The King of Kong

In the documentary “The King of Kong” they follow two avid Donkey Kong players through their trails at gaining the highest possible score. Throughout the movie I was intrigued on how competitive and secretive the players in the community were. To me I never thought gaming as a real sport that needed a referee or certain guidelines, but in this movie it showed how you can take just regular video game playing to a whole new level.

            The strategies that Billy and Steve use are completely different. Billy decides not to play in public and to kind of stay under the radar while Steve is trying to beat his highest score. I think he did this possibly because back in the day when he made the high score he had to play in front of a lot of people and wanted to see if Steve could do the same before he took him seriously. You have to give Billy a lot of credit because I figure that back then there was no other way to play games except in an arcade, so he was probably really used to people watching over his shoulder.

            Steve on the other hand was more accustomed to having semi silence and practicing in his garage. I don’t really consider this to be extremely fair because I feel like having the game at your house gives you a lot more of an advantage. You can sit and work on it for hours and analyze the game, but at an arcade you may have people bugging you or it closes. Having the game at your house makes it extremely easy. So that is why I think it was smart of Steve to go out and play in front of people to truly show how good he is. I do not think it was fair that they did not except the first score he submitted but I am happy that in the end he finished what he started and finally got the title as the best Donkey Kong player with the highest score.