Midweek Mention... King of Kong: A Fistful of Dollars

King of Kong

Sidey: King of Kong.

he, it's

Reegs: full of quarters.

Sidey: I've seen this quite a few times actually. Oh, have you? Yeah, I've got it on DVDI certainly had, when I had DVDs I had this,

yeah. VHS

and I had seen, uh, Billy Mitchell on an, on an MTV documentary thing before as

Dan: Really? Right.

Sidey: Okay. So I had previous with him.

Reegs: 'cause he was quite the star, wasn't

Sidey: Yeah. Um,

Dan: And people who don't know who Billy Mitchell is, where have you been all our lives? Um,

Sidey: not looking hard enough. You're

Dan: not looking hard. You're not looking hard enough. Billy Mitchell was the King of Kong, uh, and we're talking Donkey Kong arcade games back in the eighties.

Reegs: In 1982, he set the highest w world record score at a live event as we're informed actually in this movie of 874 odd thousand I think.

Sidey: yeah, this is a, uh, started out. As a documentary about competitive retro video gaming.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And also that it's has a sort of, uh, official score [00:01:00] recognizing body called twin Galaxies. Yeah. And the guy that runs that

Reegs: Walter Day

Sidey: fucking weird.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: yeah. He's done. They all do it through a labor of love, of passion.

Um, Walter, um. You know, would like to be as good as some of the gamers that have got the highest scores.

Sidey: It's like any referee, his way of staying involved with it is being a ref. He's not good

enough

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: right.

Reegs: that's right. He, I think he even explicitly says in the movie, uh, about wanting to do it to, to meet girls. And there isn't, there isn't a single woman in this movie, apart, apart from Doris Self, um, the cubit 80-year-old

Sidey: gamer,

Reegs: Um, but yeah, uh, I dunno.

Dan: Yeah, it's not, um,

Sidey: and as they started it's magnet, no, as, as they started making the documentary about it, then they sort of uncovered

Reegs: the story, Oh, there's all sorts going on here. Cozying up to the establishment and all sorts going on. Uh, and it, and it's weird, this documentary was 2007, I think it came out, was it?

And it, you know, the events are sort of taking place over [00:02:00] sort of 2004, 2005, that type, and it looks so old and, and eSports wasn't, doesn't seem to have been a thing. It's just populated by these super nerdy guys.

Dan: but these were the pioneer pioneers of, of eSports,

Sidey: at

Reegs: Vanguard.

They

Sidey: they, yeah. They'd been a, a magazine feature. I can't remember if it was Time Magazine or something where they did, they, this

Reegs: it was Time Life. Yeah.

Sidey: where they'd tried to sort of shone a light on this, um, sort of niche culture back then.

And there was a guy who had been saying he had, he was better than Billy Mitchell. Yeah. And at the. Magazine photo shoot for this thing. They were both there and so they had a ding dong and Billy Mitchell wipe the floor with him. Yeah. And then this guy had then wi, seems like everyone at that time who came into Billy Mitch was orbit.

Reegs: they just fell for his aura.

that guy that you're talking about is Steve Sanders.

He's author of Masters Guide to Donkey Kong. Um, and he's the one who talks us through this importance of this small set of video games, Pacman, [00:03:00] Ms. Pacman Gallagher, and Donkey Kong as being like the pinnacle of gaming, um, because of testing. Eye hand, no. What does he call it in this eye hand coordination?

I'd never heard it that

Dan: Yeah. I used to play football. A guy called Steve Sanders, but it's not the same guy. He

Sidey: He actually has a bit of an arc in this.

Reegs: Yeah, absolutely. Everyone does. Uh, in fact, the way the thing starts, it starts with Billy Mitchell. Yeah. Um, the unbelievable hair of Billy

Sidey: Uh, per like Uber stubble. Yeah. Mullet.

Reegs: It's not just a mullet though.

Sidey: No, that's not, that's not giving, its full,

Reegs: you're not doing its justice. It's like

Sidey: whole look is, he is then wearing like slacks and a shirt. He is always got a tie and it's like it's statue Liberty or it's the stars and bars, that sort of stuff.

He's super into the USA. He's

Reegs: He's talking about how video games are meant to be played for fun.

Um, but then there's an another set of people that will do it to like take it to their, um. You know, test their skills and he, he literally compares himself to a fighter pilot, uh, the Red Baron, um, [00:04:00] talking about the number of kills and seven kills. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Nobody remembers

who came in third. The American number one. The, the,

Sidey: They actually give you a little snapshot of what his psyche, what his mentality is like. 'cause they show he has a chicken wing. Hot wing sauce in these big bottles, and he goes to the supermarket and he, he puts his in front of all the other competitors.

Like, this guy's a fucking loser.

Reegs: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like a, a character from like the office or something.

Yeah. But come to life. But

Dan: yeah, they, you know, the people that fall within his orbit absolutely. Are taken by him and

Reegs: Well,

Dan: he is the hero he thinks he yeah. Okay. Horror

Reegs: got Aura, definitely. And we see it. Um, you know, we see him in his power stance. Um, we see him

Sidey: Sand's, quote scripture about how

Reegs: about how amazing, he is,

Sidey: how he'd been. Right by, um, by

Reegs: Uh, that's what he says. Uh, steel, what is it? Iron Forges Iron. It's what he says about his relationship with Billy. Yeah, it's amazing. Um, and we meet his rival, Steve. We, but

Sidey: Webe

Reegs: we,

Sidey: because then no one ever bothers to ask him his [00:05:00] name right.

Until the very, very end.

Reegs: Well, Walter keeps getting it

Sidey: and they've been saying it wrong the whole time, but he's been laid off and he's, and they and his wife goes, I wondered if he was maybe autistic. Like, yeah, no

Reegs: no shit. Yeah. I know you

Sidey: fucking one in this film is autistic. Yeah. Um, and to he says to gain some sort of, uh, control or get a hobby.

Um. He start, he decides just completely randomly from what I could work out to start. I think he reads an article

Dan: well, he was a really

Reegs: world record and he's, he's basically like, he can do that. And, and his story is he's a sort of nearly man. Yeah, he's been brilliant at lots of stuff. He was a good athlete. He was a great musician.

Sidey: Good at drawing.

Reegs: do this scene where he's talking about his, um. Eye hand coordination and he's drumming and it's like a scene outta fucking whiplash.

I expected, um, the guy to come in and start screaming

Dan: he

Sidey: it's his child's like miniature drum kit. It was like Simon Day, he

Dan: was on the, he was on the Seattle grunge scene at the same time as Nvo just kind of missed out on that. He was on like, um, could have been a, a great picture, but [00:06:00] he,

Reegs: anxiety took him at a great mo when he was

Dan: in like the.

Reegs: trial

essentially. Couldn't perform. Yeah. So he's just nearly, it's never quite happened for him, even though we see a lot of evidence to suggest he's a bright, intelligent, devoted family

Sidey: seems way more. Uh, well adjusted than the other people. Yeah. The other that, that were shown. And then we're gonna see him in his garage just playing Donkey Kong Jr.

Dan: Because he gets a machine,

Sidey: He actually figures it out.

Reegs: it's like beautiful mind. He's just like drawing it out on the, um, on

Sidey: the patterns of play. And he figures out you, if you move him that way, you can actually control where the bowels go.

So he's. Videotapes himself setting a new

Reegs: Yeah.

With his kids screaming for a shit halfway through, screaming at him. He needs to, dad, can you come and wipe my ass? Stop playing games. He's only about

Dan: I'm about to set a new world record. And he is like, and so it's, it is all, uh, it's all going off. But it's called, uh, it's in doubt a little bit because, um.

I [00:07:00] think he, he, they don't

Sidey: they don't, they don't

Dan: they don't accept

Sidey: Well they do, but not in this

Reegs: Well, it's clear, it's the as it will become clear later, it's gonna be like Billy Mitchell objects to this,

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: well,

there's another guy as well that's bought a circuit board for him,

Reegs: What? Yeah, so they, they have a team that take this all very seriously.

Robin Ekk was the head referee and he watches like hours and hours. He's like, I've got 200 hours of like, um, challenges to watch and all that stuff. So he goes with another referee and they do a breaking and entering into, um, Steve Weeb Be's garage to go and examine the circuit board on his machine to make sure essentially that he's not playing on an And at this time they don't discover anything wrong with the machine, although they're. Desperately looking for evidence, but they do find that it was sent to him by this other guy. Uh, Roy Schlitt. He calls himself Mr. Awesome. And drives the awesome mobile.

Sidey: He's got, um, videos on how to meet women. Yeah. And I don't think he's ever met one in his life.

Dan: Well, he's got a photo of him like looking all buff, isn't he?[00:08:00]

Sidey: It's the guy. He just, um, Ray Kondo in. Um,

Reegs: it looks like that, doesn't

Sidey: that's exactly what it looks like in the Berlin.

Dynamite. Yeah.

Reegs: He's got an ax to grind with Billy Mitchell because he's had, he had a score on missile

Sidey: Do you remember that one? It was the one with the track

Reegs: I do remember that one. And he was accused of cheating? I think so. You know, he's definitely, um, so his connection now to Steve Weeby, unbeknownst to Weeby, who, who had no idea of any of this going on, has now sort of put his record. Um,

Sidey: so

we we're gonna get a bit of, um, Billy then saying, listen, if you wanna, if you want

to really have some kudos, you really want to set the record straight, then that needs to be done in person, you know, with an audience. You can't just submit, um. A videotape bearing in mind what he does in a minute and um,

Dan: yeah.

Reegs: So they travel to this place, the fun spot. Yeah. Um,

Sidey: it's a well

Reegs: get Jose Esposito's the best around at this point of all these like nerds playing, uh, computer

Sidey: And there's this fucking little shit bag. Here is another [00:09:00] disciple. I think they actually call him a disciple. Yeah. Of Billy

Reegs: Brian Coup. He talks about the machine there. Nobody's ever got, there's a kill screen. Yeah, kill screen coming up.

Dan: Will he? He's he's on the high score, um, chart, isn't he? I think like four, four fifth for Brian Co. And,

Sidey: He's constantly on his clamshell phone to Billy,

Dan: he's hoping he's gonna get, uh, a kill screen one day, but he's just Yeah.

Drumming up. There's gonna be a kill screen

Reegs: Well, Steve

Sidey: goes and watches a few times and, um, and he lets, um, Steve know that Billy isn't gonna come. Yeah. Billy is a total co in the whole, the whole of this. Um, he'll never face him. Um, but he's on the phone to himself. Yeah. He is like 600,000 on his first man.

And, you know, it is a good game and, but keeps he's sort of trying to put him off. He's like hovering

Reegs: he's like really intensely watching over his shoulder and loudly talking to the documentary crew. Like, oh, anything could happen at any time. Three Fireballs could just get you all that

stuff is,

Sidey: You get the feeling that he would definitely fuck Billy if he got the chance.

Reegs: It's, they don't want Steve [00:10:00] Weeby to succeed because Billy Mitchell's success and Twin

Sidey: It's, all intertwined now intertwined Yeah.

Reegs: completely. So the whole world of eSports is sort of propped

Dan: And, and for those listening who dunno what a kill screen is, is basically because these computer games were so old, it got finally got to a screen where it didn't say the end 'cause they just ran on forever. Like Pacman just runs on forever, it just gets faster or whatever.

Um. Eventually the screen just

Sidey: it just randomly die.

Code

Reegs: can't compile anymore and it just falls over. Um, so there is like a maximum amount of this game that you can play for. Bearing in mind they do point this out, the average game for an average gamer is about a minute, and these guys are playing it for hours at a time, getting

Sidey: like, yeah, I was thinking the Ks must hate 'em 'cause they're just putting one quarter and then they just fucking play the whole night and then they fuck off. Um. But he does, he goes around and rallies the troops. And at this point, Steve has been, um, you know, he's been playing for ages.

His concentration starting to flag, but ironically having a crowd there perks him up and he does break the, the record. Um, but we've been [00:11:00] also been shown Billy and this fucking weird, um, Cuba woman and he gives her a videotape and he says, listen, I don't mind if you lose your luggage, but you cannot lose this videotape and you must deliver it to fucking Steve, blah, blah, blah.

And, um. She jets off and it's almost like immediately that he breaks the

Reegs: about 10 minutes after he's broken the record.

They've literally just put his score up on the website.

Sidey: Yeah. And it is the most hatchet job videotape.

Reegs: they play this video, so obviously jumping and skipping.

Sidey: it's

got static all side on the side of the screen with the, with the

Dan: yeah, and the, and the judges are is,

and you know, everybody's been saying you can't.

Submit a video score. You gotta do it live. He

Sidey: himself had poo-pooed the original video

Dan: Billy then sends in this dodgy

Sidey: a million, this one's a mill.

Dan: and they're, they're kind of questioning it, but they don't want to question Billy. Oh God. They don't wanna question Billy.

frighten to Billy,

Reegs: the score is credited, uh, to Billy and, uh, you know, Steve sort of [00:12:00] leaves a kind of defeated man a little bit.

Um,

Sidey: he says, am I, can I watch the tape? And they're like, no, no, no. It's not possible.

Reegs: Uh, so we sort of, it's, it's sad, you know? I mean, he's sort of, he's issued this friendly challenge. He's proven his metal,

Sidey: know,

well, he's been challenged by Billy and he's stood up to everything he's asked him to do. He's

Reegs: he's come down to his, you know, to the place to do it, and it's not worked out, and he's gone sort of home with his, almost, with his tail between his legs.

And then it's nine months later and the story picks up again because Twin Galaxies is gonna be appointed the official record keepers for the Guinness Book of World Records. So suddenly that does kick it up a little bit of notch.

Dan: Well, they've got a few weeks to get in a high, another high score and they're going to

Sidey: they're hosting like a Grand Prix or something, you know,

Dan: So they all go back down

Reegs: well it's, it's, it's enough to get Steve Weeby like motivated again. And he, I of the tiger goes back into

Sidey: actually.

Reegs: he? Literally, um, he goes back into training and then he It is in Billy Mitchell's yard in Florida.

Dan: Well, that's it. It's [00:13:00] about 10 minutes from Billy Mitchell's house and it's,

Sidey: he actually phones him. He won't take his call, but he leaves a, he leaves an answer phone message from Billy saying, look, I'm gonna be in town

to come

Dan: Billy Mitchell's shit scared that his record's

Sidey: he even goes and eats in, in Billy's, uh, restaurant.

Reegs: Yeah, I, there's some amazing bits because he sort of turns up and then drives off. It's like an episode of Alan Partridge or,

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: like he turns up in his car and then they're like, oh, um, you know, Billy's not coming today. And then it just says like, captions, this is Billy's car Amazing.

Sidey: uh, yeah, he's a chill dick.

And then so we do get Steve, uh, grinding away at the game trying to get. The, the million or the high score that he needs to get in the Guinness Book of Records. Um, and, and lo andhold Billy does actually turn out not to play, just turns out with his wife. Um, and she sort of, um, is hanging around and he says, oh, oh, hi Billy.

And he, and he just walks off and goes, there's some people, I just don't wanna spend too much

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: It's such a dick.

Dan: like,

Reegs: like, he's about six years old.

Dan: He's [00:14:00] never had any kind of interaction with him. Apart from that, you know, you just think, what has he done to, apart from play Donkey

Reegs: is obsessing over a game that you obsessed over.

Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. Um, wow. But the, the time does run out. Um, he doesn't get there. He, he gets like 800 th I

Reegs: Yeah. It's near, it's quite, it's near, but not enough. Um, but at this type though, Walter does sort of comes to accept, like, hang on a minute, you're a man of integrity. Yeah. I think he learns to pronounce his name right.

Uh, which is nice of him.

Someone

Sidey: says it wrong. Um, and he is, and finally he actually says, no, it's Weeby. Yeah. Could

Dan: Could you, could you tell me? Yeah. And he, he, he does. Yeah. Walter then starts to think, I dunno, maybe the bigger picture, I can't just be up Billy Mitchell's ass the whole

Sidey: Well, they don't need to

Reegs: Well, it's more like he's met him and he's seen Steve and his family come down, be nice.

Be part of the scene. Yeah. And he's seen Billy behave like

Sidey: well also they've got kind of accreditation of Guinness now. Yeah. They're not beholden. As [00:15:00] exclusively to like this one

Reegs: It's becoming bigger than Billy Mitchell.

Sidey: Douche bag.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: Um, so, uh, they write him an apology note of sorts and, you know, Steve, I think seems happy with that.

But in an epilogue we do learn that no one has publicly beaten the score that Steve Webe put in at the Fun Spot Machine, which was said to be a cursed machine as

Sidey: Yeah,

Reegs: extra difficult. Um, and the mi um, Mitchell's tape score was. Struck from the record, and Webe then submitted another tape score, which was accepted for well over a million points, which meant at that point he held the live and recorded highest scores of all time.

All of this stuff been massively surpassed by now,

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: the current world record is 1.27 million. Yeah. So in 2021,

Sidey: And it turns

Dan: they get to the kill screen?

Sidey: they, they subsequently not, it's not in the movie, but, um, Billy Mitch was found to have been using emulators and all of his scores have [00:16:00] been struck off. And it turns out that a lot of this was maybe. Sort of sensationalized in the

Reegs: film. What are you saying?

Sidey: And there was other, there were other people who were also really, really good. They just cut it out so that they could just put it up against as these two. But I think all the way that Billy behaves, you can't edit that.

Reegs: I think it's more, this is definitely Steve's story. A man who, you know, the underdog who. Found something in life that he was good at, no matter how pointless or stupid like anything else is in the world. Um, and he found something that he was good at and he did it and he became brilliant and it, you saw him like grow in character and self-esteem through this movie.

Dan: well, you, you say pointless and stupid and Okay. Video game, but it's like Donkey Kong. Do you know what I mean? It's like everybody knows this game. It's um, if you're gonna be good at a game, then being good at the toughest one there is

Sidey: could say it was he was the best in the world at something. Yeah. Yeah. E

Dan: Yeah. E exactly. Um, and. It was, uh, very much a, a movie with [00:17:00] lots of strange characters, with lots of strange arcs. I mean, Walter, he, he was just a,

Reegs: brings out the guitar at

Dan: brings out the guitar. At

Reegs: He was a failed musician when he, uh,

Sidey: um, Webe. We

Webe and Mitchell, um, did dispute the claims of the movie, both of them, and said that they were actually on much friendlier terms than is portrayed in the documentary.

Dan: I hope so. Yeah.

Sidey: Um, I find it hard to believe that you could be friends with Billy Mitchell. Seems like,

Reegs: well, he can't be a successful business person to like and be a complete bellend all the time. I, there was a few times where I wondered if he was starting to laugh as they were cut. Like he was almost playing a bit of a character.

Yeah. Um, like some things were so stupid. The bit about the, when he's pointing at his tie

But he is going, what? Three letters. What he says, what three initials am my, what do I live by? And he's pointing at his tie and he goes, TIE, the director. And he goes, no, USA is like you. That must have been [00:18:00] written.

That's too good. Um, yeah. I, I really liked this

Dan: Oh.

I thought it was brilliant. I think it is just, um, and it, they may have been, um, you know, built up a little bit for the viewer and made a little more of those arguments and characters, um, arguments than actually was true. But it all made for great viewing. Um, I had seen it before. It was one of those.

Documentaries that are absolutely no problem in sitting down and watching again. Yeah.

Sidey: Um, I dunno that the subject matter would've appealed to Chris necessary, but the runtime would have, I think, breezy like 80 something minutes. It rous by no time.

Reegs: And there's, uh, I followed this up with another documentary that's on Prime at the moment about speed runners.

Sidey: Oh yeah, I'm well into that.

Reegs: That is fucking

Sidey: amazing. What's the, oh, you have hit me. Hit me up with a documentary. So I'm well into that.

Dan: Well, the, it, you, you mentioned Alan Partridge in the office and things like that. And it is [00:19:00] very much like that. It's, um. These are people that you hope aren't taking it as seriously as they're portrayed on tv because

It

is just a joke.

Reegs: Well, but I do, I always love people who, they, they, they're, they love their subcultures. It's a bit like green room, right? That's gonna be about

Dan: Certainly some of them did like,

Reegs: absolutely, you know, people who just, they find the things that they love and they just do it no matter any, what anybody else says.

It's great. I,

Sidey: I, I'd say this is a must watch. It's a super, super strong recommend.

Dan: Oh, it's a high score.