Walter Aldro Day, Jr. (born May 14, 1949 in Oakland, California) is the founder of Twin Galaxies, an international organization that tracks high-score statistics for the worldwide electronic video gaming hobby.

Musical Career

As portrayed in recent documentary movies: Chasing Ghosts:Beyond the Arcade and the King of Kong:A Fistful of Quarters, Day believes he is a singer/songwriter and performs his own music on the stage.

Involvement with Video Games

On November 10, 1981, Day opened an arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa called Twin Galaxies, Though it was a modest arcade of merely 22 arcade games, it soon became known as the International Scorekeeper for the burgeoning video game industry. Under Day's direction, Twin Galaxies set rules for gameplay on hundreds of games while maintaining a records database of competitive high scores. Twin Galaxies is considered by gaming historians as being the first organizer of professional gaming, putting competitive electronic gaming on the world map.

A former oil executive, Day left the oil industry and opened the arcade as an excuse to be able to play more video games. Twin Galaxies' role as a small-town arcade was forever altered when the January 15, 1982 issue of TIME magazine carried a cover story on the growing popularity of video games. The story focused on the high-scoring exploits of Steve Juraszek, a 15-year-old Illinois suburbanite, who had broken the world record on Defender, with a score of 15,963,100 points. When a local Ottumwa boy, Tony Mattan, broke Juraszek's record with 24,565,975 points, Day was inspired to create the International Scoreboard.

After Mattan's record-breaking accomplishment, Walter Day attempted to contact 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. Within six months of launching the scoreboard, Day was receiving about 50-75 phone calls per day, with many coming from countries other than the USA.

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. He 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.

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 governor Terry Branstad, and high-ranking members of Atari, honoring Twin Galaxies and Day.

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, of Ottumwa, Iowa.

Footnotes

External links

• Twin Galaxies Official Website