I was born only eight months before the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was released in the U.S. While my life was filled with various other activities, video games have been a part of it since I was five. I feel that I and others of my age group have a unique perspective, since we are young enough that we do not remember a time before video games, but old enough to remember much of the progress of the industry. One of the most curious things to come out of video games is the competitive gamer. Unlike most people who play games for fun or for relaxation, these individuals take this form of entertainment very seriously. The 2007 documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters follows two such gamers as they battle back and forth for the Donkey Kong high score world record.
At the time that the documentary opens (in 2006), the record is held by Billy Mitchell, who set the record back in 1982 at the age of seventeen. Until this point, the closest score submitted to Twin Galaxies, the arcade that manages the official records for Guinness, was nearly 300,000 points less than Mitchell’s score. Enter Steve Wiebe. After he was laid off by Boeing, Wiebe began playing Donkey Kong to give himself something to do, and immediately began to excel at the game. After some practice Wiebe submitted a taped score to Twin Galaxies for consideration. Unfortunately, his tape was ultimately rejected, which set off a race between Mitchell and Wiebe to set a new world record.
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