Todd Rogers banned from Twin Galaxies and records removed
By HalHawkins, January 29, 2018 in Atari 2600
[d2f]Iggy*SJB
[d2f]Iggy*SJB 53
Location:On the edge of sanity, just outside the border.
$9 was what it cost here too, for a VCR rental and 2 movies. Starting in '88 they changed their pricing on movies though (I don't think they even still had VCR rentals by that time): $3 a night for "new releases", and $1 a night for everything else. Also, they started having a "dice day" once a week. If you rented two movies you rolled the dice to determine the price of the second (if one rental's regular price was more expensive than the other's then the dice roll applied to the cheaper of the two movies). You rolled a pair of dice, one at a time, so the second movie would cost you from 11 to 66 cents. A best case scenario was 2 movies for a total of $1.11.
I didn't start playing arcade games until '84, and the only pool table in town was at a bar, so in 1982 when I had $5 to burn I usually bought a box of 50 .22 WMR rounds, which was about $5 back then (way more expensive than .22 LR, which were about $1 for a box of 50). I remember buying a "sucker spear" at the hardware store for $5 in '82 as well:
I was always looking to upgrade parts on my BMX back then too, but $5 wouldn't get you much, maybe an aluminum alloy seat post clamp. You could get a tube and tire for $5, but I usually patched my tubes with those kits that had a sheet of rubber, a cheese-grater-looking scraper thing on the top of the can, and cement. And my tires lasted a long time anyway because I refused to skid my tires on pavement.
That's the difference between being 7(second grade) and 15(as I was) in '82. I was practically living at that pool hall.... but then again, my best friend's parents owned it, so I was almost always there. At least, until it burned down in '84. The video store was a good distance away, and I could make better use of the money at the pool hall which was across the street.
Kind of ironic that we're talking about this, as the owners didn't re-open after the fire, and what was the pool hall was split into two store areas, one of which became a little "mom and pop" video store. By then('85), they were starting to pop up around here.
VectorGamer
VectorGamer 9,951
Go Sleep In the Cold
\m/
Location:Retrocade, USA
I'll be completely up-front here in admitting that I don't really understand all the finer points of chasing record scores.
Why does anyone compete in any sport? They enjoy the competition and want to be number 1.
I haven't sent in any scores to TG in almost 2 years cuz I'm competing in pinball instead. There's money to be had in pinball though. Set a new record score on the TG scoreboard and maybe you're lucky to get a kudos.
Billy Mitchell: Arcade Legend's 'Donkey Kong' High Scores Get Removed Due To Alleged Emulator Use
https://www.inquisitr.com/4770688/billy-mitchell-arcade-legends-donkey-kong-high-scores-get-removed-due-to-alleged-emulator-use/
MaximRecoil
MaximRecoil 241
I didn't frequent pool halls until I got my driver's license when I was 16, because the closest one (in Dover-Foxcroft) was a 20-minute drive, and the best one (in Bangor) was a 45-minute drive. My friends and I usually went to the one in Bangor because not only was it better, but there was more stuff in general to do in Bangor than in Dover, including a good-size arcade at the Bangor Mall (Space Port).
I could have played arcade games in '82 but the idea didn't appeal to me at the time. I had played Pac-Man one time in 1980, Donkey Kong one time in 1981, and Q*Bert one time in 1982, and that was it. I didn't last more than a minute on any of them, so I didn't think they were any fun. In '84 my older sister got a part-time job at a local full-service laundromat/drycleaners, which had 3 video arcade machines and 2 pinball machines. She would give me quarters and I got hooked on the game Karate Champ, and then Punch-Out, and then lots of other games, most notably Super Punch-Out in '87 and Street Fighter II in '91. I've owned a Super Punch-Out (along with a Punch-Out PCB that I can swap into it) and Street Fighter II arcade machine since 2005 and 2007 respectively.
When I was 15 I spent my money on movie rentals, NES game rentals, food (e.g., pizza, chips, soda), and guns/ammo (15 is when I first bought a gun with my own money, which I could do because it's when I got my first job). There weren't any arcade games that I was playing regularly in 1990. Super Punch-Out was rotated out in 1988 and Street Fighter II didn't come along until '91.
rjchamp3
rjchamp3 106
The Nes Dream Master
Location:Wherever that may be
Nobody Should be Shocked I told you all years ago many of these people are frauds and paper champs but, they knew how to kiss ass to become a name!!!!!
I am glad I left, and glad I am prob banned for good, because if it means getting on my Hands and Knees like William MacEvoy and riding Reverse Cowboy on Jace Hall, I rather never compete again.
I am Enjoying my new work of speed runs and earning money as well on hits and views!!!!!!
I may have a 4th 2600 game in the Works stay tuned
When all said and done 10-12 or more will be banned for life with fraud and fake scores.......
I hope they open challenges on MY legit work, it will get so many hits and views and in the END ill be the ONLY gamer to survive the challenges
+Random Terrain
Random Terrain 10,346
Visual batari Basic User
Controlled Randomness, Replay Value, Nonlinear
Location:North Carolina (USA)
My daddy can beat up your daddy!
Andromeda Stardust
Andromeda Stardust 8,669
Cyborg Bounty Hunter
Alita Jean
Location:Milky Way Galaxy
On a more serious note, I always thought the footage in King of Kong: Fistfull of Quarters were they turned the CRT on it's side
(tate mode) to display a direct feed of Billy Mitchell's play-through, where he stopped at the edge of the ladder to roll the score to 1,000,000 (compared to Steve Weibe's were his son was crying about something bathroom related - you just can't fake stuff like that) was a bit odd. If Billy Mitchell tapped the video harness to direct capture rgb off of the arcade board, would this not be an illegal mod? Now we know the truth...
Sad times we are coming to. At least they did not scrub his live scores or his Pacman perfect run. He's still a legendary gamer regardless, but just like with Lance Armstrong, at some point you have to make an example of people who insist on cheating the system.
2600 Forever
2600 Forever 354
He doesn't have a daddy, he is an experiment, horribly gone wrong. I thought he was banned ages ago, sad.
Bryan 3,712
Cruise Elroy = 4DB7
Location:Chesaning, MI
There was a lot of incestuous scorekeeping in the early days of TG with the top players verifying each others results and my bet is that everyone who is going down has the ability to take many others down. It'll be interesting to see what shakes out in the end.
If Billy Mitchell tapped the video harness to direct capture rgb off of the arcade board, would this not be an illegal mod?
No. Direct-feed recordings, from both console and arcade machines were/are frowned upon, because you never see or hear the player, the console or cabinet, or the DIP switches, but there wasn't (and isn't) a Twin Galaxies rule against them. Also, with a Nintendo arcade machine you don't have to tap into the harness (though it still wouldn't be an illegal modification to do so, because it isn't a modification of the game board). The Nintendo/Sanyo arcade monitors have a color inverter board mounted on the flyback transformer cage. It has one RGB input header and two RGB output headers. One of the output headers is just a pass-through connection labeled "non invert out"; you use this with a Nintendo game board (or, because it's just a pass-through connection, you can skip it altogether and plug directly into the RGB input header on the chassis). The other output header is labeled "invert out", and you would use this for connecting a non-Nintendo game board to a Nintendo/Sanyo monitor.
To get a direct-feed recording from a Nintendo arcade machine you'd just make or buy a cable to plug into that normally-unused "invert out" header. I don't know of any device that can directly record a ~15 KHz RGB video signal, so you'd also need something like Jrok's RGB to NTSC converter, which will convert it to a composite video signal, which can then be easily recorded with a VCR or DVR.
Twin Galaxies hasn't scrubbed any of his scores yet, but if they do decide that he cheated by using MAME, he'll probably be banned from Twin Galaxies and have all of his records, including his perfect Pac-Man run, removed. That's what happened to Todd Rogers recently.
Edited February 7, 2018 by MaximRecoil
Supergun 790
Location:Orlando, Florida
Twin Galaxies is not the be all & end all of video game high scores. Many high scores have been achieved & recorded by players through other organizations over the years. High scores have been being documented before, during, and after TG ever even existed.
Furthermore, any player (be it Rogers, Mitchell, or anyone) who achieved / achieves a high score, properly, fairly, and officially, deserves the credit & recognition for doing so. PERIOD. There is NO SUCH THING as "banned for life". (maybe from a particular website or scoreboard, but certainly not blindly across the board of everything that exists.
As far as I know, Mitchell has never submitted scores to any place other than Twin Galaxies. Other places have republished Mitchell's and other Twin Galaxies records, such as Donkey Kong Forum, but they weren't the ones who approved the scores in the first place.
In the case of Todd Rogers, his alleged 5.51 was actually an Activision record from 1982; Walter Day simply copied it into the Twin Galaxies database in 2000 or so, without doing any independent verification whatsoever. They are free to erase it at any time of course, but the bizarre thing is that Guinness also erased it from the category of "oldest standing video game world record" based on Twin Galaxies erasing it. That doesn't make any sense, because until the original record keeper (Activision) revokes it, it is still a standing record. If you throw Activision out of the picture, then the record only dates back to 2000 (when Twin Galaxies added it to their database), which means it never would have been the oldest standing record to begin with.
+KaeruYojimbo
KaeruYojimbo 3,886
River Patroller
Location:Portland, OR
I'm impressed. I've never seen an entire post written in I Can Has Cheezburger before.
Shawn 8,804
Random Person
Custom Status
It's nothing new for him. Check out his other posts here and around the internet. It's truly something to behold. His youtube videos where he interviews himself and claims it was by "the media" are my personal favorites of his works. It's almost like a deformed art if you look at it in a certain light.
+Austin
Austin 5,916
Location:Fairfax, VA
There's money to be had in pinball though.
Eh, sort of. If you want to see any of what little there is, you need to be a top-tier player and have the commitment to compete all over the place. Even then chances are you'll just break even with most wins after you factor in travel costs.
Torr 533
Location:Newfoundland, Canada
I still remember years ago when GamePro magazine (or more likely it's offshoot SWATPro) had a High Score column. There was ONE that I always called bullshit on.
Supposedly some kid scored 11 million points on Altered Beast. I don't recall the exact score I'll just always remember it being 11 million because, hell, even 1 million is hard to crack on that game. That is, assuming you clear each stage at fast as possible for the best bonus, you still only get 100k per stage... so he played through all five stages/looped the game about 20 times (played 100+ levels) including incidental points for enemies, which ain't worth much, a couple hundred each. The blue wolves are 1,000 points, but of course are rare, usually only 3 per area. And that's without having Neff run away ONCE so that he always gets the 100k bonus. The second time Neff appears in a level he's only worth 50k, and the third time, a paltry 20k. Missing Neff would mean having to play an extra level or two to make up lost points.
Edited February 7, 2018 by Torr
I can sometimes be a reservoir of trivial information.
Ask and you shall receive:
And I agree. I can loop the game, but it's tough to do.
And usually my game will finally end just a level or two into the second loop.
Even with the help of accessing the secret options menu, to max out lives & health,
getting the game to loop 10 times would be almost impossible.
Either the score was a misprint. (should have been 1 million, not 11 million,
or the guy used a game genie.
EDIT: and it was in SwatPro Magazine. You have a good memory my friend!
Edited February 7, 2018 by Supergun
Cynicaster
Cynicaster 1,955
Location:Ontario, Canada
Super-condensed chain of events:
1) King of Kong comes out in 2007, most viewers have never heard of Billy Mitchell, but walk away from the film thinking he is a dirtbag
2) Outrage ensues in the community, from people who are supposedly "in the know," crying foul that the KoK filmmakers created a fictional narrative and tried to pass it off as a documentary. Billy Mitchell is named the primary victim of this deception
3) As time passes, the vast majority of the retro gaming world starts to accept that KoK is fiction and that Billy Mitchell is a good dude. People all over defend him whenever somebody makes the mistake of using KoK to judge Billy's character
4) Billy gradually falls out of hard competition and more into the role of respected luminary and figurehead on the retro arcade scene
5) A whole 11 years after the film that almost ruined his reputation, smoking gun evidence emerges to show that Billy is actually more of a turd than even the movie made him out to be.
The movie never tried to make the claim that Billy wasn't capable of scoring a million points on DK; they were just kind of making a spectacle over how Billy was a d-bag for sending in a tape rather than playing live. All these years later, we learn that the whole "taped submission" fiasco is even more egregious than the film depicts, because the performances are, at best, not in accordance with submission rules (i.e. using MAME rather than real hardware) and at worst they are completely faked (using MAME save states to patch together a "golden" run, as evidence shows).
Reality TV show idea: Billy Mitchell and Mike Kennedy live in exile together on a deserted island
H.E.R.O. 344
New leader of the Bungeling Empire
Location:Underground
'The Perfect Fraudman' & 'The King Of Con' by his former associate Dwayne Richard on YouTube delves even deeper into the seedy underbelly of arcade game high scores but obviously Richard isn't unbiased in these.
Edited February 7, 2018 by H.E.R.O.
AtariWarlord
AtariWarlord 792
Location:Alberta, Canada
I think the reason why is that so many of his scores were highly suspect. A good example was Fathom. His record was 1,110,500. Second place? 142
Not debating that the high score is probably a fake score, but that second score raised my eyebrow. I'm pretty sure even I could get higher than 142 in Fathom, and I'm terrible at that game. Could it be that no one else has gone for the record (it is a relatively obscure game, after all)?
Fathom is one of the very few 2600 games that has an ending. And you actually lose points while your playing in almost every area of the game. So going for a high score is not usually on the players mind. (not that it's worth the effort anyhow)
HalHawkins
HalHawkins 21
Its because in that game, you score is your health/a timer, so it always goes down. If you die before completing a level, then your score will be really low. You have to complete a level (or the game) to get a high score. Highest score I've ever seen was around 13k for a completed game, so it definitely maxes out well before 1 mil.
Lord Thag
Lord Thag 1,217
We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese
Location:The Land that Time Forgot
I'm not at all surprised. I've seen the underhanded behavior of this crowd at conventions (mainly Billy Mitchell and Co., Todd was always quite friendly). I've dealt with the borderline crazy behavior of Mitchell's gaggle of cronies online for years, and watched them target, attack, lie, and smear a couple of friends of mine as well. The rabbit hole goes deeper than the news has indicated.
The karma is well deserved.
TLD1985
TLD1985 165
All of this because some tired person working at an office desk in the early 80s; looked at a blurry photo of a CRT TV screen and misread a number as 5.51, wrote it down, sent off a badge and then just moved on with their lives and forgot about it.