The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is the most nerdtastic documentary you n00bs will ever see. Period. It begs the question: Why wasn’t my middle school science teacher as awesome as Steve Wiebe? Heck, all my seventh grade science teacher did was drop pens on the ground and ask me to pick them up in order to look at my cleavage. But that’s a different story, a much darker… repressed… different story.
Here are the game’s main characters:
Steve Wiebe: he’s like your Mario, who never seems to get any stars or coins and constantly gets thrown barrels in his way. Some of these barrels include getting badly injured while pitching in the high school baseball championships and getting laid off the day he signed the lease on his home. But like Mario, he starts over with a new life and tries to move on. While on the hunt for a new job, Wiebe looks up the world record for Donkey Kong and decides at that moment, he is going to beat it. But before he can do that, he needs to face a whole new set of barrels being thrown at him.
Billy Mitchell: the record holder of Donkey Kong. He is the Donkey Kong throwing all of the barrels…if Donkey Kong looked like a more twisted brother of hair guru, Paul Mitchell. Billy earned the world record score in 1982, and has been living off of that fame ever since.
Walter Day: meet Barrel #1. Walter is the head “referee” of the FunTown tournament. Walter enters and verifies all of the new high scores for classic arcade games. Walter didn’t count Steve’s video submission of what would have been the highest Donkey Kong score because of Billy’s affiliation Roy Shildt, an enemy of Billy Mitchell. It’s funny though, Walter was so quick to add Billy’s secret new video submission even though it had many breaks and skips in the VHS tape.
Brian Kuh: Barrel #2. After Steve Wiebe sends in his tape, Kuh breaks into Wiebe’s garage and pulls apart his machine to see that it is not tampered with. He finds a box in the garage with the return address belonging to Roy Schildt and reports it to Walter Day. Brian quits his job as a bank comptroller so he could move closer to FunSpot and practice there everyday. He enters the tournament as a competitor against Wiebe, claiming that he has what it takes to win. But aside from losing early in the levels, he spends most of the tournament reporting to Billy Mitchell of Steve’s increasing scores.
Despite all of the barrels and Donkey Kong metaphors, the documentary ends with a sentence saying that eventually Wiebe earns the highest score. Yay! Steve wins, you really feel for the guy. But overall, all I felt was that all of the characters were pathetic. Each of them was desperately trying to relive the past. Wiebe, having a high score in a game won’t make you win that baseball game you lost years ago. Walter, you are sooo old. Retire! No one needs a referee for these games anymore because no one plays them anymore. If you don’t believe my argument, Google Image search Billy Mitchell and that’s all the proof you need. This rivalry is still going on today. So Billy Mitchell, I hope it’s worth your Kid Rock haircut and Steve Wiebe, I hope it’s worth neglecting your kids because in the end you both lost. On January 11, the record was taken by Hank Chien, a 35 year old plastic surgeon who had only been playing the game for a year and a half.
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