Our next Trading Card Spotlight features Steve Wiebe, who is displayed on card number 7, from the Superstars of 2011 Collection. Steve is also featured on cards 469, 472, 491, 547, 559, 565, 578, 592 and 2239. As one of the stars of the popular documentary “King of Kong”, Steve is one of the greatest Donkey Kong players in the world. At one time he held the world record on the arcade game during the classic battles with Billy Mitchell. Since then many have taken the spot and currently Steve is 11th with a verified score of 1,064,500. Steve has appeared on multiple shows on the G4 TV channel and has also been seen in movies such as “Four Christmases” and “Horrible Bosses”. Since 2006 Steve has made appearances to try and beat the Donkey Kong score at such events as the Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show, Denver Comic-Con and 1Up Arcade/Bar in Colorado. Steve has also entered multiple Kong Off tournaments each year held by Ritchie Knucklez. Steve was inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, Iowa in 2010. He also has the 4th highest score on Donkey Kong Jr. with 1,190,400.
Do you remember your first video game / arcade you played and what do you remember about it?
I remember playing Space Invaders at a local burger joint called Charlie’s. Most of the games were found in pizza parlors and 7-11 food chains in the beginning. The owner of Charlie’s would give a free milkshake to anyone that scored over a certain number of points on Space Invaders. I never excelled at Space Invaders back in the day, so I’d give a quarter to one of my friends that was really good and hope he could win me a shake.
Did you ever think when you were younger you would be on a Video game Trading card?
I never imagined the day of video game trading cards. I collected baseball and football cards, so I thought the only way of every making it on a trading card was making it to the professional level in baseball, football, or basketball; little did I know.
If you could describe Walter Day in one word, what would that word be and why?
Creative. Walter has a visionary mind and sees things from a very interesting perspective.
Are you still involved with gaming today, and what role do you play?
I still periodically play Donkey Kong and compete in the annual Kong-offs. I haven’t been able to devote the time that I used to in the past when I was going for world records. Life circumstances are very different today than they were ten years ago.
This is one of an ongoing series of articles based on the Walter Day Collection of e-sports/video gaming trading cards – check out more information at thewalterdaycollection.com.
Todd Friedman is heavily involved in the retro gaming community and has co-promoted the Video Game Summit in Chicago, IL for the past 16 years. He also has published 2 books and written for various different gaming magazines including Old School Gamer.
