Video Game Villain Billy Mitchell, an Adult Who Goes By ‘Billy,’ is Suing to Get His ‘Donkey Kong’ Records Back

The King of Kong was a really important movie that sort of kicked off an entire movement of documentaries about esoteric bullshit no one cares about. Honestly, do you care who has the high score in Donkey Kong? Of course not. But The King of Kong was a great movie, I’ve watched it multiple times. It’s been referenced in TV shows like How I Met Your Mother and South Park and I’m convinced it lead to the creation of later docs like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and The Toys That Made Us.

Because the story was so compelling, everyone who had seen the movie was extremely happy years later when it came out that the film’s  antagonist, Billy Mitchell, had been banned from Twin Galaxies and had all his records voided on the grounds that the video he produced at the film’s climax was made on an emulator and not original hardware.

It came out a few days ago that Mitchell is suing Twin Galaxies to have his high scores reinstated, claiming that calling him a cheater was defamatory.

But in the most petty move I’ve ever seen, Mitchell is also suing the person who proved he was cheating.

Benjamin Smith, aka Apollo Legend, showed that the transitions between stages on the video tape Mitchell submitted weren’t possible on original Donkey Kong arcade cabinets (like the one Steve Wiebe has in his garage) but instead were a sign that the game was actually running on MAME, an arcade emulator.

So Mitchell is suing him, too.

It’s time to move on, Billy. For starters, try Bill or William.