Eye Candy #9 - "The King of Kong"

The King of Kong - I was little too young to be a huge arcade crawler. I played when I could, sure, and lost many a quarter in “Tron” but I was never obsessive about it. I was more of a Nintendo nerd, spending hours a day with Zelda. This recent documentary is about the world of competitive classic video games (which surprisingly to me, continues to this day) and the obsessive personalities of those involved. I tend to enjoy documentaries that showcase the off-beat and unusual, and this is very much in this vein. Billy Mitchell has been the world record holder on Donkey Kong since 1982. He is a living god in the world competitive electronic gaming, and has his own group of sycophantic followers that will do anything to help Billy protect his reputation and legacy, including the ‘official’ record-keepers of Twin Galaxies, a game record keeping organization founded in the early 80's with extremely close ties to Billy Mitchell. Into this world enters Steve Wiebe, an unemployed Redmond, Washington native, who beats Billy Mitchell’s high score on Donkey Kong. However, his score is thrown out because it’s by videotape.and of Wiebe’s relationship with another player, Roy Schildt. So off Wiebe goes to Funstop, a large video arcade in New Hampshire to repeat his feat live, and then the ensuing competitiveness between the two. This film certainly calls into question the validity of the workings of Twin Galaxies and its impartiality. Mitchell is painted with a fairly unpleasant brush (apparently the whole story is not communicated in the film in regards to the relationship between Mitchell and Wiebe). Some in the Mitchell camp believe that Mitchell is portrayed poorly in the film. According to Steve Sanders, a close friend of Mitchell’s, "Is the movie accurate? I would say yes. Is the movie fair? I would say no." So it’s true but not fair. Hmmm...A well-made documentary on a subject I know absolutely nothing about. Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”