Former 'Donkey Kong' Record Holder Billy Mitchell May Now Sue Twin Galaxies (gamespot.com) 77
"Billy Mitchell always has a plan," said Billy Mitchell in the 2007 documentary about Donkey Kong high scores, The King of Kong.
And he tweeted the phrase again Wednesday. GameSpot explains why. "Billy Mitchell, the professional gamer and hot sauce purveyor who rose to fame for setting several retro video game high scores, is preparing for a return to court." As reported by Axios, the U.S. appeals court gave Mitchell permission to proceed with his defamation suit against Twin Galaxies, the online video game leaderboard website. In case you missed the legal tussle, the whole saga began when Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records stripped Mitchell of his several of world records for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong after he was accused of using emulation devices to earn his scores instead of authentic arcade machines, as was required for these world record attempts. While Guinness would later reverse its decision, Twin Galaxies has so far refused to reinstate Mitchell's records.
Mitchell would file a defamation suit against Twin Galaxies in 2019, while the site itself fought back with an "anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation" — more commonly known as a SLAPP motion — response, a legal move designed to have frivolous lawsuits dismissed from court and prevent parties from being silenced, as spotted by Kotaku. This week's ruling by the State of California's Second court has stated that Mitchell and his legal team have enough material to continue the lawsuit.
Whether Mitchell and his team actually stand a chance of winning the case is another matter entirely...
Mitchell also tweeted the exact wording of the court's decision, starting with the words "Because Mitchell showed a probability of prevailing on his claims, the trial court properly denied the anti-SLAPP motion."
And he tweeted the phrase again Wednesday. GameSpot explains why. "Billy Mitchell, the professional gamer and hot sauce purveyor who rose to fame for setting several retro video game high scores, is preparing for a return to court." As reported by Axios, the U.S. appeals court gave Mitchell permission to proceed with his defamation suit against Twin Galaxies, the online video game leaderboard website. In case you missed the legal tussle, the whole saga began when Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records stripped Mitchell of his several of world records for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong after he was accused of using emulation devices to earn his scores instead of authentic arcade machines, as was required for these world record attempts. While Guinness would later reverse its decision, Twin Galaxies has so far refused to reinstate Mitchell's records.
Mitchell would file a defamation suit against Twin Galaxies in 2019, while the site itself fought back with an "anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation" — more commonly known as a SLAPP motion — response, a legal move designed to have frivolous lawsuits dismissed from court and prevent parties from being silenced, as spotted by Kotaku. This week's ruling by the State of California's Second court has stated that Mitchell and his legal team have enough material to continue the lawsuit.
Whether Mitchell and his team actually stand a chance of winning the case is another matter entirely...
Mitchell also tweeted the exact wording of the court's decision, starting with the words "Because Mitchell showed a probability of prevailing on his claims, the trial court properly denied the anti-SLAPP motion."
I guess. (Score:2)
Frivolous as it seems to me, I'm sure he incurs some form of fame/enrichment from this.
Though not sure what.
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"Remember me? I used to be somebody..." - Billy Mitchell
No, no you weren't and, if some old video game scores are the most important things to have happened in your life, you need to seriously reconsider your life choices. Though, this lawsuit proves your beyond such hope, so carry on while the rest of the world goes right on ignoring you for the triviality you are.
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He's a guy who used MAME to cheat [twingalaxies.com] at a video game high scores list.
The basis for allowing Cheater Mitchell's suits to proceed is also quite specious [techdirt.com], privileging Mitchell's "waah they didn't listen to my known-to-be-a-fucking-lying-fraud so-called witness over the actual evidence" over the, well, ACTUAL EVIDENCE:
Apparently at issue is that Mitchell wanted a witness, specifically the referee of his Donkey Kong high score, to be interviewed and considered by Twin Galaxies prior to their having negated Mi
Guinness World Records out of court settlement (Score:1)
Guinness World Records out of court settlement so that says that billy Mitchell may have an good case for an jury / judge.
Re:Guinness World Records out of court settlement (Score:5, Insightful)
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The _results_ of the settlement, the re-instatement of Mr. Mitchell's world record, is certainly something the court can consider. such a public testimony can and should affect the judge's opinion on the legitimacy and potential outcome. The judge cannot rely on what the previous court's verdict, you're correct. But evidence exposed or testimony that is in a court's public records can be evidence, including evidence to factor into a summary judgment.
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What makes you think that an out of court settlement is automatically sealed? Many are, but it's not mandatory. The court records up to the settlement may not be sealed, and courts have a great deal of power to unseal even those records sealed by a previous court.
It's commonplace in _bureaucracies_ to erect a "Chinese wall" around any information one party or another wants kept out of decision making. There can be good reasons for this, but many of the reasons are to prevent the people making decisions with
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The _results_ of the settlement, the re-instatement of Mr. Mitchell's world record, is certainly something the court can consider. such a public testimony can and should affect the judge's opinion on the legitimacy and potential outcome. The judge cannot rely on what the previous court's verdict, you're correct. But evidence exposed or testimony that is in a court's public records can be evidence, including evidence to factor into a summary judgment.
You do understand that Guinness is a different entity than Twin Galaxies, right? You do understand that Mitchell is suing for defamation against Twin Galaxies right? How is Guinness settling by reinstating his records affect whether or not Twin Galaxies committed defamation?
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Are you under the impression that each court case is decided in a vacuum from other cases?The limits on introducing evidence or testimony from previous cases are much less restrictive than you might think. Some of the guidelines are explained at https://namwolf.org/admissibil... [namwolf.org] .
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Almost every settlement is done without admitting fault as part of the signed paperwork. All that it proves in evidence is that they didn't want spend effort to fight it, not whether they had a case.
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If I may be so crude, so what if fault wasn't decided by the previous court? The evidence from the previous court may still be introduced, including evidence that may have only been available through court orders and discovery. And in this case, the Guinness Book of World Records re-asserting Billy Mitchell's record might be considered testimony from the world recognized authority on world records that the record is legitimate.
I agree that a previous settlement is not compelling legal proof, but the court d
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If I may be so crude, so what if fault wasn't decided by the previous court? The evidence from the previous court may still be introduced, including evidence that may have only been available through court orders and discovery.
Public evidence from other court cases may be introduced. The result of the settlement is not used by the court. Also the evidence must be materially relevant.
And in this case, the Guinness Book of World Records re-asserting Billy Mitchell's record might be considered testimony from the world recognized authority on world records that the record is legitimate.
Except Mitchell is suing for defamation. That "testimony" bears no weight as to whether Twin Galaxies defamed Mitchell.
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Truth is an absolute defense to libel claims, because one of the elements that must be proven in a defamation suit is falsity of the statement. If a statement is true, it cannot be false, and therefore, there is no prima facie case of defamation. [freedomfor...titute.org]
The factual truth is Mitchell didn't get his records on arcade hardware. Mitchell has no case, he's just a cheater who's trying to bully the companies that do recordkeeping into backing down, and trying to bully journalists who cover the story into backing down
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Aside from what the others have said (settlements do not set precedent), there was no settlement. AFAICT, there never was any suit against Guinness, they simply decided there wasn't enough evidence to rescind the record, so they reinstated it. It wasn't even that they found the gameplay was legitimate, just that there wasn't strong enough evidence it wasn't legitimate to change the record.
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And, more to the point, they really don't care. Why? Guinness makes money by selling books on 'records' for entertainment purposes only. Unless there is glaering fraud that would make them look bad to accept, they could care less. They really will not spend time or money verifying a claim about fraudulent records unless nation-state actors are involved.
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Underclocking the game (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can emulate the game, then it means you can slow it down as much as you want by slowing down the clock speed.
And if you have 2 days to make a decision for your pac man instead of 200 milliseconds, then yes, that's what I would call an unfair advantage.
Re:Underclocking the game (Score:5, Insightful)
Mitchell has demonstrated his skills on certified unmodified arcade hardware, exceeding his original record score. So I don't think he needed to cheat.
That said, the video of his original record is definitely on an emulator. I have no doubt of that, the evidence is undeniable. He may have known and cheated by using save states etc, he may not have. Either way the rules are clear, no emulators.
If he genuinely didn't know then it's a bit harsh to ban him for life and cancel all his records. I've been playing arcade machines at shows, games I know inside and out, and not realised that there was a PC inside and not an original arcade PCB.
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Were there a lot of arcade cabinets running MAME in 2005 when Mitchell set his Donkey Kong record?
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I think so. As I recall there were some specific ATI graphics cards that could output a 15kHz signal, and some WinMAME front ends designed for cabinet use. There was a lot of stuff on forums about editing ini files to create custom video modes with odd refresh rates to match certain games, like PacMan was 57.5Hz.
You could buy adapters that let you connect the arcade joysticks as PS2 keyboards.
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Sure, technically it could be done, but in 2005 it was far cheaper and simpler to buy an original machine. 60,000 Donkey Kong cabinets were sold in the US.
Also, according to this Youtube analysis at 19:20, allegedly Billy Mitchell released a video of him/his friend swapping the Donkey Kong board that he'd just set the record on for a Donkey Kong Junior board, for his next record attempt. That doesn't square with the theory that he might have accidentally set his record on a MAME emulator.
https://www.youtube [youtube.com]
Re:Underclocking the game (Score:5, Interesting)
The video he submitted to Twin Galaxies with the record score is definitely MAME. The way the screen is drawn in MAME is different to the arcade hardware, because MAME uses a double buffered display and the real hardware renders into a single buffer as the beam is displaying it.
The result is that on real hardware you see parts of the background for a fraction of a frame as the beam overtakes the CPU drawing it. In MAME the buffers are swapped during vblank so you never get that effect.
There is no doubt that the record video is of MAME.
Re: Underclocking the game (Score:2)
I saw that video too a long time ago.
He's not going to win this battle and he knows it. So now he is stomping on the floor like a little kid trying to get his parents to cave in and buy the toy that he wants.
Either he accepts what happens and move on, or he ends up insane, broke, and homeless playing Frogger in real life.
Hopefully I won't be going down the freeway if/where/when he chooses option #2
Re: Underclocking the game (Score:2)
"happens"
happened
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However there IS very clear evidence that it was emulated by the display of a bug known to only exist in versions of MAME until very recently, involving the display order of the girders when a stage begins.
In fact, this situation is what brought the bug to the attention of MAMEdev; it's been subsequently fixed.
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has demonstrated his skills on certified unmodified arcade hardware, exceeding his original record score. So I don't think he needed to cheat.
Demonstrated later... doesn't mean the original record was legit at the time it was first claimed.
I guess Twin Galaxies' mistake is publishing an official statement that can be considered "defamation" - Instead, they should have just stricken him from the record with no official explanation about Mitchell's conduct, and limited the official statement to something l
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So I don't think he needed to cheat.
Doesn't matter if he "needed to" cheat. The facts and overwhelming evidence are he cheated. Maybe he decided he was rusty and no longer trusted his own skills. Maybe he had been cheating so long and getting away with it, he forgot the risks. Maybe he thought he'd never get caught - it took 36 years (from 1982 to 2018) to fully catch Todd Rogers, or at least 16 years to fully debunk him even after the 2002 revelation that his Barnstorming record had been fabricated (whi
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If you can emulate the game, then it means you can slow it down as much as you want by slowing down the clock speed.
You can also do things like create save points, rewind, etc.
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It would be perfectly possible to modify a genuine PacMan arcade machine to have a variable clock speed so you could slow it down
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It would be perfectly possible to modify a genuine PacMan arcade machine to have a variable clock speed so you could slow it down
Good luck filming the screen and yourself (of course moving and talking to match the slowed-down game), recording the sound and editing everything so it looks convincingly un-slowed-down, though...
Re: Underclocking the game (Score:2)
Considering how tightly linked old games were to screen refresh rates, I doubt it. You'd have to slow down the CRT screen's refresh rate as well. Even if you managed to do that, the phosphors have a time-to saturation-value (how long the electron beam has to stay on it for it to reach maximum light emission) and a decay time (how long the phosphor keeps emitting light after the electron beam has moved on) which certainly can't be easily tweaked. Probably easier to write a CRT emulator these days!
Billy Mitchell ? (Score:2)
Wasn't he the first person to sink a battleship by dropping bombs on it?
They named the B25 bomber after him.
Re: Billy Mitchell ? (Score:2)
"He sunk my battleship!"
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Nah, he just sells jewelry in Alabama with really stupid commercials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Nope, he also loves promoting Billy Mitchell's (Rickey's) World Famous Louisiana Hot Sauce
https://www.giantbomb.com/foru... [giantbomb.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Please please please get a life foundation (Score:2)
He should just forget about video games and just concentrate on his advertising career.
This Donkey Kong business is much adeu about nothing, and nobody is even going to care about so and so getting the highest score in any game in the long run.
It's best for him to forget that DK ever existed as clearly there is a type of damaging obsessive compulsive behavior involving that game. OCD is very consuming and life destroying.
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Does this guy's whole life revolve around a video game that goes bloop and bleep?
Mod as you will, but if this guy put the same energy into improving something about our rotten world...
In 2007 no less. So much empty looking back. It's a la mode.
Re: Please please please get a life foundation (Score:2)
I heard this clown's fawning a couple times in the past few years, but 2007? Yikes!
This guy really needs to get laid.
"Twin Galaxies does not keep records on this game" (Score:4, Insightful)
If Twin Galaxies loses, they may choose to just drop specific games from their record-books.
After all, they are not under any obligation to maintain records on games where they cannot be confident that all players are playing the same game.
For that matter, they are not obliged to maintain records on any particular game. If they decide to de-list games that involve a damsel in distress because they are "sexist" (sarcasm) or because the player's character is constantly eating pills because such games "encourage drug use" (more sarcasm), that's their prerogative.
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They can't lose. Mitchell would have to prove that they knew he didn't cheat, but accused him anyway out of malice.
He can't even prove that he didn't cheat. He can only dispute the accusation by providing witnesses.
If, for example, he didn't cheat but Twin Galaxies believes he did, then he loses. Twin Galaxies wins. Even if he can prove 100% that he didn't cheat, he loses. He has to prove that Twin Galaxies knew he didn't cheat when they said whatever it was that he says defamed him, in addition to proving
An interesting video about this on youtube (Score:2)
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Karl Jobst's video [youtube.com] does a better job of exposing this wanker.
Last year Twin Galaxies sued him for $3,333,360 -- the same amount as the maximum score possible in Pac-Man. :-)
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Karl Jobst's video [youtube.com] does a better job of exposing this wanker.
That, and it's sadly gotten a sequel [youtube.com]...
Where is the original link and context? (Score:2)
This part keeps being repeated with no original link: "As reported by Axios, the U.S. appeals court gave Mitchell permission to proceed with his defamation suit against Twin Galaxies". I cannot find the original article. What does "permission to proceed" merely mean? Does that mean the Court of Appeals acknowledged his filing. That does not mean the Court will even hear his case; they may turn it down without comment. Is it on the docket and which Court of Appeals?
From what I remember, Mitchell has not ha
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"Fun fact: The day after my wedding, I awoke to a call from a number I didn't recognize. Figured it was a family member who was lost or something. Nope. It was Billy Mitchell to chat more about an interview we'd done. "
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That almost sounds like someone who wants to keep the dispute in the news for self-promotion purposes and not actually concerned about winning or losing a case.
Is it just me.. (Score:2)
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Maybe we can heckle him at Funspot.
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Nobody has liked this guy for years, except maybe that other cretin, Todd Rogers.
Re: Is it just me.. (Score:2)
He is far less harmful and annoying than many of the people who keep re-emerging in the spotlight.
What I think is going on here is a case of OCD, and that disorder has the ability to destroy lives. I'm seriously concerned about this guy's mental health as it seems OCD is what continues to drive him to continue persuing this whole Donkey Kong bruhaha. By now most people would've just muttered a few curse words and moved on.
I have OCD, and I had it all my life. I wouldn't wish it on my worst
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Rules are rules, no? (Score:2)
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I think if the rules state consoles only, no emulator, then that's pretty straight forward and Mitchell has no case. He sounds like the High School football quarterback that threw the winning pass at the homecoming game that one time in his Senior year, and has based his entire useless life on that one event, reliving and bragging about it every time he gets drunk, for the past 40 years -- or at least wants to be that dude, but the rules keep him from being him.
It was four touchdowns in one game [youtube.com], you cretin.
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Billy Mitchell always has a plan (Score:2)
"Billy Mitchell always has a plan," said Mitchel [...]
He's not the only one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Still unable to buy his hot sauce (Score:2)
I'm still unable to buy his hot sauce. Did he give up on that front?