“I don’t believe in journalism,” is perhaps the most amazing line from Billy Mitchell’s lengthy “Road to Redemption” panel, which was held a while back (and reported on at the time by Variety). The Q&A panel was held at the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo, and this week the event’s official YouTube channel dropped video.
Mitchell says some wild stuff at this panel, which itself was a reaction to his entire history of video game world records being redacted from the history books at Twin Galaxies. This happened after a lengthy investigation led to the company discovering Mitchell’s infamous Donkey Kong tape, a smoking gun of sorts that was a big plot point in the King of Kong documentary, turned out to be footage that wasn’t taken from real Donkey Kong hardware.
Mitchell, throughout the panel, drops several conspiratorial bombs, including implying Twin Galaxies (under recent-ish new ownership) fabricated the problematic Donkey Kong footage (suggested to be running on MAME instead of a true arcade cabinet). He also slips into a bizarre tirade about the FBI, his son, and something about pedophile pornography.
He closes it out by saying he’ll re-do the taped score, but won’t go any higher that that. Because he doesn’t need to. Because, as he says, “I’m Billy Mitchell.”