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Billy Mitchell’s High Scores deleted for Cheating

Billy Mitchell is an infamous video game player known for his record-breaking scores in classic Donkey Kong and his bullying attitude. His greatest achievements are obtaining the highest scores in Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. His scores and rivalries are so famous that there’s an actual documentary about it called King of Kongs. Billy Mitchell has been on Guinness Book of World Records several times. Well, it turns out Billy Mitchel was cheating to obtain his high scores and was stripped of his title and banned from Twin Galaxies.

Billy Mitchel – David Greedy via Getty Images

Twin Galaxies is a gaming website and forum dedicated to professional gaming recognition and support. They have a relationship with the Guinness Book of World Records that helps record gaming achievements. Billy had recently broken the world record in Donkey Kong by achieving a score of a 1,062,800-point performance on July 31, 2010. This raised many suspicions from the community. Jeremy Young, a prominent member of the Donkey Kong Forum, accused Billy of achieving his high score on an emulated version of Donkey Kong rather than a legitimate arcade board. It was noticed after a frame by frame analysis of the footage that Billy sent in was displaying an incorrect sequence in the level transitions that never occurs on an arcade board.

Frame by frame analysis of the footage from Billy Mitchel

Usually, a member from Twin Galaxies must be physically present to view an attempt at breaking a world record but new management had changed. Twin Galaxies accepted the footage from Billy as proof of his achievement.

For his gaming crime, all of his high scores have been removed from records in Twin Galaxies and Donkey Kong Forum. This also includes his record-breaking score in Pac-Mana – a score of 3,333,360, the maximum before Pac-Man reaches its “kill screen” and becomes unplayable. His player page on Twin Galaxies is now blank.

With his score removed, the new world record holder is Steve Weibe who was Billy’s rival shown in the King of Kongs documentary in 2007. Steve is now the first world record breaker million-point scorer in Donkey Kong history and is recognized by Twin Galaxies. Twin Galaxies’ statement is below regarding their ruling.

With this ruling Twin Galaxies can no longer recognize Billy Mitchell as the 1st million point Donkey Kong record holder. According to our findings, Steve Wiebe would be the official 1st million point record holder.

Sources:

Polygon

Twin Galaxies

Twin Galaxy’s Statement against Billy Mitchell

Donkey Kong Forum

Donkey Kong Breakdown

Square-Enix opens Luminous Productions and their future

Square-Enix recently announced they will be announcing a new studio called Luminous Productions. The head is Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy XV. Most of the team are from the Final Fantasy XV developers. Their vision: “Luminous Productions was established with the purpose of developing new AAA titles and bringing innovative game and other entertainment content to a global audience.” Besides Final Fantasy XV, Tabata has also worked on many of the Final Fantasy VII spin-offs including Crisis Core and Final Fantasy Type-0.

While FF XV has received a mixed reception from hardcore JRPG and Final Fantasy fans, the game’s sales were critical to saving the series and Tabata’s goal to continuously improve the game is admirable.

Square-Enix is no longer a gaming juggernaut since early 2000’s. They have had less success in game releases as the gaming industry grew. In the mid 2000’s, there were less unique IP titles from SE and more focus on Final Fantasy spin-offs. None of them sold well except for Bravely Default. When Yosuke Matsuda took over SE, he noticed the decline in overall quality and had Square refocus their efforts on diversifying their portfolio. They developed three new studios, Square-Enix Collective, Tokyo RPG Factory, Studio Isoltila. Each have different focuses such as helping develop new indie games or old franchises of SE, create new classic style JRPG’s and Studio Isolita has the director of the Tales RPG series leading the development of a new game. Matsuda has also allowed studios to work on new projects such as the upcoming Avengers game by the Tomb Raider team and sold the Hitman studio after he believed SE wasn’t the right publisher.

While SE has been slow on development and game released, under Matsuda, they have achieved a profit of 257 billion yen last year. Luminous Productions plans to work on a new IP outside of the Final Fantasy series. With Tabata running his own studio, perhaps we will see a big new series.

Sources

Square-Enix

The Verge – FFXV saves FF series from ending

Gamesindustry Biz – Matusda helps SE grow

Square-Enix’s profit margins in 2017

Spyro Reignited Trilogy Details and release date

After the amazing success of the Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy, Activision is now remastering the Spyro trilogy (Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, Spyro: Year of the Dragon) from the PlayStation. Known as Spyro Reignited Trilogy, the game is for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The release date is September 21st. The game was originally created by Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank, Jax, Infamous, Spider-man). Developer Toys for Bob is handling remastering duties for the Spyro trilogy. They are known for their work on Skylanders.

Similar to the Crash Trilogy, the game is being remade from the ground up. The game will feature all new assets, lighting, controls, and some characters will have “creatively re-imagined with additional flair.” The game will also have improved control. Although the PlayStation 1 Spyro games are classics, the controls can be improved. The soundtrack will also be a re-imagined version of composer Stewart Copeland’s soundtrack.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy will cost $39.99.

Sources:

IGN

Niantic owes $1.6 million for failed Pokemon Go Event in 2017

Last year, Niantic held their first outdoor event festival dedicated to Pokemon Go in June. It was held in Chicago Grant Park and the idea was for players to meet, catch the rare Pokemon, Lugia, and create an event that people have been asking for since the creation of Pokemon Go. It didn’t go as planned.

Huge issues occured such as failed cellar connectivity, huge lines, sign in issues, and the inability to play the game frustrations and led to lawsuits. People were understandably frustrated and Niantic responded by offering to refund the 20,000 attendees the ticket price of the Chicago event and offer $100 of in-game currency. Niantic was involved in a class action lawsuit and will be paying $1,575,000 to refund the attendee’s ticket prices along with airfare, hotel fees, parking, car rent and fuel, and toll fees.

According to documentation in the Chicago court, the settlement should be solve by May 25th and victims will receive emails regarding the payment. There are check systems to ensure people aren’t lying about attending the event. You’ll need proof that you checked in at the Go Festival in Chicago and anybody who has spent over $107 must provide receipts to receive full reimbursement. If there is any leftover money, the remaining balance will be split evenly and donated to the Illinois Bar foundation and the nonprofit organization Chicago Run. Niantic will not receive any money for the event.

Business View:

From a business POV, its great to hear a company apologizing to their users. Recently, gaming companies have been closely inspected for poor business practices. Niantic has been working to create smaller, focused events such as raids for Pokemon Go and has clearly learned from their mistakes from the Chicago Go Fest. They have continuously improved and updated on the game and still remains as one the most downloaded app.

Sources:

TechCrunch