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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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Guinness Reverses Decision to Strip Billy Mitchell’s Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Records
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Everything bows to success, even grammar.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:43AM (31 children)
Call the waahmbulance... a millennial didn't get to see his name in a book no one reads anymore. If Billy Mitchell was Black, Guinness would have had the police shoot him by now.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:47AM (1 child)
He paid good money for that record, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:52AM
If he was *really* good, it would only have cost him a quarter.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:54AM (6 children)
As a white man I'm wondering what the number is that I have to call to get the police to shoot some black people for me. I seem to have misplaced my card.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @12:03PM (2 children)
>> what the number is that I have to call to get the police to shoot some black people for me
9-1-1 in most locations.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:15PM (1 child)
Small potatoes. If you really want to kill black people, you want the number of some inner city gangs. They shoot a lot more than the police. Now if you're not particular about methods then you can go even further. Ring up some dudes in Africa and see if you can get another civil war going on, or spread some misinformation about HIV.
It's murder by numbers, 1-2-3...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @08:56PM
This org has them beat by a long shot. https://tinyurl.com/bquwqrp [tinyurl.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @12:10PM (2 children)
The number is 555, It's easy to remember by the letter in the middle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @12:34PM
I see what you did there ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @01:53AM
Why would I want to call that old crusty DNC org? BLM is where its at these days.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @12:07PM (10 children)
Yeah, like the NASCAR garage door rope that has a loop on the end that's been on that door more than a year before some dumb ass black retard moves in and sees it as a noose. Many auto shops with those doors have a rope hanging from it and most of them have been tied into a loop to make it easier to pull the door shut. Anyone who ever worked around a shop knows that. He's just another Smaglett playing the race card. Fuck your white privilege whining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @01:54PM (9 children)
Citation needed, a noose has a very different knot than what you'd use for something like that. A noose is intended to slide easily, making it inherently unsuitable for applications like this. I'm not aware of any pictures of the actual rope being posted online, so you're being purely speculative here. Given the timing and the number of people involved in NASCAR, it wouldn't be surprising if one of them was racist enough and stupid enough to put an actual noose in the one Black driver's garage.
This is an individual that's racing professionally, I'd wager that he's seen loops used for closing doors before, also a noose is rather easy to identify with all the wrapping around the central rope.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday June 24 2020, @02:21PM (5 children)
You could, like, google for yourself too...
Here's the top link that I got: https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nascar/news/bubba-wallace-noose-garage-fbi-nascar-hate-crime/14b1apmtuk00f1ohtkixnq8grh [sportingnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @02:51PM
I could, but that's not my responsibility. I have no way of knowing which particular source the poster was referring to.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @03:01PM (3 children)
Wow, why would someone tie a knot like that instead of the simpler and much better bowline?
Personally, I used a monkey's fist so I didn't have to worry about kids getting stuck in a loop.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:17PM (1 child)
Because why not?
https://www.netknots.com/rope_knots/loop-knots [netknots.com]
There are all sorts of types of knots it could have been based on the grainy pictures we have seen. Link has examples.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:12PM
Yep, that was more or less my conclusion, the picture could show a noose, but it could also show a fair number of other loop knots as well, not to mention the possibility of it being some sort of spliced loop.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:28PM
I don't tie a monkey's fist - just a double square knot at the end of the rope. Like yourself, I worry that someone or something might get caught in a loop, that I don't want to be caught in the loop. Any sort of a loop in a non-stationary line says "snare" to me. Oh - the monkey's fist. I seriously don't remember how to tie it. Maybe I'll look it up, and try to remember . . .
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @03:40PM (1 child)
Judge for yourself. Here is a pic [twitter.com] of the rope in question.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:35PM
The photo isn't clear enough for my satisfaction. It doesn't appear to have 13 wraps. A hangman's noose is very distinctive. Does that knot even slide? No non-sliding knot can be called a "noose". In the two pics, the rope appears to be the exact same length, so that "noose" probably won't slide if a burly 200 pound man jerks on it for all he's worth.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @04:26PM
A required knot for boy scouts looks like a noose. So does the finger hole on a fucking YoYo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @01:57PM (10 children)
Billy Mitchell isn't a millennial. He was born in 1965 making him Gen-X and practically a Boomer. Geez you people are really stretching the definition of millennial when you need to mock somebody.
I personally am not up on the particular controversy, but from what I understand, the basis for him being delisted was purely speculative. Unlike that drag race record that was definitively proven to be impossible, this one remains within the realm of possibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @03:44PM (5 children)
From the article:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @06:28PM (3 children)
So we wait for the Twin Galaxies suit to be over and see if Guinness changes its mind once again. This forum post [donkeykongforum.com] convinced me pretty well, which someone else referenced the last time this subject came up. They'd probably be better off just leaving the section blank.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:17PM
As far as Guinness goes, one of the issues there is that they trusted a 3rd party to make the determination. Regardless of whether or not Twin Galaxies was operating in good faith based upon the evidence in hand, it seems illl-advised for Guinness to rely so much on a 3rd party certification when they can and do have their own judges for other records.
I also realize that there have been other cases where the hardware just wasn't functioning properly just by chance giving people an unfair advantage. I can't recall the specific game, but I think it was one of these Pac Man records that had to be rescinded due to the matching operating more quickly than it was supposed to. The result being that there was less endurance required to hit a given level than normal, the result being that as long as the player could physically keep up with the faster play, that there was a greatly reduced demand for being awake to complete the record attempt.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:44PM (1 child)
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:
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @08:10PM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:06PM
From the summary I found on Wikipedia, the allegations appear to be questionable. I don't know whether or not his attempts were legitimate, but it's clear that he is a player of the caliber necessary to achieve those scores. Achieving a perfect Pac Man score isn't an easy accomplishment, but is consistent with somebody that's capable of turning out a world-record performance of other arcade games.
They claim that it was played on a MAME set up, but it doesn't appear that it was ever proven and Billy did submit additional documentation on the run that was apparently discounted.
TBH, it does look, at least on the surface, like the record was inappropriately revoked by Twin Galaxies, and having the Guinness record returned is appropriate. Using information that wasn't publicly available about the referee as evidence that there's something questionable going on is rather dirty. Same goes for making a statistical analysis of a rare event and concluding that because it's unusual to score at that rate, that there is a problem. If you set a record, then it should be an unusual performance, otherwise, it wouldn't be a record.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:39PM (3 children)
Give it a break. Boomers were the product of returning war veterans fucking anything that didn't run away, or anything that didn't run fast enough. Boomers started in 1945, and pretty much ended in the early '50's. No, 1956 don't really count, and 1960 sure as hell don't count. The hell with any sophistry bullshit you want to throw at the claim.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:49PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @10:04PM
In 100 years, boomer will have replaced the word old in common usage, and old will be marked by the OED as archaic.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 24 2020, @10:21PM
Well, that settles that. The Census Bureau certainly can't be wrong.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.