The King of Kong [Part 1]
I am a huge fan of the old school, classic arcade games. I think of great games like Pac Man, Centipede, Galaga, and of course Donkey Kong. The other night I was vegging out and I started watching something that intrigued me. You ever watch a show, that is so stupid but somehow you get sucked into it? It was a documentary called The King of Kong. It was a show about the beginning of professional gaming with the classics. It followed the lives of 2 particular individuals, Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. Now Billy Mitchell is the World Record holder for PacMan (playing the first ever perfect game), DK Jr., DK, and Burgertime. If gamers can be celebrities Billy Mitchell is as famous as they can be. To quote his dad, “Billy Mitchell is a winner.”
Now entering into the picture is Steve Wiebe. Steve originally wanted to be a professional musician. He was smart, talented, athletic… but nothing has ever gone his way. He was in one of the original grunge bands in Seattle—went nowhere. Lead his team to the state finals in baseball and Steve couldn’t pitch because he had hurt his arm. Went to be an engineer at Boeing and was laid off the day he and his wife signed on their house. He’s come up short in a lot of things in his life.
Some of us can relate to that feeling, that no matter what we do, we feel like we can never get ahead. So Steve decided that he was going to beat the DK record. He works and works at it and just can’t pull it off. The record held by Billy Mitchell was over 874,000 and Steve’s record was only 829,000.
Finally Steve breaks the record by becoming the first person ever to break 1,000,000 points. He had recorded his game and sent it in to Twin Galaxies the organization responsible for competitive gaming. They refused to accept his score and determined that the tape could be fraudulent. (Interesting fact: Billy Mitchell is on the board that decides whether or not the tape is admissible.) So Steve, never able to catch a break flies down to play DK live to prove that he broke the record. He finally gets the record only to have a tape submitted by Billy Mitchell breaking 1,000,000 accepted by Twin Galaxy and Steve Wiebe loses the record for the second time on a questionable occurrence. Oh the melodrama…
What’s funny to me is this is about DK!!!!!
What a joke!
But I started to think about it… how often in my own life have I focused on something that meant a lot to me, that others around me thought was foolish?
