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from the what-a-wicked-web-we-weave-when-first-we-practice-to-deceive dept.
Twin Galaxies, the long-running video game high score tracker recognized by Guinness World Records, has banned Billy Mitchell and removed all of his past scores from its listings after determining that two million-plus-point Donkey Kong performances he submitted were actually created with an emulator and not on original arcade hardware as he consistently claimed. The move means that the organization now recognizes Steve Wiebe as the first player to achieve a million-point game in Donkey Kong, a question central to the 2007 cult classic documentary The King of Kong.
Nearly two months ago, Mitchell's scores were also removed from the leaderboards at Donkey Kong Forum. Forum moderator Jeremy "Xelnia" Young cited frame-by-frame analysis of the board transitions in Mitchell's Donkey Kong tapes, which showed visual artifacts suggesting they were generated by early versions of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) and not original Donkey Kong arcade hardware.
[...] The ban has no effect on the current world record in Donkey Kong, which currently sits at the 1.247 million points [score] set by Robbie Lakeman in February.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 13 2018, @03:08PM (3 children)
Keep up with updates.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday April 13 2018, @03:34PM (2 children)
I know you're joking, but for everyone else, I don't think he would have been given a pass if he was found to be cheating on a modern release of MAME.
There's a different lesson here... I think you hit upon it -- Cheating is ok as long as you don't get caught!
It could be that the records he made were using a MAME emulator current for that time... because years have passed and the same glitches that existed then are not happening on current versions, and so it takes a true patriot to go and examine each version of mame and play the game and review a recording frame-by-frame to check for similar evidence of emulation on the original footage.
Not only is the lesson not to get caught cheating (not cheating often helps with this), but another lesson is don't be such a jerk that people become motivated to spend a great deal of time and effort and personal resources to take you down. That happens to people that even demonstrate true skill; arrogance knows no bounds.
Or, people can get good at something and try to ride that crest of fame or self-recognition that you conquered a challenge and actually learned how to do it.
I am hoping there'll be a hall of fame for people that come up with ingenious cheats, just so their creativity and effort in the avoidance of actually gaining the proper skills is well documented. It could be something akin to if there was ever a George Castanza guide to gaming or something (A Seinfeld character for those that don't recall the character--he wasn't a gamer but he was adverse to working), complete with good and bad examples of how to lose at cheating.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 13 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
No, I mean he was caught because there were frame differences in an old version of MAME. Does the current version still have those frame differences?
Oh, so you did know I wasn't joking.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Osamabobama on Friday April 13 2018, @05:46PM
I'm afraid I don't get the joke (whether or not it exists). If the MAME version used for cheating was current at the time of the cheat, how would keeping up to date have helped?
There are three eras of MAME releases that are being referenced in this discussion, intentionally or otherwise:
Any updates would have meant the difference between 1 and 2. But possible glitches that provided evidence of cheating could also be in either 1 or 2, at least how that evidence is described in the summary.
A passible joke would be to suggest that he could have gotten away with cheating if only he had updated to 3, because the glitch was fixed in that version. But it wasn't available at the time! (Get it?) Well, I suppose I get that joke, but I was assured it wasn't there.
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