Billy Mitchell

Early Arcade Fame and First Records

Billy Mitchell was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts. His interest in video games started around age 16, driven by a friendly competition with a classmate on Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. He contacted Walter Day of Twin Galaxies, then a single arcade in Iowa, to ask about world records. In November 1982, Mitchell was part of a Life magazine photoshoot with other arcade champions. At this event, he challenged a player named Steve Sanders to Donkey Kong, showing the game's impassable kill screen at level 22 while setting a high score of 874,300. Sanders later admitted to lying about his previous scores, and Twin Galaxies gave the record to Mitchell, who kept it for over 18 years.

In 1983, Mitchell was involved in plans for a national gaming tour called the Electronic Circus, though the project did not succeed. He spent that summer at Twin Galaxies, concentrating on a small number of games. By 1984, Day named Mitchell Twin Galaxies' player of the year. However, the 1983 video game crash forced the arcade to close its storefront. After submitting a record score for BurgerTime in 1985, Mitchell left competitive gaming for about ten years to work at his family's restaurant business, Rickey's Restaurant, which he later owned.

The Quest for a Perfect Pac-Man

Mitchell's most famous early accomplishment involved Pac-Man. After a widely reported but false claim of a 6 million-point score by an eight-year-old in 1982, Mitchell worked with a friend in 1983 to plan the route to the game's highest possible score. This needed a perfect, no-death run through all 255 standard levels and then moving through the glitched, half-garbled screen of level 256 to get every possible point, for a total of 3,333,360.

In 1999, with a group of Canadian players said to be close to this score, Mitchell returned to gaming. After one player came within 90 points of perfection, Mitchell achieved the perfect score on July 3, 1999, at an arcade in Laconia, New Hampshire. The achievement was confirmed by Funspot and Twin Galaxies, which called him Video Game Player of the Century. Namco, Pac-Man's creator, invited him to the Tokyo Game Show. Later that year, Mitchell offered a $100,000 prize to anyone who could pass the glitched level 256.

Rivalry and The King of Kong

Mitchell's competition with teacher Steve Wiebe over the Donkey Kong world record was the subject of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong. Wiebe repeatedly tried to break Mitchell's long-standing record, often asking Mitchell to be present for direct challenges at places like the Funspot arcade. Mitchell stressed the importance of setting records at official locations rather than with submitted tapes. He did not go to Wiebe's early attempts, saying he needed to practice again.

The film showed the back-and-forth record fights. Wiebe first had a score over one million points accepted then taken back by Twin Galaxies because his machine used an unofficial circuit board. He later set a verified record in front of witnesses. Hours after that, Mitchell sent a tape showing a higher score of 1,047,200, which Twin Galaxies first accepted. After complaints, Mitchell's score was canceled for being on tape and not witnessed, giving the record back to Wiebe. Mitchell later said the film's editing made him look bad, resulting in hate mail and harassing calls.

Later Records and Public Profile

Mitchell kept pursuing records after the film came out. On July 26, 2007, he took back the Donkey Kong record with a score of 1,050,200, known as the Mortgage Brokers score as it was said to be set during a mortgage brokers' convention. This record was later broken, but Mitchell reclaimed it on July 24, 2010, with a score of 1,062,800 at a Boomers arcade in Florida. This was the last time he held the official record.

His public presence went beyond record-setting. He came in last in the 2007 Microsoft Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championships. In 2008, he was the first video game player on a Topps Allen & Ginter trading card. In 2015, he unsuccessfully sued Cartoon Network, arguing a cheating video game character on Regular Show copied his likeness. Mitchell also appeared in several other documentaries about competitive gaming during the 2000s and 2010s.

The 2018 Investigation and Fallout

In 2017, questions came up about videos of Mitchell's 2010 Boomers arcade record, where he had used the same cabinet for Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. by changing circuit boards. An investigator, Jeremy Young, later studied this footage and Mitchell's earlier record tapes from 2007. In early 2018, Young gave evidence that the games were played using the MAME emulator software, not original arcade hardware. His analysis noted statistically unlikely scoring rates and visual signs in the footage matching MAME's loading sequence.

The investigation also found that the referee who verified the disputed scores was Todd Rogers, a former Twin Galaxies referee who had been banned for sending in fake scores. Mitchell defended himself on a radio show, stating he never played MAME and suggesting the tapes might have been faked. He said he sent original tapes and evidence to Twin Galaxies to argue against the claims.

Record Removals and Legal Battles

On April 12, 2018, Twin Galaxies announced the results of its investigation. It found clear evidence that at least two of Mitchell's submitted scores were not done on original hardware, pointing to the MAME-specific visual output. The organization removed all of Mitchell's scores from its leaderboards and banned him from future submissions. Guinness World Records, which used Twin Galaxies for verification, did the same, disqualifying all of Mitchell's records, including his perfect Pac-Man score.

Mitchell threatened to sue both organizations. In early 2019, he filed defamation lawsuits against Twin Galaxies, Jeremy Young, and a YouTuber. Twin Galaxies filed a counterclaim against Mitchell and Walter Day in late 2020. In 2024, Mitchell and Twin Galaxies reached a settlement. As part of the agreement, Twin Galaxies posted Mitchell's scores on a new historical leaderboard that is separate from its current competitive records. Mitchell remains banned from Twin Galaxies competitions.