Kong, Donkey Kong

As many of our most frequent readers know, I often wax poetically about the HBO and all of the joy it has brought into my life. I not only believe in the brand, I also think it is a tremendous value. I think my current cable carrier charges me around $12 per month for 6 different channels of HBO (i.e. HBO, HBO East, HBO Latin, HBO Space, etc.). That being said, I think the worst value in movies is the Blockbuster chain. Since Blockbuster has long since pushed almost all of the locally owned or mom/pop stores out of business it has a dominant presence in the movie rental business. Unfortunately, it has flexed its muscles to raise its rental fees to an astronomical $5 per movie. While this may not seem like a lot of money at first glance, when I rented three movies at one time and my total bill came out to $16.50. Now we are starting to talk about real money!

I was recently at my local grocer and I noticed that they had a vending machine for movies. I had never personally seen one of these contraptions and when I went to check it out it seemed easy enough to use and I gave it a try. I pushed a few buttons, searched through their less than voluminous collection of movies and picked out what I thought might be a winner in The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. All I had to do was swipe my credit card and agree to pay this machine $1 per day for the movie. I thought this seemed fair so I swiped and took my copy of the movie. I can’t speak for the machine but it would be my impression that we both felt pretty good about the terms of the transaction. Of course, if I find out this machine has used my credit card number to purchase batteries, play the claw game, get its oil changed or any other activity that these machines do these days…I will be disappointed!

The King of Kong is a documentary about one man’s journey to lose his job, neglect his family, ruin his eyesight, obtain carpel tunnel syndrome, travel to exotic locations with arcades and Motel 6’s, meet video game nerds, and break the world record score on Donkey Kong. I think this is a pretty standard journey. I know both Matthew and I followed this formula when we graduated from College (it truly is a coming of age journey). As you can imagine though, this journey is filled with hazards, pitfalls, centipede, Q*bert, and pong. No one said it would be easy.

The two main combatants in this picture are the Donkey Kong record score holder - Billy Mitchell, and the man who would like to be the record holder - Steve Wiebe. Billy Mitchell has been good at Donkey Kong for quite a while and set the record high score for the game at some point in the early to mid 1980’s. In present times though, Billy has founded what he terms a successful chicken wing sauce and a runs his own restaurant. Even more important than that though, Billy Mitchell is very protective of his record score and he has a full, luxurious head of mullet hair (or as I like to call it the Missouri Compromise). If Billy Mitchell grew out a beard he would be the guy on the box of Just for Men. Yeah, his mane is truly that nice!

As this movie is a documentary there are a couple of “characters” that we get to know and frankly, thank the good Lord that we are not them. One of the more shady characters in this picture is Roy Shildt. This guy is the world record holder in some other mid-80’s arcade classic (Paperboy?) and he is also the star of a series of ‘B’ movies using the name Mr. Awesome. There is one particular clip that is shown several times where Mr. Awesome is portraying General Patton while talking about chasing the ladies for some Cinemax style Friday After Dark enjoyment. Of course, as all YouTube porn wannabes often complain, Shildt is disappointed his movies have not yet gotten him on the Tonight Show.

The other character of mention from King of Kong is the bearded wonder Walter Day. Walter has a job that no one would ever think necessary….he is the video game referee. That is right folks, this guy watches nerds at the arcade play their console to ensure that game play is held to the highest standards. He also wears a long sleeve referee shirt while watching.

One thing that did surprise me about this picture is that they actually show very little of the play of Donkey Kong. I can remember as a child playing this game but I am not sure that I ever passed the first level. There were barrels rolling everywhere, fire’s burning out of control, a hammer that seemed to swing itself, and a medium sized ape holding onto a mid-30’s blonde. There was just too much going on!

I don’t know why Mario (or what ever the character is that chases Kong) didn’t just leave this really tall building, go back to his house and get some bananas or some bamboo (what ever ape’s ate in the early 80’s) and make a simple trade with the animal. I mean, it’s a big dumb smelly ape for goodness sake; surely Mario could work something out with it? And was this blonde really worth saving? I don’t know her story for sure but how did she get into this predicament? How exactly do you get caught by an ape? Shouldn’t you have seen this coming? The whole set up for this game takes place in a really tall warehouse so it is unlikely that this blonde was doing missionary work in the jungle when she ran into a pride of apes.

And another thing, what kind of warehouse is this exactly? There are barrels piled up every 6 floors or so, there are ladders everywhere, there is a part with single platform elevators and there are automatic pogo-sticks jumping around. How has OSHA let this go on? I am assuming that this game is set on a Saturday or Sunday because no one else appears to be working at this factory but when the regular workers come back to work on Monday not only are they returning to dangerous working conditions, they are also returning to a mess of broken barrels and flame bursts (and let’s not forget that all of the hammers that they placed into the ceiling are now missing). If my memory is correct, this factory has 25 screens, multiply that by the about 6 floors per screen and we are talking about a 150 story building (a 150 story building without an express elevator). Can you imagine if you worked every day on the 140th floor?

I may have gotten a little off message there for a minute, so here is a quick review of the last 75 minutes of the King of Kong. Steve Wiebe practices at Donkey Kong, Steve Wiebe breaks world record on Donkey Kong as previously set by Billy Mitchell, Walter Day rules that Steve Wiebe’s record is fraudulent, Steve Wiebe again breaks world record on Donkey Kong, Steve Wiebe cry’s tears of joy, Billy Mitchell mails Walter Day a tape of himself breaking world record on Donkey Kong, Steve Wiebe cry’s tears of disappointment, Billy Mitchell brushes hair in slow motion, end credits.

So to wrap this one up, it turns out that Mario (or who ever it is that is chasing the blonde) never saves the blonde from the ape. At the end of Donkey Kong Mario just dies (probably from exhaustion – his blood is on you OSHA).

Warren