Guinness World Records restores arcade legend Billy Mitchell’s world recordsrecord

Guinness World Records has restored arcade legend Billy Mitchell’s five historic world records. These records were smashed after Twin Galaxies accused the arcade player of cheating. According to Guinness, there is not enough evidence.

Guinness World Records editor-in-chief Craig Glenday says the decision was made after Mitchell appealed to the organization. In investigating the claims, Guinness World Records again looked at the evidence, interviewed new eyewitnesses and asked experts for gameplay analysis and hardware verification. Ultimately, there was not enough evidence for a unanimous disqualification for the Guinness World Records board. In these cases, according to Glenday, Guinness World Records goes back to the decision that was made when the records were set, which in this case means that the records are restored.

In a response, Billy Mitchell says to celebrate the decision. When he was “falsely accused” in 2018, he said he shook his head at “how this could happen.” “But I didn’t shake my head for long. My support system simply wouldn’t allow it. They said never give up.” So Mitchell started collecting all the historical evidence and gathering new material. “While collecting, I started playing. I started to ask myself. Am I really that good? Could I reach the same level of play that I had for so many years?”

This came to a head last year, according to Mitchell, when he said he did so again twenty years after he achieved a perfect Pac-Man score. Also this time in arcade hall Funspot, where two decades earlier he was the first player to get this perfect score at Pac-Man. He forwarded this proof to Guinness World Records.

Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies, says he is happy that Mitchell’s records have been restored. “I was confident this would happen. Anyone who was a part of the old days and watched Mitchell play knows he was fully capable of hitting these records. There was no MAME available to join during the golden age either. to cheat. I’m proud to be a part of this process.”

Day retired from Twin Galaxies in 2010. MAME is the arcade emulator that Mitchell claims to have used to set two records of 1,047,200 and 1,050,200 points in Donkey Kong cheating. Whether Twin Galaxies itself has changed its mind is not clear. Ars Technica reached out to the record organization to get a tea-drinking Kermit the Frog meme in response. Mitchell has sued Twin Galaxies for defamation, on July 6 the two parties are in court.

Twin Galaxies decided in 2018 that Mitchell was cheating, after months of investigation. For example, for certain records, Mitchell is said to have swapped Donkey Kong PCBs and used non-genuine arcade PCBs. This is against the rules, so Mitchell was disqualified from Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records. The records set back include the first perfect Pac-Man score in 1999 and four Donkey Kong scoring records from 1982 to 2010. Also, Guinness World Records again sees Mitchell as the first person to reach Donkey Kong’s killscreen and the first player who gets a million points in Donkey Kong.

What will Mitchell do next? “It’s too hard to say I don’t want new world records, so I think I might. But more than anything, I want to get back to what I do. The ambassadorship of competitive gaming. The legacy that will remain, long after we’re out of here. That’s my real passion and that’s what I will continue to do.”