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Guinness Reverses Decision to Strip Billy Mitchell’s Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Records

posted by martyb on Wednesday June 24 2020, @10:37AM   
from the is-pluto-a-planet-or-not? dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Guinness reverses decision to strip Billy Mitchell's Pac-Man and Donkey Kong records:

Guinness World Records has reversed a 2018 decision to strip notorious arcade game figure Billy Mitchell's Pac-Man and Donkey Kong records. Mitchell, who was at the center of revered documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, says it's "a long time coming."

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Original Submission

• Re:First world privileged white male problems Re:First world privileged white male problems (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:44PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:44PM (#1012119)

  The old argument was pretty convincing, yes.

  The rebuttal in the new press release [apnews.com] however is not particularly convincing. It seems to center around the following quote from Todd Tuckey:

  What Twin Galaxies (new owners) asserts about Billy Mitchell’s score is simply not possible. There has never and will never be an emulsion board that plugs into a Donkey Kong machine. It is simply impossible for anything but legitimate hardware to have been inside Billy Mitchell’s machine.

  Assuming a typo and they meant emulation board instead of emulsion board... I can't believe this is the cornerstone of the argument. PC to JAMMA converters have existed for years, for instance here's archive.org's listing of one such converter from 2013 [archive.org]. Now, Donkey Kong isn't JAMMA... Donkey Kong PCB to JAMMA adapters are pretty easy to find but the reverse, JAMMA to Donkey Kong cabinet adapters, are a bit harder. But I found this video, also from 2013 [youtube.com] showing someone running a non-Donkey-Kong JAMMA board in a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet using a series of adapter boards.

  I'm not sure these links are 100% solid proof that there "has never" been something that plugs into a Donkey Kong machine, but this is as much effort as I care to put into searching for something so trivial at the moment. It's also worth noting that 2013 is a lot more recent than the times the alleged cheating occurred, which are 2005 and 2007, and possibly also 2010 (I see some reference to hesitation to declare the 2010 score as obtained by cheating).

  I will be somewhat disappointed if nobody bothers to more solidly disprove the "will never" part of the argument by hooking up modern hardware to a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet in 2020. Bonus internet points for specifically hooking up a PC running the version of MAME allegedly used to perform the cheating. Even more bonus points if the modern hardware somehow uses a mixture of oil and water for cooling, just in case they try to say "emulsion" isn't a typo.

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• Re:First world privileged white male problems (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @08:10PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @08:10PM (#1012130)

  That was an interesting post.

  The "will never" part of the quote is not terribly relevant to the particular situation, but if it proves to be wrong, it may be an issue for future record attempts.

  Parent