King of Kong

I worked all weekend and thus unlike last weekend didn't have a lot of free time to do much. There was nothing on TV last night so I decided to fire up the Netflix on the PS3 and see what was available there. I decided to watch the movie The King of Kong, a documentary about a guy who is trying to break the long standing record for most points ever in a Donkey Kong game.

The movie stars Steve Wiebe, a likable but down on his luck family man from Washington state. After being fired from his job Steve had a lot of free time on his hands and didn't know what to do with himself. For whatever reason he decided that he was going to dedicate his free time to try to beat the long standing record for most points in a Donkey Kong game held by Billy Mitchell. Mitchell is considered to be one of the best video game players of all time. He held the Donkey Kong record for most points for over 25 years. He has played a perfect game (all dots acquired, no deaths) in Pac Man. He is considered to be the Michael Jordan of games.

Twin Galaxies is the official score keeper of video games, an organization who reviews all attempts to breaks records and verifies if they are legit or not. They are kind of like the Guinness record people for video games. They were founded in the early 1980s by a bunch of computer nerds who are every bit as geeky as you could imagine. Their founding came around the same time Billy Mitchell was becoming famous for his accomplishments. Subsequently, most of the people who are a part of Twin Galaxies worship Mitchell and Mitchell has major influence over them.

The film portrayed Mitchell as a master manipulator and a sore loser. Once Galaxies got word that Wiebe was the real deal, they did everything they could to not acknowledge his accomplishments. Often Mitchell would be the one pulling the strings in the background. When Weibe sent in a tape of him playing a game which beat Mitchell's score, Galaxies said that he must perform in front on an audience to verify it. Wiebe did just that and shortly after Billy Mitchell sent in a tape of a higher score and Galaxies credited him with the highest score over Wiebe's without any question. In the end Wiebe beat Mitchell's score and both Galaxies and Guinness World Records now acknowledge Wiebe as the all time Donkey Kong champion with a score of over 1,000,000. Overall it was quite interesting to see how this rivalry between the great champion Mitchell and the underdog family man Wiebe developed. To this day Mitchell and Wiebe are trading high scores back and fourth.

After I watched the movie I was in the mood to play some Donkey Kong myself and was curious to see if the game really was as hard as they were portraying in the movie. I wanted to see if I could get anywhere near the scores posted in the movie. Below is a screen shot from a Donkey Kong game I downloaded on Virtual Console on the Wii. Notice the top score in the middle of the screen. I am currently nowhere near the record!



I couldn't mention Donkey Kong without thinking of this scene from Billy Madison:



While we are on the subject of video games, Gran Turismo 5 is supposed to come out later this week. I'd say GT5 is my most anticipated game of all time. I really hope I didn't jinx it by posting that ticker as it has had numerous delays, including one earlier this month. I will have a full post (or posts) later on once I actually get my hands on it.