This week I just decided that I will be attending the International Video Game Hall of Fame “Big Bang” event next month. The IVGHOF is a new organization based in Ottumwa, Iowa. The goal of the IVGHOF is to house a museum of every arcade game ever made, and a Hall of Fame of gamers of all eras. Why Ottumwa? Ottumwa was once the home of Twin Galaxies arcade, the famous arcade run by Walter Day. Walter had the idea of holding the “Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard” of arcade high scores back in the peak of classic arcade gaming. The Twin Galaxies arcade is no longer around, a victim of the arcade video game crash in the mid ’80s, but Twin Galaxies is still going strong as an online record book. The history of Twin Galaxies and Walter Day is very interesting and I recommend watching “Chasing Ghosts” or “The King of Kong” to learn more about it. Because of Ottumwa’s unique role in Video Game history, they have been proclaimed as the “Video Game Capital of the World”.

The famous Life Magazine photo of the top arcade game players taken in Ottumwa, 1982

The IVGHOF kicked off last summer with a large event featuring several gaming celebrities, tournaments, and presentations. This year they are again holding a big event that should bring video game personalities and fans from around the country to Ottumwa for a four day celebration. I didn’t have a chance to go last year, but this year I am excited to have the chance to go.

I’ve been working with Walter Day, who is helping organize the event, to bring my Joust machine to the celebration. It will be used for various events, and hopefully there will be some world-class players getting some time on playing it. I’d love to see Steve Sanders take back his World Record on my machine, but we’ll see if he’s up to the challenge!

I’m really excited to experience this piece of classic arcade gaming history and to get a chance to meet some of the arcade greats like Sanders, Billy Mitchell, and maybe Steve Wiebe. Wiebe is scheduled to be inducted in the HOF, so I hope he’s there.

You can read more about the Big Bang event, and the IVGHOF at the official site: IVGHOF.com. There is a list of all of this year’s inductees on the site as well.

For a great documentary of the history of Twin Galaxies, try to see the movie Chasing Ghosts. It never made it to DVD, but it has been shown on Showtime and may again be broadcast.

Check out Twin Galaxies Website to see records of almost all arcade games. There are several scores for MAME emulated arcade games, and consoles both old and new.

This time it was for Donkey Kong Jr. DKJr is way harder than Donkey Kong, and I really stink at it. DKJr was another game that Billy Mitchell was a long time record holder for, until he was beat last August by a guy named Ike Hall. Steve beat Ike’s record by over 100,000 points setting a score of 1,139,800 points. Steve will be attempting to beat the Donkey Kong record on June 2, 2009 at the E3 Enterainment Expo in LA. It will be broadcast live on G4 Television.

Congratulations Steve! Good luck in June trying to set the Donkey Kong record again.

Here’s a link the the Twin Galaxies announcement of the record: Twin Galaxies Announcement

This past weekend I just received some exciting news from Jeff Rothe of Coinopspace.com. COSP is going to host a live chat with Steve Wiebe. Steve is the Donkey Kong player profiled in the movie King of Kong. It is a great “documentary” about what it is like to try to challenge a long-time classic arcade game world record. I highly recommend the movie if you have not seen it! Steve is a great guy and it will be interesting to hear some of his stories about his life after making KOK.

Here’s the link to the event: Chat with Steve Wiebe

Also, make sure you sign up for an account on Coinopspace.com, even if you do not plan to attend the chat. It’s a great site that has several networking tools for classic arcade game collecting.

Here’s the promotional text from Coinopspace.com covering the event:

On April 15th 2009 Steve Wiebe will be on Coinopspace.com, participating in a live group chat even with Donkey Kong fans and general coin-op enthusiasts. Steve is the latest in a monthly series of live chat sessions that has seen the likes of Tim Skelly, Owen Rubin, Jeff Kulczycki and Brian Colin.

If you aren’t a Donkey Kong fan, and somehow have been living under a rock for the past two years, Steve Wiebe is one of the best Donkey Kong players in the world and starred in the movie King of Kong, a documentary about his quest for the top score. Steve has one of the only 1,000,000 point scores ever recorded in public, and is one heck of a nice guy to boot.
Coinopspace.com is a brand new website for arcade, pinball and console enthusiasts to connect and share stories. Coinopspace.com isn’t just a forum based website, but has every feature for sharing your collection and restoration hobby that you could possibly imagine. There are advanced customizable profiles, photo hosting, a live chat section obviously, hosted blogs, videos and so much more. In the coming months we hope to connect collectors with more arcade game and pinball creators to ask those questions about your favorite games you’ve been dying to know.

To participate in the Steve Wiebe chat you need to sign up for the website and then you can RVSP for the event at the following link:
http://www.coinopspace.com/events/creator-chat-steve-wiebe

You can view all upcoming creator chats and events on the events page at
http://www.coinopspace.com/events

Ask Steve all those questions you have after watching King of Kong, there may be no other better time!

Last Saturday I hosted a small collector get together in my arcade. The weather was horrible, but we had a few guys show up.

There was plenty of talk of beating some of my high scores, and a few actually went down. Sorry you couldn’t beat my Donkey Kong high score this time Jodey! I even beat a few myself, including my Joust high score that I held since I first got the machine 10 years ago!

Check out the pictures in my January Game Day Photo Gallery

Some of the scores posted that day:

Brent’s (Dr. Galaga) D2K score

Fred’s (CrazyKongFan) Space Invaders Deluxe score

Fred’s (CrazyKongFan) Tron score

MY new Joust score!