video games
06/19/2007
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Why does it seem like the most interesting documentaries are always about people that I would probably hate if I met? The King of Kong is no exception: the movie centers on the conflict between Billy Mitchell, the best arcade game player in history, and Steve Wiebe, a middle school science teacher who has designs on breaking Mitchell’s twenty-year-old Donkey Kong record.
The trailer is so good I don’t even really have anything to add except to say that if you’re curious, you should head to the Billy Mitchell page on Wikipedia (the gamer, not to be confused with the American General from WWI) and check out his “notable scores.” I don’t know what getting a 3,333,360 on Pac-Man means, but I’m sure it’s really impressive.
Anyway, I’ll definitely be seeing this movie in all its nerdy glory. To that end, I found a quote from an IMDB user that made me even more excited: “[Mitchell and Sanders] are some of the strongest characters I’ve seen in a movie since STAR WARS.” Indeed!
