Just when my popularity had reached its zenith, I was to suffer a humbling fall from grace every bit as epic as that of Donkey Kong’s plummet from atop the construction site on Board 4. It all started innocently enough, one dark and stormy night in early 1981 when a mysterious VHS tape shattered through the front window of my family’s living room. This shocking and confusing event was made all the more traumatic as my father is, to this day, a die-hard Betamax purist.

Several days later, when we were able to procure access to a VHS player at an affluent friend's house, I was shaken to the core by what I saw (once I was able to adjust the Tracking for suitable quality playback). My untouchable claim to fame- my Atari 2600 Missile Command World Record- had been absolutely decimated by a creepy, bearded eleven-year-old freak from Hollywood, Florida. This was the first, but unfortunately not the last time, I'd lay my eyes on the infamous Billy Mitchell.

It didn't take long for me to realize that Billy had dispatched dozens of copies of his VHS of terror to the media and all major video game manufacturers. Word spread like wildfire of his arrival on the arcade scene and in the following months, Billy cemented his reputation and supplanted me as the elite gaming phenom by becoming the first person to ever achieve a perfect score in Froggy Dong, a game with a well-earned reputation as the most difficult arcade experience of all-time, as it combines the most challenging elements of every classic title ever created.

As more and more of my records were slipping away, I finally got my opportunity for a face-to-face encounter with my new nemesis when Life magazine gathered all the top arcade gamers in the world together for a cover story in April of 1982. Unfortunately, my courteously worded request for a friendly Defender contest was met with the unexpected and immediate rejoinder of Billy forcing me to the ground, sitting on my head, and repeatedly farting for what seemed to be hours.

Regardless, I was still clinging to the World Record for Burgertime and enjoying the lifestyle of a world-famous arcade gaming badass. The ages of 8-9 are a complete blur to me, and memory serves mere vague shards of hallucinatory reminiscences of snorting a potent cocktail of Pixie Sticks and cocaine off of Drew Barrymore’s body in a darkened balcony of Studio 54. Oh, what a ride it was.

Not surprisingly, this whole time my never-was father was beside himself with jealousy. The friction boiled over when I realized he was slowly bleeding me of my fortune, blowing a great deal of it to feed his insatiable obsession with acquiring world’s largest collections of Deloreans and designer parachute pants. Then the unthinkable, ultimate betrayal occurred when he impulsively left me to manage Billy, who claimed to be a fatherless orphan left on the doorstep of a Chuck-E-Cheese as an infant.

My first independent career move following my emancipation from my father was to accept the small but noteworthy role of "Lil' Perv" in Joysticks, the first arcade game-themed sex comedy for kids. At the time the formula seemed sure-fire cinematic gold, but box office suffered mightily from a deadly combination Billy's meteoric rise, my plummeting fame, and an inopportune MPAA rating that deemed the target audience far too young to legally buy a ticket. This apparently forced kids to buy tickets for our opening day competition, Annie and The Dark Crystal, in record numbers in order to sneak into Joysticks. In retrospect, taking the project was at best a dubious decision, as it required full frontal nudity and I was paid in rolls of quarters.