Walter Day
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Walter Day (born May 14, 1949 in Fairfield, Iowa) is the founder of Twin Galaxies, the official scoreboard of arcade gaming. In addition to keeping track of the world records of nearly every single arcade game, he also has some world records of his own, such as his record on Make Trax. Through his promotion of 'arcade athletes', such as Billy Mitchell and EGM founder Steve Harris, he is credited with energizing the already blazing competitive arcade gaming of the mid-1980s.
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[edit] Beginning of Twin Galaxies
A former oil executive, Day first had the idea to start an arcade record database during a business trip in Utah in the summer of 1981. He started playing Pac-Man occasionally, eventually after two months playing it obsessively. As he traveled through Utah, he stopped at various Pac-Man machines and wrote down the high score recorded on it. Eventually, he had collected the high scores of nearly fifty machines before his business trip came to an end.
When he got back, Day quit his job in the oil industry to start his own arcade, called Twin Galaxies. He founded the arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa In early 1982, arcade gaming exploded in popularity, due in part to a cover story on the January 15, 1982 issue of TIME magazine about Steve Juraszek, a 15-year-old Illinois suburbanite. Juraszek had broken the world record on Defender, with a score of 15,963,100 points, carrying a single game for sixteen hours. Juraszek's record did not stand for long, however. On February 8, 1982, Day was awakened by a phone call from Tony Mattan, a 16-year-old boy interested in breaking Juraszek's record. Day initially was skeptical, but agreed. A few hours later, at 8:00 AM, Mattan stepped up to the machine, and carried his game for exactly twenty-four hours before stopping the game voluntarily. His score was 24,565,975 points, substantially higher than Juraszek's.
The next day, Walter Day attempted to contanct Williams Electronics, the creators of the game, to report Mattan's score. However, upon learning that neither Williams or Namco kept any records of high scores, he decided to set up his own scoreboard. He did so that same day, on February 9, 1982. Players from all around the United States began sending in their scores, with about one thousand scores being reported each day during late March 1982. However, after receiving reports of extremely implausible scores (such as a score of twelve million points on Pac-Man, and a half a million points on Pole Position), Day decided that no scores would be accepted unless three witnesses were present during the game.
[edit] Growing popularity
Eventually, Day had the idea of staging competitive gaming events. Day found that California and North Carolina had the highest concentration of all-star gamers, so he formulated a plan: the top players from each state would form teams and face off. decided that the California team would face the North Carolina team. It took much prodding from Day to get the "California Challenges North Carolina All-Star Playoff" organized, which took place over the weekend of August 27-30, 1982, with California beating North Carolina 10-7.
Eventually, video game-related magazines, such as Computer and Video Games and Joystik, began publishing full-page tables of high scores culled from Day's archive. Day soon made a lucrative business out of this, as more and more magazines asked for permission to print the records. Eventually, the Guinness Book of World Records dedicated an entire category to Twin Galaxies, which listed the world records on the most popular games. This section became a hit for Guinness, as many players wanted to know the highest score on their favorite games.
On November 7, 1982, the top players were all photographed for Life magazine, and on November 30, Ottumwa was declared the official "Video Game Capital of the World" by its mayor, Jerry Parker. On March 19, 1983, a special award ceremony was held, which included Iowa governer Terry Branstad, and high-ranking members of Atari, honoring Twin Galaxies and Day.
[edit] The U.S. National Video Game Team
On July 25, 1983, Day founded the U.S. National Video Game Team, consisting of he and five of the nation's best players: Billy Mitchell, from Hollywood, Florida; Steve Harris, from Gladstone, Missouri; Jay Kim, from Miami, Florida; Ben Gold, from Dallas, Texas, and Tim McVey, a local Ottumwa resident who became Day's favorite arcade customer.
They soon headed for the 1983 Video Game Master's Tournament, a charity fundraiser for cystic fibrosis research. They arrived on August 11, and attracted audiences, who donated to the fundraiser. After setting a few new records, the team toured the United States. One memorable journey, in September 1983, was a tour of the East Coast to verify excessive scores (such as the aforementioned twelve million points on Pac-Man). After arriving in Baltimore, Maryland, they confronted the player who made the claim. He snapped at them in zealot-like daze, screaming, "This is NOT HOLY!!! You are LOW PEOPLE!!!". The man's claim was subsequently wiped off of the record, with the official record of 3.1 million points the new record. In November 1983, Day hand-delivered documents to both the Italian Embassy and the Japanese embassy, to challenge them to an "international video game challenge", to which Italy declined, but Japan accepted. However, plans fell through and the match never took place.
On January 14, 1984, the 1984 Coronation Day occurred in Dallas, Texas. Tim Collum was crowned as 1983's best player, an honor he accepted.
[edit] Iron Man Contest
On July 5, 1985, Day started the Iron Man Contest, arguably the most infamous moment in Twin Galaxies' history. The night before, the players (Tom Asaki, Billy Mitchell, Mark Bersabe, Jeff Peters, and James Vollandt) vandalized the hotel they were staying in, throwing mattresses out of windows and hurling ice cubes and toilet paper at pedestrians from their balcony. They eventually pelted the concierge's dog with spitwads, prompting the concierge to fly into a rage. However, he cooled down and allowed them to stay.
The goal of the Iron Man competition was simple: you had to carry your game for as long as you could. If anyone passed 100 hours, they would be awarded a $10,000 prize from the Sports Achievement Association. The contest started at 11:00 AM. One player, a Japanese teenager, resigned his game at the seven-hour mark after being confronted by his weeping family.
The games continued unbroken until the 24-hour barrier, in which Tom Asaki lost his Nibbler game due to a glitch in the game. In Nibbler, each statistic was allotted 256 bits of data. Each extra life accumulated would add two bits to the load on the Extra Lives data. If it were to go over 256 bits (128 lives), all the lives in reserve would be reset to zero. Asaki did not even know of this bug until warned by Billy Mitchell that he was accumulating lives too fast. Tom's game ended with a score of 300 million points.
Mitchell himself was the next to go, after 39 hours. The trackball broke down due to the body oils from his hands. By the time the machine could be repaired, Mitchell was already in a deep sleep, effectively eliminating him from the competition. His game ended with an impressive 10,774,191 points.
Mark Bersabe lost his final man on Asteroids after 45 hours, with a score of 18,552,590 points (far from Scott Safran's record of 41,336,440 points). Jeff Peters, who played Q*Bert while sitting in a recliner (with the control panel in his lap) lasted until the fifty-hour mark until collapsing from exhaustion, with 19,498,150 points.
The winner of the contest was 18-year-old James Vollandt, who carried his Joust game for 67½ hours. After being the only one remaining in competition (after Peters' elimination), he resorted to dangerous techniques to keep himself awake, including blasting his face with freon, starting at the sixty-hour mark. 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 still stands to this day. However, Vollandt did not receive the prize money because he did not pass the 100-hour mark.
[edit] After the golden age
After the "golden age" of arcade gaming died out due to the popularity of home gaming and the NES in 1986, Day has maintained a small but devoted following. His fame has sparked since the late 1990s, due to his website, TwinGalaxies.com.
