The King of Kong - Donkey Kong Champs Square Off
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The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a 2007 documentary revolving around Billy Mitchell and Walter Day and their competitive love for videogames. The film is directed by Seth Gordon and is being distributed by Picturehouse. It will see a limited release on August 17th, 2007.
This will be director Seth Gordon’s fourth film, following Squirt (2002), Fears of a Clown (2004), and The Problem with Percival (2006). In 2008, he will direct The Only Living Boy in New York, a film about a recent college graduate in New York City who’s life is upset by his father’s mistress.
The two “stars” of the film are Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. Steve Weibe is a high school science teacher and Billy Mitchell owns and manages a restaurant that he inherited from his parents. Both are normal, down-to-Earth guys who share a passion for video games, specifically Donkey Kong.
The film revolves around Donkey Kong because of the supposed harsh difficulty of the game. Mitchell is quoted in the film as saying that the average Donkey Kong game “doesn’t last a minute” and that it’s “pure brutality.”
Mitchell has received a lot of recognition for being a video game player, such as being named “Video Game Player of the Century” at the 1999 Tokyo Game Show. In 2006, MTV named him one of “The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time.”
As a video game player, this movie sounds right up my alley and I can’t wait to see it. That being said, the film has already nabbed some high praise from various sources - Variety calls it “wildly entertaining - so if your interest in video games is next to one, I don’t think you should write it off just because of that.
Watch the trailer for The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters:
jim10 3 years ago
Great Hub I can't wait to get around to watching the movie. I added a link to here from my recent arcade hub. It would be really cool if you could check it out.