Twin Galaxies

History

During the summer of 1981, Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies incorporated, visited more than 100 video game arcades over four months, recording the high scores that he found on each game. On November 10, he opened his own arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, naming it Twin Galaxies. On February 9, 1982, his database of records was released publicly as the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard.

Twin Galaxies became known as the official scoreboard, arranging contests between top players. Twin Galaxies' first event attracted international media attention for gathering the first teams of video-game stars. Top players in North Carolina and California were formed into state teams that faced off in a "California Challenges North Carolina All-Star Playoff", playing on 17 different games in Lakewood, California, and Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. California defeated North Carolina 10–7 over the weekend of August 27–30, 1982.

Similar competitions were also conducted during the summers of 1983 and 1984 when Day organized the players in many U.S. states to form teams and compete in high score contests for the Guinness Book of World Records. The states included California, North Carolina, Washington, Illinois, Nebraska, Ohio, Michigan, Idaho, Florida, New York, Oklahoma, Alaska, Iowa and Kansas.

On November 30, 1982, Ottumwa mayor Jerry Parker declared the town "Video Game Capital of the World", a claim that was backed up by Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, Atari and the Amusement Game Manufacturers Association in a ceremony at Twin Galaxies on March 19, 1983.

Twin Galaxies' status as the official scorekeeper was further enhanced by support from the major video game publications of the early 1980s. Beginning in the summer of 1982, Video Games magazine and Joystik magazine published full-page high-score charts taken from Twin Galaxies' data. These high-score tables were published during the entire lives of these magazines. Additional high-score charts also appeared in Videogiochi (Milan, Italy), Computer Games, Video Game Player magazine and Electronic Fun magazine. Twin Galaxies' high-score charts also appeared in USA Today (April 22, 1983), Games magazine and was distributed sporadically in 1982 and 1983 by the Knight-Ridder news service as an occasional news feature, originating from the Charlotte Observer.

Twin Galaxies brought top players together on November 7, 1982, to be photographed by Life magazine. This photo session is the subject of a recent documentary film, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, which was screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. On January 8–9, 1983, Twin Galaxies organized the first significant video-game championship, to crown a world champion. This event was filmed in Ottumwa by ABC-TV's That's Incredible! and was aired on the night of February 21, 1983.

In March 1983, Twin Galaxies was contracted by the Electronic Circus to assemble a professional troupe of video game superstars who would travel with the Circus as an "act." With Walter Day hired as the "Circus Ringmaster", Twin Galaxies supplied a squad of 15 world-record holders on Twin Galaxies' high-score tables. Though the Circus was scheduled to visit 40 cities in North America, its Boston inaugural performance, opening in the Bayside Exposition Ctr. on July 15, 1983, lasted only five days, closing on July 19. The players selected by Twin Galaxies for the Circus are believed to be history's first professionally contracted video game players.

On July 25, 1983, Twin Galaxies established the professional U.S. National Video Game Team, the first such, with Walter Day as team captain. The USNVGT toured the United States during the summer of 1983 in a 44-foot GMC bus filled with arcade games, appearing at arcades around the nation and conducting the 1983 Video Game Masters Tournament, the results of which were published in the 1984 U.S. edition of Guinness World Records. Under the direction of Day, functioning as an assistant editor for the Guinness Book in charge of video-game scores, the USNVGT gathered annual contest results that were published in the 1984—1986 U.S. editions. In September 1983, the USNVGT visited the Italian and Japanese Embassies in Washington D.C. to issue challenges for an international video game championship. In 1987, the USNVGT toured Europe where it defeated a team of UK video game superstars. Every month between 1991 and 1994, the U.S. publication Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), published a full-page high-score table titled "The U.S. National Video Game Team's International Scoreboard".

In 1988 the Guinness Book of World records stopped using Twin Galaxies as a source.

On February 8, 1998, Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records was published. It is a 984-page book containing scores compiled since 1981. The second edition is planned as a two-volume set, with the first volume containing arcade, MAME, Novelty and pinball scores released on June 1, 2007.

Founder Walter Day left Twin Galaxies in 2010 to pursue a career in music, and since then ownership of Twin Galaxies has changed hands several times. In 2013 Twin Galaxies began charging money for accepting score submissions. There are some claims that this led to a termination of the relationship with Guinness, but other sources state that this relationship was already over in 1988.

Impact of high scores on the media

Twin Galaxies reports that during that early era it was not unusual for there to be multiple new world records reported in the media on a single day.

Ottumwa

On November 30, 1982, Mayor Jerry Parker declared Ottumwa the "Video Game Capital of the World." Ottumwa hosted history's first video game world championship, which was filmed by ABC-TV's That's Incredible on the weekend of January 8–9, 1983 and aired the night of February 21, 1983.

Ottumwa was the birth site of the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard and the U.S. National Video Game Team, two organizations that still exist today.

Efforts to establish Ottumwa as the site of the Official Video Game Museum

On April 6, 2009, Owen Good, of Kotaku, penned a major article titled: "A Claim to Fame in the Dodge City of Video Games." In this story, he examines Ottumwa's prospects as potentially the "Cooperstown, NY" of the video game industry. On April 29, 2009 Ottumwa announced that it has reclaimed the title Video Game Capital of the World. With Walter Day, Billy Mitchell and Steve Sanders in attendance, the Ottumwa government announced plans to develop a Video Game Hall of Fame and Museum.

U.S. National Video Game Team

The U.S. National Video Game Team was founded on July 25, 1983 in Ottumwa, Iowa by Walter Day and the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard. Walter Day was the Team Captain and the first six members chosen by Twin Galaxies for the team were:

Additional members accepted in 1983:

Additional members accepted in 1984:

Additional members accepted in 1985:

Additional members accepted in 1986:

Chronological timeline

Video Game Film Festival

Twin Galaxies organized the first Video Game Film Festival on June 2, 2001, at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire as a vehicle to document the cultural impact that video games have exerted on today's society. A second festival is planned but no date has been set.

Console Video Game World Championships

Twin Galaxies conducted the first Console Video Game World Championship during Twin Galaxies' 1st Annual Twin Galaxies' Video Game Festival at the Mall of America, Bloomington, Minnesota, on the weekend of July 20–22, 2001. This event is also known as the Console Game World Championship and had originally been planned for March 24–25, 2001 at the Sheraton Dallas Brookhollow Hotel in Dallas, Texas, but was moved forward to the Mall of America event.

The second Console Video Game World Championship was held the weekend of July 12–14, 2002, at the 2nd Annual Twin Galaxies' Video Game Festival at the Mall of America.

Classic Video Game World Championship

Twin Galaxies conducted the first "Classic Video Game World Championship" on June 2–4, 2001 at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. The winner of this renewed video game contest was Dwayne Richard with Donald Hayes coming in second place. This event was descended from the Coronation Day Championships that were conducted by Twin Galaxies in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 2000. The 2nd "Classic Video Game World Championship" was conducted on the weekend of June 30–July 2, 2002. The winner was Dwayne Richard with Donald Hayes again coming in second place. This was the last year the contest was in this format. The following years had the Funspot location organizing and running the contest in a more informal arcade "Player of the Year," format.

In July 2001 and 2002, Twin Galaxies conducted the annual Twin Galaxies' Video Game Festivals at the Mall of America, attracting approximately 50,000–75,000 attendees each year.

On August 15, 2005, Walter Day and the staff of Twin Galaxies led a contingent of USA and UK video game players to Paris, France, where they delivered an eight-foot (2.4 meter) tall Proclamation which proposed a "London vs. Paris" Video Game Championship.

On September 24, 2005, The U.S. National Video Game Team revived and formed a New England Chapter with Walter Day as the national team captain and David Nelson of Derry, New Hampshire, as the chapter captain.

Iron Man Contest

In the first week of July, 1985, Twin Galaxies conducted the 1st Twin Galaxies Iron Man Contest. The goal of the Iron Man competition was simple: competitors had to continue playing their game for as long as they could. If anyone passed 100 hours, they would be awarded a $10,000 prize from the Sports Achievement Association.

The winner of the contest was 18-year-old James Vollandt, who carried his Joust game for 67½ hours. The game malfunctioned at around 58 hours, wiping out all of his 210 extra lives. However, he earned back forty of them. He left the game voluntarily with a record-breaking score of 107,216,700 points, a record that stood until 2010, when John McAllister broke the record over live streaming video on justin.tv.

Film

In 2007, a film about Twin Galaxies and video game champions in the 1980s, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a feature documentary about retro arcade gamers, featuring Twin Galaxies, was released in theaters on August 24, 2007. The documentary was in large measure critical of Twin Galaxies' handling of challenges to long-established top scores, suggesting that its organizational structure is rife with conflicts of interest.

Frag, a feature documentary about modern professional gamers, was released on DVD on August 1, 2008 by Cohesion Productions of Cedar Falls, Iowa. The first ten minutes of the documentary recapped Twin Galaxies' role as the pioneers of organized video game playing back in the early 1980s.

Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler, a feature documentary about the video game Nibbler, was released worldwide in 2016. The film includes information about the history of Twin Galaxies and the competition for high scores. Walter Day is featured throughout much of the film.

Twin Galaxies' Gallery of Posters

Since August 1, 1982, Twin Galaxies has been producing unique, colorful posters to document gaming events. Though the first dozen posters issued in the early 1980s enjoyed printing runs of 500 – 1,000 copies each, the posters created in recent years have been issued as limited editions with only 20-24 copies produced of each one.