Twin Galaxies

Twin Galaxies is an organization and social media platform that facilitates interaction, achievement, recognition, and competition between people involved in the culture and activity of playing video games. Guinness World Records considers Twin Galaxies to be an official supplier of verified world records.[1]

Twin Galaxies
FormationNovember 10, 1981 (1981-11-10)
FounderWalter Day
Founded atOttumwa, Iowa, U.S.
PurposeVideo Game Culture Social Media Platform, News, Competition, Record Keeping
HeadquartersBeverly Hills, California, U.S.
Key people
Jace Hall (CEO), Chris Nordling (COO)
Parent organization
None
AffiliationsGuinness World Records
Websitewww.twingalaxies.com

History

In mid-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.[2]

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.[3][4][5]

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.[6][7][8]

Twin Galaxies brought top players together on November 7, 1982, to be photographed by Life magazine. This photo session is the subject of a 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.[9]

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.[10]

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".[11][12][13]

In 1988, the Guinness Book of World records stopped publishing records from Twin Galaxies due to a decline in interest for arcade games.[14]

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.

Founder Walter Day left Twin Galaxies in 2010 to pursue a career in music,[15] and since then ownership of Twin Galaxies has changed hands several times.[16] In 2013, Twin Galaxies began charging a fee for score submissions.[17]

In March 2014, Jace Hall announced himself as the new owner of Twin Galaxies.[18] 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 1980s
Mark Hoff and Joel West

U.S. National Video Game Team
Main article: 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.

Chronological timeline
  • July 25, 1983; The Team founded in Ottumwa, Iowa by the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard with Walter Day as Team Captain.
  • August 11, 1983; Embarked on a national tour to conduct the 1983 Video Game Masters Tournament.
  • Cystic Fibrosis Video Game Challenge Week in Ottumwa, August 8, 1983[19]
  • Letter from Michigan House of Representatives. Harold Sawyer to USNVGT, August 16, 1983[20]
  • August 24, 1983; U.S. National Video Game Team inspired Civic Proclamations around the USA.[21]
  • September 15, 1983; Conducted a tour of the East Coast of the United States on behalf of Video Game Player Magazine to verify excessive high-score claims submitted by players.
  • September 24, 1983; Hand-delivered official documents to the Japanese and Italian Embassies in Washington, D.C., challenging these countries to an International Video Championship.[22]
  • November 15, 1983; Ottumwa Proclamation to the People of the Country of Italy, November 15, 1983][23]
  • January 14, 1984; Working with the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard, the USNVGT conducted the 1984 Coronation Day to crown the 1983 players, manufacturers and magazines of the past year.[9]
  • February 12, 1984; The U.S. National Video Game Team attends the February, 1984 AMOA Expo in New Orleans, beginning a long tradition of reviewing new games for the video game industry.[24]
  • February 10-February 12, 1984; Canada-USA Video Game Team Conference is organized by USNVGT.[25]
  • April 12, 1985; The Red Cross Video Game Team Invites President Ronald Reagan to Join The Team[26]
  • April 8, 1986; The U.S. National Video Game Team is authorized by the Guinness Book of World Records to organize contests.[27]
  • April 1, 1987; U.S. National Video Game Team Announces its 1987 "Best Games" at the ACME.[28]
  • April 1, 1987; U.S. National Video Game Team Conducts 1987 Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness.[29]
  • July 12, 1987; The U.S. National Video Game Team organizes 1987 Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness Record Book.[30]

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.[31][32]

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.[33][34][35][36][37]

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.[38][39]

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.[40]

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.[41]

In 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[42] 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 Twin Galaxies history and the competition for high scores. Walter Day is featured throughout the film.

Since August 1, 1982, Twin Galaxies has been producing unique, colorful posters to document gaming events.[43] Though the first dozen posters issued in the early 1980s enjoyed 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 of each one.

Chronology of selected 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 Cyberstation Arcade Hattiesburg, MS
January 30–31, 1999 Chicagoland Arcade Championship Friar Tuck's Arcade Calumet City, IL
July 10, 1999 National Family Fun Day 28 States Across America Nationwide
July 29–30, 2000 Classic Gaming Expo 2000 Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, NV Las Vegas, NV
September 25 - October 20, 2000 Unreal Tournament Championship Online Competition International
Nov. 20 - Dec. 20, 2000 Official Tony Hawk Pro 2 World Championship[44] Home-Based Submissions International
January 1 - March 7, 2001 Space Empires IV World Championship[45] Online Submissions International
May 3 - July 2, 2001 Crazy Taxi World Championship Home-Based Submissions International
July 20–22, 2001 1st Twin Galaxies' Video Game Festival Mall of America Bloomington, MN
May 18, 2002 Save the Pak Mann Arcade[46] Pak Mann Arcade Pasadena, CA
May 30 - June 2, 2002 2nd Classic Video Game World Championship[47] Funspot Family Fun Center Weirs Beach, NH
July 12–14, 2002 2nd Twin Galaxies' Video Game Festival[48] Mall of America Bloomington, MN
November 12–19, 2005 November Hi-Score Jamboree at Funspot Funspot Family Fun Center Weirs Beach, NH
December 2–4, 2005 Legends of the Golden Age[49] Totally Amused Humble, TX
April 6–9, 2006 Toughest Gun in the Dodge City[50] Apollo Amusements Pompano Beach, FL
April 28–30, 2006 2006 Video Game & Pinball Masters Tournament Pinball Hall of Fame Las Vegas, NV
September 16, 2006 Grand Rapids Nintendo DS Championship Ultimate LAN Experience Grand Rapids, MI
November 10–18, 2007 5 November Hi-Score Jamboree at Funspot Funspot Family Fun Center Weirs Beach, NH
March 5, 2008 Steve Wiebe Attempts Donkey Kong World Record MIX08 Event Las Vegas, NV
July 17, 2008 Steve Wiebe Donkey Kong Record Attempt Twiistup 4 Technology event Santa Monica, CA
August 2, 2008 Nintendo Wii Shootout Ultimate LAN Experience Grand Rapids, MI
June 12–14, 2009 Steve Wiebe Donkey Kong World Record attempt and Walter Day presented inaugural Twin Galaxies Hall of Fame Ceremony[51] Northwest Pinball and Gameroom Show Seattle, WA

Cheating controversies

Records by both Todd Rogers and Billy Mitchell have been invalidated by Twin Galaxies after investigations that determined the scores were not genuine.[52] Rogers was revealed to have entered bogus records into the database either by himself or his friend who was a referee at Twin Galaxies, whereas Mitchell was found to have used an emulator to reach create certain scores while claiming to have played on an original arcade machine in violation of the Twin Galaxies rules.[53][54]

gollark: Maybe it is to.
gollark: Not even gigabit Ethernet?
gollark: Besides, 802.11ax improves 2.4GHz performance.
gollark: Yes you do.
gollark: The installer literally uses an RCE vulnerability.

See also

References
  1. Twin Galaxies is the official supplier of video game scores to the Guinness World Records books - GuinnessWorldRecords.com Archived July 23, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  2. California Tops Carolina in Video Challenge - RePlay Magazine, October, 1982 Archived 2007-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
  3. What is the Video Game Capital of the World? - Cashbox Magazine, April 2, 1983 Archived March 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  4. The King of the Video Game Addicts - Toronto Sunday Star, March 27, 1983 Archived October 23, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Video Game Capital Lies Amid Iowa Cornfields - St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 9, 1983 Archived March 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  6. Seek Individual Excellence - Associated Press Wire Story in Miami Herald, August 21, 1982 Archived October 23, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  7. Records, like promises, are not always meant to be broken - USA Today, July 7, 1983 Archived March 24, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  8. Video Game Records - USA Today, April 22, 1983 Archived March 24, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  9. Twin Galaxies' Coronation Day Crowns Video's Best of '83 - RePlay Magazine, February 1, 1984 Archived March 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  10. Video Hall of Fame - Blip Magazine, February 1, 1983 Archived October 23, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  11. U.S. Video Team Holds Tourney - CashBox Magazine, October 22, 1983 Archived December 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
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  26. The U.S. National Video Game Team organizes a fundraiser for the Red Cross and announces plans to create a Red Cross Video Team to take to Washington, DC. Archived 2007-10-25 at the Wayback Machine
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  40. Festival Marries Classics with CounterStrike, RePlay Magazine, Woodland Hills, CA, September 1, 2001 Archived December 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
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  45. http://www.strategyplanet.com/news/index.asp?month=1&day=5&year=2001%5B%5D
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  52. Alexandra, Heather. "Doubt And Drama Still Haunt An Old, Seemingly Impossible Atari World Record". Archived from the original on January 30, 2018. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
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  54. Crecente, Brian (April 12, 2018). "'King of Kong' Star Stripped of High Scores, Banned From Competition".
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