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Euan Kerr
St. Paul, Minn.

Steve Wiebe's struggle to become 'The King of Kong'

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Steve Wiebe
Steve Wiebe, a teacher from Seattle holds the world record score for the Donkey Kong video game. He's one of the subjects of "The King of Kong: a fistful of quarters."
MPR photo/Euan Kerr

Striving to be the best you can be can take many forms....

"My name is Steve Wiebe," says the clean-cut teacher from Seattle.

"I currently have the Guiness Book of World Records record for the arcade game "Donkey Kong," and my score is at this point is 1,049,100 points."

Steve Wiebe is the King of Kong, but his title didn't come easily. His struggle is outlined in a new documentary "King of Kong: a fistful of quarters" which opens this weekend in Minnesota.

Billy Mitchell
Billy Mitchell held the world record Donkey Kong score for more than two decades. He also runs a hot sauce business.
Image copyright Picturehouse

Wiebe enjoyed playing Donkey Kong in college, and even went so far as to buy a machine to play in his fraternity. He got so good that he regularly got to what Donkey Kong experts call the "Kill Screen." He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr that's the point in all Donkey Kong machines where due to a glitch in the program the system runs out of memory and the game just ends.

He sold the game thinking it was faulty. He later found out that he'd actually been setting world record scores, but needed to do it with witnesses if it was going to count.

Steve Wiebe's story is told in "King of Kong: a fistful of quarters" which opens in Minnesota this weekend.

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Steve Wiebe
Steve Wiebe, a teacher from Seattle holds the world record score for the Donkey Kong video game. He's one of the subjects of "The King of Kong: a fistful of quarters."
MPR photo/Euan Kerr