Weekly Dose of Gaming News - Billy Mitchell's Records Restored
Everyone remembers King of Kong, right?
If for some reason you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and go watch it, ASAP. It's a documentary following the competitive arcade gaming scene is Steve Levy attempt to take on Billy Mitchell to secure the highest score record for the 1981 arcade game, Donkey Kong.
Long story short, there was some controversy, I know. And although Levy ended the game with a new high score, Mitchell sent a VHS himself getting a higher score earning him the World Record despite many being skeptical of the video's legitimacy.
As the student of 2010, Billy Mitchell held 4 World Records for the highest score in Donkey Kong and 1 for the first perfect score in Pac-Man. In 2018, however, it was determined that Mitchell used emulators to get the highest scores and all of his Donkey Kong records were removed, as well as others which included his scores in the Guinness World Record book. And a shocking to many development last month, Guinness World Record announced that they were reversing their decision and reinstating all 5 World Records that had previously been stripped.
Guinness World Record said in a statement "In this case, a re-examination of the records in question and the emergence of key eyewitness and expert testimonials led to a reversal of earlier disqualifications and the reinstating of Mr. Mitchell's original records. The records archive has been updated accordingly to reflect this."
This has caused a parent's skepticism in the Speedrun community, especially on Reddit where user ersatz_cats posted a discussion post titled "Why Speedrun.com should disassociate themselves from Guinness World Records".
For anyone following the controversy, click the link below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/hgclgq/why_speedruncom_should_disassociate_themselves/
What do you think about Mitchell's reinstated World Records?