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Billy Mitchell Takes his Donkey Kong High-Score Cheating Case to Court

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 05 2020, @11:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-on-like-Donkey-Kong dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In April of 2018, the Twin Galaxies video game scoreboard announced its finding that well-known classic game score-chaser Billy Mitchell did not achieve his Donkey Kong high scores on unmodified arcade hardware, stripping him of all his accumulated records in the process. Since then, Mitchell has oft claimed that he would fight the decision every way he could. And in September 2019, Mitchell and his lawyers said in a statement they would be forced to "resort to legal recourse" if Twin Galaxies didn't rescind its decision and reinstate Mitchell's scores.

But court filings obtained by Ars Technica show that Mitchell had already filed suit against Twin Galaxies in a Los Angeles County court as early as April 2019.

Mitchell's defamation lawsuit—misfiled as "William James Mitchell vs. Twin Galexies, LLC [sic]" and not reported in previous press accounts—has been slowly building to a planned July anti-SLAPP hearing, where Twin Galaxies will make use of a statute that lets defendants quickly strike down lawsuits that threaten "public participation." Twin Galaxies says in court filings that its statements regarding Mitchell's scores were not defamatory and that finding in Mitchell's favor "would have chilling effects on the freedom of speech."

"My law firm and I are fully confident that we will establish a prima face [sic] case for all parts of the lawsuit," Mitchell told Ars Technica in a Twitter Direct Message.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @04:18PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @04:18PM (#990759)

    There is an easy fix for all of this.

    Break out a decently restored machine. Stand him in front of it. Go for the high score. Done. That this has not happened does not look good on him. He is one of the top players of this game in the world. There is little doubt about that. The way he did it though looks super shady....

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @04:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @04:22PM (#990761)

    That doesn't quite address it, all that would do is establish him as one of the top players, not necessary the top player. Often times those crazy high scores are the result of not just practice and study, but also having a good day. To make matters worse, that score was recorded years ago and it's entirely possible that his reflexes aren't quite what they were.Especially, if he hasn't been practicing recently.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 06 2020, @03:53PM

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday May 06 2020, @03:53PM (#991075) Homepage
    He has, under live-streaming scrutiny, reproduced all of the scores that are claimed he faked (to within insignificant margins). He's capable, that's not under question. That, however, says nothing about whether he had the mad million point skillz at the time that was the record.
    --
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