Walter Day

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Walter Day

Walter Aldro Day Jr. (born May 14, 1949 in Fairfield , Iowa ) is an American entrepreneur and, as the founder of Twin Galaxies, a pioneer of esports .

Life

Day initially worked in the oil industry . In November 1981 he opened an arcade called Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa . Shortly after a video game cover story appeared in TIME magazine in 1982 about 15-year-old Steve Juraszek who set a new record in the game Defender , one of the players in his arcade broke that record significantly. Day then contacted both Williams Electronics Games and Namco and learned that neither company had a leaderboard of their own. This inspired him to create an international video game leaderboard, which he put into practice on February 9, 1982 with the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard . In November of that year, Life Magazine published a cover story about Twin Galaxies .

He founded the US National Video Game Team , the first professional video game team , which is composed of five leading players of the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard composed, and was the team boss. The team toured the United States in the summer of 1983, some of the events were broadcast on American television, and some results entered the Guinness Book of Records . In 1983, Day and Twin Galaxies were honored by the Governor of Iowa in the presence of senior Atari officials . As a result, Day worked as assistant editor for the video games section for the Guinness Book of Records between 1984 and 1986.

In addition to the pure collection of the data, rules of the game were soon drawn up under Day's management, which should ensure the comparability of the results and prevent fraud or the exploitation of program errors. The result was the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records ( ISBN 1887472-25-8 ).

In 2007, Day appeared in two video game history documentaries , Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters . On the latter he worked as a screenwriter . In March 2010, Day announced his retirement from Twin Galaxies and wanted to start a career as a singer-songwriter .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ krone.at
  2. ↑ http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=17&id=618 ( Memento from January 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (English from Internet Archive)
  3. ↑ The Guardian (English)
  4. ↑ The Inquirer (English)
  5. ↑ eurogamer.net
personal data
SURNAME Day, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Day, Walter Aldro Jr. (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur, pioneer of esports
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Fairfield , Iowa