The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a short but sweet documentary that follows the lengths two men will go to set the records for the classic arcade game, Donkey Kong. We learn a whole lot about the many faces that populate the world of competitive video games, like Walter Day as official record-keeping referee, Steve Sanders as a fraudulent Donkey Kong champ in his youth who has now become a lawyer, Mr. Awesome, and the gaming world’s superstar, Billy Mitchell. He holds several world records including a score of 800,000 for Donkey Kong. Enter Washington science teacher Steve Wiebe who dutifully plays Donkey Kong in his garage. He challenges Billy’s score and videotapes himself passing 1,000,000 points; all the while you can hear his son in the background screaming to have his butt wiped.

What becomes very apparent is that the entire record-keeping system is tilted in Billy’s favor. It’s both sad and funny to watch a group of grown men who have all gravitated toward one man at video games. Billy’s claim to fame is he’s the best at video games, and he has a restaurant, a line of hot sauce, and other products that sell because he has that small sliver of fame. And this select circle of gamers essentially is a freaking tree house and they don’t like someone from the outside crashing their private party. This group of man-child sycophants is clinging to their small notoriety like a life preserver on a doomed ocean liner. It’s baffling how serious and self-involved they all come across; while on the phone with Billy, Steve Sanders, while dining, says in the most hyperbolic alertness that Steve has come into the restaurant “uninvitedly” like it’s some grave offense. It’s a restaurant! (Billy at one point literally says, “No matter what I say, it draws controversy. It’s sort of like the abortion issue.”) These few established gamers throw hurdles at Steve and even dismantle his Donkey Kong machine to snap pictures looking for some tenuous proof that his score was inflated somehow. When they find a small dew drop of glue in one corner of the control board, they claim that this, compiled with the fact that the board was given to Steve by a known enemy to Billy, is enough to disqualify Steve’s record-breaking million point score.

They challenge him to break the record in public and that’s what Steve does, which is more than what Billy Mitchell is capable of. Steve travels to renowned New Hampshire arcade FunSpot and, under the glare of Billy lackeys, breaks 900,000 and gets to the heralded “kill screen,” where the old arcade game, because it has exhausted its memory, begins a stage simply to kill Mario within seconds. We’re told only two others have been ever known to reach a kill screen in public.

And then Brain Kuh pops in a videotape that Billy sent. The tape is a recorded game, presumably of Billy playing, where he passes 1,000,000 points on Donkey Kong and undermines Steve’s recent accomplishment. The sycophants are all abuzz, with Kuh on the phone with Billy relaying every moment in hilarious fawning detail. Apparently, it wasn’t kosher for Steve to submit a recorded video of his score but Billy doing the same thing is acceptable. This double-standard is even more dubious when you realize that Billy Mitchell is one of the deciding members on whether or not to credit Steve’s million-point tape; isn’t that a bit of a conflict of interest? Billy’s record-breaking tape has a mysterious blur that only appears on the side of the screen with the score, and the blur conveniently or coincidentally covers the score as it passes into seven digits. Surely that is more questionable than a dollop of glue on a control board, but oh well, the score stands.

The last part of the film involves the Guinness Book of World Records reaching out to Walter Day to setup a section on video game score records. The location for this showdown is even in Billy’s own backyard of Hollywood, Florida. Steve travels 3,000 miles to be there and challenge Billy head-to-head in public, but the many days go by and Billy refuses to put his skills to public scrutiny. Is he afraid to lose in public, or is there really something funny with that record-breaking tape he submitted to FunSpot?

King of Kong is pleasantly structured like a sports movie. Billy is portrayed as the villain, the establishment, and Steve is the underdog that just wants to succeed at something in a life that seems filled with disappointment. Even better, the filmmakers made a training montage set to “Eye of the Tiger.” The movie follows the expectations of a triumph-of-the-will tale, and King of Kong is all the better because of the silliness of the world of competitive old school arcade games. The sincerity and seriousness is so high that you cannot be faulted for asking whether or not this film is a mockumentary. It doesn’t seem to be real but that’s part of what makes it’s so fun to watch. Yes there’s some bias in the editing, but Billy Mitchell sure makes it easy to be characterized as a villain living high on his spoils of long ago. He openly connives and an old woman he’s helping reach a Q-Bert record even refers to him as “devious.” I think Billy even relishes the role of villain.

King of Kong is filled with great personalities and Kuh may be one of the funniest and most pathetic real-life figures I’ve seen in recent documentaries. He’s a self-described “prodigy” of Billy’s, and he was one of the two people who ventured into Steve’s garage while he wasn’t home. He “retired” at age 30 and was one of the most vocal proponents of Steve proving his skills are valid in a public site. He says the true game player must perform in public, under pressure, with another gamer looking on, possibly playing mind games with you (he really does say this, I swear). Yet when Billy doesn’t follow suit, it’s legit. Steve was playing at the time the video was shown and asks to watch it. Kuh declines, saying it was a “one-play only show,” never mind the fact that Billy could have studied Steve’s own winning tape for hours. His hypocrisy and weasel nature aside, when he speaks directly to the camera to narrate Steve’s ongoing Donkey Kong game is where the true depth of how sad this guy is comes on display. He’s talking about how far Steve is advancing with thinly veiled envy and desperate hopes of a bad turn of events; he advises to be on alert for “wild barrels” and “aggressive fireballs.” It’s altogether pathetic. “For someone else to beat me to the kill screen would be a letdown,” he says, “but let’s see what happens, maybe he’ll crack under the pressure and maybe I’ll get my chance to do it first.”

King of Kong is a vastly entertaining documentary told with wit and visual flair. Debut filmmaker Seth Gordon has crafted a highly enjoyable little glimpse into the strange lives of competitive gaming. Following a sports movie model, it’s easy to root for the underdog and get swept up in the compelling, if bizarre, storyline. King of Kong is arresting and fascinating documentary on the agony of defeat and the thrill of competition.

Nate’s Grade: B+