TVSquad

The saga of video game champion Steve Wiebe, the man made famous by the wonderful documentary film The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, is one that will be told on mountain tops by the elders of the tribes to young men as they pass into adulthood.

Wiebe struggled to achieve the success he so richly deserved for chasing the Donkey Kong world champion title from the Twin Galaxies score organization, due in part to the underhanded and downright evil efforts of reigning champion and Donkey Kong douchebag Billy Mitchell. Even though he has surpassed Mitchell's scores since the release of the film, Mitchell always seemed to be one barrel behind him, making Wiebe even more of an iconic hero to geeks, spazzes, dweebs and everyone else.

So at this year's E3 video game expo, the G4 Network gave Wiebe and his many fans the chance to reclaim the title for humble people everywhere by broadcasting his nine hour attempt live on television. It may sound like something that could make your eyes bleed no matter how close you were sitting to the TV, but it became hands down one of my 10 greatest sporting broadcasts of the year. And this is from a network that runs reruns of both COPS and Cheaters.

Of course, it's only as exciting as it can be if you know the story between Wiebe and Mitchell's rivalry. So if you hadn't seen The King of Kong or even read up on the details, it might just appear to be a grown man sitting at a video game machine. If you were with the in-crowd, it was everything a TV sporting event should be: dramatic, tense, hopeful, exciting, and having nothing to do with Barry Bonds.

His first two attempts didn't yield him the record. His third literally drew a breath of shocked gasps as a power outage knocked out his machine and forced him to start all over again. I'll bet Bill Buckner's missed ground ball in the '86 World Series didn't draw as much shocked breath from the spectators. Well, at least not in New York.

The closer Wiebe came to breaking the score, the more I found myself flipping towards the channel to catch a break on the action or flying on the web to see if his latest score had been posted. The coverage of the whole endurance race was detailed, dramatic and downright fun to watch. My inner child was rooting for Wiebe the whole way through.

So how did Wiebe do? Watch this recap and find out.