Early Life
Little is known about Walter Day before he opened his first arcade. During the 70's he was apparently part of a fairly successful comedy troupe that included his friend and future
Twin Galaxies partner
Jon Bloch.
What is clear is that by 1980 Walter and Jon had both found themselves in the offices of Rofheart Oil working as oil brokers. Though he was fairly successful in this position Walter was unsatisfied; he found the oil industry boring, apparently, and longed to do more with his life.
His opportunity came when he and a co-worker (Roger D. Beaton ) came up with the idea of developing a "Who's Who Directory on the petroleum oil industry." Information on what happened next is
scarce, to say the least, but apparently Roger was an avid Space Invaders player who was also tuned in to the small competitive gaming scene at the time. It seems that as Walter and Roger toured around the country taking note of whatever information they planned to put into their directory, they were simultaneously taking note of all the video game highscores on every machine in every arcade they came across.
It was at this point that Walter, despite showing very little personal interest in video games before, apparently made the decision to dedicate his life to the video game community. On November 10, 1981 Walter Day opened the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa followed by the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard on February 9, 1982.
Twin Galaxies
Though Twin Galaxies was a modest arcade at best, featuring only 22 cabinets, it received a fair amount of publicity because of Day's efforts to maintain the (at the time) only scoreboard for competitive video game players. Within six months of launching the scoreboard Twin Galaxies would receive on average of 50-75 phone calls a day reporting new high scores.
Twin Galaxies success coincided with the public taking a greater interest in the video game industry as a whole, and this only contributed to Twin Galaxies popularity.
Post-Twin Galaxies
In March of 2010 Walter Day announced his retirement from Twin Galaxies. This came as no surprize to many of his fans, as he had been open about his desire to persue a career in music for some time. Twin Galaxies continues keeping record of all high scores for hundreds if not thousands of games.
Trivia
Log in to comment