![]() After submitting a record score for BurgerTime in 1985, Mitchell moved away from video games for the next ten years, spending more time at his family's restaurant, Rickey's Restaurant, and eventually taking ownership of it. By 1984, Day named Mitchell the Twin Galaxies' player of the year, but due to the 1983 video game crash, Twin Galaxies had to close down its storefront in March 1984, though it still tracked scores. Day continued to bring Mitchell on various trips to confirm high scores reported by players, with Mitchell frequently calling out bluffs. ![]() Later that summer, Day founded the US National Video Game Team, a slimmer version of the Electronic Circus that aimed to make a stop in a major city in each US state, but the inaugural event had many snags. But the idea fell through, and Mitchell and others spent the summer months camping out at Twin Galaxies and competing for high scores on video games, with Mitchell focusing on only a few selected titles. In 1983, Day invited Mitchell along with several other players from the photoshoot to participate in the "Electronic Circus", a 40-city tour where the players would demonstrate their skill at the arcade games at each stop. He attended Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School in 1983. Around this time, Mitchell established a friendship with Robert Childs, who had a business buying and installing arcade cabinets in places like laundromats. Later, Sanders admitted that he had lied about his previous Donkey Kong scores, and Twin Galaxies gave the record to Billy Mitchell who held it for more than 18 years. Mitchell challenged Sanders to Donkey Kong and demonstrated that the game had an impassable " kill screen" when he reached level 22, while subsequently beating Sanders and setting a high score of 874,300. In November 1982, Life brought several notable arcade players, including Mitchell and Sanders, to Ottumwa for a photoshoot. Day told him of a record of 1.4 million claimed by Steve Sanders. Mitchell became curious whether Donkey Kong had a recorded world-record high score, and reached out to Walter Day at Twin Galaxies, at the time a single arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, that had started tracking such records. His interest was also spurred by a friendly rivalry with a classmate, the two trying to outscore each other on both Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. He began playing video games around age 16. He was initially uninterested in video games, but as they became more popular, according to Mitchell, "veryone was standing around the Donkey Kong machine and I wanted that attention". In grade school, Mitchell became an avid pinball player. Mitchell was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and grew up in South Florida. Mitchell's family owns the Rickey's restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida, and he sells Rickey's World Famous Hot Sauce. Both Mitchell and Twin Galaxies settled in 2024, as an expert for Mitchell testified that proof that Mitchell had used emulation or modified hardware was inconclusive, and Twin Galaxies restored Mitchell's score in their historical leaderboard. While Guiness restored Mitchell's scores, Twin Galaxies countersued Mitchell. Twin Galaxies and Guiness removed Mitchell scores, leading Mitchell to threaten legal action against both for defamation. In 2018, Mitchell's high scores on Donkey Kong were contested after members of the Twin Galaxies forums found discrepancies in the videos Mitchell had provided for The King of Kong, suggesting he had used emulation software to falsify his score. A 2007 documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, follows his attempts to maintain the highest score on Donkey Kong after being challenged by newcomer Steve Wiebe. In 1999, Mitchell was the first person to claim a perfect score of 3,333,360 points on the arcade game Pac-Man. Mitchell rose to national prominence in the 1980s when Life included him in a photo spread of game champions during the height of the golden age of arcade video games. However, in 2017, the legitimacy of a number of his records was called into question, leading to Twin Galaxies stripping Mitchell of his records. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized Mitchell as the holder of several records on classic games, and he has appeared in several documentaries on competitive gaming and retrogaming. He achieved fame throughout the 1980s and 1990s through claiming numerous records on classic video games, including a perfect score on Pac-Man. (born July 16, 1965) is an American video game player.
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