Donkey Kong cheating case rocked by photos of illicit joystick modification | Hacker News Reader

Donkey Kong cheating case rocked by photos of illicit joystick modification

arstechnica.com

132 pointsstalfosknight63 comments

> The photos in question were taken at the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers (FAMB) Convention, which hosted Mitchell as part of its "80s Arcade Night" promotion in July 2007.

Seems like those guys had more money than they knew what to do with. Hope it turned out ok for them.

One of Billy Mitchel's childhood friends was a mortgage broker at that convention.

Speedrunner Karl Jobst made a good overview video of this last week. He is no stranger to Mitchell's shenanigans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHK0Jg2R7SQ

He's also been sued by Mitchell - multiple times now I think?

Twice I believe, and possibly by Todd Rogers as well. Billy is/has also sued Twin Galaxies and Guinness.

Karl is wrong in his claim that the stick appears to be an 8-way stick. Directionality is determined by a restrictor plate mounted on the underside of joystick assembly. Here's an example: https://www.ultimarc.com/arcade-controls/joystick-accessorie...

It's impossible to tell which plate is installed by looking at the top of the panel.

Edit: He does get some things right. My point is that this is surprisingly technical. Even some of the best players in the world don't know how the game works.

Either way it's modified.

More to the point the footage is consistent with 8-way movement. Then there's a picture of the modified machine. And the appearance is consistent with an 8 way...

It's getting pretty sweaty

> Either way it's modified.

Yep. The oldest rules I've seen require that the machine have an original stick.

> More to the point the footage is consistent with 8-way movement

Which footage? An eight way stick let's you barrel steer while ladder climbing. I don't believe that this will be detectable from looking at footage alone.

> And the appearance is consistent with an 8 way.

This is impossible to tell from the photographs. The restrictor plate is mounted on the underside of the joystick assembly.

I haven't played the game in years (if ever?). What is barrel steering, and why can't you tell that something else is happening while the player is climbing a ladder from looking at footage?

In the game, if a barrel is above you on a platform, and it approaches the top of a ladder, if you move towards the ladder you can force it to come down the ladder. The logic is partly what makes the game so hard and frustrating, as most people obviously aren’t aware of this.

Oh, huh, I had no idea. But isn't it obvious that the barrel is coming down the ladder? Or is it also slightly random?

Here's more than you ever wanted to know on the subject:

http://donhodges.com/Controlling_the_barrels_in_Donkey_Kong....

http://www.jeffsromhack.com/products/donkeykong_tech.htm

Thanks!

Jumpman's facing influences barrel behavior. With a four way joystick you can't vary your facing while climbing a ladder unless you pause on the ladder. The ladder climbing sprite is facing agnostic. With a four way stick a player would need to lift off up (or down) to move the stick left and right. On an eight way you can keep climbing with deflecting left and right. Visually you won't be able to detect this.

There is a random component to the barrel behavior. You could potentially detect steering by looking at jumpman's ladder entry direction and examine the behavior of each barrel during his climb. This would be an absolutely miserable task though.

It might be easier to detect an eight way stick by finding buffered ladder climbing: does Jumpman begin ascending a ladder on the first frame in which he can climb and does he start moving left or right on the first frame after he dismounts?

That explains things, thank you.

so is an 8-way stick one that also has 4 tact switches, just arranged so that two can be pressed simultaneously?

According to another comment, in this case it's just a lack of a plate on the underside with a cross-shaped cutout that physically restricts the joystick to movement in the cardinal directions.

Yes, I have a controller with an arcade joystick, the 4-way setting just physically restricts the movement of the stick so that you can't be pressing more than one direction at a time. 8-way removes that restriction and allows two directions if you do a diagonal.

I'm just amused that there was an actual lawsuit filed for defamation over Donkey Kong high scores.

If you are interested there was a whole documentary made about the competitive world of Donkey Kong some time ago called "King of Kong".

This guy is the "King of Kong" from the doc.

It’s so satisfying to see Mitchell being bright to justice after having watched that documentary a decade ago. It was so frustrating to watch how his records were accepted back then.

Mitchell being a cheat is the greatest thing ever. Just the most poetic and perfect ending to King of Kong.

I feel bad that if someone watches it now for the first time they will never get that reveal years later.

Yeah King of Kong needs an addendum.

King Kong serius business

I still find it hilarious that every time I see Billy Mitchell I think of Peter Dinklage's hilarious character in Pixels although the movie itself wasn't that great.

I always think of Mitchell himself in 2007's "King of Kong" in which Mitchell was viewed as the villain (perhaps unfairly at the time) but he didn't do himself any favors in making himself seem like a sympathetic character.

I remember seeing that a long time ago. Is he the one who came across as a pretty bad husband and father?

> Is he the one who came across as a pretty bad husband and father?

I don't think so. The film had footage of Steve Wiebe telling his kid he couldn't help with the potty because he was busy gaming.

Ohh that rings a bell.

He was painted as the villain, but the filmmaker has been accused of editing the story to make him look worse than he was. He was definitely a hateable character, but a lot of the details and timeline were messed with.

Although, as the Spin-Off Doctors say in their recap of Chasing Ghosts[1],

> "And again, [Mitchell is] not in it much, but when he's in it, he provides enough evidence that the stuff in King Of Kong was not all that fabricated when it comes to his attitude." (35:48.960 --> 35:59.600)

[1] https://soundcloud.com/jimquisition/the-spin-off-doctors-cha...

I am sure there is an aspect of that but what made him look like such a jackass in the movie was his own words.

Not to mention that he cheated and was the villain in reality.

Yeah he was not a great guy for sure but the reality would not have made for much of a movie.

Even during the King of Kong days there was some suspicion around Billy Mitchell’s records(He had the uncanny ability to one up any one who broke his records almost immediately). There just wasn’t proof.

The suspicion was perhaps heightened by the fact most people thought he was a jerk and wanted to see him taken down, except for his groupies who worshiped him.

At this point, it is fairly conclusive that he has cheated in several instances.

I have a feeling he's lived this lie so long he just believes it as true at this point.

The Costanza Principle

The best conmen are the ones who earnestly believe their own BS.

Sounds like Maradona

Why didn’t any of the people actually there not notice this? Did the ref guy not verify the game was stock and compliant? Other than looking dapper in the striped shirt isn’t that what he’s there to do? They’ve had photos of it for decades and physically stood staring at it and are crazy fanatics about donkey Kong and keep all their toys in box and mint since they were 3 and someone just now said “wait a minute!”

That feels a little late to call cheating

The guy in the striped shirt is Ted Rodgers, a prolific video game record cheater in his own right, and as mentioned in the article the photos just became public last month.

The "ref" in question is Todd Rogers, who also got caught cheating at other world records. https://youtu.be/PrH7aPmO61w

The Washington Post[1] is somewhat less sensational about Todd Rogers' banning than Karl Jobst, and which seems to be primarily due to his apparently impossible Activision Dragster performance in 1982 on an Atari 2600.

[1] https://archive.ph/qytIr

I don't like linking YouTube, but I've noticed the media usually writes their articles around videos that they also saw... might as well cut out the middleman. (This one didn't but meh)

The video was more thorough, adding lots of background, but also sort of had that entertainment vibe of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The Post article is more focused, but also narrower in scope.

A similar debate exists in fighting games with all button controllers. Interestingly, the control stick ultimately actuates button contacts under the hood. But all button controllers can do things like simultaneously supply left and right activated inputs, or up and down and some games respond to these inputs in a way that gives players an advantage. That said, it'd be trivial to install electrical interlocks prohibiting such simultaneous inputs.

I built exactly this board for a homebrew (S)NES controller. Simultaneous L+R inputs are converted to neutral and U+D are converted to U.

Even with the interlock a player can gain an advantage by buffering inputs.

But theoretically someone quickly actuating a fight stick could buffer inputs all the same.

I haven't played much DK, but I do remember the stock joystick because it was annoying. You could move it in one of only four directions and there is a guide slot so you can't go directly from one direction to another -- you must move through zero first. The stick shown, regardless of whether or not it's an eight-way, may not have the same guide slot, the absence of which would provide a game play advantage.

Mitchell very much seems to be losing his reality distortion field

The title reads like a Hacker News headline if it existed back in the 80s.

1. Click link

2. Immediately see a picture of Billy Mitchell

Not even surprised.

Why are we still talking about this guy?

Because photos of illicit joystick modification rocked a Donkey Kong cheating case he is involved in. It's a very unique and interesting story.

Let's hope that the prevailing defamation defendant successfully moves for the plaintiff (Billy) to pay for their legal fees.

This is one case that's warming me up to binding arbitration. I'd say that in an ideal world, we'd spend $0 of taxes on court disputes over video game cheating.

I mean, we spend lots of time using the legal system to resolve marital and land issues. Ultimately most legal issues are interpersonal issues, I don't see why the perception of a conflict as silly should preclude a judge from helping mediate

This is a defamation case. There isn't really room for binding arbitration; there's no contract to bind.

It's rough because while I agree that I don't want to see a bunch of court time wasted on video game cheating, this isn't a case about video game cheating. It's a case about defamation, a defence to which is the accuracy of the claims (in some countries), and then yes suddenly it's a case about video game cheating.

I do think that you should have legal remedies to defamation, and in most cases of defamation the two of you are unlikely to have had a prior contract that could have included an arbitration clause. (In this particular case they could potentially have but I suspect that's uncommon.)

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