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The King of Kong & The Original Competitive Video Gamers

Authored by Scott Goldberg on July 8, 2007 - 11:06am.
King of Kong Professional video gaming has a good deal of momentum right now, with several leagues paying top players hundreds of thousands of dollars (and in some cases much more) to help raise that league to the status of “The Next NASCAR.” Talking with executives, you would think their respective leagues are the first of their kind. But King of Kong helps dispel that notion, spotlighting an arcade game, Donkey Kong, two men who essentially perfected it, and the culture around it that’s been in existence since the creation of Twin Galaxies, the “official scoreboard for video game and pinball hi-scores” since 1981. (see the trailer here)


As is the case with professional video game leagues today, it’s hard to take the men of King of Kong serious at first. Billy Mitchell is the legend who set a Donkey Kong record in 1982 no one has come close to beating. He puts Napoleon Dynamite’s Uncle Rico to shame in the Glory Days department, staring hard at the camera while he delivers personal axiom after axiom about the importance of integrity and open competition in the video game world. His long blown-dry hair, manicured beard, and American-flag tie make him the ultimate video game rock star, something that at first seems both ridiculous and believable. We’re shown that Billy is viewed as a god both inside and out of the Twin Galaxies community, once receiving, in fact, the title “Gamer of the Century,” a plaque he readily brandishes for the cameras.

Billy Mitchell from King of Kong  
But the strength of King of Kong arrives at the moment when you begin to take the side of Steve Wiebe, the story’s Rudy character who’s never had a break and transitions the film from comedy to an insightful story about the characters who comprise competitive video gaming.

Living in Redmond, Washington with a wife and two children, the soft-spoken Wiebe was laid off, we’re told, and was in search of some kind of control of his life. When he visited the Twin Galaxies website and saw Billy Mitchell’s record he knew he could beat it. So he bought a Donkey Kong machine, put it in his garage, and set to work, decimating the record on videotape and sending it to Twin Galaxies for review.

The story takes its dramatic turn when Twin Galaxies sends two men to Redmond to break into Wiebe’s garage, dismantle his machine, and conclude that the score was somehow forged. To officially own the Donkey Kong record, they say, Wiebe must set it in a recognized location, for the public to see firsthand. That place is Funspot, the video game world’s Yankee Stadium.

Steve Wiebe & Family, King of Kong The juxtaposition between Wiebe and Mitchell – indeed the bitter rivalry – takes shape at Funspot. Wiebe embodies the axioms Mitchell spews at the film’s outset while we gradually come to see Mitchell as a farce. Wiebe once again beats Mitchell’s record – by a mile, in fact – but we’re warned right after that Billy Mitchell is not one to go down easily. “He always has something up his sleeve,” says more than one person.

Mitchell sends a minion – an old lady, oddly enough, and legitimate candidate to own the Qbert world record (again, both a comical and interesting perspective on video game culture) – to Funspot to deliver a tape. On that tape is a record-setting score that, despite obvious flaws and errors, is accepted by Twin Galaxies as genuine. It also contradicts Billy’s intense assertion that records must be set in person on official machines. It is the first time that his integrity is unquestionably shattered, and in turn he becomes a genuine villain.

The Hero/Anti-Hero story of King of Kong is told and constructed well enough to make non-video gamers care deeply about the plot. You can’t help yourself from rooting for Wiebe as he travels to Mitchell’s home turf in Hollywood, Florida for a showdown. The arcade scenes are far less ridiculous than they were at the film’s outset, and you come to understand the passion of the bystanders who so enthusiastically dip their emotions into the storyline.

And perhaps that bodes well for today’s professional video game leagues, which naysayers believe will never captivate the hearts and minds of fans the way that, say, NASCAR has. But King of Kong brings the accessible human story to the forefront, on atypical grounds, and reminds us that the interest we have in sports in general is not as much about the sport itself, perhaps, as it is about the story around it. ESPN, in other words, has contributed more to the fandom of the modern professional sports world than the sports themselves. King of Kong has possibly done the same for the professional video game world.

Scott Goldberg

Published in DMW Daily, July 9, 2007
tags: Games | Movies | Film | Video Games | Donkey Kong |



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