8/4/2004 Chip Sbrogna Cliff Hanger
Champion
congratulated by Walter Day, Referee
The following story is Paraphrased:
Twin Galaxies: Walter Day Story at: www.twingalaxies.com
Twin Galaxies in the beginning...
Walter Day started out with one arcade. Link
The Arkansas Gazette, (February 20, 1983)
Twin Galaxies' ascent into fame was steep. It was not yet one year old when LIFE
magazine arrived to immortalize Ottumwa, IA, (its hometown) as the "video game
capital of the world." This was just the beginning. Walter Day, born on May 14, 1949
in Fairfield, Iowa has come back to his roots back in Fairfield, Iowa, after a
high school career in Southern California and a Oil Broker career in Texas, as
well as a standup comedian stint and collector of thousands of year books, he
decided to go into the lucrative arcade business.
His goal has always been to record something of significance. It has been his
lifetime achievement to find, record and mingle among the greats in the video
game industry, of those who achieved the illusive business of the illusive high score
number one spot on the leader board in chasing ghosts, centipede's and Asteroids.
Finding the players and traveling the world to visit a glimpse of these high scores
has been his dedicated life. Each score monitored, each score inputted onto
Walter Day's laptop of high scores, to be updated onto the Twin Galaxies Scoreboard.
Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard
His attire is black and white, that of a referee, and his tone is mild and
philosophical about his life's journey and how the quest has been sought and filled
and now the last chapter is coming to ink. Truly a man with a love of life and
of the games and people who he has amassed to help him with his quest, he is the
only one who could be available to record high scores since 1981 with the concentration
of a monk and the desire and attitude of a young man. This is his legacy, the
Twin Galaxies High Score Board, and as the official Guinness Book conduit to legimate
high scores which all started with one small arcade in Iowa.
However, for the first three months of its existence, Twin Galaxies was just another
arcade, enjoying quiet anonymity in a small sleepy Mid-western town. Twin Galaxies,
however, was destined to become a major figure in the video game story with its
high scoreboard, but it all started in Houston, TX.
Walter Day makes good as an Oil Broker,
Walter began as an oil broker in Texas in 1980 but it was to boring for him.
He constantly felt an urgent need to find something more exciting. The oil industry
was not the get rich oil trade that one would have hoped it to be.
In Walter Day's office of Rofheart Oil was Jon Bloch, an old-time friend who had been
his partner in a comedy routine which had been performed at a major hotel in the
Catskills during the mid-'70s. Jon was one of America's greatest comedians, and
kept Walter Day in good humor all the time, though boredom was setting in again.
Eventually, Jon would become the partner of Twin Galaxies Arcade.
Walter goes on the road for some excitement:
Walter convinced a fellow oil man, Rodger D. Beaton, to join in a get-rich-quick
idea in publishing a Who's Who directory on the petroleum oil industry.
With this idea as a good concept, Rodger D. Beaton put up the money and the idea
started to get off the ground, except for the secret passion of Rodger D. Beaton
and his video games ambitions.
Walter had heard of video games before, but had never spent money on those new
fanagled things. Pong was the big game of the day when it was released in 1972 and
finding it was very difficult. Rodger D. Beaton, however, had an ambition to be the
best ever at Space Invaders.
Iowa scores were pouring in. Tom Rhoades of Chariton, IA, gained notoriety at the
Rabbit Hutch in Des Moines, IA, when he proved evidence that he was the first person
in the nation to turn the score counter over at one million points on Defender in 1981.
By May 1982, Walter Day had become more confident about our status as the "official"
scorekeeper. It was in May that boilerplate slogans began to creep into his interviews.
Walter started cautiously with statements like: "We are the official scorekeeper
for the world of video game and pinball playing." The media loved it. They realized
they were plugged into an important source of information and were very appreciative.
Then I reeled out his all-time favorite punchline: "Twin Galaxies is the world's most
famous arcade, right here in Iowa."
Then came the Second Annual Video Game Festival at the Mall of America Link
Top Video Game World Champions with Walter Day
Dwayne Richard, Billy Mitchell, Todd Rogers, Walter Day
"If you ever need to interview any of the world champions, you'll have to call a man
named Walter Day in Ottumwa, IA, who is the official scorekeeper for video games.
You'll have to call him because he's the only person in the world who can lead you
to the champions."
Walter Day - Referee
ANOTHER of Walter Day's projects is collecting the high school yearbooks of famous
people. In an effort not to miss anyone who becomes famous in the future, he’s
trying to collect every high school yearbook published in the United States. Link
Walter Day is the world’s only electronic games referee. [Link] He runs
the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard—the “official scoreboard for the world of
video game and pinball playing.” As the founder of organized video game playing, Day
has judged contests and high scores submitted by arcades as far away as South Africa,
Australia, Ireland and Japan. He has written the official rule book for video game and
pinball playing sponsors two major contests every year to allow new players to enter
the Official Video Game and Pinball Book of World Records.
Is the authority that establishes the rules and standardized tournament settings
on each game!
Settles all arguments by telling you what the current high score is on almost any
game and who you have to beat to become the new world champion!
Organizes video game and pinball playing into a sport, with a tradition of
contests, statistics, world records and star players! Coordinates an
international schedule of tournaments that players can compete in to gain
entrance into this record book!
Brings credit to thousands of youth around the world who know they are the best!
Walter Day - 1982Scoreboard
The actual scoreboard was at Walter Day's Twin Arcade in Kirksville, MO -
and known as the Center of the Video Universe.
Walt Day, established himself and the Twin Galaxies Entertainment Centers in Kirksville
and Ottumwa, Iowa, as the official national scoreboard for video games as the first
person to record video game high scores nation wide.
His research and verification of high video game scores was the beginning to the
widely recognized national scoreboard.
Defender started it all, by Walt finding out if his player was indeed the best in
the world, he found that there was no scoreboard to go to so this began the keeping
of records for the industry.
The video game hall of fame was also to be located at the Kirksville location,
however, in the end it came to be that the Ottumwa, Iowa arcade became the name
that everyone knew as the arcade that represented on Life Magazine.
Walter Day - Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard - The Beginning
February 1982 - Blip Magazine interviews Walt "Walter" Day
Baseball has its batting average, its RBI's and its earned-run averages. Football
has statistics for running, passing, kicking and just about anything else that
happens on the field. Even TV is ruled by ratings numbers. Statistics are as American
as apple pie and pizza. And now statistics have burst upon the video game scene.
There's a man in Ottuma, Iowa, who keeps tabs - almost minute by minute - on high
scorers at arcade games all over the country. His name is Walt Day, and he's the
director of the Twin Galaxies Official International Scoreboard. Walt makes his
living by selling ice cream and making change at the Twin Galaxies Entertainment
Center while he's doing this, he handles phone calls from all over the U.S. The
Ask Walt the highest score ever recorded for QIX, and he'll rattle off the number
359,556. That was chalked up by Ben Goldenberg. He did it at the Silver Bowl
Arcade in Berkeley, California, on May 5, 1982.
Other record scores that Walt has verified include: February 1982
Game Score
Alpine Ski 174,000
Bosconian 185,000
Centipede 4,421,232
Donkey Kong 398,000
Kickman 4,642,920
Missile Command 60,220,510
Mousetrap 30,314,000
Ms. Pac-Man 130,300
Omega Race 600,700
Pac-Man 5,579,350
Space Invaders 150,880
Stargate 15,926,075
Tempest 828,453
"Defender score: 15,936,100 points"
If you want to report a record, or just to find out the latest high score for a
particular game, call Walt Day at (515) 684-6421. If it's a normal day, expect
a busy signal. The day I telephoned him I was one of forty or fifty callers. So
keep trying.
"Qix score: 359,556 points"
Day's statistics are reported in newspapers and on television and radio. They also
appear in several video game magazines. "But by the time the magazines are published,"
he says, "the scores are out of date.
"For example, the September issue of JoyStik reported the high score for Defender to
be 33,013,200. Well, by the time the magazine hit the newsstands, that record had been
broken four or five times. It's over 50,000,000 now."
Remember Steve Juraszek? He was the young man hailed by Time magazine for setting the
all-time Defender record - 15,936,100 points. According to Walt, that isn't much of an
achievement any more. "Juraszek," he says, "is now somewhere between fiftieth and
Sixtieth on the all-time Defender list."
Walt recently supervised the construction of a huge electronic scoreboard that keeps
an up-to-the-minute account of all scoring records. There wasn't much room for the
board at Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottuma. So it was set up at another Twin Galaxies,
in Kirksville, Missouri.
But Walt considers the Ottumwa arcade to be the international high-score headquarters.
"It's hard to believe," he says, "that Ottuma, Iowa, could become the video game capital
of the world. But that's exactly what has happened.
How did Ottuma become the video game capital? How did Walt get to be a dean of high
scores? It began a couple of years ago. "One day," Walt explains, "I was working behind
the counter at Twin Galaxies. Someone playing Defender ran up a high score of about
24,000,000 points. We thought it might be an all-time record, so we started calling up
other arcades to ask. But no one seemed to know if it was the high mark.
"So we decided to call it the official record until we heard otherwise. We did the
same thing for other games. The next thing we knew, people were calling to report
other records, or to find out the record score for a particular game. We were on our
way to becoming a national institution."
Shortly after that, something else started happening. People started coming from every
part of the country just to play the games at Twin Galaxies. "We're like the Yankee
Stadium of video game arcades," Walt says. "People want to be able to say that they've
visited here."
Where are the best video arcade players in America? According to Walt's figures, they're
in North Carolina or in California. "Those two states have the most record holders," he
Says. How about the greatest single scoring achievement?
As far as Walt is concerned, that distinction belongs to a handful of determined Robotron
players. Robotron is a sci-fi nightmare where the screen blazes with action. Sinistar
robots have wiped out all of humanity except for you, your parents, and your kid brother.
You must destroy the robots before they get your family. It takes hours of practice to
Train your mind to deal with the weird creatures you must face in the game.
"Recently," Walt says, "I've had reports from three or four different players who have
scores over a million points in Robotron. That means they had to play the game for 27
or 28 hours! Can you imagine playing a game like Robotron for that long? You'd be like
a wet dishrag!"
For his own enjoyment Walt prefers much gentler games. Make Trax is one of his favorites.
In that game, you're a paint brush painting a maze while two fish are chasing you. Walt
himself holds the Make Trax scoring record - a whopping 1,508,310.
"I admire kids who do well playing a particular game," Walt says. "Mastering a game
takes a lot more than just good eye-hand coordination. Understanding is just as
important. It takes a good, alert mind to beat a video game.
"And practice," Walt adds.
"Lots and lots of practice."
Another Walter Day Biography Link
congratulated by Walter Day, Referee
The following story is Paraphrased:
Twin Galaxies: Walter Day Story at: www.twingalaxies.com
Twin Galaxies in the beginning...
Walter Day started out with one arcade. 
His attire is black and white, that of a referee, and his tone is mild and
philosophical about his life's journey and how the quest has been sought and filled
and now the last chapter is coming to ink. Truly a man with a love of life and
of the games and people who he has amassed to help him with his quest, he is the
only one who could be available to record high scores since 1981 with the concentration
of a monk and the desire and attitude of a young man. This is his legacy, the
Twin Galaxies High Score Board, and as the official Guinness Book conduit to legimate
high scores which all started with one small arcade in Iowa.
However, for the first three months of its existence, Twin Galaxies was just another
arcade, enjoying quiet anonymity in a small sleepy Mid-western town. Twin Galaxies,
however, was destined to become a major figure in the video game story with its
high scoreboard, but it all started in Houston, TX.
Walter Day makes good as an Oil Broker,
Walter began as an oil broker in Texas in 1980 but it was to boring for him.
He constantly felt an urgent need to find something more exciting. The oil industry
was not the get rich oil trade that one would have hoped it to be.
In Walter Day's office of Rofheart Oil was Jon Bloch, an old-time friend who had been
his partner in a comedy routine which had been performed at a major hotel in the
Catskills during the mid-'70s. Jon was one of America's greatest comedians, and
kept Walter Day in good humor all the time, though boredom was setting in again.
Eventually, Jon would become the partner of Twin Galaxies Arcade.
Walter goes on the road for some excitement:
Walter convinced a fellow oil man, Rodger D. Beaton, to join in a get-rich-quick
idea in publishing a Who's Who directory on the petroleum oil industry.
With this idea as a good concept, Rodger D. Beaton put up the money and the idea
started to get off the ground, except for the secret passion of Rodger D. Beaton
and his video games ambitions.
Walter had heard of video games before, but had never spent money on those new
fanagled things. Pong was the big game of the day when it was released in 1972 and
finding it was very difficult. Rodger D. Beaton, however, had an ambition to be the
best ever at Space Invaders.
Iowa scores were pouring in. Tom Rhoades of Chariton, IA, gained notoriety at the
Rabbit Hutch in Des Moines, IA, when he proved evidence that he was the first person
in the nation to turn the score counter over at one million points on Defender in 1981.
By May 1982, Walter Day had become more confident about our status as the "official"
scorekeeper. It was in May that boilerplate slogans began to creep into his interviews.
Walter started cautiously with statements like: "We are the official scorekeeper
for the world of video game and pinball playing." The media loved it. They realized
they were plugged into an important source of information and were very appreciative.
Then I reeled out his all-time favorite punchline: "Twin Galaxies is the world's most
famous arcade, right here in Iowa."
Then came the Second Annual Video Game Festival at the Mall of America 
Dwayne Richard, Billy Mitchell, Todd Rogers, Walter Day
"If you ever need to interview any of the world champions, you'll have to call a man
named Walter Day in Ottumwa, IA, who is the official scorekeeper for video games.
You'll have to call him because he's the only person in the world who can lead you
to the champions."
Walter Day - Referee
ANOTHER of Walter Day's projects is collecting the high school yearbooks of famous
people. In an effort not to miss anyone who becomes famous in the future, he’s
trying to collect every high school yearbook published in the United States. 
Scoreboard
The actual scoreboard was at Walter Day's Twin Arcade in Kirksville, MO -
and known as the Center of the Video Universe.
Walt Day, established himself and the Twin Galaxies Entertainment Centers in Kirksville
and Ottumwa, Iowa, as the official national scoreboard for video games as the first
person to record video game high scores nation wide.
His research and verification of high video game scores was the beginning to the
widely recognized national scoreboard.
Defender started it all, by Walt finding out if his player was indeed the best in
the world, he found that there was no scoreboard to go to so this began the keeping
of records for the industry.
The video game hall of fame was also to be located at the Kirksville location,
however, in the end it came to be that the Ottumwa, Iowa arcade became the name
that everyone knew as the arcade that represented on Life Magazine.
Walter Day - Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard - The Beginning
February 1982 - Blip Magazine interviews Walt "Walter" Day
Baseball has its batting average, its RBI's and its earned-run averages. Football
has statistics for running, passing, kicking and just about anything else that
happens on the field. Even TV is ruled by ratings numbers. Statistics are as American
as apple pie and pizza. And now statistics have burst upon the video game scene.
There's a man in Ottuma, Iowa, who keeps tabs - almost minute by minute - on high
scorers at arcade games all over the country. His name is Walt Day, and he's the
director of the Twin Galaxies Official International Scoreboard. Walt makes his
living by selling ice cream and making change at the Twin Galaxies Entertainment
Center while he's doing this, he handles phone calls from all over the U.S. The
Ask Walt the highest score ever recorded for QIX, and he'll rattle off the number
359,556. That was chalked up by Ben Goldenberg. He did it at the Silver Bowl
Arcade in Berkeley, California, on May 5, 1982.
Other record scores that Walt has verified include: February 1982
Game Score
Alpine Ski 174,000
Bosconian 185,000
Centipede 4,421,232
Donkey Kong 398,000
Kickman 4,642,920
Missile Command 60,220,510
Mousetrap 30,314,000
Ms. Pac-Man 130,300
Omega Race 600,700
Pac-Man 5,579,350
Space Invaders 150,880
Stargate 15,926,075
Tempest 828,453
"Defender score: 15,936,100 points"
If you want to report a record, or just to find out the latest high score for a
particular game, call Walt Day at (515) 684-6421. If it's a normal day, expect
a busy signal. The day I telephoned him I was one of forty or fifty callers. So
keep trying.
"Qix score: 359,556 points"
Day's statistics are reported in newspapers and on television and radio. They also
appear in several video game magazines. "But by the time the magazines are published,"
he says, "the scores are out of date.
"For example, the September issue of JoyStik reported the high score for Defender to
be 33,013,200. Well, by the time the magazine hit the newsstands, that record had been
broken four or five times. It's over 50,000,000 now."
Remember Steve Juraszek? He was the young man hailed by Time magazine for setting the
all-time Defender record - 15,936,100 points. According to Walt, that isn't much of an
achievement any more. "Juraszek," he says, "is now somewhere between fiftieth and
Sixtieth on the all-time Defender list."
Walt recently supervised the construction of a huge electronic scoreboard that keeps
an up-to-the-minute account of all scoring records. There wasn't much room for the
board at Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottuma. So it was set up at another Twin Galaxies,
in Kirksville, Missouri.
But Walt considers the Ottumwa arcade to be the international high-score headquarters.
"It's hard to believe," he says, "that Ottuma, Iowa, could become the video game capital
of the world. But that's exactly what has happened.
How did Ottuma become the video game capital? How did Walt get to be a dean of high
scores? It began a couple of years ago. "One day," Walt explains, "I was working behind
the counter at Twin Galaxies. Someone playing Defender ran up a high score of about
24,000,000 points. We thought it might be an all-time record, so we started calling up
other arcades to ask. But no one seemed to know if it was the high mark.
"So we decided to call it the official record until we heard otherwise. We did the
same thing for other games. The next thing we knew, people were calling to report
other records, or to find out the record score for a particular game. We were on our
way to becoming a national institution."
Shortly after that, something else started happening. People started coming from every
part of the country just to play the games at Twin Galaxies. "We're like the Yankee
Stadium of video game arcades," Walt says. "People want to be able to say that they've
visited here."
Where are the best video arcade players in America? According to Walt's figures, they're
in North Carolina or in California. "Those two states have the most record holders," he
Says. How about the greatest single scoring achievement?
As far as Walt is concerned, that distinction belongs to a handful of determined Robotron
players. Robotron is a sci-fi nightmare where the screen blazes with action. Sinistar
robots have wiped out all of humanity except for you, your parents, and your kid brother.
You must destroy the robots before they get your family. It takes hours of practice to
Train your mind to deal with the weird creatures you must face in the game.
"Recently," Walt says, "I've had reports from three or four different players who have
scores over a million points in Robotron. That means they had to play the game for 27
or 28 hours! Can you imagine playing a game like Robotron for that long? You'd be like
a wet dishrag!"
For his own enjoyment Walt prefers much gentler games. Make Trax is one of his favorites.
In that game, you're a paint brush painting a maze while two fish are chasing you. Walt
himself holds the Make Trax scoring record - a whopping 1,508,310.
"I admire kids who do well playing a particular game," Walt says. "Mastering a game
takes a lot more than just good eye-hand coordination. Understanding is just as
important. It takes a good, alert mind to beat a video game.
"And practice," Walt adds.
"Lots and lots of practice."
Another Walter Day Biography 
