Donkey Kong champion loses title for ‘using emulator’

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The Donkey Kong world champion has been stripped of a record he set for the 1981 arcade classic following claims he did not use an original machine.

Twin Galaxies, which tracks video games records, believes that Billy Mitchell’s 1,047,200 score on the original Donkey Kong was achieved using an emulator.

An emulator is a computer program that replicates an arcade or console machine.

Twin Galaxies was alerted by Donkey Kong forum moderator Jeremy Young.

Mr Young suspected that images seen in a video of Mr Mitchell’s Donkey Kong world record run were impossible to generate on an arcade machine.

He believed that the game must have been played on an emulator.

Twin Galaxies then did its its own investigations, which led it to conclude that Mr Mitchell had not used the original arcade machine.

In a post on its findings, Twin Galaxies said: “Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Billy Mitchell’s scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards.

“We have notified Guinness World Records of our decision.”

The BBC has contacted Mr Mitchell for comment.

As well as conducting its own investigation, Twin Galaxies said it had taken into account at least two different third-party inquiries which came to “identical conclusions”.

It concluded: “With this ruling, Twin Galaxies can no longer recognise Billy Mitchell as the first million-point Donkey Kong record holder. “

It said that record would now be bestowed on another gamer, Steve Wiebe.

Written by Maybell