'Pac-Man' And 'Donkey Kong' World Records Reinstated By Guinness

The controversial decision to strip Billy Mitchell of his world records in “Pac-Man” and “Donkey Kong” has been unanimously reversed by Guinness World Records.

In the latest twist in a story with the enigmatic arcade game master Mitchell at the center, the 2018 decision by Guinness has been turned over. Thus, his claim to be the first person to achieve a perfect score on “Pac-Man” for a total of 3,333,360 points and the first to reach 1 million points on “Donkey Kong” have been re-established, notes The Verge.

Mitchell, the central figure in the documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” set the “Pac-Man” record in 1999. He then set the “Donkey Kong” record six years later. Those records came under scrutiny from the video gaming community, however, when it was discovered that Mitchell set them on video game cabinets that were running arcade emulation software MAME.

An investigation was launched by Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard – a separate organization from Guinness that also audits and awards records. Although no conclusive evidence was found that Mitchell did indeed cheat, Twin Galaxies stripped him of his records with Guinness following soon after.

This prompted Mitchell to sue Twin Galaxies for libel while also threatening to sue Guinness. The libel case against Twin Galaxies is still ongoing.

In a video released on the Guinness World Records YouTube channel, Guinness editor-in-chief Craig Glenday noted that “existing evidence and newly sourced eyewitness testimony, plus some new expert gameplay analyses and hardware verification” was reviewed before reversing the decision, The Verge reports.

“In the end, we found that there just wasn’t sufficient evidence to support the disqualification across the board,” Glenday said. In cases such as this where there is debate, Guinness would typically defer to the original decision and Glenday noted that was the case here.

Mitchell himself rose to national prominence in the 1980s when “Life” included him in a photo spread of game champions during the height of the golden age of arcade games.

In that same video, Mitchell appears and calls himself “video game player of the century” while celebrating the Guinness decision to reinstate his records. He goes on to place events in historical context citing a 1982 event as the birth of what is now known as eSports where he first set the world record for “Donkey Kong.”

Mitchell cites that event as the one that ignited his passion to be the best and that it took him across North America, Europe, and Asia. It was in 1999 where he performed history’s first perfect score in “Pac-Man” onstage at the Tokyo Game Show in front of 70,000 people. He cites that as the climactic point in his gaming career.

Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies, also appeared in the video, saying he was “very pleased to see this happen.” Day also expressed his support for Mitchell as “a tremendous player” and that those scores he established were genuine.

Although Mitchell admits he still gets pulled back into competitive gaming, he shares that these days, he prefers being an ambassador for competitive gaming and classic arcade gaming.