Dispute Decision: Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong & All Other Records Removed

[FAST6191]

While I have no objection, other than my philosophical ones, to him being stripped of records on that site (and others that pull from it/reference it/hold it up as their chosen standard), and I presume there is a "word of the internal review team is final" line in the site terms somewhere to cover their arses, I am still not at cheating being proven for this one.
Cheating from where I sit requires the attempt to actively influence the outcome outside the remit of the game, and in some cases using a device to do it (card counting tending to have that one -- memorise all you want, use your phone to record the cards going out and then you are then considered to be cheating).

 

[kuwanger]

Yeah, I understand. It just seems to me that it's really difficult to prove there's an active advantage to using some non-original hardware, so that's why the rules make it clear that only original hardware is allowed. It used to be that MAME was wildly inaccurate in tons of games, and there's tons of other arcade and console emulators that are wildly inaccurate, but actually knowing how to exploit them and proving that exploit is really hard. I can fully understand why you'd feel it doesn't amount to cheating until they can prove his actions resulted in an advantage, but like card counting it's the aspect of using something outside yourself and the tools that make it card counting to me. It's why a paper and pencil would be cheating even though in theory memorizing would be equivalent. In practice, it's virtually impossible to know for certain.

 

[cracker]

After reading up on it again I realize the major problem with MAME being used. It allows for essentially a TAS to be created for a 'single-shot' video to be created post-play. Of course, it can't be proven one way or another at this point and the only witness is involved in a speed-run scandal. The burden of proof was all on BM and he failed - legitimate or not.

 

[Condarkness_XY]

Another one bites the dust... And another one and another one bites the dust.

 

[DarthDub]

I don't see the problem in using an emulator. Game's so old and hard to find, also very expensive.

 

[FAST6191]

I don't see the problem in using an emulator. Game's so old and hard to find, also very expensive.

I imagine it is more of an ease of verification thing.

Two main things.
1) it is trivial to do a tool assisted run (or an outright AI run) on an emulator.
2) emulation is not always accurate and if you are playing at the ragged edge (and people that routinely end up playing to the point of a killscreen are) then it starts to really matter if it is not. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/ covers something like it for the timing side of things, and if you ever looked into the random number generator (RNG) side of pokemon hacking you have a good example of another thing where emulators occasionally fall short*.

*a classic one might be uninitialised memory. When you turn a computer on its memory is typically random until you set it to be something else. If you read this memory before then you have a nice random number. If the emulator starts it at the same all 00s or a fixed random pattern then the game might make supposedly random actions be the same and thus make the game easier. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html is a nice example of such a thing going wrong, albeit not for a game.

 

[FAST6191]

Seems one Mr Mitchell fired back with a lawsuit threat

This guy historically has done quite a bit of game law (normally copyright related) but works for me here


Twin galaxies published the evidence package (which seems fairly compelling for Mr Mitchell)and the notice sent
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BMbW-_fSwCFQ1Kzl59pj7TnoQiuAdgcJ/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sAW-RRD0-qdg_TcKZHk9Aaoj5bGovz14/view

 

[cracker]

It doesn't matter if he had perfect timing to pull off the maneuvers people think were impossible or not. The fact still remains that the screen drawing in the video has never been able to be replicated on an actual coinop. This strongly points to an emulator being used. It is interesting that (as far as I have read on this) Billy seems to be the only one allowed to submit his arcade runs via recordings rather than doing it live with a judge present...