Billy Mitchell (gamer) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Billy Mitchell |
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Mitchell at a 2014 Twin Galaxies event
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| Born | William James Mitchell Jr. July 16, 1965 Holyoke, Massachusetts, U.S. |
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William James Mitchell Jr. (born July 16, 1965) is an American video game player. For many years, he was famous for setting high scores on classic arcade games. However, starting in 2018, some of his records were questioned. Mitchell has also appeared in movies about competitive gaming and old video games.
In 1982, Mitchell was featured in Life magazine. This was during the time when arcade games were very popular. In 1999, Mitchell said he was the first person to get a perfect score in the arcade game Pac-Man. This score was 3,333,360 points. A 2007 movie called The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters showed his efforts to keep the highest score on Donkey Kong. This happened after a new player, Steve Wiebe, challenged him.
In 2018, people started to question Mitchell's high scores on Donkey Kong. Members of the Twin Galaxies forums found problems with the videos Mitchell had given for The King of Kong. They thought he might have used special software called an emulator to fake his scores. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records removed Mitchell's scores because of this. Mitchell then took legal action against both groups. Guinness later put Mitchell's scores back. Twin Galaxies also took legal action against Mitchell. Both sides settled their cases in 2024. Twin Galaxies then put Mitchell's scores on a new "historical leaderboard." Mitchell is still not allowed on the current Twin Galaxies leaderboards.
Mitchell's family owns Rickey's restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida. He also sells Rickey's World Famous Hot Sauce.
Contents
About Billy Mitchell
Early Life and First Records
Billy Mitchell was born on July 16, 1965, in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
When he was in elementary school, Mitchell loved playing pinball. He wasn't very interested in video games at first. But as video games became more popular, he wanted the attention that came with playing them. He started playing video games around age 16. He also had a friendly competition with a classmate. They both tried to get higher scores on Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.
Mitchell wondered if Donkey Kong had a world-record high score. He contacted Walter Day at Twin Galaxies. Twin Galaxies was an arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, that tracked video game records. Day told Mitchell about a record of 1.4 million points claimed by Steve Sanders. In November 1982, Life magazine brought several famous arcade players, including Mitchell and Sanders, to Ottumwa for a photo shoot. Mitchell challenged Sanders to Donkey Kong. He showed that the game had a "kill screen" at level 22, which meant you couldn't play past it. Mitchell beat Sanders and set a high score of 874,300. Later, Sanders admitted he had lied about his old Donkey Kong scores. Twin Galaxies then gave the record to Billy Mitchell. He held this record for over 18 years. Around this time, Mitchell became friends with Robert Childs. Childs had a business putting arcade games in places like laundromats.
In 1983, Mitchell was going to Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School. That summer, Walter Day invited Mitchell and other players to join the "Electronic Circus." This was a plan for players to show their skills in 40 cities. But the plan didn't work out. Instead, Mitchell and others spent the summer at Twin Galaxies. They competed for high scores on various video games. Mitchell focused on a few specific games. Later that summer, Day started the US National Video Game Team. This was a smaller version of the Electronic Circus. It aimed to visit a major city in each U.S. state. But the first event had many problems. Day continued to take Mitchell on trips to check high scores reported by other players. Mitchell often found out when players were not telling the truth. By 1984, Day named Mitchell the Twin Galaxies' player of the year. However, because of the 1983 video game crash, Twin Galaxies had to close its arcade in March 1984. Day still kept track of scores. After setting a record score for BurgerTime in 1985, Mitchell stopped playing video games for ten years. He spent more time at his family's restaurant, Rickey's Restaurant, and later took it over.
The Pac-Man Challenge
After Pac-Man was released in 1980, players found that it also had a "kill screen." At level 256, half the screen would be filled with strange symbols. This made it impossible to finish the level and keep playing. In 1982, an eight-year-old player claimed to reach over 6 million points. This news got national attention, and President Ronald Reagan even congratulated the player.
In 1983, Mitchell worked with his friend Chris Ayra. They wanted to find the way to get the highest possible score on Pac-Man. This perfect score was 3,333,360 points. To get it, a player had to complete the game without losing a single life. They also had to collect all possible points on the "nonsense" side of level 256's split-screen. This needed special knowledge of where the dots were.
In 1999, a group of Canadian players, including Rick Fothergill, were close to reaching this perfect score. This made Mitchell want to return to video gaming. He wanted to be the first to achieve it. On May 8, 1999, Fothergill set a world record, just 90 points short of a perfect score. In response, on July 3, Mitchell achieved the perfect score. He did this at an arcade in Laconia, New Hampshire. This was recorded as the world record by Funspot and Twin Galaxies. Because of this, Twin Galaxies called him "Video Game Player of the Century." Namco, the company that made Pac-Man, invited Mitchell to Japan for the Tokyo Game Show that year. After returning in November 1999, Mitchell offered $100,000 to the first person who could pass the split-screen level.
Returning to Gaming
In 2004, Mitchell achieved a Donkey Kong score of 933,900. Many people watched him do this at the Midwest Gaming Classic. This was his new personal best. In 2006, writer David Ramsey described Mitchell as "probably the greatest arcade video game player of all time."
In 2004 and 2005, another player named Steve Wiebe tried to set a new world record in Donkey Kong. This event was shown in the 2007 movie The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Wiebe wanted Mitchell to be there to challenge him directly. These public showings of high scores were preferred over video recordings. Mitchell said, "To me, most important is to travel to a sanctioned location, like Funspot, that makes it official." Mitchell did not show up at Wiebe's events. He said he had not played games for half a year and needed to practice.
During Wiebe's attempts, he got a score of over one million points at his home. This was recorded on video. Twin Galaxies first accepted it but later took it back. This was because Wiebe's game unit used an unofficial "Double Donkey Board." This board had parts for both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. Later, Wiebe got another high score in front of many witnesses at a New Hampshire Funspot. Twin Galaxies accepted this score. Just a few hours later, Mitchell sent his own video to Twin Galaxies. It claimed to show him getting a new high score of 1,047,200. This was better than Wiebe's score. Twin Galaxies accepted it as the new official world record. Wiebe and others complained to Twin Galaxies. Eventually, Mitchell's score was removed because it was on tape and not witnessed. This gave Wiebe the record again. After the movie came out, Mitchell said he did not expect to be shown as a bad person. He said he received angry messages because of how the movie was edited. Besides The King of Kong, Mitchell appeared in other movies in the 2000s and 2010s. These included Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007), The King of Arcades (2014), and Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler (2015).
On July 26, 2007, Mitchell again took back the Donkey Kong record with a score of 1,050,200. This score was called the "Mortgage Brokers" score. It was supposedly achieved while Mitchell was at a convention. This 2007 score was beaten on February 26, 2010, by Hank Chien. On July 24, 2010, Mitchell got the record back with a score of 1,062,800. He did this at the Boomers arcade in Dania, Florida. This was the last time he held the record. Wiebe and others broke it later that year.
Mitchell placed eighth in the Microsoft Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championships on June 4, 2007. In 2008, he became the first video game player to be on a Topps Allen & Ginter trading card.
In 2015, Mitchell filed a lawsuit against Cartoon Network. He said that a character in the show Regular Show named Garrett Bobby Ferguson (GBF) was based on him. This character cheated at video games. Judge Anne Elise Thompson threw out the lawsuit. She said that "the television character does not match the plaintiff in appearance."
Questions About Records
In August 2017, Jeremy Young, a moderator for the Donkey Kong Forum, raised concerns. He saw a video posted by Robert Childs of Mitchell's score at Boomers. Mitchell had played both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. that day. He broke records for both games. But he used the same arcade machine for both. Childs had swapped the game's circuit board between the runs. The videos did not show the complete record-breaking games. Young thought there might have been problems with the board swap. Mitchell and Childs said that some parts of the board-switching were acted out. But they said this part of the recording was made long after the records were set on real game machines.
Young kept looking into the video from Boomers. He also looked at the King of Kong and Mortgage Brokers scores. In early 2018, he showed evidence that both scores were achieved using MAME. MAME is a emulator, which means it's software that lets you play old games on a computer. This suggested the scores were not made on real arcade machines. Young then removed these three scores from the Donkey Kong Forum website. He said they were not real gameplay. Wes Copeland, who used to hold the Donkey Kong high score, agreed with Young. He looked at how fast points were scored in Mitchell's game. He said it was very unlikely to happen on a real machine. Also, the person who checked the Boomers and Mortgage Brokers scores was Todd Rogers. Rogers had been banned from Twin Galaxies himself for submitting fake scores. This made Mitchell's scores even more doubtful.
Mitchell defended his scores on the East Side Dave Show. He said, "I've never even played MAME. I don't have MAME loaded in my home." Mitchell added, "The film footage that he has, that Jeremy has, shows MAME play... I'm not disputing what he says. What I'm disputing is the fact that I want him to have the original tape." Mitchell also suggested that the video Young had might have been faked. Young replied that it would be extremely difficult to fake such tapes. To support his case, Mitchell said he sent Twin Galaxies recordings of his gameplay. He also sent other evidence to prove he did not cheat.
On April 12, 2018, Twin Galaxies announced their findings. They said their investigation found clear evidence that Mitchell had not achieved at least two of his scores on real arcade machines. They said, "an unmodified original DK arcade PCB did not output the display seen in the videotaped score performances." The videos of these two scores showed the game loading in a way that looked exactly like how the game loads when played on MAME. Twin Galaxies removed all of Mitchell's scores from their records. They also banned him from submitting scores in the future.
After this, Guinness World Records also removed Mitchell's scores. Guinness got its video game scores from Twin Galaxies. They said, "The Guinness World Records titles relating to Mr. Mitchell's highest scores on Donkey Kong have all been disqualified due to Twin Galaxies being our source of verification for these achievements." This also included Mitchell's Pac-Man high score and his first perfect game.
Mitchell challenged these removals. He said he would sue Twin Galaxies and Guinness if they did not put his records back. With his son's encouragement, Mitchell used Twitch to stream games. He played to get scores equal to his old records. The situation between Mitchell and Twin Galaxies also caused problems with some of his friends in the video game community. In early 2019, Mitchell filed lawsuits against Twin Galaxies, Jeremy Young, and YouTuber Apollo Legend. A judge ruled against Twin Galaxies' attempt to stop the case. Twin Galaxies then filed a lawsuit against Mitchell and Walter Day in late 2020. They claimed that Mitchell and Day had tricked Twin Galaxies' current owners. They said Mitchell and Day sold the website knowing it had fake scores. This reduced its good name and value. In October 2021, a U.S. appeals court allowed Mitchell's lawsuit against Twin Galaxies to continue.
In June 2020, Guinness World Records announced something new. After reviewing the evidence, they could not find clear proof that Mitchell had used wrong methods. They put both Mitchell's Donkey Kong and Pac-Man records back. In 2021 and 2022, Mitchell filed two lawsuits against YouTuber and speedrunner Karl Jobst. He said that two of Jobst's videos were harmful to his reputation. One video used a clip that called Mitchell a cheater. The other video talked about the cheating claims against him.
In September 2022, forensic analyst Tanner Fokkens and five other experts published a report. After looking closely at his gameplay, they found that Mitchell could not have gotten his records on real arcade machines. The way the game changed from one stage to the next was the same as in MAME. Photos from the 2007 Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers convention were found in January 2023. They showed that the Donkey Kong machine Mitchell used there seemed to have a changed joystick. This joystick might have allowed eight-way movement instead of the usual four-way movement. This would go against Twin Galaxies' rules against playing on changed equipment. Eight-way joysticks are not allowed because they might give an unfair advantage. They can make it easier to do certain moves in the game compared to the original four-way joystick.
Mitchell and Twin Galaxies settled their cases in January 2024. The details of the settlement were not shared. Twin Galaxies put Mitchell's scores back online that same month. They said that Michael Zyda, a professor from University of Southern California, said it was impossible to tell if Mitchell used wrong equipment. This was because the evidence was not clear enough. The scores were put back on a special "historical database" of scores from before 2014. That's when Twin Galaxies got new owners. These scores are not part of the current official records. Also, Twin Galaxies removed the original posts from their forums that had accused Mitchell of cheating. The people who run the Twin Galaxies forums agreed with Twin Galaxies' decision based on the expert's opinion. But they still said that Mitchell is banned from future Twin Galaxies contests. They thanked Jobst and other YouTubers for their work in providing their own evidence. They also said that interested readers should look at all the evidence and decide for themselves.
Lawsuits About Reputation
In 2020, Mitchell sued YouTuber Ben Smith (known online as "Apollo Legend"). This was because Smith made videos claiming Mitchell cheated. The lawsuit was later settled. Smith had to remove videos about Mitchell and not talk about him anymore. No money was exchanged in this settlement. Smith later passed away in December 2020.
From May to July 2021, Jobst posted videos. In these videos, he claimed that Mitchell's lawsuit was a "significant factor in Mr Smith taking his own life." He also wrongly said that Smith had paid "a large sum of money" in a settlement to Mitchell. Jobst later published a video taking back his statements in July 2021. In September 2021, Mitchell sued Karl Jobst for harming his reputation. This was because of Jobst's videos about Mitchell's lawsuit against Ben Smith and videos accusing Mitchell of cheating. Jobst defended himself. He said he "never said Apollo Legend attributed anything to Billy Mitchell." He also said that even though he "...felt it harmed Apollo in multiple ways ... my opinion was those negative impacts wouldn’t have helped his decision in the end." The Queensland court gave its decision on April 1, 2025. They awarded Mitchell A$350,000. The judge said that Jobst had suggested that Mitchell "in essence, hounded Apollo Legend to death." The judge also said that the videos "caused substantial additional damage to Mitchell's reputation and caused him distress."
Personal Life
Mitchell has three children. He lives with his wife in Weston, Florida.
Notable Scores
Mitchell set high-score records on several games in the 1980s and 1990s. Since his first high score in Donkey Kong in 1982, and his record attempts between 2004 and 2010, other players have matched or beaten Mitchell's scores.
- In 1982, Mitchell set a record on Donkey Kong with 874,300 points.
- In 1984, he set a record score for BurgerTime of 7,881,050. This record stood until 2005.
- In January 1985, he set a new record score for Ms. Pac-Man of 703,560. This record stood until 2001 when Chris Ayra surpassed it.
- He set a record score for Donkey Kong Jr. of 957,300 in 2004.
- He said he got back the world records for both Donkey Kong (1,062,800 points) and Donkey Kong Jr. (1,270,900) on the weekend of July 24, 2010. By September 2010, both these records were beaten by other players.
See also
In Spanish: Billy Mitchell (jugador de videojuegos) para niños
- Cheating in video games
