Over the weekend, Donkey Kong Forum moderator Jeremy Young removed competitive video gamer Billy Mitchell's highest claimed Donkey Kong scores from the forum after presenting credible evidence that these scores were achieved via MAME emulation rather than on actual arcade hardware. Mitchell addressed those accusations publicly for the first time on an episode of The East Side Dave show recorded Tuesday (subscription required).

After a long and meandering conversation about his career both before and after The King of Kong documentary helped raise his media profile, Mitchell did acknowledge that "the film footage that [Young] has... shows MAME play," referring to the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Such footage would be potentially susceptible to manipulation via stitched-together recording of game inputs, and it would go against Mitchell's claims that his scores were recorded on actual arcade hardware.

In practically the same breath, though, Mitchell tried to cast some doubt on the provenance of the footage Young used in his analysis. "I contend that if he gets the original tape or he gets the original room shot, he will see that what I say is true," he said. "I'm not disputing what he says is true, what I'm disputing is that I want him to have the original tape."

It's something of an odd argument considering that Young's source for Mitchell's single highest score claim (a 1.062 million point game he says was achieved at Florida's Boomers Arcade in 2010) is a tape shown at a press conference Mitchell himself helped set up to announce the new high score. If the tape shown at that press conference is MAME footage, its provenance would seem hard for Mitchell to question.

Mitchell doesn't directly suggest Young is working from doctored or staged footage, but he does note that "original footage was given to [high score authority] Twin Galaxies. Twin Galaxies has it, or should have it, and if it's anywhere other than Twin Galaxies, then that's a real problem." Mitchell added that "I've never even played MAME, I don't have MAME loaded in my home..."

Interviewer Dave McDonald—who calls Mitchell a friend and "truth-teller" multiple times throughout the interview—took the argument further than Mitchell was willing to directly: “There is a tape, that is MAME, that people claim is Billy Mitchell. Everyone says the tape is MAME, the tape is MAME. Blah, blah, blah. It’s possible that it’s not even Billy’s MAME tape, that they’re trying to pass off a MAME'd tape and say it’s Billy when he had nothing to do with it.”

Twin Galaxies says it is currently investigating Young's claims. Mitchell has not responded to a request for comment from Ars. Young was not immediately available either to respond to an emailed request for comment about Mitchell's claims. [Update: Young has now responded, and his full defense of his sourcing is included at the bottom of this post.]

Who was there?

Mitchell also claims that extant "crowd shot" footage of his 1.06 million point game will show that former Twin Galaxies owner Pete Bouvier was with him at Boomers Arcade when the score was achieved, and thus Bouvier would have been able to provide trusted confirmation of the score. But that directly contradicts what Mitchell said at the time about Bouvier hearing about the claimed record "on the phone" and heading over after the fact.

Bouvier passed away late last year, so any video evidence of him directly witnessing Mitchell's attempt would be highly relevant. The other primary human witness Mitchell claims for the "Boomers score," Todd Rogers, has been largely discredited since Twin Galaxies banned him for life when they discovered his claimed Dragster time on the Atari 2600 was seemingly impossible.

But Mitchell also defended Rogers in his interview, blaming "so-called experts" and a "lynch mob mentality" for taking his records away. Mitchell also made gestures toward evidence that others have actually been able to beat Rogers' supposedly "impossible" score, though he did not have a chance to go into much detail on that point.

Though Mitchell says he has "never had a bad interaction" with Young, he refers to some others attacking his credibility as members of a "Lonely Losers Club" that come at him out of jealousy over his prominence. "I think it's very, very few people that fall into that category," he added. "Most people are good people and simply have questions."

Further Reading World’s best Donkey Kong players duke it out at Kong Off 3

Despite the controversy, Mitchell says he "hasn't had this much media attention in a while," and he appears to be reveling in the renewed spotlight, however infamous it may be.

"I go to these shows, I participate, I have my place in video game history, I have the fun I have, I spread the goodwill, and that's what I enjoy doing," he said. "With or without this tape I would have had that position. With or without this now I will have that position. If anybody has a problem with that, I'll still get weekly offerings to get booked at all these shows and still have the fun I have."

Mitchell went on to briefly contemplate what his life would be like if Twin Galaxies ends up overturning his Donkey Kong scores, and he didn't appear too concerned. "It doesn't matter what it is they decide because I can simply continue what I'm doing and resubmit more scores, only this time I guess I would do it in front of people when the time comes. Then we might have another group of people who might complain about it. And if they do, we'll simply get this much more media coverage again."

Update: Jeremy Young has responded to Ars' request for comment with a lengthy discussion of the sourcing for his video footage of Mitchell's games, and why he finds it reliable. We present it here in full as a response to the claims made on The East Side Dave show: