Game Design Theory

For a number of us, video games have been a staple of our past. There was nothing more satisfying than mopping the floor with a sibling or friend in a competitive beat-em-up game, or watching your vehicle rush past your “ghost” (a transparent computer routing your best time that’s saved on that specific level) and achieving a new high score in popular racing games. For awhile growing up the local arcades, bowling alleys, and carnivals were the only place we could experience these types of arcade machines; unless you were one of the few rich and lucky enough to buy your own system. But for a majority of us, that was a dream for our adult lives, though in those moments, we worked with what we had. With the release of games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man–games that revolved around setting the highest score possible–a whole new slew of players rose from out of their caves, and into the spotlight. In a surge of Y2K-like mania, players rushed to complete as many levels in Pac-Man as possible to try to be the first to achieve the infamous “kill screen”. This kill screen was actually an error in the system’s memory, however. When the player reached level 256 (to put this into perspective, around six to seven hours of constant play), the game would attempt to load a nonexistent level; resulting in half the screen corrupting into a jumbled mess. For one man, the infamous King of Kong Billy Mitchell, that jumbled, pixelated screen sparked inspiration; a goal to reach before anyone else. Unfortunately for the constitution of the nature of legality, adherence to the rules was never a strong suit of his.

Early in the race for the highest of scores, there arose a mediator, of sorts. A hub where all submitted scores would be judged and ranked accordingly. In simple terms, the video game’s version of the Guinness Book of World Records surfaced under the name Twin Galaxies. the referees and members of this records community set clear and defined regulations for how records should be submitted, dividing them into two main categories: Records achieved using a traditional arcade cabinet, and those that were achieved using an emulation program; the most popular being MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). This division was put in place for one main reason: a component within MAME allowed a user to create “save states”, or points within the game they could reload to after a failed run; this allowed players to keep saving the game until a high enough score was reached. Any player that was caught manipulating save states in this way to pass off an edited run as an original cabinet one was often stripped of their scores, but indefinitely banned from any further submissions to the archives.

Despite the incessant lies, coercion, and cover-ups in the current day, the notorious King was not always the laughable pariah his efforts have painted him to be. In fact his first few records–the very first highest score of over eight hundred thousand on Donkey Kong, the first to achieve the Pac-Man “kill screen” and subsequent three million point high score, and the later high score recapture in Donkey Kong of over nine hundred thousand–were achieved through legitimate means on genuine arcade cabinets. In his early days, he truly could have been considered a top contender for the royal title, so to speak. But alas as it tends to go for the power hungry, these accolades were not enough. Whether it was because of a constant pull of the rug underneath him from fellow gamer Steve Wiebe as he surpassed Mitchell’s scores or simply seeking recognition for recognition’s sake, his true intentions were never quite deduced. Regardless, the Kid had fallen to greed, and no amount of carefully constructed monologues or flashy american flag ties could help pull him out of this pit.

The first publicly known misstep was the falsified creation of media showcasing Mitchell’s first world record within the original Donkey Kong arcade game. Due to the limits of technology during the Golden Age of video games (where arcades saw the most light), successfully capturing clear evidence and proof of a player achieving a high score was naught but a dreadful challenge, in most cases. This led to communities coming together to a single area to watch the contestant attempt for a higher score. In this era, the simplest way to convince the public of your achievement was to have a large majority present during said achievement; its much harder to deny the same claim from thousands of people than it is from just one man. Despite this mentality however, Mitchell insisted on producing a recording of his first million-point-run, but there were a myriad of errors and inconsistencies within the tape itself. Random screen flashes/tearing over the score, shoddy cut ins and outs of audio throughout the clip, just to name a few, and yet not ten minutes after the video’s submission, Billy Mitchell’s first fabricated score was scribed into record by Twin Galaxies. The second misstep–coincidentally following similar events–was the successful submission of another fabricated score in Donkey Kong’s successor: Donkey Kong Jr. Brought about from the same jealous greed as the original Donkey Kong had given him, Mitchell’s lust for attention and recognition had continued to drive him further and further away from the road to redemption.

The biggest, and arguably most heinous set of missteps made from Billy Mitchell were the lies, cover-ups, and backroom connections he had made over the years with those both inside of and those who contributed to Twin Galaxies. During his time within the gaming records community, Mitchell had made several ties to influential and powerful members within Twin Galaxies. One of which, a referee by the name of Todd Rogers, was actually the definitive referee for both of Billy Mitchell’s high scores in Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. Furthermore, the financial infrastructure that had kept Twin Galaxies soaring past the competition during its heyday was heavily funded and supported by the King of Thieves himself. You know what they say I suppose, why risk losing investment when you can just bet with house money?

Due to several failed lawsuits on Mitchell’s end as well as a collective cavalcade of evidence piled against him, it seems the only fitting end for this erroneous King is to sit alone upon his stolen throne, to look back on achievements that were not ever his to claim, to live in a world where every single plan this supposed mastermind had concocted had failed. And on that note, I would just like to say I really hope you enjoyed this week’s first entry into the history of game design. These posts will typically end up being longer than the rest due to their very nature of being categorized as stories. Regardless, I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I look forward to speaking again this Thursday!

Until then, cheers.

-Ethan