Art Feature

Kansas City’s token king defends Kong champ
by Russ Simmons

In 1982, the Kansas City Star published an article about a local video game master named Steve Sanders. At the time, the teenager held the unofficial world record for the highest score ever achieved on the arcade favorite, Donkey Kong.

The Star’s headline declared him “The King of Kong.” He then wrote a Bantam book called The Video Masters Guide to Donkey Kong. But as it turns out, the accolades were a bit premature. The callow youth had fudged his numbers.

Appropriately, Sanders now appears in a highly acclaimed film about competitive arcade gaming called The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. The intriguing and entertaining flick is a front-runner for an Oscar as Best Documentary.

A lawyer in the Northland, the mature Sanders has mended his ways. In fact, he remains close friends with Billy Mitchell, the man who took the title from him during a head-to-head battle.

“The (filmmaker) first started following Steve Wiebe in his quest to become the King of Kong, to try to take the title away from the guy who’s had it for the last 20 years, Billy Mitchell,” Sanders said.

“In the course of tracking the story, they realized that Billy Mitchell had taken the title away from me in 1982. So it was natural for them to call me up and say, ‘Do you want to be involved in this project?’ Little did I realize that it would become a smash hit that’s critically acclaimed.”

A native of Clinton, MO and graduate of the law school at UMKC, Sanders has remained close to the man who dethroned him.

“Billy and I have been great friends for a long, long time. I thank the Lord for him and his friendship.”

Sanders’ obsession with video games started with his affection for pinball.

“About my junior year, I started playing pinball all the time. When I started hanging out in pinball arcades, they had a lot of video games there, too. Before too long, I accidentally became the best Pac Man player in the world. That was October 31, 1981, my senior year. I got the score of 2, 886, 030. I won a Pac Man machine in the contest.”

The King of Kong focuses on the rivalry between Wiebe and Mitchell and infers that Mitchell may have been involved in some Machiavellian schemes to prevent Wiebe from taking his record. In fact, Mitchell comes off as a self-serving egomaniacal manipulator. Sanders takes exception to that portrayal of his friend and questions the movie’s fairness.

“Fair is a difficult word,” Sanders explained. “I’m not sure that any documentary or movie ever could achieve the lofty goal of being fair. Usually there is so much more to any story than what can be portrayed. Was it accurate? It’s mostly accurate in that most things said and done is something that happened in front of the camera. As I’ve learned in trial law, once you’ve heard a story, you should always ask yourself, ‘What’s the rest of the story?’”

Sanders gave an example of one incident where the filmmakers were attempting to create some artificial friction.

“There’s a scene in the movie where Billy has asked me to invite several of his friends to his restaurant for lunch on him…his treat. The scene opens up with me on the phone with Billy saying, ‘Let me tell you who all is here…oops, look at that, here comes Steve Wiebe …uninvited and unexpected.’ The filmmakers heard about the lunch…and they decided it would be good to inject some controversy into the mix and they told Steve to go down to the restaurant.”

Steve Sanders setting a world record on two-player Joust. (photo courtesy of www.spyhunter007.com) .

Initially, Mitchell hesitated to join his friends under these circumstances. As Sanders explained, he quickly relented.

“What they don’t tell you is that after five or ten minutes, Billy sort of cooled down, collected his thoughts, came in with his wife and his kid. They all interacted with everyone including Steve Wiebe. But that part wouldn’t contribute the story. He wouldn’t seem quite so evil. They want to make him look as bad as they can because that helps the movie.”

“Is it accurate? Yeah. Is it fair to Billy? No, not really.”

Sanders also admitted that Mitchell didn’t help his own cause.

“Billy assumed that if he never addressed the situation that would never become a part of any story. Of course, the fact that he wouldn’t address actually became a key part of the story. He was hoping to avoid controversy but instead he ignited controversy.”

While he may have some reservations about the film’s depiction of Mitchell, he’s excited about its success. Although he isn’t as involved in competitive gaming as he once was, Sanders keeps his hand in.

“I play for fun. I did (recently) manage to eke out a world record on Joust. I teamed up (with a rival) to play two-player Joust and got the world record on that.”

So is Sanders concerned that his four young sons might inherit his obsession?

“I don’t want them to get as tied up in it as I did,” Sanders admitted.

Russ Simmons can be contacted at simmons.russ@gmail.com.