Cheating champ? SoFla’s Billy Mitchell is no longer king of Donkey Kong

“King of Kong” champ Billy Mitchell, a former Hollywood resident who now lives in Weston, was officially stripped of his Donkey Kong world record and other high scores Thursday after an investigation determined he cheated. Twin Galaxies, the world’s largest tracker of video game world records, also banned him for life from submitting future scores. Mitchell, 52, could not be reached for comment, despite messages left on his voicemail. His parents, who still live in Hollywood, said they had no idea his title had been stripped. “He went to Japan,” said his father, William Mitchell Sr. “He was the best of the century.

He’s fabulous. I’ve seen him play.”

His mom, Barbara Mitchell, tried to reach him on the phone but got voicemail.

“We don’t know anything about this,” she said. “We just got back from a cruise Tuesday.”

Mitchell’s mom said her son was so good at gaming that he made it into the Guinness Book of Records.

It was unclear Thursday whether Mitchell’s Guinness record will stand.

His longtime rival, Steve Wiebe, now becomes the official 1st million point record holder, Twin Galaxies said.

Patrick Quere, a Hollywood resident and gamer fan, was taken aback by the news.

“It’s going to send a shock wave through the gaming community,” he said. “This puts into question all his old victories. It discredits him as an authority in the gaming world. But only hard core, old school gamers are going to take notice.”

Quere predicted the news would not go over well in Japan.

“Japan is the epicenter of the gaming world,” he said. “That whole honor thing, I think they’d find it incredibly dishonorable — like doping in the Olympics. He was living the dream. And now his [gaming] career is shot.”

Thursday’s decision came after months of research by the administrators of Twin Galaxies, which tracks world gaming records and helps the Guinness Book validate gaming scores.

The group accuses Mitchell of making his renowned Donkey Kong score of 1,047,200 through the use of emulation software instead of on an arcade machine, as required by Twin Galaxies and Guinness.

“The rules for submitting scores for the original arcade Donkey Kong competitive leaderboards requires the use of original arcade hardware only,” the group said. “The use of MAME or any other emulation software for submission to these leaderboards is strictly forbidden.”

Twin Galaxies officials also said at least two different third parties conducted their own inquiry and came to the same conclusion.

“Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Billy Mitchell’s scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards,” Twin Galaxies said. “We have notified Guinness World Records of our decision.”

Mitchell appeared as one of the key figures in the 2007 documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” In the film, directed by Seth Gordon, Wiebe attempts to wrest the world record for the Donkey Kong arcade game from Mitchell, who is portrayed as a villain.

Nowadays, Mitchell keeps busy flying to Louisiana to monitor his hot sauce business, his mother said. He also flies to New York to visit his 20-year-old son at West Point.

Mitchell still has at least one admirer — a Hollywood man who shares his name and who remembers playing Donkey Kong as a kid.

“We played it as kids,” said the other William Mitchell. “Everybody played it.”

A reporter showed him a photo of his more famous namesake.

“He’s much more handsome than me,” Mitchell said with a laugh before heading back toward his condo.

Over at Rickey’s Restaurant & Sports Bar in Hollywood, manager Randy Dmyterko was busy seating customers.

Mitchell, whose parents own the place where he once served as a manager, was nowhere in sight.

“He’s not really affiliated with the restaurant anymore,” Dmyterko said. “He handles the hot sauce [business] now.”

Outside, New Jersey tourist Andrew Awdiok smoked a cigarette.

“You’re going waaay back,” he told a reporter who asked if he’d ever heard of Donkey Kong.

“It’s a big deal for the gamer people,” he said. “They do take it seriously, that generation, people who played all the time.”

Information from Variety was used in this report.