Be Excellent To Each Other

lots of donkey kong these days..

played it for hours on my iCade

to find some tips got on a blog disseminating the whole story, there's more to it than the documentary says
found the documentary on youtube.. scary how walter day wants billy mitchel to have it

wiebe says this
http://www.stevewiebe.com/?page_id=15/

and now it's in the ny times: dr hank chen
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/nyreg ... l?src=recg

they're children? is it sport.. just some murmuring on sunday

I do think theres a certain amount of stuff in the film which is done *for the film* rather than it being a real documentary.

FYI you can download Wiebe's recording on some of the torrent sites (lowish res)

So King of Kong is... a film? A game? It isn't immediately apparent...

king of kong is a documentary about world record attempts at donkey kong,
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQZ9wXO8RVs and further

King of Kong is an amazing documentary that enthralled Mrs Meaty, me, Nervous Pete (it was his DVD) and Pupil (and perhaps someone else) when we sat and watched it.

I don't know what's scarier, how seriously they all take their very tiny leaderboard, or Billy Mitchell's mullet.

this blog shows even far more detail on just how serious they take it..

http://donkeykongblog.blogspot.com/

I've watched this on Netflix over the last couple of evenings, it's really good, far better than you'd possibly imagine a documentary about the world's highest Donkey Kong score ever being.

It turns out to be a real human kind of tale, with a clearly defined baddy who the director - (check out the Wiki page for it) - says they had to take care not to make even more cunty than he clearly fucking is.

A surprising treat, and very compact at 80 minutes, if you've got access to Netflix (or other 'distribution methods') then I whole-heartedly recommend you give it a watch.

One of those genuine little gems IMO.

If you enjoyed it there are a few similar documentaries about the Pinball Industry and Chasing Ghosts which is about the highscores for a number of old games (Pacman as the title) and from what I've read online Billy Mitchel is actually quite a nice bloke but was made to look that way (and has played up that 'bad image') for the documentary

Theres also a more recent one about someone going after the high score on Missile command and the issues he has

** Edit **

Missile command : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808299/

Chasing Ghosts : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479879/

The Future of Pinball : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0918519/

Special when lit : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1511532/

Theres another pinball one I'm sure was called something like "Tilt - the history of Stern" but cant find it right now or may be getting it confused with some of the other titles above

Watched this last night (for the second time), funnily enough. Watched it with some non-gamers, and we all just loved it. The characters would have been perfectly pitched if it was fiction, let alone a documentary.

And yes, I kinda dorked out at the dedication and technique on show.

Yeah I know, Wikipedia, but it says the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_ko ... uted_facts





http://www.411mania.com/games/columns/1 ... f-Kong.htm



Cheers zaphod I'll try and dig them out

The stuff about Billy Mitchell sounds like rubbish to me. It's like playground chat.. "I've got a bad story about Billy but I'm not going to tell it... Nope.. not going to tell... Ever.... but you'd love it.. if only you could hear it... it's just the story for you"

It's like he's trying to get people to beg him to tell his stories.

Leave Billy alone!

Selective editing can only take you so far, either Billy Mitchell was reading from a script on more than one occasion 'for the film', and was apparently happy for himself to be made out to be a total cunt (which doesn't make sense to me, surely no one goes into a documentary wanting to be the obvious baddie?), or he is actually a bit of a nasty bastard.

I'm going for the latter.

i think he actually believes he's the goody.. (at least until he saw the final version)

I really enjoyed it, but would've liked to see more of Mr. Awesome and his lightning bolt covered Trans-am.

There's a guy in King of Kong who looks just like Herc from The Wire. Greg Bond, 'Mappy Champion'. Uncanny.



I've seen it four times now and it still makes me chuckle. The Rixondales love it. My mum loves it. My friends love it. And Billy Mitchell is clearly an unpleasant chappy.

Though I kinda feel sorry for his acolyte, the one who is determined to follow in his footsteps, Brian Kuh, who staggeringly displays no inate talent for what he believes to be his one true calling - playing Donkey Kong. And if that ain't tragic, I don't know what is.

Whilst the unfathomably intense Robert Mruczek is utterly glorious in his wide-eyed, unblinking, single minded Terminator-style pursuit against all who would betray the purity of Donkey Kong, to the extent of turning on the man who set him loose, Billy Mitchell.

Roy Schildt's just terrifyingly weird though.

I tell ya, this tale's got it all. But it's the Wiebe family that's the heart of the piece. Can't believe I found myself really rooting for an unknown family out there purely because of injustice in the world of Donkey Kong. If you ain't seen this film, you really should. The characters are incredible.

Chasing Ghosts - Beyond the Arcade features Robert Mruczek (amongst others) and boy, is he creepy. He happily shows off his "art" pictures that he's paid a small fortune for. The majority of which are pencil drawings of women with no clothes on, bearing all for the viewer.

He's weird.

Here's a screenshot of him showing off one of his pictures but it is NSFW so beware.

Can't quite bring myself to click on that link there Vision. Some things just be best left unseen. But I shall take a strange sort of fascination in knowing uncomfortable frown-inducing wrongness is just a click away.

Yeah, uh, strike out the 'glorious' and replace with something doubtless more appropriate. Did I ever tell you about the young Chinese guy with the nasal harsh robot voice who comes into the library and keeps trying to print off Nazi fetish girl pictures, which he then tries to collect and pay for at my desk, by the way? I still can't get through to him why we frown on that sort of thing.

Just watched this. Brilliant.

Definitely. He thinks he's cool, and the alpha male. He has a busty wife and his business, and I honestly think he believes he's above his peers, who have perhaps 'accomplished' less on a societal level.

He's incredibly snide, and rude, but I think he reckons that makes him the rock star of gaming.

Sorry I just don't get that from him at all, (the rock star bit, rock stars don't have to be cunts), he had one chance right at the end of the film, where his own friend was basically giving a 'decent bloke' speech about Wiebe, and Bobby was asked to comment, and he refused to even say one single good word about the man.

Bobby's friend makes a really conciliatory speech, whilst he's sat right next to Bobby, and the director asks Bobby how he feels about that and he just says 'I'm not familiar enough with the situation to comment' - or some horseshit like that.

Thoroughly nasty piece of work.

And that's why it's such a fascinating and entertaining documentary. Imagine if they were all mates and nice to each other throughout? That would have been dull.

He thinks they do, clearly. And generally, the good rock stars do have a bit of that about them. Axl Rose is a magnificent bastard, for example.


Of course. He was more concerned about his pal betraying him by complimenting Wiebe.

Oh yes it's a remarkably good film, I've recommended it to Mrs AE even though she has no interest in the subject matter. (It was recommended to me by a chum on a sort of 'Yeah I know, Donkey Kong high scores, but seriously, it's a really good film' basis.)

I just didn't see anything in the entire presentation to suggest that Bobby isn't a wanker and Steve isn't a genuinely nice guy. Clearly a bit Aspie with his obsession, but that's not a choice.

Axl Rose was last a credible rock star in about 1990.

Slash has gone on to be a true rock star and he's a genuinely nice bloke.



If he sees his friend saying a few gracious words about a clearly decent bloke as a betrayal, then he's all the more the wanker of the piece.

We differ in how we define 'rock star', then. Slash is awesome and a nice dude, but you need a bit of dickish swagger. For me, Axl's mythology is easily as rock starry as... doing some good riffs and solos.

As far as I'm concerned, Axl is the last true rock star.


Exactly...