With the release of several key blockbusters, a "Golden Age" of arcade gaming was in full swing at the beginning of the 1980s.
Arcades were opening by the hundreds and thousands throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Japan. They became places of congregation for youth and sources of growing profit for those in the game business. Arcades were more visible than ever in pop culture, even scoring a Billboard hit with "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia that sold over 1 million records.
Tens of thousands of arcades existed in America as the golden age kicked off. According to Play Meter Magazine, over a million machines were operating within the country.
Often dimly lit but for the bright screens and the glowing machines, arcades in the golden age of the 1980s were the electric and neon colored Forum Magnums for the modern adolescent Americans of the day, centers of their teenage lives and everything that came with it: socializing, truancy, a watchful eye from the police, young friendship, community, animosity and, yes, competition.
As arcades and gaming became more popular, the thrill of playing in front of crowds lit a fire under competitors. The race to high scores on a variety of games heated up while game developers and manufacturers took notice.
In 1981, Atari sponsored several major tournaments. In October, a national record for Asteroids was set in Manhattan (118,740 according to vidgame.info) at a sanctioned competition.
Later that month, Atari's ill-conceived Coin-Op $50,000 World Championship in Chicago drew a lackluster 250 competitors (some sources report even lower numbers) when over 10,000 were expected. The poor planning and thoughtless expectation of profit was one of the clearest signs of a bloated company leading the video game industry, the blind leading the blind.
Rumor has it that Atari’s prize checks bounced. It would not be the last time that happened in competitive gaming.
Despite the dud championship event, attempts to kick start competitive gaming continued.
In 1981, Iowan arcade owner Walter Day began his Twin Galaxies scoreboard and became the de facto scorekeeper, rule setter and enforcer for American competitive gaming during the era. With the help of game developers, Day’s fame rose and within a few months of opening up, he was receiving over 50 calls per day about high score claims. By 1983 and 1984, Day was organizing teams, competitions and recording high scores for the Guinness Book of World Records
"The public and media were fascinated by video games," said Walter Day as quoted in Replay. “The media, in particular, was amazed by players who could actually beat the games. It was this perception of ‘man versus machine’ that made many news stories so intriguing to the public.”
Twin Galaxies became the authority on and the face of competitive gaming in the 1980s. On November 7, 1982, LIFE Magazine took an iconic photo of the best video game players in the world standing atop their games of choice. The photo was taken on a street outside of the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, the self-proclaimed video game capital of the world. Walter Day is quoted as having said, "Having the video game capital here among the hogs has a certain charm." The picture has come to be seen as the most important video game photo of the era and one of the most important of all time.
The gamers and games included in the photo are Sam Blackburn (Eagle), Jeff Brandt (Donkey Kong, Jr.), Michael Buck (Carnival), Leo Daniels (Tempest), Eric Ginner (Moon Patrol), Ben Gold (Stargate), Jeff Landin (Jungle King), Mike Lepkosky (Ms. Pac-Man), Billy Mitchell (Centipede), Doug Nelson (Pac-Man), Darren Olsen (Centipede), Mark Robichek (Tutankham), Steve Sanders (Donkey Kong), Ned Troid (Defender), Todd Walker (Joust) and Joel West (Bezerk).
Walter Day assisted the American television show That’s Incredible! in organizing the 1983 North American Video Game Challenge, one of the first and certainly the most well-known gaming championship at the time. The competition’s format was a strange approach to a strange problem. Five unrelated single-player games were played, scores were "normalized" and compared. The 1983 television event featured the players running in between games and toward a finish line. The program has since become immortalized in video game history.
In 1983, the U.S. National Video Game Team and the Video Game Masters Tournament were created by Twin Galaxies which was "financially hurting and in need of a PR home run" according to Day. The goal was producing and tracking world records for the Guinness Book of World Records. In a 44’ bus complete with some of the most popular arcade machines on the planet, a set of mattresses stuck wherever they would fit (one of several cost-saving measures taken by the team) and a single driver (that would be Walter Day who described the long bus ride as a “strenuous ordeal”), the American all-star team set out from the crowd gathered to bid them farewell to tour the nation, promoting themselves and their games.
"The idea was alluring," wrote Day. “Imagine the commotion that would ensue when a professional team of video game players rode into town! We were, essentially, video game drifters, taking Ottumwa’s ‘Dodge City of Video Games’ concept on the road to challenge any players foolish enough to risk their quarters on a game with us.
"Yes, I was excited to be the first person in the world to be the captain of his own professional video game team and tour across the country. A professional video game team would, I hoped, be the draw that would get us all signed to TV contracts – or at least bring in sponsorship monies from the manufacturers."
The bus broke down early and often. No one on the bus got enough sleep. The team received a crash course by fire in dealing with the media, many representatives of which were curious enough to cover several tour stops.
"Driving across Ohio in daylight, with our U.S. National Video Game Team emblems flapping, was a great high," wrote Day. “Everybody saw us, kids pointed, cars honked, girls waved. We were gods.”
The bus would eventually die. The replacement car followed it to the grave after a frantically driven 8,000 miles and an unceremonious death in the Arizona desert. Hospital visits and run-ins with the law followed but so too did visits with Sega and with Nintendo of America who consulted with players on the team concerning their games. The team continued playing and promoting up and down the west coast of America.
The team took all comers. According to Walter Day, his kids never lost.
As would become a common theme in competitive gaming even into the present, those involved with the tour have been called hustlers as much as gamers. When one reads about the sleepless nights, the burnt out engines and the exhausted and triumphant group appearing on national television a number of times, it’s easy to see why.
With video games gaining more and more popularity, the group of gamer champions was featured in passing in magazines and television shows, gaining exposure and fame beyond what any of the young men (the oldest being 20 at the time of the photo) had previously achieved.
The clash of egos and personalities that would ensue over the next forty years between individuals in and around this group has been the subject of much curiosity, most notably culminating in two well-received but sometimes controversial documentaries in 2007: "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" and “Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade.”
Despite the significant amount of media attention focused around the group of top arcade gamers, making something close to a living off of video games remained a dream for most involved. It was largely a young man’s adventure: alcohol, groupies, games and attention were in abundant supply for the young group. Money was not.
"The fact is everyone wanted to do it for a living," said Billy Mitchell in the 2008 Frag documentary, “and the truth is nobody did.”
Tournaments and competitions were ephemeral at best. Even as media personalities discussed and marveled at this new phenomenon of professional video game playing, it would be hard to argue that it actually existed.
At this point, professional gaming was a ghost much talked about but never seen.