Kill Screen

The problem with Netflix, large-screen TVs, and microwave popcorn is that people like me who are basically anti-social tend to get out to movies less and less. Which means, of course, we miss a lot. But luckily I didn't miss a recent movie -- King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a documentary that's all about the classic video arcade game Donkey Kong. Well, actually, it is about more than Donkey Kong; it's about the people who play Donkey Kong -- I mean really play it. Competitively. Seriously. Hour-after-hour kind of playing.

Before turning to the movie, let's start with the game itself, just in case you're not familiar with it. In a nutshell, its a 1980-era arcade game in which Mario (the player) climbs ladders to free Pauline from Donkey Kong (a.k.a. King Kong). During the process of going from one stage to another, Donkey Kong tries to stop Mario by throwing barrels and other obstacles towards Mario.

What the movie "King of Kong" is about is the people who try to out do each other in attaining the highest possible scores. According to the official synopsis, the movie is about a "middle-school science teacher and hot-sauce mogul [vying] for the Guinness World Record on the arcade classic, Donkey Kong." But its really about much more than that.

Villaneous hot-sauce mogul Billy Mitchell, who describes himself as the "Darth Vadar of Donkey Kong," holds several records and has been unbeaten for decades. However, nice-guy newcomer Steve Wiebe, a middle-school science teacher from Redmond, Washington, discovers he's a Donkey Kong natural and decides to take on Billy. Then there are the long-simmering rivalies among other fans and Billy synophant, as well as people who simply have a love of the (video) game. For instance, there's Walter Day who is the founder of Twin Galaxies which keeps tab on all the world record scores for pinball and video games. Then there's Jillian Wiebe (Steve's daughter) says: "Work is for people who can't play video games."

I'm not going to tell you how it ends, but I will say that that it is as at least as exciting as the baseball playoffs and a lot more exciting than watching NASCAR or a golf match.

It was interesting that early in the film, Walter or Billy (I don't recall who) made the comparison between yesteryear's classic video games, like Donkey Kong, and today's online, graphic-intensive games, like Halo 3 which garnered $300 million in sales in the first week it was available, racking up more than 3.6 million hours of online gameplay. As Walter (or Billy) said, the classic games require a concentration and hand-eye coordination that today's games can't compete with. There's a lure to these "simple" games that's hard to top. Just as interesting the thick, dog-eared notebooks that top players like Steve and Billy keep describing in detail each and every screen in the game. In essence, they reverse engineer the game to figure out how to beat it.

And what does "kill screen" mean? Once the maximum score is reached in Donkey Kong -- the point at which the game can't tabulate any more points -- Mario disintegrates. According to the movie, there are only two or three known instances of this score being achieved. Does anyone in the "King of Kong" reach it? Well, go see the movie. You'll be glad you did.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:30 AM  Permalink