Reporter's Notebook: It's on like Donkey Kong
In the course of reporting this week's feature on local attorney and video-game badass Steve Sanders, we had to lose some details for space. This Plog is for those of you who always get the two-disc DVDs with the special features and deleted scenes.
Sometimes Steve Sanders' name will come up in Internet forums. On the Internet Movie Database, he's listed as appearing in documentaries The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade. Reaction to Sanders is mixed.
"Steve Sanders seems to be a nice guy," one user wrote.
"It's pretty sad most of these guys live in the past," another poster wrote. "And if that Steve Sanders guy lied about his scores, why do they talk about him as a great gamer? He's a liar and obviously not that great, so why does he get recognition by the other guys?"
Sanders has until December 17, 2009, to make another run at the Joust world record or risk losing his pizza bet to Billy Mitchell.
Mitchell recalls their time as competitive video game players as fraught with mad, lusting women.
"We didn't chase the groupies, they chased us," Mitchell said. "We were the new people in a town that was rather boring."
When their Electronic Circus event in Boston collapsed, Mitchell said Sanders was the one sent to retrieve the papers for filing bankruptcy.
Walter Day, the circus ringmaster and the world's leading video-game referee, has had enough of the video-game scene. He's planning to pursue his music career and maybe write a few novels after he retires. He mailed his official video-game referee jersey to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. to be included in their video-game history exhibit. No such collection exists.
"I boldly made it out on the label: For submission to your video-game exhibit," Day told me. "I did get a response, but I'll never tell what that response was."
Smithsonian officials did not return calls seeking comment on the museum's policy for handling unsolicited submissions.
Finally, despite Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel's assertation that games are harder now, it seems it's still difficult to keep a competitive league going. Wendel was formerly spokesman for the Gaming Championship Series, an international electronic sports league based in the U.S. The GCS folded in November 2008. -- Peter Rugg
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