In the past five years or so gaming has been building momentum as an organized competitive sport. (Spare me, please, the debate about whether gaming is a sport.) Tournaments of real-time strategy games like Starcraft are nationally televised in South Korea, and there are even professional gamers who earn upwards of six figures per year from winnings and endorsements. But even as contemporary gaming becomes more mainstream, the gaming heroes of the past have slipped into obscurity. Truth be told, they never really climbed their way out of obscurity.

One of the biggest of these old school arcade champions is Billy Mitchell, a hot-sauce salesman who held the Donkey Kong high score for over 20 years. In the documentary The King of Kong, which was screened last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, Mitchell must face his first serious challenger for the Donkey Kong crown.

The challenger is Steve Wiebe, a laid-off Boeing engineer from Redmond, Washington. Wiebe is a bit of an also-ran, plagued throughout his life by disappointments — an injury cut short his promising baseball career in high school, his musical ambitions never went anywhere, and he was laid off from Boeing on the same day he and his wife signed the papers to purchase their first home. This last disappointment awakened something in Wiebe. He’d had enough, and he now had the free time to do something about it. He needed to prove to himself that he could achieve something significant. He chose Donkey Kong.

In his bid to unseat Billy Mitchell from the Donkey Kong throne, Wiebe installs a Donkey Kong machine in his garage and gets to work. He tackles the challenge like the engineer he is — he uses a wax pencil on the game’s screen to trace the paths of the barrels, fireballs, and springs being hurled at him by Kong, memorizing their patterns and timing. He learns subtle tricks to fool barrels into dropping where and when he wants them to. And when he’s finally ready, he mounts a video camera over his shoulder and gets to work on his record-breaking game. In an absolutely classic scene, Wiebe manages to beat Mitchell’s score by a substantial margin, all while his young son screams at him to “stop playing Donkey Kong and wipe my butt!” To beat Mitchell’s long-standing record is quite a feat, but to do so while being harangued by an annoying twerp with a dirty bum is nigh on heroic.

But this record-breaking game is only the beginning. The more-or-less official keeper of gaming world records is Twin Galaxies, founded by “Chief Scorekeeper” Walter Day. Day also happens to be a personal friend of Billy Mitchell, a fact which sets into motion a hilarious geek soap opera. First, the validity of Wiebe’s video is called into question. Then, two of Day’s deputies visit Wiebe’s home while he’s not there and convince his wife to let them inspect the Donkey Kong machine to make sure it hasn’t been improperly modified. They find reason to believe that the circuit board came from Roy Shildt, a.k.a. “Mr. Awesome,” Mitchell’s long-time nemesis. This fact alone prompts Twin Galaxies to nullify Wiebe’s high score because there is no way to verify that the board Shildt sent Wiebe was not tampered with.

Steve Wiebe has come too far to give up now, though. He travels across the country to a tournament at a New Hampshire arcade known as the mecca of classic arcade gaming. Here the Twin Galaxies referees watch as Wiebe once again beats Mitchell’s record, while Mitchell’s lackeys make hushed phone calls to update him on Wiebe’s progress. Shortly after Wiebe finishes his record-breaking game, one of Mitchell’s acolytes produces a video tape that purports to show Mitchell getting an even higher score. Although the validity of the tape is highly dubious, the Twin Galaxies team immediately posts Mitchell’s supposedly record-breaking score to their Web site as the new high score. Wiebe’s record would stand for less than a day.

Regardless of how you feel about video games, The King of Kong is a touching look at a man struggling to live up to his potential after a lifetime of disappointments. Swirling around him are a cast of characters that are so bizarre it’s hard to believe they weren’t created by a screenwriter. The preening, strutting Billy Mitchell presents himself as the Obi-Wan of the game world, complete with a retinue of hangers-on to do his bidding. The contrast between Mitchell and the exceedingly pleasant Wiebe makes for great drama, with the nerdy peanut gallery offering plenty of comic relief. The film strikes a nice balance between acknowledging the obvious humor of the entire endeavor and respecting the conviction and discipline of its players. I am clearly biased as a gamer myself, but this is one of the very best sports documentaries I’ve seen.

The King of Kong opens nationally on August 17, and its director, Seth Gordon, has already signed to remake it as a feature film for New Line Cinema next year.