Review of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) by Edith N — 12 Apr 2010

Everything Is Important to Someone.

I'm not sure I've ever played Donkey Kong in my life. When it came out in 1981, I was shy of my fifth birthday, and by the time I was old enough, Dad had died and money was tight. I didn't have the quarters to pound into machines--and, on further thought, I didn't have much in the way of opportunity, either. There aren't a whole lot of arcades in Altadena, which is one of the reasons I still think of it as a small town, I guess, even though it may well be bigger, population-wise, than the city I live in now. What's more, and this tends to shock people, I've never owned a gaming console in my life. My grandparents Dillon owned an Atari, which my brain insisted belonged to my dad, but I only remember playing it while Dad was alive, so yeah. I've played a little Pac-Man, and Mom used to kill at Frogger, but mostly, the world of video games left me behind. My friends do not necessarily care about this. I have spent a lot of time watching other people play games. I have listened to far more about games than I have ever wanted to. But I've never played Donkey Kong.

In 1982, Billy Mitchell scored over 800,000 points in Donkey Kong, a world record which went unmatched for decades. In 2005, Steve Wiebe was laid off by Boeing and decided to boost his spirits by playing Donkey Kong. A lot of Donkey Kong. In 2006, he videotaped himself playing a game wherein he scored over a million points. (There is some controversy as to whether Wiebe beat Mitchell's record, as there was one set in 2000, but the producers referred to it as impossible to verify.) That score was controversial, but when it was thrown out, Wiebe was still the record-holder with a 2003 score. At any rate, this launches into the byzantine world of competitive gaming. Mitchell seems to have based his entire self on video games; he is the first person to have ever played a perfect game of Pac-Man. He has also been kind of the face of championship gaming since that day in 1982, and Wiebe is an outsider. Conflict ensues.

In the summary at the end of the film, it states that Jillian Wiebe, his daughter, still doesn't understand what's so important about the Guinness Book of World Records. Nicole Wiebe seems deeply frustrated about the whole thing. In a moment which will no doubt embarrass him for the rest of his life, Derek, his son, demands that his father stop what ends up being the record-breaker so that Steve can wipe Derek. And in fact, I don't know how much Donkey Kong arcade consoles go for these days, but to buy one after having lost a job and bought a house at the same time can't have helped the family finances much. (And how much does it cost in electricity?) There's a TV Tropes page about "Serious Business," and it's clear that Donkey Kong is for these people. In one of the clips on the DVD, Wiebe says not to imitate his parenting style, but I can't help wondering if that's the only thing which suffers. Anything you pursue that obsessively takes time out of your life, and I guess the issue is whether it's important enough to you.

The question, I guess, is whether you see these people as impressive or pathetic. It's interesting to think that they've discovered a glitch in the game's programming that its creators didn't know was there, the so-called Kill Screen. (Apparently, if you get far enough on the game, the system essentially freezes and kills you within about six seconds.) It's also worthwhile to really put dedication into something you love. (As of right about now, I'm halfway through the library's DVD catalog! And it's only taken three years!) I guess it's something to counteract all those people who consider hard work a thing of the past. It's not as though any idiot to drop a quarter into the machine for the first time can rack up that many points. The issue, though, is whether you think their goal, here, is worth it, or perhaps whether having a goal and working toward it is worthy on its own benefits. Most of the appeal of this movie for most people, I suspect, is that duality, the divisiveness of "noble" or "kind of pathetic.".

Various of the people involved have protested how they appear in the film. The producers freely admit to having trimmed for dramatic purposes, though they also defend their choices. Curiously, the thing they're firmest on is that they cleaned up Billy Mitchell. They say that the real Billy Mitchell is less pleasant than the already-surly guy onscreen. Mitchell and Wiebe both swear they get along okay, but it's hard to imagine how some of the scenes could be taken out of context and made better. In the only shot in the entire movie where they interact, Mitchell blows Wiebe off completely, unto making a comment to his wife (whose name I don't remember) that there are some people he just doesn't bother with. Mitchell said, when asked, that he hadn't played video games in more than a year at that point, which to me kind of contradicts something he says in the "additional scenes." Still, a lot of what happens makes you wonder how much any of these people are playing for love of the game anymore.