William James Mitchell Jr., commonly shortened as Billy Mitchell, is an American video game player. He was born in 1965, and is commonly associated with the Pac-Man series.
History[]
Relation to Pac-Man[]
In 1999, Mitchell claimed to have set a score of 3,333,360 points in Pac-Man; the highest score physically possible in the game. The score was authenticated by Twin Galaxies, who Mitchell had worked with dating back to the 1980s. This "perfect Pac-Man" score received a large amount of publicity, with multiple news articles and broadcasts being produced regarding Mitchell's score.
Some form of contact occurred between Twin Galaxies and Namco involving Mitchell's "perfect game". Presumably from seeing the publicity of the event, Namco invited Mitchell to two press events in Japan: a Pac-Man event at Namco's "Wonder Park", and an appearance on-stage at the 1999 Tokyo Game Show (an event in which Namco was heavily promoting Pac-Man World). From this point forward, Mitchell commonly attended other Pac-Man-related events, including the 2007 "Pac-Man World Championships" (where Mitchell competed in Pac-Man Championship Edition, finishing in last place). Mitchell was also used in promotions for various Pac-Man-related media, such as the movie Pixels and the Antstream streaming service.
In recent years, Mitchell's high scores have been subject to numerous accusations of cheating. In 2018, evidence was found indicating that Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores were potentially staged; this led to Twin Galaxies retracting all of Mitchell's scores from the database, including Pac-Man. Mitchell has filed several lawsuits against individuals who have spoken against him, citing their claims as "defamation".
Trivia[]
- While lesser known than his original Pac-Man scores, Billy Mitchell held the world record in Ms. Pac-Man in 1985; this score would be surpassed in 2001 by Chris Ayra.