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Guinness World Records reinstates Billy Mitchell's scores, unanimously decided

by nintendaan
18 June 2020
GN Version 5.0


Back in 2017, the first concrete information about the video game cheating of Billy Mitchell was unearthed. It came to light that Mitchell used MAME emulation hardware and used Twin Galaxies referees to put in unlawful scores. In 2018, Guinness World Records decided to pull the highscores, stating the following: ''The Guinness World Records titles relating to Mr. Mitchell's highest scores on Donkey Kong have all been disqualified due to Twin Galaxies being our source of verification for these achievements. Twin Galaxies was the original source of verification for these record titles and in line with their decision to remove all of Mr. Mitchell's records from their system, we have disqualified Mr. Mitchell as the holder of these two records.''

Now, somewhat more than two years later, GWR changed their mind in light of new evidence. Their statement:

In the light of compelling new evidence received by Guinness World Records, the Records Management Team has unanimously decided to reverse decisions made in April 2018 in regards to videogame high scores achieved by Billy Mitchell between 1982 and 2010.

As of 10 June 2020, the following historical records for the arcade platform have been reinstated:

3 July 1999 - First Perfect Score on PAC-Man – 3,333,360 Points
7 November 1982 – Highest score on Donkey Kong – 874,300 Points
4 June 2005 – Highest score on Donkey Kong – 1,047,200 Points
14 July 2007 – Highest score on Donkey Kong – 1,050,200 Points
31 July 2010 – Highest score on Donkey Kong – 1,062,800 Points

This reinstatement also re-recognizes Mr Mitchell as the first gamer to reach the kill screen on Donkey Kong (7 November 1982) and first gamer to score 1 million points on Donkey Kong (4 June 2005).

Guinness World Records is always open to accepting new evidence for historical achievements, and to reviewing new and existing evidence for disputed titles.

In this case, a re-examination of the records in question and the emergence of key eyewitness and expert testimonials led to a reversal of earlier disqualifications and the reinstating of Mr Mitchell’s original records. The records archive has been updated accordingly to reflect this.


Mitchell must be rather thrilled to those scores back, though we must question the ''key eyewitness and expert testimonails'' used to revert this decision. GWR isn't willing to share any significant details about the ordeal, which is fishy at the very least. We can only guess at what happened here.

[GWR]