Slim and I saw "King of Kong" with Shani and Dave. And, now the rest of the story (spoilers):

• Mitchell and Wiebe played head to head in 2004 in a San Diego tournament. [MTV News]


• Wiebe's wife was "was ready to throw the machine off a cliff." [New York Magazine]


• Mitchell's videotape, sent to Funstop, wasn't counted as a high score; Twin Galaxies revoked it a couple of days later. Mitchell says he didn't play Wiebe in Hollywood because he hadn't played for six months and was out of practice. (Of course, he loses sympathy when he murmurs of hopes lawyers would seek him out to bring a lawsuit.) [MTV News]


• If one is going to have record-keeping, it's not entirely crazy to have verification procedures: like most arcade games, Donkey Kong has dip-switches, and four of the dip-switches affect difficulty of play.


• Mitchell isn't a referee for Donkey Kong scores. [Steve Sanders @ EFilmCritic]


• And, oh, by the way, Mitchell has beaten Wiebe's high score again. [MTV News; Twin Galaxies; Twin Galaxies]


• Mitchell seems to do his share for charity, but that restaurant appears to be inherited family business. [Twin Galaxies; Rickey's Hot Sauce]

I liked the movie when I saw it, but now I'm feeling kind of manipulated—with 400 hours of footage, and unlimited access to music, it's invariably possible to put together 90 minutes that tell a story different from what happened if doing so makes a better arc, but it's still nauseating when you learn you've been taken. I do feel bad for the people who made Chasing Ghosts, as I suspect that the market for documentaries featuring Walter Day is rather saturated now. (ObWikiGroan: former solicitor general Walter Dellinger vs. Walter Day.)

There's Internet babble about a fictional adaptation of the documentary that has achieved Wikiality, but reading the source shows that it's wishful thinking that Johnny Depp and Nathan Fillion would reprise the real-life leads. I can't imagine any agent would let either make the movie, much less a studio greenlighting something that required people to be paid.

But there really is a Roy Awesome, and some of the scenes in the movie appear to come from this longer NSFW interview.