In mid-1981, Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies, Inc., visited more than 100 video game arcades over four months, recording the high scores that he found on each game.[citation needed]
On February 9, 1982, Day's database of records was released publicly as the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard.[citation needed]
Twin Galaxies' first event formed state teams from the top players in North Carolina and California, facing them off in a "California Challenges North Carolina All-Star Playoff." The teams played in 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.[2]
In September, 1982, the book "Defending the Galaxy"[3] is released—and declaring Twin Galaxies as the "Video Game Capital of the World," and describing the California/North Carolina contest just held.[citation needed]
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 GovernorTerry Branstad, Atari and the Amusement Game Manufacturers Association in a ceremony at Twin Galaxies on March 19, 1983.[4][5][6]
Beginning in the summer of 1982, Video Games magazine and Joystick published high-score tables taken from Twin Galaxies' data. Additional high-score charts also appeared in USA Today, Videogiochi (Milan, Italy), Computer Games, Video Game Player and Electronic Fun.[7][8][9]
On January 8–9, 1983, Twin Galaxies organized its first world championship, which was filmed by ABC-TV's That's Incredible! and aired on February 21, 1983.[10]
In March 1983, Twin Galaxies was contracted by the Electronic Circus to assemble a professional troupe of video game high-scorers. Though the Circus was scheduled to visit 40 cities in North America, its Boston inaugural performance 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.[11]
On July 25, 1983, Twin Galaxies established the first professional U.S. National Video Game Team. 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 US edition of Guinness World Records.[citation needed]
In 1988, the Guinness Book of World records stopped publishing records from Twin Galaxies due to a decline in interest for arcade games.[12]
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. A second edition was published as a three-volume set in 2007. A third edition was published in 2009.[non-primary source needed]
Founder Walter Day left Twin Galaxies in 2010 to pursue a career in music,[13] and since then ownership of Twin Galaxies has changed hands several times.[14] In 2013, Twin Galaxies began charging a fee for score submissions.[15]
In March 2014, Jace Hall announced that he was the new "Head Custodian and Caretaker of the TWIN GALAXIES organization".[16] On April 28, 2014, the full Twin Galaxies website, including the high score database and forum content, came back online.
Walter Day (right) and his business partner from the early 1980sMark Hoff and Joel West
The US National Video Game Team was founded on July 25, 1983, in Ottumwa, Iowa, by Walter Day and the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
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.[17][18][19][20][21]
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.[22][23][non-primary source needed]
In July 2001 and 2002, Twin Galaxies conducted the annual Twin Galaxies' Video Game Festivals at the Mall of America.[24][non-primary source needed]
On August 15, 2005, Walter Day and the staff of Twin Galaxies led a contingent of US and UK video game players to Paris, where they delivered an eight-foot-tall (2.4meters) proclamation that proposed a "London vs. Paris" Video Game Championship.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
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 a live streaming video on justin.tv.[25]
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a feature documentary about retro arcade gamers, and the competition between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe, which in which Walter Day and Twin Galaxies feature prominently, was released in theaters on August 24, 2007. The documentary was critical of Twin Galaxies' handling of challenges to long-established top scores and suggested that its organizational structure is rife with conflicts of interest.[non-primary source needed]
Frag, a feature documentary about modern professional gamers, was released on DVD on August 1, 2008, by Cohesion Productions[26] of Cedar Falls, Iowa. The first ten minutes of the documentary covered 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 Twin Galaxies' history and the competition for high scores. Walter Day is featured throughout the film.
Cheating controversies
Records by both Todd Rogers and Billy Mitchell were invalidated by Twin Galaxies after investigations determined that the scores were not genuine.[27] Rogers was revealed to have entered fake records into the database either by himself or by his friend who was a referee at Twin Galaxies, whereas Mitchell was found to have used an emulator to reach certain scores despite claiming to have played on an original arcade machine, which is a violation of the Twin Galaxies rules.[28][29]
Poster gallery
Since August 1, 1982, Twin Galaxies has been producing stylized posters to document gaming events.[30][non-primary source needed] Though the first dozen posters issued in the early 1980s had printing runs of 500–1,000 copies each, the posters created in later years have been issued as limited editions with only 20–24 copies produced.[citation needed]
Twin Galaxies contests and events
Date
Title
Venue
Location
April 3–4, 1982
National Defender Championship
33 Arcades across America
Nationwide
August 27–30, 1982
California Challenges North Carolina
Light Years Amusement/Phil's Family Fun Ctr.
Wrightsville Beach, NC/Lakewood, CA
January 8–9, 1983
North America Video Game Olympics
Twin Galaxies/"ABC-TV's "That's Incredible"
Ottumwa, IA
August 24–28, 1983
1983 North American Video Game Challenge
8 Cities Across America
Lake Odessa, MI/Omaha, NE/Chicago, IL/San Jose, CA/Seattle, WA
January 14, 1984
1984 Coronation Day Championship
Twin Galaxies
Ottumwa, IA
January 12–13, 1985
1985 Coronation Day Championship
Captain Video
Los Angeles, CA
April 19–20, 1997
1997 Video Game & Pinball Masters Tournament
12 Cities
Fairfield, IA/Wilmington, NC/Edmonton, AB, Canada/Voorhees, NJ/St. Louis, MO/Kansas City, MO
June 27, 1998
Crowning the Superstars of Mobile, Alabama
Cyberstation Arcade, Springdale Mall
Mobile, AL
August 22, 1998
Crowning the Videogame Superstars of Tulsa, Oklahoma
Funhouse
Tulsa, OK
August 29, 1998
Crowning the Videogame Superstars of St. Louis, MO
Exhilirama Arcade
St. Louis, MO
August 29, 1998
Crowning the Videogame Superstars of Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
Missile Command is a 1980 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for Japanese and European releases. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari's vector graphics game Tempest from the same year. The game was released during the Cold War, and the player uses a trackball to defend six cities from intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching anti-ballistic missiles from three bases.
Defender is a horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed by Williams Electronics in 1980 and released for arcades in 1981. The game is set on either an unnamed planet or city where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis's first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids. Defender was demonstrated in late 1980, before entering production in early 1981. It was distributed in Japan by Taito.
Track & Field, also known as Hyper Olympic in Japan and Europe, is a 1983 Olympic-themed sports video game developed by Konami for arcades. The Japanese release sported an official license for the 1984 Summer Olympics. In Europe, the game was initially released under the Japanese title Hyper Olympic in 1983, before re-releasing under the US title Track & Field in early 1984.
Donkey Kong Jr. is a 1982 arcade platform game that was released by Nintendo. It is the sequel to Donkey Kong, but with the roles reversed compared to its predecessor: Mario is now the villain and Donkey Kong Jr. is trying to save his kidnapped father. It first released in arcades and, over the course of the decade, was released for a variety of home platforms. The game's title is written out as Donkey Kong Junior in the North American arcade version and various conversions to non-Nintendo systems.
The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence of arcade video games from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The release of Space Invaders in 1978 led to a wave of shoot-'em-up games such as Galaxian and the vector graphics-based Asteroids in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. Arcade video games switched from black-and-white to color, with titles such as Frogger and Centipede taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.
Donkey Kong is a 1981 arcade video game developed and published by Nintendo. As Mario, the player runs and jumps on platforms and climbs ladders to ascend a construction site and rescue Pauline from a giant gorilla, Donkey Kong. It is the first game in the Donkey Kong series as well as Mario's first appearance in a video game.
Bump 'n' Jump is an overhead-view vehicular combat game developed by Data East and originally released in Japan as Burnin' Rubber. Distributed in North America by Bally Midway, the arcade version was available as both a dedicated board and as part of Data East's DECO Cassette System. The goal is to drive to the end of a course while knocking enemy vehicles into the sides of the track and jumping over large obstacles such as bodies of water.
In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points, and events in the game can raise or lower the score of different parties. Most games with score use it as a quantitative indicator of success in the game, and in competitive games, a goal is often made of attaining a better score than one's opponents in order to win.
Nibbler is an arcade snake maze game released in 1982 by Chicago-based developer Rock-Ola. The player navigates a snake through an enclosed maze, consuming objects, and the length of the snake increases with each object consumed. The game was the first to include nine scoring digits, allowing players to surpass one billion points.
The U.S. National Video Game Team (USNVGT) is an American esports team. It was founded in July 1983 in Ottumwa, Iowa, United States by Walter Day and Jim Riley as part of the Electronic Circus tour, with Steve Sanders as the first captain. After the Circus folded, Day re-established the team with himself as the captain, taking the team on a bus tour. The team challenged the players of arcades across the country and attempted to challenge other countries through visits to foreign embassies. In the years that followed the team ran numerous competitive contests.
Walter Aldro Day is an American businessman and the founder of Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks world records for video games and conducts a program of electronic-gaming promotions.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a 2007 American documentary film about competitive arcade gaming directed by Seth Gordon. It follows Steve Wiebe in his attempts to take the high score record for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong from Billy Mitchell. The film premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival and was released in U.S. theaters in August 2007. It received positive reviews.
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade is a documentary film directed by Lincoln Ruchti about the golden age of video arcade games. The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival and has also been shown at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, as well as other film festivals.
Steven J. Wiebe is an American two-time world champion of the video game Donkey Kong, most recently holding the title from September 20, 2010, to January 10, 2011, with a high score of 1,064,500. Wiebe was the first person to achieve over a million points on Donkey Kong, with 1,006,600 on July 4, 2004. He is one of the primary subjects of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Like his Donkey Kong rival Billy Mitchell, Wiebe was put in a Topps Allen & Ginter baseball set, which is featured in the 2009 edition of the baseball product.
Doris Self was a video game competitor who gained recognition in the 1980s as "the world's oldest video game champion". In the 2007 Guinness World Records, Self was recognized as the world's oldest video game competitor. The documentary film The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters detailed Self's quest to recover her standing as the "oldest champion" from John Lawton, the 72-year-old co-founder of the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, who had captured the world title on Depthcharge.
David Nelson is an American arcade video game player who holds world record high scores listed in the 2008 Guinness World Records-Gamer's Edition.
William James Mitchell Jr. is an American video game player. He achieved fame throughout the 1980s and 1990s through claiming numerous records on classic video games, including a perfect score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized Mitchell as the holder of several records on classic games, and he has appeared in several documentaries on competitive gaming and retrogaming. However, in 2017, the legitimacy of a number of his records was called into question, leading to Twin Galaxies stripping Mitchell of his records.
The Video Game Masters Tournament was an event that was created in 1983 by Twin Galaxies to generate world record high scores for the 1984 U.S. Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. It was the most prestigious contest of that era and the only one that the Guinness book looked to for verified world records on video games at the time. This contest was conducted under the joint efforts of Twin Galaxies and the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983, 1984 and 1985 and by the U.S. National Video Game Team alone in 1986 and 1987.
Players have competed for the highest score for the video game Donkey Kong since its release in 1981. The competition became more prominent after it was covered in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong.
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