The infamous legal battle between high-score chaser Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies has finally come to an end, with Twin Galaxies announcing the restoration of all of Mitchell’s scores on their official historical database. This decision follows a confidential settlement reached in a defamation case surrounding Mitchell’s removal from the Twin Galaxies scoreboard in 2018.

As part of the reinstatement, Mitchell’s scores now appear on ‘The Original TG Historical Database,’ a section of the site dedicated to preserving performances and achievements predating the current Twin Galaxies ownership and modern adjudication protocols. However, his scores still do not appear on the main page of Donkey Kong scores, which reflects more modern adjudication decisions.

Twin Galaxies referenced recent testimony from Dr. Michael Zayda, an expert at the trial, whose findings suggested that Mitchell’s submitted gameplay could depict play on original unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware if the hardware involved was malfunctioning. This finding contradicts the Donkey Kong Forum’s removal of Mitchell’s scores in 2018, after they claimed to have found evidence of emulator use in the video of some of Mitchell’s high score performances.

Twin Galaxies’ 2018 investigation heavily relied on the evidence presented by the Donkey Kong Forum, which led to the removal of three of Mitchell’s high-scoring Donkey Kong performances between 2007 and 2010. However, with the recent legal settlement and expert testimony, Twin Galaxies has decided to reinstate all of Mitchell’s world records from his videogame career.