993 6y agoI've encountered counterexamples, but they were more ha-ha-only-serious than first-order sincere.
- cbanek 6y agoOooo, a sarcasm detector, that's real useful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ73Q4DwrGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ73Q4DwrGM
- wiradikusuma 6y agoI dont know the person. Is this sarcasm?
- j_m_b 6y agoBilly Mitchell has been streaming DK on Twitch. I saw him host Walter Day on his stream a couple of months ago. Can't be too much bad blood between them.
- bhickey 6y agoWalter sold Twin Galaxies a few years ago.
- mannykannot 6y agoHere's some commentary on the technical arguments against the play on the videos being from original hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/8a6ymm/billy_mitchell_the_donkey_kong_mame_frame/ https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/8a6ymm/billy_mitc...
- DangitBobby 6y agoThis hardware is guaranteed to run the same for it's entire lifetime regardless of age or repair?
- bhickey 6y agoHi, I wrote the linked post. The most important thing to keep in mind is the rendering artifacts demonstrate that the video in generated using double buffering. In single buffering, the CPU writes to VRAM which is ultimately read and displayed on the CRT. The circuitry writing to VRAM is racing the circuitry that reads it. With double buffering you have two video buffers in memory. The CPU writes to one while the other one is being read. While aging hardware can experience glitches, rewriting a game to use double buffering simply isn't something that will occur by happenstance.
- DangitBobby 6y agoI see.
- mmcgaha 6y agoI have never understood how we can point to video that has gone through an unknown converter into a television screen recorded by an unknown camera and say definitively what the expected result will be. I feel like the timing on multiple devices is guaranteed to give us some strange artifacts.
- toast0 6y agoI don't think there's an expectation for an exact recorded output, but in this case, it's known how the arcade system draws the levels in ram, how the video output chip works from the ram, and if things show up on screen inconsistent with that, but consistent with how an emulator outputs video, that's pretty fishy for contest that's supposed to run on real hardware. It's also an indication that the emulator isn't totally accurate at all times, even if it might be during gameplay.
- phone8675309 6y agoFor a good overview about how DMCA/lawsuit happy Billy Mitchell is, check out this video from the absolute legend Karl Jobst: https://youtu.be/DNSJX1a2weo https://youtu.be/DNSJX1a2weo
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- jiveturkey 6y agoThis is not a good overview. It's a one sided response to a lawsuit. It's incredibly annoying, like watching a domestic dispute unfold in public. I tried to keep watching but couldn't.
- acomjean 6y agoSuing is really a jerk move. I mean it’s a video game high score. It’s impressive played on an emulator or not.. but in the grand scheme of things.. I always thought of Billy Mitchel as kinda a fun personality in small doses. In the extras on the “fistful of quarters” he brings an old woman a q Bert machine to practice on which was nice. Though he seems to have a bit of an humility problem he seemed affable. This Lawsuit changes ones perception of that image a bit. I wonder what his reception at in person video game events will be once they resume.
- colejohnson66 6y agoWhat’s the purpose of requiring authentic arcade PCBs over emulators?
- coldpie 6y agoThis is a deep and complicated question, but the top-line answer is it's the best way to prevent cheating (note I didn't say perfect). A big part of these classic games is how the random events are generated. It would be fairly easy to modify the game in an emulator to more often generate ideal random events, giving you an edge over people playing on the real hardware. So the community agreed that for the purposes of the leaderboards in question here, the game must be played on real hardware.
- LanceH 6y agoTo add, the biggest deal with altering the random events for a game like donkey kong isn't that the player would know what is coming up next. Depending on the random spawns in the game, there are more points to be scored. So you could play a perfect game and score 100k less than the record. So they're chasing the perfect game during a perfect random spawn.
- Garlef 6y agoAs an interesting example: In speedrunning, certain movement patterns of bosses can be cleared faster than others. If such a pattern only shows up in 1/4 of the runs and you need a good combination of three or more such patterns over the course of the game, the ability to control this will make reaching a world record much much easier. You still need a lot of skill, though. There are some excellent documentaries on speedrunning on YT: For example Ninja Gaiden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1tVD7UEqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1tVD7UEqw
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- nyjah 6y agoAs a casual follower of speed running / high score community and HN frequenter, I'd say everyone who doesn't follow would be surprised how much detail goes into mastering some of these old games. These guys decipher everything, and find tricks that depend on "subpixel" perfect timing to shave off mere milliseconds. And they have thousands and thousands of attempts. The community at large thinks Billy Mitchell is a piece of shit, so tells me enough. Here's some channels if you want to learn more. https://www.youtube.com/user/RWhiteGoose https://www.youtube.com/user/RWhiteGoose https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ltptWa0xfrDweghW94Acg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ltptWa0xfrDweghW94Acg
- cainxinth 6y agoI don't know anything about Mitchell beyond what I saw in "The King of Kong," but he and his lackey come off as scheming, haughty jerks in that film.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoWearing your patriotism on your sleeve ... or around your neck ... tells me all I need to know. No, seriously, I have never been wrong yet about a person's character by observing things like that. I know a view as unscientific as that will not go over well with the HN crowd, but perhaps some of us do find merit in body language, and other external "tells". To be sure, not saying he is not an impressive, and maybe even the best Donkey Kong player — just making an observation about his general trustworthiness in my view.
- Covzire 6y agoI'm not sure if he's so much wearing/celebrating his patriotism as he is cloaking himself with it. He's extremely litigious from all accounts I've seen and it seems to be part and parcel of a carefully crafted and intimidating persona. Billy himself has no credibility to a lot of people, so why not throw a symbol front and center that holds weight for people. Just my opinion, don't sue me Billy.
- 6y ago
- MilnerRoute 6y agoIt's important to emphasize that this isn't just about a Donkey Kong score. Twin Galaxies took the extreme position that because they were suspicious of a handful of Donkey Kong games played over the decades by Billy Mitchell -- they're invalidating every score in every videogame he ever played in his life. (In 1985 Mitchell held the world's high scores for Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Jr., Centipede, and Burger Time.)
- MilnerRoute 6y agoIt seems like the record Billy is most proud of is his perfect game of Pac-Man. (To this day on Twitter he calls himself "Pac-Man Billy.") Here's a good article that explains how difficult that was. https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect-man https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect... After 254 levels of normal Pac-man, the screen fills with jibberish and screen noise -- some of the pixels you have to eat are actually invisible. Billy was the first person on planet earth to crack that level. That's one of the other records Twin Galaxies has invalidated. Billy's argument is in part: there's zero evidence he cheated at Pac-man, so why is that score being invalidated too.
- bobbylarrybobby 6y agoLooks like the Pac-Man score was reinstated. https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/29330854/retro-gaming-pariah-billy-mitchell-guinness-records-reinstated https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/29330854/retro-gamin...
- MilnerRoute 6y agoBy Guinness. But not by Twin Galaxies...
- bobbylarrybobby 6y agoAh, thanks for this correction
- 6y ago
- waterside81 6y agoWhat's interesting about this to me is that there's some disagreement over what the absolute highest possible score is. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/is-this-the-worlds-first-perfect-game-of-donkey-kong/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/is-this-the-worlds-fi...
- mingw__ 6y agoI don't think there's disagreement - my score from 2016 is the one this article is about. The max is whatever the game's RNG will give you, and is probably somewhere close to 1.3m. As top-tier play has gotten better, the ceiling has increased. We used to think this score was about as good as it was going to get, but only a few years prior, we thought the max was closer to 1.15m. Wild how things change.
- noobermin 6y agoI forgot what machine it was but I read a comment here about how a particular machine literally used an RC circuit for timing a delay. It's small things like that that really cannot be emulated perfectly. EDIT: found it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569280
- gspr 6y agoThis whole ordeal is like the ultimate case of someone reliving "that one highschool [insert sport] match" where they "won the game against [insert rival highschool]" and won't stop for the rest of their lives.
- eplanit 6y agoUncle Leo from "Napoleon Dynamite".
- Threeve303 6y agoIf someone claims you are something you are not you have a right to sue them. I don’t think this should necessarily reflect poorly on him. Everyone deserves the right to clear their name even if they are only accused of cheating at a really old video game. Truth matters and unfortunately a long drawn out expensive process is the only way we have in most cases.
- tantalor 6y agoThey didn't claim he was a liar, they implied it.
- dylan604 6y ago> Truth matters How I wish truth did matter. In what time period are you referring? Clearly, in 2020, truth at best is tolerated. When you have people with photo/video evidence of someone saying something, but then argue with you that it didn't happen or that's not what was actually said, the truth is no longer relevant. So the question then becomes "Whose truth matters?" In an era of post-truth with concepts of 'alternative facts', truth is best describe as "what you believe is truth".
- phizy 6y agoThat's a disingenuous narrative. Truth can ultimately be verified independent of belief. That's what makes it true. If your idea if truth is such that it can be dictated by political will, then you don't understand what makes truth special. It is special almost wholly due to its resilience to narrative, and it is incredibly bold or stupid to try to discount it through those means.
- dylan604 6y agoI don't hold the above as personal beliefs. I'm much more aligned with "The great thing about the truth is that it can be true whether you believe in it or not." That's spin on Neil Degrasse Tyson quote on science, but it holds true to me as well for truth. It doesn't even need to be political. We have people that believe in a flat earth to this day. If you go through life expecting people to accept true as true, then you will be sadly un-armed for real-life experiences. There are people that are absolutely unwilling to accept that what they currently believe is not accurate, and will not listen to any reasoning what so ever.
- OrangeMango 6y agoIs there any reason to believe that cheating is something that started recently? Is there any reason to believe that the ROM loaded on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet is exactly the same? Is there any reason to believe that the components on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet perform the same? If you look at the sports world you have, more or less, the acceptance that cheating happens, the components change, training regimens change, etc. Professional baseball has comprehensive statistics dating back to the 1860s and the result is that people have divided the sport into eras, and when you compare players in different eras you don't look at the stats alone, you compare how they performed relative to their peers, etc. A "high score" list that ignores the reality of change is worthless.
- mingw__ 6y agoIs there any reason to believe that cheating is something that started recently? No, and no one involved has suggested this. Is there any reason to believe that the ROM loaded on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet is exactly the same? Yes, unless otherwise documented by MAME. Is there any reason to believe that the components on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet perform the same? Yes, based on literally thousands of hours of video footage.
- OrangeMango 6y ago> Yes, based on literally thousands of hours of video footage. Well that's fantastic! Probabilities can be established for all sorts of in-game occurrences and the probability of this dude's game being legit or not. Not only that, but the gamer ability can then be separated from the randomness of the game on any particular play! Are all the high scores the result of aberrations in the game, or because the player is just that great???
- mingw__ 6y agoProbabilities have been calculated from Billy's footage that shows his alleged arcade games rendering as MAME. His random hammer smashes give points way higher than the mean, suggesting he stitched save states in an emulator.
- coldcode 6y agoIn 2020 with so many issues in the world — high scores in video games is not worth caring about.
- johnwalkr 6y agoReading the drama unfold in realtime a few years ago on the forums was enthralling. It was like reading a 500 page serial and by the end there was cold-hard facts vs "I'm going to expose fake news on my friend's right-wing internet radio show." King of Kong made him look shady, but the evidence of cheating since then is all based MAME emulator quirks* of very specific versions that allow replays from arbitrary points, lack of sound in recordings, glitches in video recording at convenient times, high score runs witnessed without anyone in the same room. This quirks are things like (and I'm simplifying here) "Arcade hardware draws girders from left to right, but MAME v1.11 draws them from right to left. Billy Mitchell's video also shows them drawn from right to left, plus this random enemy always appears in the easiest possible position." One of the original threads: http://donkeykongforum.com/index.php?topic=2055.0 http://donkeykongforum.com/index.php?topic=2055.0 The 5 or so main threads are novel-length, in total. And a cringy appearance on an unknown talkshow which was supposed to exonerate him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLxh9Yi5Dc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLxh9Yi5Dc
- gorgoiler 6y ago> Mitchell argues that ... “[their] case rests on an untenable conspiracy: that scores of people around the country ... have agreed to lie” Curious use of language, in context.
- devwastaken 6y agoHopefully they have enough proof on a technical level why billies scores aren't possible.
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- ineedasername 6y agoMost notably, this is not a case intended to prove if Mitchel cheated. Such proof would be sufficient, but not necessary for Twin Galaxies to prevail. Proof that of cheating can remain an open question: so long as Twin Galaxies isn't shown to have taken it's actions with malice then they win.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoJust let him have the damn title already. What a waste of legal resources. No one even plays that stupid game anymore. It was a bad game designed purely to suck money out of people. It doesn't even have an ending. Mario just dies on the 22nd level no matter what you do. Oh. Sorry. Spoiler alert.