Beginning a post with “Salutations, Ignorant Fuck,” trying to insult someone by referring to their birth with the words “your choking, bloodied infant form issued forth from your screaming mother,” I mean, wow, yeah, I bet you’re gonna make a GREAT documentary.

Maybe I saw a different version of the movie? The movie that I *just* watched ended with Steve Wiebe as the world record holder (with a score of 1,049,100 points achieved on August 3, 2006).

Apparently Billy Mitchell has surpassed this score since then (with a score of 1,052,200), but that fact was not included in the movie that *I* watched (as distributed by Netflix).

-Rob

Okay, that was awesome.

A number of weblogs recently linked to this page from out of the blue, leading me to believe you jostled among them and found yourself reading this entry. This might explain your commentary on a page written in February, with multiple clarifying followups, that has otherwise been superceded elsewhere in the five months hence.

As I sincerely doubt that your filmmaking and film watching career harkens back to the exact moment your choking, bloodied infant form issued forth from your screaming mother, I will assume that you are one of those folks who takes a number of liberties when he constructs his scribbled opinions in the heat of emotion and ignorance. Therefore let me say the following, in an easy to understand list:

1. This movie and my movie are not the same movie; they did not steal my idea and I did not steal theirs and they do not overlap in subject matter.

2. I am making several movies.

3. While movies are, by their nature, edited products, out and out lies and misrepresentation opposite to reality are generally not what people should find “at the finish line” when they assemble their footage.

Enjoy your filmmaking career and die, slowly and alone, forgotten but for your distant-faced caretakers.

Being bitter is a sickness like cancer that will eat away at your soul. It is the single most poisonous substance you can have in your body. I was bitter for a long time, seeing people I deemed as unworthy being escalated in an industry I was trying so hard just to get footing. The anger swelled in me and clouded my thoughts and tainted my work. It will do the same to you.

Why dwell on the past when the most important thing is to look toward the future. If this “Arcade Film” is the only egg in your basket then you have a problem. A good filmmaker is always thinking and plotting new projects. Maybe it’s a good idea for you to put your energies into a new project instead of spending your valuable time digging up info to defame another colleagues work.

If you think for one second that any documentary or reality TV isn’t stilted in some way to make the audience feel a certain emotion, you are crazy. ALL docs are edited to create a narrative story. If they weren’t no one on earth would want to watch them. In most cases a the focus of a doc isn’t realized until the very end of shooting. Once all the footage is tallied the film makers see what they have and find and angle.

It’s not healthy to get mad at every film that comes out that may be similar to an idea you have had in the past or are working on at the time. This happens 100s of times a day. There are no new ideas. I guarantee a thousand writers have the same idea at the same time everyday, but the rule generally is, whoever gets to the finish line first wins.

Please let your anger go and focus that energy on making the best film you can make, no matter what it may be about.

No, zota, not “with it.” Day was saying that Wiebe held the record for almost 2 years with the first score. The record he held after that point was with the Funspot score, which did remain the top score, but for a 48 hr. interruption, until they verified Mitchell’s tape some six months later.
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aside:six months-does that number mean anything to you? if Mruczek is really just a Mitchell cronie, wouldn’t he be just a leeetle more concerned with checking the official tape a bit sooner to make sure his beloved Billy stays on top?
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Granted, TG did decide to reclassify Wiebe’s score in Oct. 2003, but under serious pressure from the gaming community. You’ve read that message board and the overall tenor of the posts that decried the use of a double donkey kong board to reach such a high score. Mruczek was defending Wiebe at that point, and are you going to tell me that Mruczek was only doing that because he could see into the future and know that the whole world would be scrutinizing his handling of the Wiebe situation, so he better act like he’s on Wiebe’s side?

No-to Mruczek it was just business as usual, and it was just another score that needed to be verified.

The reason they didn’t accept Wiebe’s other videos was pretty obvious. Even with all the attempts to make The King of Kong fit neatly into Aristotle’s plot arc and to define a clean protagonist and a horrible antagonist, who is really the most seedy individual in the film? It’s Mr. Awesome himself. You don’t find him at all a bit disturbing and vengeful? You don’t think that his name would raise some eyebrows when TG discovered his involvement with Wiebe after all they knew about him. It raised some eyebrows for me.

Now one area that does strike me as problematic is the fact that apparently Steve made a trip to San Jose and proved he could reach the kill screen in front of TG staff (http://www.twingalaxies.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=24476&highlight=#24476). That is the most indicting bit of info as far I can tell, but the movie never gets into that.

But points go to TG also in Mruczek’s repeated offer to travel to Steve’s to verify his score personally. Mruczek was going to pay his own way, bring a TG approved board and give it to Steve. Steve posts at 11:56 on Nov. 10 that he’s up for Mruczek’s offer (http://www.twingalaxies.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=24476&highlight=#24476), and from a later post of Mruczek’s it is clear that Steve did call him, but Mruczek only got the message. So-the question there is: who dropped the ball on that one? Mruczek seems to indicate he did not. But Steve doesn’t post anymore on the TG website, so it’s impossible to tell.

Ah, so many mysteries! I guess it is just as easy to write revisionist history even in the digital age with all these message boards, videos and recorded conversations that should help clarify things.

Hmmmm…after all this late night reading (and with Lost’s pot-boiler finale fresh in my brain) I could almost see all of these guys in on this from the beginning. Wiebe, Mruczek, Mitchell, and Day hire Gordon to write a movie in which they are the stars and play their respective real life roles in a documentary to create controversy that will stir interest and get people running to the message boards and the KoK website. Everyone’s happy: Steve gets famous, Billy gets to ham it up, Mruczek and Day get exposure for the competitive gaming industry. It sounds like a good plot for a movie, and wouldn’t you know it? One is in the works.

So what? It was probably omitted because it neither added to nor subtracted from the film’s premise. While Wiebe got a “free lunch”, Mitchell got to look “generous” in front of his cronies. In fact, it’d be a net gain for Wiebe were the scene omitted altogether since he wouldn’t have been portrayed as a stalker/interloper. I, too, might not have shown up to a private party that my rival has crashed.

Billy denies Steve the satisfaction of playing one-on-one on Donkey Kong. They’d played Donkey Kong one-on-one a year before the documentary was filmed at a previous championship.

Again, so what? Multiple people state multiple times that past events don’t matter; actively defending records in verifiable fashions in the now is most important. Mitchell says this himself as he’s dodging Wiebe…or, he was quoted out of context and made to dodge Wiebe. In any case, he said it at some point and his actions did not match his words.

It seems like Steve Wiebe finally gets a chance to top Billy and that same day, a videotape arrives and Billy tops Wiebe. Steve Wiebe already had the top spot in Donkey Kong, having achieved the record before the documentary started.

This statement being true would have destroyed the premise of the film. I doubt it would have been made in this event. As reported in the picture and this thread, Wiebe’s score was apparently “declassified” from regular consideration. Again, I don’t see how this picture would have received funding were the premise to be, “Let’s film a guy beat his own internationally recognized high score.” Basic fact checking would ferret this out. I could be wrong on this one but haven’t seen compelling evidence thus far.

In any case, it’s bad taste, contradictory, and downright hypocritical to require Wiebe to double-confirm his records via video and live play but allow Mitchell to send in a fuzzy, suspicious “exhibition” videotape and force it into the records without the scrutiny afforded to Wiebe (or anything close to it). The filmmakers did not make this up; all relevant facts are caught on film.

The videotape that Billy sends in has a suspicious glitch. The videotape was a copy and the original was sent in with no glitch.

Irrelevant. Does not address “Mitchell gets records on his terms” vs. “Make Wiebe jump through hoops”. Mitchell could have helped himself by making the original available to the filmmakers. They would have been more reliable couriers than an 80+ year old woman. Or he could have used a copy tape other than the one that recorded “Who’s the Boss?” for five seasons.

Two representatives of Twin Galaxies arcade forced their way into Steve’s garage and looted the machine. Two members of the same social scene as Twin Galaxies and Steve were let into his garage by his grandmother, and asked Steve for permission to photograph the circuit board.

The film represents TG staff as pushy but ultimately invited guests, which is probably true. While Wiebe cooperated with their requests, the film is not out of line in portraying the TG staff as less than honorable. The “secret master hacker and his gum” accusations alleged by TG were preposterous. Anyone even remotely involved in digital circuitry would understand how difficult it would be to cover up such a modification. Every chip on the board can be probed and/or disassembled and compared to known values. TG almost certainly has the equipment to do so. The only reason they’d resort to superstition is that they’ve studied the data and found no discrepancies.

A number of insiders constantly appraised Billy on what was going on at the competition and took suggestions from him. Multiple times, the conversations being shown from both sides are not the same conversation.

This is too vague. My response could be anywhere between, “So what?” and “This changes everything!” The truth is probably in between, but, given my reaction to the previous bullets, I’m leaning toward the “so what” side.

I’ll stipulate that the film takes dramatic license, but, from where I sit, most of what was glossed over is irrelevant to the film proper and would have made a more boring movie. The rest of your post is not as high of quality as your initial bullet points. Therein you reveal your personal investment in the matter and, thus, your emotional attachment. Therefore, if a reply is forthcoming, I suggest neither self-sourcing nor any literature from Twin Galaxies. As a previous poster mentioned, TG has vested interest in overturning negative aspects portrayed in the movie.