Two men, one game, a mission, a hope, a passion: “Donkey Kong.” Wait. “Donkey Kong” – the video game with the large ape-like creature who throws barrels at Mario as he ascends the steel girders of the construction site?

“King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” is the story of arcade game gurus Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe, and it has been taking a trip through independent movie theaters nationwide. Last Friday it made its premiere in Fort Worth at the newly opened Hulen Movie Tavern.

Documentary films sometimes have trouble establishing a plot and finding story twists when it is factual information being put into a cinematic feature, but director Seth Gordon managed to uncover a story full of controversy, deceit and villainy with real-life characters.

Basically, there are two men who are competing for the title of the world’s best D”onkey Kong” arcade player: Billy Mitchell, known as the “Gamer of the Century” by Time magazine, and Steve Wiebe, the man who will always be second best at everything. Mitchell is a suave classic gamer who knows that being the best takes hard work and sacrifice; he is determined not to relinquish his title to a nobody from Redmond, Wash. Wiebe is the delightfully mediocre family man who lost his job with Boeing and went on to find comfort in Donkey Kong. Mitchell is the best, but Wiebe wants the title and sets out to become the Guinness Book of World Records holder for highest “Donkey Kong” score.

When Wiebe initially sets the record scores for both “Donkey Kong” and “Donkey Kong Jr.,” Mitchell takes on the role of an arcade Joseph Stalin using his gaming Kremlins to ruin the man who briefly took his throne. With a simple phone call and a quick score update, Billy Mitchell returns to the top leaving Wiebe in pursuit of video game nirvana.

What follows is the tale of heartbreak as Wiebe tries to regain his title, but he is at the mercy of Mitchell and his flunkies. The raw emotion and the tears shed by the man who will always be second-best reveal a downtrodden protagonist who differs from the conniving Mitchell.

There is a moral that shows being the best doesn’t always make a man the favorite in a competitive atmosphere. That, and anyone who has ever wasted a Saturday afternoon locked in their bedroom playing video games should not be ashamed of an afternoon in front of an electronic screen.