Behind the 12-year-old Wii Sports hoax that briefly fooled the Internet
Behind the 12-year-old Wii Sports hoax that briefly fooled the Internet

          
          
The truth of that anonymous claim was always questionable, even with the "photographic evidence" of Adam posing in front of a screen showing a 2400 rating. The important thing, for our purposes, was that the claim itself existed online in the late 2000s, when Kalanick could plausibly find it and perhaps cite it as evidence that his presumed 2399 rating was "tied for second."
A message from the past
Keep all that in mind and imagine my reaction when I got an email that led off with the line "My name is Adam Haller, and I'm the shirtless guy in the 2400 Wii Tennis picture."

    
              
                
              
                Our little "Adam" is all grown up, and he found a shirt!
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      Our little "Adam" is all grown up, and he found a shirt!

          
  
        
            

Haller, who later confirmed his identity with a more modern (shirted) photo, went on to lay out the details of his hoax from more than 10 years prior (lightly edited here for clarity):
I just wanted to let you know that there was a global leader-board at some point for Wii Tennis. It wasn't hosted directly by Nintendo but a website similar to highscores.com (I can't recall the exact URL) [Editor's note: He may be thinking of the defunct wii-records.com].
What I can remember is that, when I played this game, I spent a few weeks getting to the score of 2399 and at that time took the picture. Afterwards, I decided to Photoshop the picture to say 2400 instead. Mainly to mess with a friend of mine who I played with a lot. I submitted the photo to the ranking website, and for some time they had me in the top slot, but they kept asking for video confirmation, which I obviously couldn't give them. They eventually removed me.
During that same time period, I created a website on 250free.com to blog about it. I then submitted that website to Digg and created several fake accounts to up-vote it a few times until it got some traction. I also posted the website to several other Wii Sports forums, under false accounts to give it additional hype. I relished in the comments people posted about it, some claiming they had been trying for weeks to achieve the same thing, which is likely impossible to do. I thought it was funny to imagine people trying to match this impossible feat.
...
I hope this information hasn't come out too late. I no longer like the idea of people spending a crazy amount of time to match the 2400 score thinking its possible when it's not.
There you have it. A confession, from "Adam" himself, that the claimed 2400 skill rating that was once recognized far and wide (read: on some old Web forums and a defunct online high-score board with a half-remembered URL) was a hoax!

          
                  