Donkey Kong World Record Holder Banned and Removed from Record

The only thing worse than being caught cheating on a world record is when it comes to light after your record had been established. Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong world record was put into question not long ago, and now organizer Twin Galaxies has decided to revoke his top three scores for cheating.

Here are a few segments of the official statement, explaining their reasoning and reaction:

"On 02-02-2018 Twin Galaxies member Jeremey Young ( @xelnia ) filed a dispute claim assertion against the validity of Billy Mitchells historical and current original arcade Donkey Kong score performances of 1,047,200 (the King of Kong "tape"), 1,050,200 (the Mortgage Brokers score), and 1,062,800 (the Boomers score) on the technical basis of a demonstrated impossibility of original unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware to produce specific board transition images shown in the videotaped recordings of those adjudicated performances.

Jeremy's assertion concluded that not only can original Donkey Kong arcade hardware not produce the board transition images shown in the recordings, but that these transitions were actually generated through the use of MAME (emulation software.)

The rules for submitting scores for the original arcade Donkey Kong competitive leaderboards requires the use of original arcade hardware only. The use of MAME or any other emulation software for submission to these leaderboards is strictly forbidden.
. . .
With this ruling Twin Galaxies can no longer recognize Billy Mitchell as the 1st million point Donkey Kong record holder. According to our findings, Steve Wiebe would be the official 1st million point record holder.
. . .
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."

In short, Mitchell has been removed from his place as "First 1 million score" holder, and has been banned from future participation.