Dodge a barrell and check out this week’s Movies You Have Not Seen But Should!
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Greetings and thanks for joining us for the 20th installment of Movies You Have Not Have Seen But Should. I hope you have enjoyed the previous films highlighted in this series, some you may have never seen before (but hopefully have now) and some that you may have seen before but it had been a lot time since your last viewing. For this week’s installment we will shift gears a bit. We will look at the first documentary to be highlighted in this series. We will look at the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.
The film centers on the classic arcade game Donkey Kong and one man’s attempt to break the world record for highest score on the game. The man who is attempting to break the record is Steve Wiebe. Wiebe is from Redmond, Washington and at the time of filming was a laid off engineer at Boeing working as a science teacher in a local school. He is portrayed in the film as a hard luck guy who can’t seem to get the breaks to go his way. While going back to school to get his master’s degree, he buys an old Donkey Kong arcade game and begins playing it in his spare time. He reads about the world record and decides he would try and go after it himself. He does end up breaking the record and sends a tape of the event to Twin Galaxies, which is an organization that keeps track of high scores of arcade games in the United States. Wiebe became a news topic and a celebrity of sorts as word spread about his feat.
On the flip side, there is Billy Mitchell. Mitchell was the record holder before Wiebe. Mitchell achieved the then highest score back in the 1980s. Among arcade video game players, he is seen as the “king”. He is also not afraid to let people know about it either. He is portrayed in the film as being cocky, arrogant & self-promoting. Mitchell isn’t too happy that anyone, let alone Wiebe broke his record. He then challenges the authenticity of the record. The rest of the film goes back and forth between the two as Wiebe seeks validation for his high score while Mitchell tries to remain on top of the mountain.
Along with featuring Wiebe and Mitchell, it also has interviews and features Wiebe’s family, several of Mitchell’s friends, other arcade game players, and the founder of Twin Galaxies Walter Day along with the chief referee Robert Mruczek.
The film premiered on January 22, 2007 at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It was also featured at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, True/False Film Festival, Aspen Comedy Festival and Fantasia Festival. It opened in limited release in the U.S. on August 17, 2007. It was received well by critics. It has a 97% freshness score on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 83. It was nominated for several Best Documentary Feature awards and several critics listed the film in their top 10 films of 2007.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is available on DVD and Amazon Instant Video. If you’re into classic video games or a fan of a good documentary, this is one to certainly check out. It’s one that you may not have seen, but you should.
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