King Of Kong : A Fistful Of Quarters

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is one of the most interesting movies I have seen this year.

It is a documentary which looks at the video game world and its World championship regulators - Twin Galaxies - who are in charge of all the accurate coin-op machine high scores.

The main focus of the film is spent on a man named Steve Wiebe who has the desire to become the world champion at Donkey Kong.

His quest is achieved in the middle of the movie but there are a few shenanigans involved with the record being set as the regulators - along with the current World champion - seek to rescind the record due to the machine having a peculiar looking circuit board.

The fact that the record was made on a video camera recording and not in a live venue was also one of the factors behind the score not being recognised. This shows a certain double standard on the part of the Twin Galaxies as nearly all of their high score data is collected from video tapes sent to them from gamers.

If Wiebe is the protagonist of this story he must contend with a few antagonists along the way. The most notable baddie is the World champion, Billy Mitchell.

Mitchell comes across as nothing more than an asshole in the documentary. He made the record at the game in 1982 and stood undefeated for so long. There is one scene in the film where he improves his record but it seems doctored because the film of the game gets scratchy when the people in charge of scoring are viewing the feat.

I personally think that this score is illegitimate and it is offered to the viewer to make up their mind on whether it should stand or not.

I can't really say any more because it will spoil it, what I can say - however - is it was an interesting insight into the world of video gamers. I'd make a strong argument that 99,9 percent of the people in this film are super geeks but that is because I am an outsider looking in. I'm sure it's perfectly normal for folk like this to show signs of OCD in trying to get a high score on their favourite arcade game while another guy in the room is running around telling other patrons that they are about to see the final screen of Donkey Kong and to go watch the machine.

Bearing this in mind, one of the most intelligent comments made in the film was from Wiebe's infant daughter when she wondered why people put themselves through torture just to get their name inside the Guinness Book of Records.