News Summary:
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This occurs as Mitchell continues his defamation lawsuit against YouTuber Karl Jobst, one of his accusers, as well as Twin Galaxies. Although the cases have not yet gone to trial, it is assumed that this image will support the defenses of Twin Galaxies and Jobst because it appears to contradict statements Mitchell has made in the past.
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Billy Mitchell is once again the target of cheating accusations after it was revealed through photographic evidence that he set the world record on a modified Donkey Kong machine. As a result of this violation of the site’s rules, Twin Galaxies decided to delete his records from the leaderboard in 2018.
The photos show Mitchell and Todd Rogers, a former Twin Galaxies official, posing in front of a Donkey Kong machine. Many believe this is the machine Mitchell would have used given that the photo was taken at the 2007 Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers Convention, the event where Mitchell claims to have set his world record. As the only publicly accessible images connecting him to the occasion, Mitchell would also have to rely on eyewitness accounts to bolster his claim that he was present and actually broke the record live.
As expected, Jobst has drawn attention to the picture on his YouTube channel and used it to prove that Mitchell didn’t play the game on the original hardware. The red stick, he continues, would enable the player to move in eight dimensions as opposed to the game’s original four, greatly simplifying gameplay.
The red joystick on the Donkey Kong machine, however, is visible in the images. The original machines have smaller, black joysticks, according to a quick search.
According to a report by Arstechnica, professional Pac-Man player David Race shared the images last month as their source. He claims that anonymous Micthell critic Ersatz Cats, who wouldn’t give their sources to Arstechnica, gave him the images. However, other sources in the report attested to the veracity of the pictures, claiming that professional players have been sharing them for years.
Despite the fact that his Twitter account is currently set to private, Mitchell doesn’t seem to have commented on the publication of this image. He has consistently insisted that he obtained the records lawfully, and since suing his detractors, he has had his Guinness World Records reinstated. Guinness World Records decided against the claim of cheating because there wasn’t “sufficient evidence,” according to their statement.