Walter Day leaves Twin Galaxies

By Tom Bramwell Published 8 March, 2010

Off to pursue music career.

Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day has announced that he is leaving the organisation to pursue a music career.

Day founded Twin Galaxies, which gathers videogame records, in the summer of 1981 and has been actively involved in running it since.

Twin Galaxies' records are regularly included in the Guinness World Records - Gamers Edition, and the organisation and Day himself achieved cult fame in 2007 thanks to the King of Kong documentary, which chronicled Steve Wiebe's attempts to wrest the Donkey Kong world record from Twin Galaxies poster-child Billy Mitchell.

Announcing his decision, Walter Day first revealed that the city of Ottumwa, Iowa would be forming "the world's official International Videogame Hall of Fame" this year, and that over a four-day festival in August "about 30 people" would be inducted.

He then explained his personal decision to move away from the organisation he founded nearly 30 years ago. "I like to dream big and shoot for the stars, and that's what I'm doing now," he said. "I'm leaving Twin Galaxies and the videogame industry to be a musician, composer, singer-songwriter, and perform my stuff actually on the stage."

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Slipstream #1 2 years ago

    Best of luck to him, it'll be a drastic change considering how long he's been in this industry, but there's no time like the present to go out and achieve what you feel, good luck!

  • ant72 #2 2 years ago

    King of Kong is awesome.

  • MightyMouse #3 2 years ago

    We have a kill screen?

  • Vice.Destroyer #4 2 years ago

    I want to see Walter Day on American Idol. And Bonehead? Google Walter Day. He is a legend in his own right. One of the earliest people with the Peter Pan syndrome.

  • Erinan #5 2 years ago

    Who? What?

  • jellyhead #6 2 years ago

    Good man, best wishes to him.

  • youhavenomail #7 2 years ago

    *whispers* I don't think it's going to be a very successful change of career.

  • Vice.Destroyer #8 2 years ago

    Youhavenomail? You have no heart, more like.
    :)

    *whispers* I agree with you.

  • actionfitz #9 2 years ago

    So he can dedicate himself full time to writing folk songs about Billy Mitchel?
    /roll eyes.

    King of Kong is so funny but this guy comes off like an asshat in it tbh.

  • Nuada #10 2 years ago

    The King of Kong is magic but Day comes off as such a sycophantic worm to Mitchells Hateful-Bastard Archevillan. Let him write his album of ballads of Billy's ties and hand Twin Galaxies over to someone who can at least pretend to be unbiased.

  • jellyhead #11 2 years ago

    He has to write one song titled "Donkey Kong Killscreen", has to.

  • Sonic_D #12 2 years ago

    Good luck to him, he'll need it unforunately based on the stuff he played in the King of Kong.

    And just to be complete, as much as I enjoyed the King of Kong after doing a bit of reading on the net it became clear the film maker took some significant liberties with the truth. Sure Billy Mitchell is an ass and Day was definitely stuck up it at times, but the extent of the editting and omission of info leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

    From Wiki, the main fact that is omitted is that Steve Wiebe already had the record!:

    Walter Day of Twin Galaxies believes that the documentary is dishonest in its portrayal of the actual events. In posts on a Twin Galaxies forum entitled "The King of Kong — Official Statement"[19] he contends, among other things, that:

    In 2000 Tim Sczerby reached a high score of 879,200 points. Steve Wiebe beat both this score and Billy Mitchell's 1982 score. (In response, the film's producers claim that "Tim Sczerby's consistently disputed record was impossible to verify and did not merit inclusion in the film."[20])

    Steve Wiebe actually held the high score record for almost 3 years, and when his videotaped score of 1,006,600 points was rejected, the record actually reverted back to Wiebe's own previous record reached in 2003 — it did not revert to Billy Mitchell's 1982 score as implied by the film.

    Mitchell's videotaped record sent to the Funspot event was actually discarded after the event, and Walter Day apologized "for the mistake of approving this videotape without the benefit of a complete verification process". The score was reverted to Wiebe's score achieved at Funspot.[21]
    Edited by 2 at 08/03/10 @ 16:33

  • jellyhead #13 2 years ago

    I remember there being a bit of controversy around King of Kong's release. Wasn't there supposed to be another documentary that was going to set the record straight? I think it got canned but my memory is rusty. Might have been released as a book instead.

    Anyway, "Donkey Kong Killscreen" sing it! :)

  • harzo #14 2 years ago

    You're the best, arounddddd, nothings gonna ever keep you down....