Kef Schecter ([info]furrykef) wrote,
@ 2009-05-31 02:44:00
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Dethroning the king of Kong
You may be familiar with the (slightly fictionalized) documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. In it, Steve Wiebe (the "good guy") tries to take the world record in Donkey Kong from Billy Mitchell (the "bad guy"). [Note: This was itself fictionalized: Wiebe was actually trying to beat his own previous record, which had already displaced Mitchell's.] He did so... but almost immediately before the movie came out, Billy Mitchell broke Wiebe's new record.

The reason for this post is... at E3, Wiebe's gonna try to take it back. And you can watch, too, at g4tv.com. Dunno if any of you all are geeky enough to watch, but I know I will. Dunno what time it's gonna be on, though... G4 lists it as "all day", so I'm guessing starting at 10-11 AM Eastern or thereabouts.

Also, the King of Kong is going to be shown on G4 on July 1st and 2nd if you haven't seen it. I haven't, so I guess I'll watch it first.

- Kef

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[info]another1stkiss
2009-05-31 03:05 pm UTC (link)
I loved King of Kong, but documentarian Jason Scott's blog posts on the subject have severely tempered that love. I still think Wiebe is a cool guy, though, and I think this sort of thing deserves all the exposure it can get.

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[info]furrykef
2009-05-31 07:35 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I don't really like that The King of Kong fictionalized things -- and, more to the point, a whole bunch of people think that the fictionalized version is what really happened or close enough to it -- but I think that issue could have been resolved by simply adding a disclaimer to the end (I'd have said the beginning, but better not to ruin the story before it's even started) that briefly explains this. Of course, they didn't do this as far as I know, but it'd have been all that was really necessary. The dramatization doesn't make it a bad work in and of itself; it's the presentation of the dramatized work as non-dramatized that's the problem.

- Kef

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[info]hookahbowl.com
2009-06-11 01:58 am UTC (link)
I am so jealous of Steve Wiebe ... I would love to get paid 10k for all the time i've spent practicing video games

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[info]furrykef
2009-06-11 04:04 am UTC (link)
Heh, well, he didn't beat the record, so he didn't get paid. ^^;

Though, yeah, even just having the opportunity is cool.

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