The King Of Kong.

My Rating
(out of 5 envelopes):


MPAA Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 79 minutes
Genre: Documentary

Remember the good old classic arcade game sof the 80s? Well, have you ever wondered what happened to the nerds who obsessed over them? Well even if you haven’t, see this documentary.

The King of Kong is about Steve Wiebe(pronouned wee-bee), a downtrodden school teacher who has always been good but not good enough. After being laid off, he decides to try to beat Billy Mitchell’s unbeaten high score of 874,300 on Donkey Kong set in 1982.

The world of competitive arcade gaming is still alive and thriving. And you get a pretty good glimpse of it from this film. Twin Galaxies is the organization that is featured in the documentary. The organization tracks video game records and is the official record keeper for the Guiness Book of World Records (you can check out there site here). In order to validate a gaming record, you have to submit a tape to them and then they carefully inspect and scrutinize everything about it, including the machine you played on. It’s an extremely difficult process, as you can see in the film.

The great thing about this movie is that even if you aren’t necessarily into arcade games even close to the degree of the games in the film, you can still get into the film. When the film begins, you’ll think “Wow, how can these people be so obsessed with these games after all these years?” Even though the premise of this movie seems simple, but it plays out incredibly well. The movie has both heroes and villians, and you will cheer for the good guys and root against the bad. You’ll see why these nerds still love video games as much as they used to.

Be sure to fast forward through the credits to the end(or I suppose you can watch them) to find out what has happened since the film with some of the people featured. If you have time, there are some interesting bonus features on the dvd that are worth checking out.




Netflix Page for The King of Kong
This movie is also available on Watch Instantly.