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 a famous American video game player. He became well-known in the 1980s and 1990s for setting many high scores on classic arcade games. One of his biggest achievements was getting a perfect score on Pac-Man.
Organizations like Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized his amazing skills. Billy Mitchell has also appeared in several documentaries about competitive gaming and retrogaming (playing old video games).
In 1999, Mitchell was the first person to claim a perfect score of 3,333,360 points on Pac-Man. 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.
Later, in 2018, some of Mitchell's high scores were questioned. People found issues with videos he had shared. This led to suggestions that he might have used special software to fake his scores. As a result, Twin Galaxies and Guinness removed his records.
Mitchell disagreed with this decision. He even threatened to take legal action. While Guinness later put his scores back, Twin Galaxies did not. Eventually, Mitchell and Twin Galaxies settled their disagreement in 2024. Twin Galaxies then put his scores on a special historical list. However, Billy Mitchell is still not allowed on their current leaderboards.
Mitchell's family owns Rickey's restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida. He also sells his family's special hot sauce.
Contents
Who is Billy Mitchell?
Becoming a Gaming Star
Billy Mitchell was born on July 16, 1965, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He grew up in South Florida. In school, he loved playing pinball. He wasn't very interested in video games at first. But as they became more popular, he wanted the attention that game champions received.
He started playing video games around age 16. He had a friendly competition with a classmate. They tried to beat each other's scores on Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Mitchell wondered if Donkey Kong had a world record. He contacted Walter Day at Twin Galaxies, a place that tracked game records.
In November 1982, Life magazine featured Mitchell and other top players. Mitchell challenged another player, Steve Sanders, at Donkey Kong. He showed that the game had a "kill screen" at level 22. This meant the game couldn't go any further. Mitchell beat Sanders and set a new high score of 874,300. Sanders later admitted he had lied about his old scores. Twin Galaxies then gave the record to Billy Mitchell. He held it for over 18 years.
In 1983, Mitchell was attending Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School. That summer, Walter Day invited Mitchell to join the "Electronic Circus." This was a tour where players would show off their skills. The tour didn't happen as planned. Instead, Mitchell and others spent the summer at Twin Galaxies. They competed for high scores on various games.
By 1984, Day named Mitchell the "Twin Galaxies' Player of the Year." However, the 1983 video game crash caused Twin Galaxies to close its arcade. Day still kept track of scores. After setting a record for BurgerTime in 1985, Mitchell took a break from video games. He spent the next ten years focusing on his family's restaurant. He eventually became its owner.
The Pac-Man Challenge
After Pac-Man was released in 1980, players found a "kill screen" at level 256. Half the screen would show strange symbols. This made it impossible to finish the level. In 1983, Mitchell and his friend Chris Ayra figured out the highest possible score on Pac-Man. It was 3,333,360 points. This required playing perfectly without losing a life. It also meant collecting all points on the messed-up side of level 256.
In 1999, some Canadian players were getting close to this perfect score. This made Mitchell want to return to gaming. He wanted to be the first to achieve it. On May 8, 1999, Rick Fothergill set a world record. He was just 90 points short of a perfect score.
In response, on July 3, Mitchell achieved the perfect score himself. He did this at an arcade in Laconia, New Hampshire. Funspot and Twin Galaxies recorded this as the new world record. Twin Galaxies named him "Video Game Player of the Century." Namco, the company that made Pac-Man, invited Mitchell to Japan. He attended the Tokyo Game Show that year. After returning, Mitchell offered $100,000 to the first person who could pass the split-screen level.
Returning to Gaming
In 2004, Mitchell set a new personal best on Donkey Kong. He scored 933,900 points. Many people watched him do this at the Midwest Gaming Classic. A writer named David Ramsey called Mitchell "probably the greatest arcade video game player of all time" in 2006.
In 2004 and 2005, another player named Steve Wiebe tried to set a new Donkey Kong world record. This was shown in the 2007 film The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Wiebe wanted Mitchell to be there to challenge him directly. Public demonstrations of high scores were preferred over video tapes. Mitchell often 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 needed to practice since he hadn't played games for a while.
Wiebe eventually scored 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 a special board. Later, Wiebe got a high score at a New Hampshire Funspot. Many people watched him, and Twin Galaxies accepted this score. Just hours later, Mitchell sent his own video to Twin Galaxies. It claimed he scored 1,047,200 points, beating Wiebe's score. Twin Galaxies accepted Mitchell's score as the new record.
Wiebe and others complained to Twin Galaxies. Mitchell's score was eventually canceled because it was on tape, not witnessed. This gave Wiebe the record again. After the movie came out, Mitchell said he didn't expect to be shown as a bad person. He received hate mail and phone calls because of how the film was edited. Mitchell also appeared in other documentaries like Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007) and The King of Arcades (2014).
On July 26, 2007, Mitchell took back the Donkey Kong record. He scored 1,050,200 points. This score was known as the "Mortgage Brokers" score. It was supposedly achieved while he was at a convention. This score was beaten on February 26, 2010, by Hank Chien. On July 24, 2010, Mitchell got the record back again with 1,062,800 points. This was the last time he held the record.
In 2007, Mitchell placed eighth in the Microsoft Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championships. In 2008, he became the first video game player to be on a Topps Allen & Ginter trading card.
In 2015, Mitchell sued Cartoon Network. He said a character in their show Regular Show copied him. The character, Garrett Bobby Ferguson (GBF), cheated at video games. A judge threw out the lawsuit. The judge said the TV character did not look like Mitchell.
Disputed Records
In 2017, a moderator from the Donkey Kong Forum, Jeremy Young, raised concerns. He looked at a video of Mitchell's score at Boomers. Mitchell had played both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong, Jr. that day. He broke records for both games on the same machine. The videos did not show the full record-breaking games. Young thought there might have been issues with how the game boards were swapped. Mitchell and his friend said some parts of the board-switching were staged. But they said this was done after the records were already set on real game machines.
Young kept looking into the videos. In early 2018, he shared proof that some scores were achieved on MAME. MAME is a computer program that acts like an arcade machine. This meant the scores might not have been from real arcade hardware. Young then removed these scores from the Donkey Kong Forum website. Another former record holder, Wes Copeland, supported Young's findings. He said Mitchell's score showed a very unlikely rate of scoring. Also, the person who checked Mitchell's scores, Todd Rogers, had been banned from Twin Galaxies for fake scores. This made Mitchell's scores even more doubtful.
Mitchell defended his scores. He said he had never even used MAME. He also suggested that the video footage Young had might have been faked. Mitchell said he sent Twin Galaxies recordings of his gameplay. He also sent other evidence to prove he didn't cheat.
On April 12, 2018, Twin Galaxies announced their findings. They said there was clear proof that Mitchell did not get at least two of his scores on real arcade machines. The videos showed the game loading in a way that looked exactly like MAME. Twin Galaxies removed all of Mitchell's scores. They also banned him from submitting scores in the future. Guinness World Records then removed Mitchell's scores too. This included his Pac-Man perfect score.
Mitchell challenged these removals. He threatened to sue Twin Galaxies and Guinness. With his son's encouragement, Mitchell used Twitch to stream scores equal to his old records. In early 2019, Mitchell sued Twin Galaxies and some YouTubers. Twin Galaxies then sued Mitchell back. They claimed he had tricked them by selling their website knowing it had fake scores. In October 2021, a court allowed Mitchell's lawsuit to continue.
In June 2020, Guinness World Records said they couldn't find clear proof that Mitchell cheated. They put his Donkey Kong and Pac-Man records back. In 2021 and 2022, Mitchell sued YouTuber Karl Jobst. He said Jobst's videos were unfair to him.
In September 2022, experts published a report. They found that Mitchell's gameplay could not have been on real arcade machines. The way the game levels changed matched MAME. Photos from a 2007 convention also showed Mitchell's Donkey Kong machine might have had a changed joystick. This could have given him an unfair advantage. Twin Galaxies rules do not allow playing on changed hardware.
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 that same month. They said an expert testified that it was hard to tell if Mitchell used wrong hardware. This was because the video evidence was not clear. The scores were put on a special "historical database" for scores before 2014. They were not added to the current records. Twin Galaxies also removed the old forum posts that accused Mitchell of cheating. However, Twin Galaxies forum leaders still said Mitchell is banned from future contests. They also thanked Jobst and other YouTubers for their work. They said people should look at all the evidence and decide for themselves.
In September 2024, Mitchell sued Karl Jobst again. He said Jobst's videos about another lawsuit were unfair. Jobst defended himself and apologized for any wrong information.
Life Outside Gaming
Billy Mitchell has three children. He lives with his wife in Weston, Florida.
Amazing Scores
Mitchell set many high-score records in the 1980s and 1990s. Since his first Donkey Kong record in 1982, others have beaten his scores.
- In 1982, Mitchell scored 874,300 points on Donkey Kong.
- In 1984, he set a record on BurgerTime with 7,881,050 points. This record lasted until 2005.
- In January 1985, he set a new record on Ms. Pac-Man with 703,560 points. This record was beaten in 2001.
- On July 8, 1985, he was the fifth person to score over 10 million points on Centipede.
- He set a record on Donkey Kong Jr. with 957,300 points in 2004.
- He said he got the world records back for both Donkey Kong (1,062,800 points) and Donkey Kong Jr. (1,270,900) in July 2010. Both these records were beaten by September 2010.
See also
In Spanish: Billy Mitchell (videojugador) para niños
- Cheating in video games
