Almost exactly six years after being erased from the records by Twin Galaxies scorekeepers, Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores are back in the (historical) record books. In a statement released Tuesday, Twin Galaxies announced that all of Mitchell's scores would be restored to the official historical database, but not to the modern leaderboard.

Mitchell was originally banned from Twin Galaxies after Twin Galaxies forum member Xelnia (real name Jeremy Young) posted a thread disputing that Mitchell had scored on the original unmodified hardware and was Banned from the record books, Young argued that Mitchell had in fact scored using the arcade emulator MAME, which was invalid for inclusion in the arcade category.

As a result of "an independent investigation by Twin Galaxies, supported by a series of detailed submissions, experiments, and analyses," Mitchell's score was struck from both Twin Galaxies' records and the Guinness World Records, although the latter record was reinstated in 2020.

Mitchell has since been campaigning against his exclusion, and with the new submission Twin Galaxies appears to have finally reached a compromise. In its statement, Twin Galaxies said that the application, submitted on Mitchell's behalf by Dr. Michael Zaida, showed that the anomaly initially noted by Young in 2018 was "an unmodified Donkey Kong arcade where the hardware involved is likely malfunctioning due to component deterioration." The full text of Zyda's submission can be found here.

"In fairness to the expert opinion provided by Dr. Zyda on behalf of Mr. Mitchell, Twin Galaxies is reinstating Mr. Mitchell's scores as part of the official historical database on Twin Galaxies' website," Twin Galaxies stated. It also archived and "removed from view" the original forum thread by Xelnia that took issue with Mr. Mitchell's records.

To put it more plainly, this means that Mitchell and Twin Galaxies have not been able to find Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores of 1,047,200 (King of Kong Score), 1,050,200 (Mortgage Brokers Score), and 1,062,800 (Mortgage Brokers Boomers Score), meaning that a somewhat hazy compromise was reached to keep them alive in the history books without listing them on the continually updated scoreboard, which is what you would refer to if you wanted an accurate reflection of the current Donkey Kong record-breaking scene.

To that end, Mitchell said in a statement on his (now locked) Twitter account, "Twin Galaxies has resurrected every video game world record I have achieved in my career. Whether that will convince those people remains to be seen.

David Tashroudian, Twin Galaxies' attorney, said in a chat with Ars Technica that Twin Galaxies wanted to finally end its dispute with Mitchell more than anything else, as Tashroudian told Ars that he was "not sure if the cost of the legal process was [Twin Galaxies'] main motivation, but I think a final resolution is what they really wanted to achieve."

Tashroudian even said that the organization "had all its ducks in a row" for a courtroom confrontation with Mitchell, including submissions questioning some of Mitchell's experts, but that putting a full stop to the end of this saga seemed more important. Says Tashrodian, "Given all the facts, it definitely would have been a fun trial and an interesting one."

However, we will never know how the trial turned out unless someone comes forward with evidence that again casts doubt on Mitchell. Twin Galaxies' statement leaves that avenue open. While Twin Galaxies' responsibility is to "verify whether submissions meet the verification guidelines, not to investigate how the submissions were created," the latter, it says, is "for experts like Dr. Zaida and other interested parties to investigate and evaluate these for their own purposes. issues can be investigated and evaluated," he writes.