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Comment by mwidell | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the greatest documentaries I have ever seen. The story is so intriguing, interesting and entertaining. Highly recommend.

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It's actually the example I give on why one should not watch documentaries. It's extremely misleading (without actually lying):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944741

(I mean yes, Billy is a jerk for sure, but the documentary was way out of line).

They did show Mitchell delivering a frogger(?) arcade machine so a senior could practice for a tournament, which was nice. I think it was an extra in the dvd.

Billy to my mind is a bit annoying but he’s a mild “villain” in the documentary. I mean it’s video game high scores and very compulsive people..

I should watch it again.

You should definitely watch documentaries, as long as you first watch Orson Welles's masterpiece F for Fake as a pre-req. That or Abbas Kiarostami's Close Up. Then you are free to watch as many documentaries as you please.

Make sure to follow up with the much lesser known Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade

It covers a lot of the same material but gives a much wider context about that whole retro gaming scene which is shown in King of Kong

There's another with the same vibe for Tetris. I believe it's called fistful of quarters. Not nearly as good, but great soundtrack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Order:_The_Tetris_M... ?

That's the one I meant, great soundtrack. So I'm confusing names with something else.

Fistful of quarters was the subtitle of King of Kong

The youtube channel Summoning Salt made a great video that covers the history of Tetris world records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOJlg8g8_yw

Highly recommend Summoning Salt in general. I never thought I'd find video game speed runs, records, etc, interesting, but his videos end up being very entertaining. His pacing, tone, and the way he works in music are very effective.

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