Review of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) by Alex R — 27 Oct 2012

Good documentary, but is not as great as what every critic has claimed it to be. The film uncovers the word of competitive gaming and some of its icons such as Billy Mitchell who held the record of the most points acquired during a game of Donkey Kong.

With a score of 870,300 points, Mitchell set a record hat stood for over twenty years. In comes Steve Wiebe, a teacher by day and video game enthusiast and Challenger of Billy's record. The film is good, and brings to light this interesting subject; however I found myself not liking it that much because I thought that Mitchell had a huge ego and couldn't face Steve Wiebe in what would have been the film's strongest point.

I believe that if the documentary would have shown a match of Donkey Kong between Mitchell and Wiebe, then this would have been a far better film. The film is worth seeing if you're a gamer, and it is most certainly fun to watch.

However if you're not familiar with its subject or don't express interest in video games, you may want to pass up on this. You can clearly see that a few parts of the film were scripted and that's really the film's biggest weakness, that and Billy Mitchell's refusal to face off with Steve Wiebe.

I think what Mitchell did back in the 80'swas cool, but now he just makes himself look like a D__bag. In the end Steve Wiebe proved he was the better person and made Mitchell look like a coward. A good film, but pretty disappointing considering all the hype surrounding it.