Starring:Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, Walter Day, Steve Sanders, Roy Shildt, Brian Kuh
Director:
Seth Gordon (Fears of a Clown)
MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for a brief sexual reference.
Release Date:
August 2007
Synopsis:
When Steve Wiebe got laid off, he turned to the classic arcade game Donkey Kong for solace. He got so good he decided to challenge Billy Mitchell's long-standing record score. So began one of the bitterest rivalries in history. How far will Mitchell go to retain his crown?
My Two Cents:
This may very well be the best video game movie/documentary ever, even if it’s not really about video games. OK, it is about video games, but not about any game in particular. It’s about the competitive nature of human beings and the never-ending quest some people go through in order to be recognized by their peers. Regardless if you’ve ever played a game in your life, you can’t help but be caught in the drama of one man’s journey into the video game record books.
Back in the early 80’s Billy Mitchell set the world record for the arcade game Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Centipide, and later in the late 90’s he performed a perfect game of Pac-Man. That means he beat all 256 levels, collected every power pellet, ate every ghost, every fruit and didn’t die, ever, for the highest possible score of 3,333,360 points. That’s fucking insane! Billy’s mad skills have been recorded and tracked by Twin Galaxies, a video game records book and website. Pretty much everyone in the game industry knows Billy, and some call him the Michael Jordan of gaming.
Steve Wiebe, married and father of two, had recently been laid off from his job and found himself with plenty of free time on his hands. He’s a former baseball player, basketball player and musician. Every time he pursued one of his passions something happened and he either failed or had to drop out. You could say he is a born loser. A great guy, but a loser, always having to settle for second best. As he spent his days taking care of his kids he got himself an old-school Donkey Kong arcade cabinet and started playing the shit out of it. He got so good that he decided to try and beat the current world record set in the 80’s by Billy Mitchell. He beat Billy’s score by almost 200,000 points and was crowned as the new king of Donkey Kong. Billy Mitchell was so upset he demanded Wiebe’s arcade machine to be revised to check if it was hacked or modified in any way. Although it wasn’t, Twin Galaxies removed Wiebe’s score from their records and asked him to play live to see if he was the real deal. Wiebe accepted, and one of the world’s biggest rivalries was born.
Billy Mitchell is kind of a freak, with his perfect hair and USA ties, and as we see in the documentary he’s also a jerk. He avoids meeting Wiebe and doesn’t recognize him as a top player, because Wiebe is an unknown and Billy is a freaking god. Steve Wiebe travels the country, playing Donkey Kong at different events, looking for an opportunity to play Mitchell live, but the bitch keeps hiding and sending in gameplay videos instead. Since Mitchell and Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies, are such good friends, he gets away with it.
You can’t help but feel sorry for Steve Wiebe and want him to succeed at something, even if it is at having the world’s highest score in a decades old video game. This is clearly very important to him and would be for all the other nerds he meets along the way who try to beat his score. The documentary has a lot of archive footage from the 80’s that will bring nostalgic tears to all of us who grew up with Pac-Man, Marble Madness, and Galaga. But even if you hate video games you’ll still be able to appreciate Wiebe’s determination and can relate to his desire to succeed and prove to himself and others he can set a world record if he tries hard enough. How much would you be willing to sacrifice for a chance at glory?
Score:
