Original subtitles

Have you ever had a kind of dream

where you're so awake in the dream,

you're not sure if you're really awake or asleep?

You ever had that kind of dream?

I once had a dream

where this weird creature walked through the wall

and says, "quick, who wrote the famous novel by Herman Melville",

and what was the author's name?"

And I go, "ooh, don't tell me."

I know; It's on the tip of my tongue."

I don't know where it came from,

but it's such a complicated answer.

Associated Press, this is Nicole.

Is Matt there?

Matt Slagle, Matt Otero, or Matt Curry?

Oh, it's for Matt Slagle.

Okay, just a second.

Thank you.

When you have finished recording,

you may hang up or press one for more options.

Beep!

So, Matt, this is Walter Day calling back from Twin Galaxies

about the Pac-man 25th anniversary story.

In 1981, the arcade scene was very big.

Twin Galaxies opened up on November 10, 1981.

It was an absolute magical place.

It seemed to be so free of worries

and just so full of happiness and excitement.

We've gained a lot of notoriety and the reputation

for being the video gaming capital of the world.

We used to refer to it as the dodge city of video games,

because that's the place

where all the fast guns would congregate.

We had all the classics.

We had Wizard of Wor...

Donkey Kong, Missile Command,

Space Invaders, Tempest,

Gorf, Asteroids,

TRON, Joust,

Burgertime, Pac-man,

Centipede, Berzerk,

Dragon's Lair, Star Wars,

Frogger, Galaga,

Robotron,

Eagle?

Something like Eagle.

There were several games that sucked.

I could spot an arcade a mile away.

Before I could drive, I was walking to the arcade.

It was sort of like my second home in a way.

You didn't know what to expect.

You'd walk in, and there was always a chance

there would be a new game out there.

The game would arrive, and yet you'd have, like,

people stacked up and lined up waiting to play.

But, yeah, it was packed.

You could not get on that game.

There was a line out to the door.

You could find a video game anywhere.

And it was just a different era.

Then the opportunity suddenly popped up.

A kid named Steve Joraszek played Defender

nonstop on one quarter and ended up with 23 million points.

So I called up Williams Electronics in Chicago

and asked them if this was a world record.

And they said, "we don't know."

So I offered to keep track of the scores for the industry.

For some crazy reason of divine fate,

they all said, "yeah."

When anybody calls about scores, we're gonna send them to you"

send your playing techniques or high scores

to the international scoreboard in Ottumwa.

I was the official scorekeeper for the video game industry.

Here are the top finalists.

Within months, we were getting 30, 40, 50 phone calls a day.

And so I called out to Ottumwa, Iowa,

and talked to these people.

And we ended up calling up Walter.

I contacted Walter.

Walter put together the only infrastructure

that serious video game players could even become attracted to.

There was nobody else trying to do this.

Walter was the only person.

I remember talking to him on the phone.

I think you just called him.

And I called the phone number, and Walter answered.

Walter. Walter.

Walter. Walter Day.

I looked at the scoreboard,

and I saw that there were some people

who were just obviously superstars.

What I found out was, though, was that I wasn't just

the best player in my arcade.

I was one of the best players in the country.

Well, in the back seat,

we have the entire spare boards and the entire board system

from my Berzerk machine.

And, uh,

we can play some Berzerk.

That's the whole key right here is to play some Berzerk.

My dad worked two jobs most of the time

to make a living.

He went to one baseball game

in my entire life when I was about 11 years old.

And I still remember that game.

Our team lost, but my dad was there, you know.

He died in march of '78.

He died of a heart attack.

He died in my arms.

I tried CPR on him, and he just didn't make it.

It really devastated me.

And I was just very lonely,

seeking things that didn't have any direction.

And one day I walked into the underground arcade

in Shelby, North Carolina.

There was these two guys in business suits over there

playing a game called Berzerk.

What a winner does is,

they find something that they can do well,

and they just do it over and over and over.

And that's where you get your specialist at.

Well, I became a specialist in Berzerk.

In Berzerk, you are a humanoid.

And you are just running through this very simple maze,

and there are these robots who don't like it.

What happens is,

a lot of robots appear on the screen.

And you can't move your humanoid,

and they're shooting at you.

And you just got to pray that joystick will kick in.

Intruder alert.

Kill the humanoid.

There's also a Nemesis, evil Otto,

it's a stop sign,

stop sign smiley face.

And if he pounces on you, he kills you.

When somebody smiles and yet wants to kill you,

that is the ultimate in... He was a maniac.

Kill the humanoid.

Stop the intruder.

In the game of Berzerk,

there are 64,000 room combinations.

Well, no one had figured that out yet.

I mapped out every room, every combination.

I was on the top,

but if you don't have someone to help you go even higher,

you wane.

I was a chemical engineer,

mostly in the lithium industry.

I was laid off from work in 1982.

And Ron Bailey would prove to be an interesting fellow to me.

His major interest in his life was ham radio.

I thought he'd have, you know,

a little box sitting on the table.

This guy had rooms full of stuff.

I have a motto.

"Nothing in moderation."

He had a tower that was over 90 foot high

that you could actually walk up a ladder on.

Destroy the intruder.

Kill the humanoid.

I didn't know this guy was a closet Berzerk player.

He made me feel good because of the fact

that someone older was having an interest in me.

Boys, even if you're a boy at 22,

you need encouragement from older fellas.

We knew as the two of us,

we could beat everybody in the world.

When you play a video game,

there are days when you're playing the game,

and it's fighting you.

Then there are days when you and the game become one.

At some point in time,

I felt as if I could get inside the machine mentally.

You're fluid.

You're focused.

You're with the game.

You're right there with it, and everything is right.

There's nothing that's wrong.

And you can even hear what's going on outside

of your realm.

You're so focused.

There's nothing.

It is almost like a spiritual experience.

I've had spiritual experiences,

and it's a very similar feeling...

When you're playing that game, and you're totally focused,

and you're totally one with that game.

It's a unity,

and it's just like a spiritual experience.

When it's right, it's right.

The name that I used to go by when I was playing video games

in my past life was Darren Olson.

When my mom and dad got divorced,

it had been something that...

We always wanted to change our name.

There was a show we used to watch on TV

called Remington Steele.

Pierce Bronson, was it?

I'm trying to remember it.

I think he was a detective.

And that's actually where I picked up the name Steele.

He could just play Centipede and maneuver a track ball

in a way that should not have been able to be done.

He's been demonstrating tonight

his unique approach to playing Centipede,

which is to clear off the bottom part of the screen

and then live for as long as possible while the Centipede

continues to go around.

He was what I considered the best player in the world

in video games, period.

He was just someone that even champions just chose to idolize.

And Kent was another one.

Kent was just as good as Darren was.

I probably had world records on games like Stargate,

Centipede maybe at one point.

Donkey Kong Jr., Robotron.

We would actually beat each other's scores at one time.

And we didn't know each other.

That was Kent.

Probably Space Invaders that I met him.

It would have been in around there,

'cause there was somebody else

that was getting some high scores on this game,

and, you know, I'm in there playing the same game.

And, you know, of course, the next thing you know,

we're trying to compete against each other.

Games, you know, before that were pretty simple

with just a couple, you know,

the character you control,

and here's a couple enemies you can play with.

And here's 55 enemies coming at you, you know.

That was different than playing Pong

or Breakout or any of the other games.

And of a sudden, here you were protecting earth.

You could store your high score.

So other people could, like, come in and try

to beat your high score.

That was kind of a new...

I mean, that was a new idea at the time.

Originally, we used to have separate initials.

And then finally we teamed up and go,

"let's just decide on one."

I think one day somebody called us "whiz kids" or something,

so we go, "okay, what can we use?"

"Wiz."

We used W-I-Z.

'Cause you're only allowed three initials.

We'd go on one game, play two players,

and just fill up the top five scores, ten scores.

It was all "WIZ."

Nobody else would have their initials in there.

And everybody wanted to know who WIZ was.

People were asking us,

"you know, who's WIZ?"

And we would go, "I don't know who he is."

This really applied in the game track and field.

Some people that would just hit the buttons

really hard like this, right,

and make a lot of noise.

The next thing, there's this thing called the double flap,

which we used in joust all the time.

Did you do the double flap?

'Cause you can't hit it as fast this way

as you can with two fingers going.

The would do, like, two fingers on each button.

Oh, I do remember the pencil trick.

They would balance a pencil between the two run buttons

and sort of, like, toggle it.

By the pressure pushing down on the pencil,

it flicks back very quickly.

That's really cool that somebody actually adapted

the use of a pencil to play a video game.

That's rare.

That takes a genius.

After that, we started thinking and going,

"oh, I grab my mom's electric knife, right?"

I haven't heard of that.

Where the blade stuck in, it actually moved

just like my double flap did.

That's amazing.

The first time we tried it,

nothing.

"Oh, okay."

But I had the dimmer switch on it.

We had it going too fast.

So we turned it down.

The next thing you know, we're jumping six feet.

We're jumping eight feet.

Turn it up, and we found the perfect spot.

We're just blowing away.

That blows me away.

And there's initials, "WIZ" again.

So I was like, "who are these guys," you know.

Then we went and decided to conquer Calgary.

Let's take on every game in every 7-Eleven, every arcade.

Let's go beat every high score.

Everybody wanted to be better than everybody else.

Everybody wanted to showcase.

To use a sports analogy, these are the all-pro guys.

You could walk in,

and you could be the biggest, strongest guy in the place.

Well, if you couldn't play a video game,

you were nothing.

He smoked everybody else.

We would essentially dominate the game.

'Cause we would win almost every tournament we went to.

I'm the best there is in the world.

There's all these video game players that have egos

the size of cathedrals.

I couldn't accept the fact

that a computer's programmed to beat me.

I used to go and play a game

to destroy the game.

I could walk into a strange arcade

and step up to a game,

and I could have half an arcade full of people around watching.

It's not just, like, the best person at your arcade.

You would actually be the best person ever.

They were just, like, in awe of what you're doing, right?

Every game has a weakness.

You've got to be ready. You've got to shoot quick.

A t-shirt is a big part of it.

If you don't have a t-shirt, you're nobody.

They'd all backed out of the way with their line of quarters

and let us play so they could watch.

That's just the way it was.

You can go from shit to god for a quarter.

That's incredible.

That's... no, these guys are unbelievable.

To an arcade owner, I am their worst nightmare.

I go in there and spend a quarter and last all day long.

They're at a level where people can't hardly see

what's going on.

"Look at that move.

That's amazing."

People just have to stop.

They'd just come by.

"Whoa, man.

Good heavens."

Boom, baby.

That's how you play Donkey Kong.

The regular circulation of the magazine is like 1 1/2 million.

That's paid circulation,

so the readership had got to be at about 4 million.

I was a reporter at life magazine at the time.

It was, like, 1982.

And we were trying to come up with pictures

that would be good to capture the culture of the year.

Walter called me up and said,

"we're having all of the best players

"from around the country come,

and life magazine's gonna be there to shoot the picture."

We didn't know what to expect.

We don't know who's gonna be there.

We don't know if we're just

getting buffaloed into something.

"Hey, you want to go to Iowa?"

And I'm like, "where?"

We're kids.

We don't really care.

We're gonna go, you know.

We're gonna see the world.

It was pretty exciting.

There was people from all over.

It was California, Florida, I think one guy was from Alaska.

Well, actually, I flew out with two friends of mine.

And I thought we were gonna land in a cornfield in Ottumwa.

I was in a 1972 Ford LTD.

When I went through Cincinnati,

I went over that big bridge coming in from Kentucky,

and it horrified me.

Poor little North Carolina boy had never been anywhere.

I borrowed my mom's car.

They were coming down from Canada

and that that was a possible swoop

that they could pick me up.

It was an old Toronado.

It was not easy to sleep

in the company of these two guys.

I didn't know if we were gonna get there or not.

We got there, and it was a pretty small town.

I have never seen a city so square.

You pull in to Ottumwa, Iowa,

I don't know what it was at the time,

20,000 or something.

It was a little hick town, right?

The highway map for Iowa is like this.

If he hit it over the wall,

it would have been just another accomplishment.

What made it different was, he pointed at the wall.

Well, that's what I was out to do then.

And it was risky.

Billy Mitchell, video game player of the century.

It's rather simple.

If you want to get a perfect game, you walk up.

You put your quarter in.

You press start.

You eat every dot.

You eat every prize, every energizer.

And on every energizer,

you've got to get all four guys every time.

If you miss a guy, you're done.

If you miss a prize, you're done.

If you miss anything, you're done.

You die one time, you're done.

Just to give you an idea, watch how fast they turn back.

And you got to get all four.

256 boards over many, many hours,

never dying once, never missing a point.

I had all kinds of people, "oh, you can't do it.

"Oh, no one's ever done that.

"There's no way you can do that.

Bet you you can't."

I'd say, "don't bet your life."

Sorry, I'm just showing off here.

Bill Mitchell is the Jerry Rice or the Michael Jordan

of all video game players.

Man, he's phenomenal.

Very loud, very outspoken, very confrontational.

And one of the lines he would always say to me is,

"Steve, when I met you, I was but the learner.

But now I am the master."

And I turned around.

I stopped playing for a moment, and I looked at Bill Mitchell,

and I said, "fuck you, Bill Mitchell.

Fuck you."

Mr. Nakamoto, he's the father of Pac-man,

he presented me with an award for Pac-man

for having done the world's first perfect game.

So sometimes when I'm with someone,

"oh, you think you know more about the games

than the people who made them?"

Um, yeah, they told me I do.

It's a very interesting experience

to see the whole video game hobby become so big

that there are now stars like Billy.

I'd be lying to you if I told you it wasn't fun.

I'd be lying to you if I told you didn't enjoy it.

Look at him.

He sticks out like a sore thumb.

He's got... what is this?

What do they call that, that hairdo?

Business up front, party in the back.

He has this hairdo like a country western singer.

What do they call those?

Short on top and long in back?

Uh...

Ah, that's a mullet.

A mullet?

That's called a mullet. The mullet.

Mullets rock.

So he's very, very noticeable.

Walter will say Billy Mitchell

is the most famous video game player.

And I tend to disagree with that to a point.

There's a lot of jealousy involved

with this video game stuff.

I mean, these guys who play video games,

I mean, let's face it.

I mean, they couldn't get laid

in a whorehouse with a handful of hundred dollar bills.

My name is Roy Shildt.

I'm the world champion of Missile Command,

1,695,265 points, which I achieved in 1985.

The prestige of Missile Command is a lot greater,

because it's a macho game.

You know, it's Missile Command.

It has a lot of paramilitary association.

It has a lot of phallic association associated with it,

just like a missile is like a penis, you know.

It's kind of like there's a lot of penis envy involved.

Of course I was famous.

You know, he goes around saying he's the world's most famous

video game player,

like people are walking up to him all the time

recognizing him.

I said, "well, it's probably the hookers on Park Avenue."

You know.

I wouldn't play a candy-ass game like Pac-man.

That's for girls and chumps.

The guys who play Pac-man are not very talented.

They can't handle games like Missile Command

or any of the real tough games.

Those games are more popular because they're easier to play.

The games like Missile Command are not that popular,

because they're really hard to master,

and it takes a lot of skill to play them.

And track balls are a lot harder to control than a joystick.

And there's three buttons, three different missile bases,

and missiles that travel at different speeds.

The Missile Command record

is a super record, and his records are mediocre.

One great record is worth 20 mediocre records,

as far as I'm concerned.

That's why I refer to him as Silly Bitchell,

because he really is nothing but a silly bitch.

Billy Mitchell broke my score.

Oh, sorry.

Todd Rogers, I mean, that guy is so high on himself.

You can't even talk to him.

There's a number of players out there that are insanely jealous,

which I won't mention names, of Billy's achievements.

How would you like it if you worked that hard

to achieve something

and some jackass came along and tried to say it was fake?

You know, I never threatened Walter Day,

but he thinks I did.

I tried to call him after that, and he says,

"I can't talk to you.

My attorney says not to talk to you."

And he hangs the phone up.

Well, I had my attorney send Walter Day a letter

saying, "you better tell the truth about my score",

"or else we're gonna file an injunction against you,

go in to court, and all this other stuff."

And the truth is Bill Mitchell doesn't have any talent,

and he's not a great player.

He's completely full of shit.

The Missile Command score is a genuine achievement.

And that's gonna be the truth of it,

and he knows it.

Is that why I'm fighting so hard

to hold on to the Missile Command score?

Yes.

Because it makes me special.

It gives me recognition.

Of course I want to keep it.

I don't want someone to say it was fake or...

I mean, it's kind of obvious, isn't it?

Is that really a question that needs to be asked?

Well, life magazine has come to town to photograph

early on this Sunday morning at 7:30

the downtown main street.

Life magazine has come to town...

So that Life magazine could come to town...

Life magazine has come...

Life magazine...

Give me a break.

And so that's when I first met Walter.

I had not met him at all

before I actually went out for that photo shoot.

I was impressed by his charisma and his bizarrity.

He definitely reminded me a little bit of gene Wilder.

Walter Day is a product of the Berkeley era of the '60s.

He's a renaissance man.

He's a big dreamer,

always coming up with great plans and dreams.

I had 50 million business cards, the king of the card collectors.

I used to do genealogical research

and all sorts of historical research.

He was an oil broker.

I'd be on the telephone speaking to conoco.

"Oh, you want 20,000 barrels of 2 oil?"

He sold old newspapers.

And I have 7 million newspapers.

They weigh about a thousand tons.

One more step into eccentric

probably wouldn't be functioning in society.

You keep them in a dark place.

Try not to fold them, and keep them flat.

Walter's in the house.

Well, it's that time of year

when we're getting all the champions lined up.

I thought he was a guy who belonged onstage

dancing around a bunch of video games

with a microphone.

For me, video games were pulling out the sword,

getting on the horse, and leading the army into battle,

fighting, battle, winning, rivalry, warfare.

Video games were fighting and winning.

He was just that edge of, like, brilliant

"I could sell snow to Eskimos" kind of thing.

We were the most famous video game arcade in the world,

so the mayor went along with it.

I proclaimed Ottumwa the video game capital of the world,

and we just challenge anybody to prove that we're wrong.

And then a little bit later,

the governor of Iowa came and confirmed it

by announcing that Iowa officially recognized

Ottumwa as the video game capital of the world.

That's amazing what he pulled off.

Yeah, 'cause there's no Internet back then,

no mass communication.

You know, outside of the local arcade,

you didn't know across the city

if there's somebody better than you.

Just the sense, the feel, the electricity

in Twin Galaxies, Ottumwa, that Walter brought to that,

instantly you felt that there's someone

who really cared about video game players,

about high scores.

You could feel that.

And at that point, everything was great.

Here we have my 11-inch Parahybana.

She was eating a dead squirrel.

At the end of three days,

the squirrel didn't have a head or an arm.

I got stung by a bee when I was four years old.

My way of getting back at the bee

was throwing bees in a spider's web.

I got some critters for you to take a look at.

I'll bring 'em in there.

Oh, wow.

They got big.

This is the USA Flea Market,

one of the flea markets in central Florida that I frequent.

How you doing?

It's a little off-center here.

Hang on, I've got the glasses there.

There you go.

And how.

And there's a few shops that I stop at in here

to purchase either lizard or spider food.

I probably have 40 different large ones,

and total overall, maybe 200 total in my closet.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, both of them.

Excellent.

There's a variety of ones.

I have Goliath bird spiders

that range from 8 inches to 10 1/2.

Baby pink toe, south American birch spider

about the size of your little pinky fingernail.

Spiders have eight eyes, eight legs,

and they live 25 to 40 years,

hear your heartbeat 30 feet away.

We tried mating and putting those males with her.

That was a joke.

She came out... "rrr."

Oh, no; Oh, no.

Wow, it's hot in here.

17-year-old Todd Rogers is, well, a video game freak.

The young man from Chicago got the bug at 14

and now, by almost anyone's definition,

might well be considered one of the world champions

in home video competition.

Oh, Barnstorming, you have to fly over windmills

and through a barn and avoiding geese.

Every time you tap that stick,

it's 0.30 of a second that's counted off on your time.

I, of course, want to be the best at what I do.

If I'm gonna fly a perfect game,

what's the bare minimum that you can get on a game?

The tape marks the top of the windmill.

And then the second set of tape marks the very top

of the bottom inside of the barn.

I had set 32.50 on it in front of three Twin Galaxies referees

and about 30 people.

I have over 2,000 high scores.

Toddzilla,

the king of video games, Mr. Activision.

A lot of companies look to have talented gamers

promote their products.

"Well, why don't you do a show for us?

"We're gonna fly you in, gonna pay your hotel.

We're gonna feed you."

And in my case, feeding me,

oh, that's worth its weight in gold, you know.

What could be better in life than a 64-ounce Pepsi

and a piece of pizza

and all the video games you could play?

A few years ago,

I tried to recreate a German enigma cipher machine,

one of the first machine encipherment things

that was used by the Germans in World War II.

I draw a lot of pleasure from solving problems.

I had a girlfriend one time.

I was an introvert with a broken heart.

My one true love in my life at that time

was a girl named Kimberly Fennel.

She broke up with me.

Heart was completely broken.

And so I had all this time.

And so what's gonna fill the void?

All the time you would spend with a girlfriend

I was spending with video games.

Battlezone, it was the game that I was the best at,

because I was very, very aggressive

in my style to that game.

Most folks, when the tanks,

the super tanks or the missiles would come at you,

they would back up so they'd have more time to shoot.

But I figured out the rhythm of how they all moved,

so I would always go forward.

Like Patton, right?

Patton had one standing order.

Always attack.

If you're concentrating on missiles coming to shoot you,

you're not really wondering where your ex-girlfriend is now.

So I tried to go for the Robotron world record.

But I only lasted, like, 25 hours.

I played frenzied for 24 hours and five minutes.

For me, 36 hours, that was brutal.

41 hours; That was brutal.

42 hours.

48 hours.

60 hours straight.

I think it was 68 hours straight.

I started on a Saturday and ended up on a Tuesday.

I could be here until Monday morning,

but I have to go back to work.

I had played, like,

Asteroids for something like

I don't know, eight days or something.

Eventually the game gives out or you give out.

The only breaks I would take would be to run to the bathroom.

You want to hydrate yourself,

but you don't want to get to the point where,

"oh, my god, I got to make mud."

It gets to a certain point where the average person will wither.

They just cannot take the intensity.

It's too fast at the highest levels.

My name is Robert Mruczek.

I am the chief referee

for the Twin Galaxies intergalactic scoreboard.

I've been chief referee for the last four years.

I've been gaming since 1969.

As a referee for Twin Galaxies, it's my responsibilities,

as quickly as I can, pending, of course, my own availability,

to watch these performances,

authenticate and make sure they're done

at the correct settings,

and then when they are,

to enter them into the Twin Galaxies database.

I know the tournament settings and the marathon settings

in the back of my head.

I'm familiar with the world record holders,

what the scores are.

I have video tapes, and I have a few CD-ROMs and DVDs.

The longest performance is Nibbler.

It's an expected 30-to 40-hour performance.

I've seen or witnessed more than 20,000 video tapes

or world record scores over the last 4 1/2 years.

I almost don't sleep.

I go to sleep between

3:30 and 5:00 in the morning weekdays.

There are days when I do 24-hour stretches doing nothing

but watching games

on top of my regular job, which is accounting,

which I do 60 to 70 hours a week.

This is my 22-pound cat, Rusty.

He helps me watch my video tape submissions sometimes

by keeping me company while I'm watching a tape.

Watching a world's record performance

is the ultimate satisfaction,

seeing the game taken where no one else has been able

to take it before.

I think it is the single best job I could possible have.

It doesn't pay anything,

but as far as for what a gamer likes to do, this is it.

It's not easy, but I get it done.

Welcome to Video Game News Update.

I'm Walter Day

of the Twin Galaxies international scoreboard.

Imagine playing a video game for 36 1/2 hours on one quarter.

That's how Leo Daniels of North Carolina

earned a world record score of 169 million points on Robotron.

Leo was a gaming genius.

He's very bright and brilliant.

He was Mr. Video games.

He had lightning-fast reflexes.

It was just insane to watch him in some of these games.

It wasn't long until Leo had records on multiple games.

I didn't really start playing the video games

until Asteroids came out.

I went down to... It was Kure Beach Pier.

There was a little, like, putt-putt golf course thing.

And so I went back there,

and there was this short little guy with dark hair and glasses.

You know, kind of roped off from everybody else.

And I remember just seeing all these ships he had.

He would leave one asteroid

and then fly from the bottom to the top of the screen

and then just kill the little saucers for 300 points.

And then it got me thinking,

"wow, he outsmarted the game."

The people you hang around really reflects on you.

If you want to be somebody successful,

surround yourself with successful people.

Some people get married, and they let that be the end

where it should be a new beginning.

They, you know, get a humdrum job

that they don't like going in to.

And they let that interfere with their marriage.

That wouldn't be fun for me.

Hello?

I'm still doing the interview.

I told you I'd call when they were through.

She has the most super personality

of anybody I've ever met,

out of any woman.

I mean, look at this face.

She smiles all the time,

which makes me smile all the time.

There's a lot of stuff.

He's met a lot of people.

But that's cool.

He's the type of person that always has an angle

on something going somewhere.

Everything that he did in a video game,

not cheating, but, again, like, what we always used to do is

go around the original rules of the game

as the programmers had thought of it to get ahead.

And I think Leo does the same kind of thing

in real life too.

I don't know.

Some folks never grow up.

Maybe they're just like the whole Peter Pan thing,

stuck in a video game.

I continue to play games

not just because it's a part of my past.

Because it's a part of me.

I grew up with them.

You know, I don't feel my age.

I don't think I act my age at all.

I think age is just a number.

This was the first time video game players

on this level had ever met.

It was the first time in my life I met people at my level.

And suddenly, I could not be the best at every video game.

Okay, these guys were too good.

I hope in the near future to be one of the very top players,

between first and third for video games.

When Joel and I met today, we challenged each other.

We can go right through monsters.

It's totally amazing.

It's just totally amazing.

It really made me look at the way I play my game.

And it was fun.

It was humbling too,

'cause they were better than I was.

As all the other players have seen you play

say that you are possibly one of the best players

they've ever seen.

We were just sort of, in a sense, brothers.

I think Steve Sanders is probably

the most outgoing player.

He was really into his Donkey Kong.

Steve has set over 3 million points on Donkey Kong,

which is an extremely high score for that game.

That is at once a very proud moment for me

and a very shameful, embarrassing moment for me.

And I'll tell you why.

Lord, forgive us.

We're hypocrites.

We're just like those Pharisees.

Help us to be Jesus to the world.

Help us to take his kindness and compassion to everyone.

We pray it for the sake of Jesus and in his name.

Amen.

Thank you all.

When I was 17, 18 years old,

I had these license plates.

He was trying to be famous or whatever,

which he was for a while.

You know, he got a book deal out of it.

Unlike most people

who have heard about Twin Galaxies

either in a magazine or on the radio,

I heard about it when I was writing a book

called the video master's guide to Donkey Kong.

When I was playing Donkey Kong, invariably, some kid would go,

"man, you must have read the book."

And my buddy would say, "he wrote the book."

So...

Well, I guess I had the attitude,

particularly on Donkey Kong,

that nobody could beat me, period.

And I wouldn't tolerate anybody telling me they could.

By the time I knew that I was right

was when I was at Life magazine.

It was very interesting at that time.

In fact, I remember back, like, you know,

somebody would be getting close to a record,

and it was like everybody would almost stop.

Boy, how could this guy get 3 million points at Donkey Kong?

Like, I'm having trouble getting 6,000 or 7,000 points.

In front of what we'd believed

was the 20 best players in the world,

I played him a game of Donkey Kong.

He got 190,000 in his game.

After watching him not being able

to get over 250,000 to 300,000 points,

which was 10% of his score that he claimed to have...

I got 849,000 points on my first guy.

That was the end of the questions.

And I just felt like the wind had been taken out of my sails.

I felt sucker punched.

I forever put him in his place.

My game play absolutely intimidated him.

In the spring of 1982,

Walter came out with a poster of high scores.

When my score of 450,000 was reported

as having been beaten by somebody,

I think from Leo Daniels' arcade,

I should have said,

"Walter, I'll believe it when I see it."

What I did instead was, I lied.

When I discovered players were cheating,

I was absolutely dumbfounded.

I was silly enough to submit that to Walter Day,

and he was silly enough to print that.

And that score got in the guinness book of world records.

I was floored, 'cause I thought he was the,

you know, the Donkey Kong master.

Some people, if they're good at selling used cars,

and they can lie straight to somebody's face

and feel good about it... Some people can do that.

The letter reads, "dear friends",

to some of you, this letter will be rather shocking news."

But he sent everybody a letter saying that,

"look, I exaggerated my scores.

This wasn't true."

I am very sorry and very ashamed of this whole ordeal.

"I have hurt Walter, Bill, and Darren by my lies."

That kind of got me mad.

It never occurred to me that somebody could do that.

I didn't like him much.

"My sincerest apologies to you all, Steve Sanders."

That was a hard letter to write, but after I wrote it,

I felt like the weight of the world

was lifted off my shoulders.

By God's grace, that event in my life,

it is sort of a signpost,

a midnight star to guide my direction now.

Amen.

Twin Galaxies with the champions here,

I think it was... made Ottumwa kind of famous, kind of.

We were like celebrities there.

You know, here's this small town,

and all of a sudden you've got these guys coming.

The day we got there and went to the arcade,

they had to get us in a side door,

'cause the arcade was overflowing with people.

A lot of the guys were out there partying.

I mean, I was... Maybe I was too much of a nerd.

They had a 19-year-old drinking age,

so we were able to... Or maybe it was 18.

It might have been 18 back then.

I remember the cheerleaders.

They were from the Ottumwa high school.

We went up and introduced ourselves, started talking,

and then we ended up spending some time together.

I'd never seen groupies before.

That was pretty exciting.

There were actually video game groupies.

We'd have groupies hanging around us.

Yeah, there were groupies.

It's pretty weird,

'cause Ottumwa doesn't seem like a very big town,

but now it is.

I was shocked and thrilled,

because I'm a goddess appreciator.

Just like there's the Grateful Dead Deadheads

who follow the group around.

I'm married right now.

I potentially have a very jealous wife,

so I don't know if I can really go down that road.

Everybody said, "oh, Ben, I'll bet you had girls after you."

Not really.

I was just fortunate that people could look at me and,

you know, not throw up.

To me, that was not as much of a social occasion

as perhaps it could have been.

I was never that coordinated at sports.

As I've always enjoyed watching sports,

but I was never that good at playing.

And I think when it came to video games,

I was good at them.

And it was, you know, one of the first things I found

that I was, you know, able to excel at.

And so that's probably what drew me to it.

The first one was Frogger.

I played and actually beat the score

that was listed on Walter Day's record list.

His hands were so cool, and his head was so cool,

whereas I would be gripping ferociously to the joystick

trying to will it around.

And so with Frogger,

and again, my style was not to just go as fast as I can

and get to the home.

My style was, take my time.

If the traffic gets a little too busy at the front,

back up and start over again.

You know, there was enough time for me to be patient,

make sure I do it right,

and to not worry about going as fast as possible.

He reminds me of a gunslinger who's got a cool hand,

almost like a Clint Eastwood movie.

Ooh!

First of all, it involves a lot of time

and particularly patience.

I'm very organized,

a very organized person.

If I go on a trip, you know,

I follow my list of what to bring.

Back then I always kept track of my own personal top five songs.

My number one song is Play That Funky Music.

Three song is Ballroom Blitz,

Hammer, back when he was called MC Hammer,

some of the Tone-loc songs,

Wild Thing, you know, Funky Cold Medina.

I work really hard when I do work.

And so when I come home,

I'd like to be able to sit down in my recliner

and just think about not much.

You know, even as a little kid,

I liked to do things in a logical way.

You know, Mr. Spock was one of my idols.

And so I think for me, you know, it fit with my personality

of having patience and persistence.

Let me read this letter to you.

I think this is one of the funniest letters.

"I would like to enquire about my name in video games

"under the heading of high scores.

"My personal high score on Q-Bert is 287,000 points.

"I noticed you do not have a listing for Q-Bert.

"I was wondering if this is

"because you have not received word of any high scores.

"Also, do I need to have this high score made official,

"and how do I do it?

I would appreciate you giving me this information."

And it says,

"your score isn't high enough to qualify as number one.

"Presently, Ben Gold of Dallas has that honor

with 17,899,325 points."

I thought that was really funny.

Okay.

Anyway...

Today on the video game challenge,

expert players share their winning secrets

and the championship match

between the world's highest scoring players on Millipede.

Video games are sweeping the world,

and the revolution is just beginning.

Practicing for this contest,

I was going at it about eight to ten hours a day

every day during Christmas break.

He was somebody that I always thought, under pressure,

was one of the toughest guys to beat.

He played in a Millipede contest against Eric Ginner.

Are the players ready?

All right, for the World Championship of Millipede,

three, two, one, shoot.

Eric was ahead of Ben, and Ben was on his last guy.

And he just wasn't gonna let Eric win.

And on that one last guy that he had...

It looks like Ben Gold may be in trouble in the high 800s.

He went 80,000 points.

And our winner is Ben Gold.

Eric, thank you very much for a terrific game.

Sorry it didn't turn out better.

And, Ben, you're the world champion Millipede shooter.

Here's the Millipede machine

that I won on in that competition.

June 23, 1983: 892,304 points.

When young Ben Gold decides to take on a video game,

he takes it on seriously.

At 16, he has mastered some of the most complex games

in the world.

Mythology surrounded Ben in what he did.

The rumors were, "hey, I heard that Ben

"had this special gurney made

where he can lean back and still be able to work the controls."

Even rumored that he would go into

a semi kind of sleep.

Other guys would be talking smack or something,

and he would just get up and say, "no, you're wrong"

and then show them.

What am I gonna do, walk around, you know,

"hey, I am the cool and groovy, you know, video game master.

Do you want to touch me?"

I thought he was the coolest guy ever.

At that point in time, I was flying blind.

I didn't know what could possibly come out of this.

We got up there very early in the morning.

And for a while it was kind of cold.

And for a while it was kind of dark,

but then the sun began to come up.

Well, we were in the street.

They wanted to avoid traffic,

not that there was much in Ottumwa.

But more importantly is, I think where the sun was rising,

they didn't want to catch the sun...

Or Life magazine was really particular

in how they wanted to do...

This is the best sunlight for the picture.

We were supposed to be there at sunrise or something ridiculous.

Whenever we were there, it was freezing.

I mean, the saying, if you're from California,

anything that's 50 degrees or less,

you wear your down jacket.

For me, that was true.

Boy, you know, I felt cold wearing my down jacket.

And I saw these cheerleaders wearing their short skirts.

I thought, "they must be freezing."

I always wondered why Walter

didn't want to get in the picture.

The kids shouted for me to get in the photograph,

and I said, "no, no, this is your glory.

I'll stand here and watch it."

Life magazine was quite incredible.

I mean, as far as those players,

we just thought that was the best thing in the world.

Oh, yeah, it was an idyllic dream for them.

This is one of their biggest fantasy moments in their life.

Video game VIPs.

I'd walk in the arcade.

People knew who I was.

They saw these tournaments.

They saw the TV shows.

They saw the Life magazine.

It was a big deal.

I would walk in supermarkets.

"Oh, you're Ben Gold."

Everywhere they went, people poured attention on them.

Girls fell in love with them.

Adventures happened to them.

I personally don't know anyone else

who's been in Life magazine.

I just remember a few things.

God, I haven't looked at that picture in a long time.

And if I had to do it all over again,

I would have been in the photograph

with my game in the lineup too,

which would have been Make Trax,

which I was the world champion of.

For video games, this is the equivalent

of the Sgt. Pepper's album.

I had no idea what this was gonna mean.

All I knew is I was having fun.

This was excitement.

It was something no other arcade probably has equaled since.

You need to be still.

Wait a second.

When somebody comes along that is good and challenges you,

that's iron sharpening iron.

It goes back to taking an ax and sharpening it

against a piece of iron.

That's the only way it's gonna become better, sharper.

And what Ron Bailey did for me, he sharpened me.

I hate to call him a father figure

if he doesn't want to be called that,

but he was a good mentor.

For some reason, I was eating breakfast up here in Shelby.

And I walked in, and there sat Joel.

He came in, and I was having breakfast.

I had met someone for breakfast,

a young lady I was trying to impress, you know.

Hadn't seen him in a while.

And he came off very arrogant and very braggadocios

and told me, he said, "I just beat your world record."

He was real upset.

There's some things you don't do.

You don't put a man down in front of his girl.

And I have not seen him since that day.

I haven't talked to him in over 20 years.

I didn't know if he was still around.

I was told he was in Gastonia.

Probably less than 30 miles.

It's amazing.

That's why I say it's so bizarre, some of the episodes.

I would put such great importance

on these kind of things,

and they'd stick in your mind like this but...

They say I'm gonna meet him tomorrow.

And I look forward to that.

I figure we'll go in,

and we'll trash talk a little bit

and get down to some playing

and see if the camaraderie is still there

or if the competitiveness has made us, you know,

rivals or something.

The power is coming on once I turn it on,

but the screen is cycling, but it's not wanting to come on.

Ron's an engineer.

He's a ham radio operator,

so I figure he would have more experience

in doing something like this.

And since maybe we're gonna battle anyway,

maybe our two machines can become one

or something after 20 years.

It's gonna be interesting to see him,

you know, you have this picture of someone in your mind,

how they looked 20, 22 years ago.

I'm the age now that he was the last time I saw him.

It's gonna be interesting.

That's the house, 'cause there's the radio towers.

The first time Chris and I met I was playing Ms. Pac-man,

and he was looking over my shoulder.

I finished five boards.

He says, "wow."

He sat down next to me.

He put a quarter in, and bang.

He had 776,000 on the first shot.

It's in your DNA.

You have it, or you don't.

He is every reason why I am the video game champion.

Everything I've done I owe to him.

If I hadn't met him, if we hadn't pushed each other,

I would not have achieved what I've achieved,

similar to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa

in the home run derby.

This pattern is called tunnel terror.

It's called that because it's considered the safest pattern.

It's 56 seconds long, and 28 of the 56 seconds,

the three priority monsters are in the tunnel.

As long as you're in the tunnel, they can't do you any harm.

That's exactly one half of the maze.

They get put in the tunnel here,

and they just continually get pushed back and forth.

The only reason they're let out of the tunnel

for any period of time

is when we have to get the key in the center of the screen.

The key in the center of the screen we need

simply 'cause we need the points.

Otherwise we just keep them locked in the tunnel.

So we got the key,

and now we're gonna send them back in the tunnel.

Again, they spend their life in the tunnel.

That was close.

Well, I started playing Missile Command

because it was put into the lobby of my student dorm

at the university co-op at UCLA,

'cause when people were playing video games,

they say, "oh, you're awesome."

And I was kind of like... And all of a sudden,

some girl pinched me on the ass and called me Mr. Awesome.

And it kind of, like, stuck on.

So I liked it after that.

It's like a psychological escape place for me.

It's where I pretend I'm king of the world,

you know, who can get any chick that he wants,

and he's a video game stud.

And he walks down the street,

and everyone wants his autograph.

I mean, everybody wants to be famous.

I mean, everybody wants to be somebody special.

I mean, you know, unless they're walking around

without a pair of balls, I mean.

This book is in fact the most important

literary accomplishment in American history,

because it reveals the truth about success in America today.

You know, America is a country of immigrants,

and immigrants is what make this country great.

The most successful immigrant this country has ever had

is in fact Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Mr. Awesome program is kind of like an expose

on exactly the footsteps that Arnold used to be successful.

And not many people really notice.

I mean, I don't have any direct proof of it,

but he made his entire fortune

as a drug dealer and a prostitute.

Yeah, I'm being serious.

All these players will be on That's Incredible.

In Life magazine,

they did announce there was gonna be this competition.

And whoever wins gets to go on That's Incredible!

You may not ultimately win.

If you're in the top three,

you get to go on That's Incredible!

Like, whatever.

That's Incredible! Was incredible.

It was a great show.

When I was asked to go to the That's Incredible tournament,

it was the highlight of my career.

People outside looking in through the windows,

watching all of us.

I was wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt,

and I'm looking in as if, like, you know,

it's like the coolest thing in the world.

Ottumwa teens have spent about a thousand hours

since Christmas building a computer network

that made Twin Galaxies scoreboard

a marvel of high tech.

On your mark.

Get set.

Go.

Oh, it was very intense.

People were very focused.

People were very serious about the competition.

I wanted so much to do well

and get on the actual stage TV show.

It's really easy to mess the tournament up.

You either qualified in one of those three places,

or you went home.

The games were set on their hard setting, and one chance.

It was so close

that no one knew who had won except me.

After all five games being completed,

here are the top finalists.

Ben Gold.

Well, I thought I was doomed right before the Frogger.

But then everyone choked.

Darren Olson, Todd Walker.

In Iowa I was first.

Darren came in second, and I came in third.

That's Incredible!

I remember going to the studio.

That was real fun.

We got to eat with the stars,

Cathy Lee Crosby, John Davidson, Fran Tarkenton

right at our table, right across from us.

There was either four or five games that were on stage.

This game is called Burgertime.

The pickles, there was, like, an egg

that would run around and chase...

Yeah, he'd throw salt.

Or, no, no, he throws pepper at the various food items

that are chasing him in order to shock them

and make them sort of, like, stop for a little while

so he has a little more time to go and do the burger making.

Burgertime I had never played before.

And both Ben and Todd had.

And I remember approaching them and asking them,

"can you guys just show me a little bit something on there?"

And both of them say, "absolutely not.

It's Canada against the U.S."

Let's welcome Darren Olson from Calgary, Alberta, in Canada;

Todd Walker, from Milpitas, California;

And Ben Gold, from Dallas, Texas.

There was an audience.

And we did it, like, a live filming.

On your mark.

Get set.

Go.

It was really intense.

There was no sense of friendship.

It was... everybody was an enemy.

Todd was the best player.

You know, and at that point in time,

he was the best player in all of the U.S.

I had to perform at my peak and had to have some people

perform below their peaks

in order to win this competition.

I misfired on a Burgertime.

I think it was a salt or pepper shaker

or something, you know.

Todd's about to make a costly mistake.

The pepper's in the wrong direction,

and loses the chef.

Is every gold medalist the best player in their sport?

Maybe not.

But in that one moment in time, they were the best.

He's got it.

Anybody could have won any day.

Darren was just as good.

It would have made no difference.

I ended up getting through it.

But I ended up getting third place

instead of what I was hoping for was a first.

I know how a famous person feels, because, like,

"click, click, click, click, click,"

you know, a hundred flashes in, you know, in ten seconds,

just the entire place just flashing pictures.

I mean, anytime that I did anything

in the video game world,

it was like, "world champion Ben Gold,

blah, blah, blah, blah."

I'm like, "yeah, whatever."

In February of '83, the phone rang.

And it was a man from a company called meeting planners,

which was in Boston.

His name was Jim Reilly,

and explained to me that he had stayed up all night

thinking about this creative idea

for doing an electronic circus.

Almost like a video game theme park

in different cities around the country.

Like the big car shows that go from city to city.

I would be the ring master,

and my superstars would be an actual circus act.

People could and challenge the video game players,

try to beat us on our world records

or at least have fun trying, anyway.

They were gonna start paying us to play.

It was easy to think it would be like a sport.

Playing video games for a living?

Going from town to town playing video games.

It was kind of like a dream job.

And then when somebody actually put us on a plane

and flew us to Boston, "well, maybe this could be."

Boston ruled.

And they had hundreds, like, 500 games.

The battle of the superstars,

video game champions from across the United States

compete daily to set new high scores.

They had different little theme areas,

so if they'd have, like, say, Donkey Kong,

we'd be, like, in a jungle room.

Plus they were gonna have rock bands there.

Air supply was there.

If I remember right, we had a curfew.

And we had beer cans and stuff stacked all up.

But, I mean, like, they would, like,

drop firecrackers in the toilet.

I remember them saying that if, you know,

if we do anything like that, we're kicked off.

And within our contract it specifically stated

how it was we had to conduct ourselves with groupies.

It was kind of crazy.

We were all, you know, late-teen boys.

It was kind of typical, I guess.

"Therefore, I, Kevin H. White, urge the citizens of Boston

to recognize this special occasion."

They didn't.

Very few people showed up.

It didn't last much more than five days.

And it was very obvious.

That first day, then the second day, nobody.

So they literally just closed everything down.

They told us we were gonna have to pay for our own ticket home,

and they were gonna take it out of our pay.

So it got kind of crummy at that point.

That was the one that really just literally

just kind of crushed all my dreams.

I think partly 'cause of, whatever, naivety of the age

but also because it was a brand-new thing,

and nobody knew what it would become.

My entire career as a professional video game player,

it mostly was about hopes and dreams and plans.

It never was about any real money.

And who knows why each thing would crash and burn?

But we're still moving forward,

and I'm still putting foot in front of foot

in front of foot,

and I accept the whole fun experience

on the level of the adventure it is.

We both share the same passion for the industry.

And we certainly both share the same passion for history

and that history is worth preserving.

Here in Washington, we're gonna go to the Library of Congress.

'Cause they have magazines like Play Meter and Vending Times

and Cashbox and Billboard

that have all these historic moments.

The whole history of video games are there.

"Newspaper urges pinball to describe bagatelle."

This is right at the beginning

when they first started using the word "pinball."

We're the first people to revisit the long,

glorious history of electronic gaming,

just like you find happening to the history of the NFL

or the history of the NHL or baseball history.

It's bigger than movies.

It's bigger than music.

It's the biggest business in America.

It's only gonna continue to grow.

It grows each and every year.

So not to capture the history of that would be sinful.

There's no way our book could go to press without coming here

and going page by page in all these magazines,

not knowing where we were gonna find the story,

but just looking for them

and getting all that stuff that would finish

our book of records.

I often feel guilt that I'm out going and doing

this video game stuff

when I know that it would really be much more beneficial

to the world having a music career and writing my novels.

That's right, it's popcorn.

Yeah, we were under the gun four times last year

with the hurricanes that had gone through.

And, oh, look at that.

Uh.

The last year it rained so hard, when the wind kicked up,

it blew the carport back like a tuna can.

It looks like shit.

They sell you the stuff.

And I would like to program some some day

and make people... When they see my games...

They're going to buy them

just as much as they buy these cartridges.

So you want to get in the business then, huh?

And play my own games if I make any.

Yeah, yeah, you got some ideas?

I got a few.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I really don't know where it went downhill.

Alls I know is, the magazine went belly-up.

I stopped receiving money from them.

The joysticks that I endorsed,

they only came out with three or four joysticks.

You know, I had to improvise.

I had to do other work besides playing video games.

It was fun while it lasted.

Game, reality, two different things.

My wife was having people live in my house.

She had 15 different people.

I'm not paying a mortgage for people to live in my house.

The car that I had was a Neon, which was a real piece of shit,

'cause I got laid off.

And six months later on, I was in an auto wreck.

Broke my clavicle.

And I was spitting out my teeth.

"Oh, it's raining, but it's red."

Flatlined for 28 seconds.

Shock paddled me back to life.

You know, I lost my brother.

He drowned.

After our house burnt,

my dog got ran over by a squad car.

Lost a wife.

She overdosed.

Holy Christmas.

I feel like one of those country western songs.

Just don't play it back.

I don't need it, you know?

It's done.

And my late wife knew nothing of my video past.

I just told them absolutely zilch.

I didn't think it was important,

because I was in an abusive relationship.

I mean, she'd get drunk.

You know, they love you one minute,

"get the fuck out," the next.

Who the hell wants to hear shit like that?

So I figured, "anything that's important to me",

"anything that makes me happy, she's not gonna know about it,

"because she'll use it against me and throw it out,

burn it, sell it, whatever."

Then after she died,

I have no more leash over my head.

I don't have to explain myself to anyone.

If myself is unwinding and playing video games,

playing with spiders, or looking at spiders,

feeding the spiders, then that's me, you know.

It's something to get your mind off of what's wrong,

because you know once the game is done,

you have to go back to the sad reality

of what your life is at that point

if it's bad or good.

Oh, this is my room, and this is where I sleep on the floor.

I usually have my blankets arranged here

so I'm in the middle so I don't bump into anything.

As you can tell, I have quite a bit of fans,

'cause I like air being blown on me

when I'm sleeping to be comfortable.

I think video games has offered me the opportunity to shine out

amongst other people and say, "hey, I have a niche in life."

It's actually brought me out of being a nobody.

You know, you'd ask the general public,

they probably wouldn't know me from shit from Shinola,

but in the video gaming world, I'm somebody.

Oh, my gosh.

I'm twice the size I used to be.

This is unreal.

RKB.

I thought I recognized your voice.

Sit down.

I was just headed uptown to do some errands here.

But you're welcome to stay a while.

What have you been doing with yourself?

Well, gained a little weight.

Yeah, well, me too.

I don't usually keep grudges or anything.

Life took us in different directions.

When I met Ron Bailey in that video game arcade that day

and he showed interest in what I was doing,

I felt important again.

You know, how important in the overall picture of life

is him learning how to play Berzerk

versus the guidance he gave me that, you know,

helped me make better decisions?

Well, probably not much,

but it's what he wanted at the time.

Now, this guy in Florida who...

Don't get me started.

Who took the record,

well, I've issued a challenge to him

that he needs to play one of us,

because what I have said is simply this,

that the man, if you could call him that

because of what he did,

the man broke the spirit of the game.

Chris has a strategy he uses

which is known as the box pattern.

It loops around so you can go

from grid one, two, three, and four and back again.

The robots will always be in the same starting positions.

We respected the game enough not to do that,

because we felt that that was not in the spirit of the game.

I think maybe he was a little bit shocked that...

Not that his score got beaten,

but that it got beaten by such a tremendous amount, double.

He has the top score on paper,

but he's not a better Berzerk player than I am.

So you're gonna see it's the same four boards

over and over again.

That is not a Berzerk player.

That's a monkey.

You can teach a monkey how to play a certain number of rooms.

But you cannot teach a man how to play Berzerk.

Ready for me to plug it in?

Yeah.

All right.

All right, there we go.

Look out.

Whoa, look out.

It's trying to cycle.

It is?

Mm-hmm.

My finger's getting sore.

Well, we're gonna see right here

if we have a vision of high scores.

Well, don't expect me...

The fact of the matter is that, you know,

if they dropped a bomb here right now,

the two best Berzerk players in the world would be gone.

That's true.

I don't necessarily like to talk about this,

'cause it makes me really sad.

And Moon Patrol was the first game that,

like, you could put a quarter in and continue your game.

You could continue on at the level you just left.

And that was an incentive to keep on playing that game.

He who has a machine that can get

more people sticking quarters in,

those are the ones that are gonna make money.

I felt like it was kind of cheating

when you put another quarter in,

because, really, the whole concept to me

of playing these early games

was to see how far you could go on one credit.

So that's how a lot of the kids were setting the high scores.

They just keep throwing quarters in.

That to me is like, the richest person,

the one with the most quarters

is going to get the highest score.

Somebody tells me today they got a high score on a game, I say,

"yeah, how much did it cost you?"

Arcade video games had really already started the decline.

I mean, you could already tell that it was waning,

because fewer and fewer people were going to the arcade.

'Cause the games in the arcades started to suck.

The games that were there were not the games

I wanted to play anymore.

Graphics were nice,

but the game play itself?

It's pretty hard to control here.

They started, in my opinion, losing their creativity

on creating truly new ideas.

Like when Street Fighter games

where suddenly you've got these lizard head lions

with fangs, you know, going...

One guy facing the other guy in profile

and just going at it.

You know, who wants to see an Egyptian lion's head

go against a ghost or something?

You're, like, going,

"this is stupid."

I think some of the older gamers

are still stuck back in the '80s.

With those games instantly came a different crowd.

I don't think you understand.

It's my turn.

Some gang members, punk people that were coming in,

and they were causing trouble in the arcades,

and we didn't want to be there.

So we just stopped going.

Which of these games is the closest thing to the real thing?

"A," Intellivision Major League Baseball,

"B," Atari Baseball?

A lot of the uniqueness stopped appearing in arcades

and started appearing at home.

We have the Pong here,

which is one of the earlier systems that I have.

We have a Colecovision,

an Atari 800, one of my first computers,

a Odyssey,

an Atari 5200,

an Intellivision.

I have a couple handheld systems.

The Bentley system,

the Rally 4,

Atari 2600,

everything a home could want.

When Nintendo came out, that was a huge thing.

When computers became more advanced,

you could start playing games on computers.

Who the hell's gonna want to go to an arcade

when you can stay at home, sit on a chair,

get a drink, go to the bathroom whenever you want?

Just another example of how technology

has sort of made us lazy.

To me that was the beginning of the end

of what I call the classic gaming era.

In today's world, things get so popular

and then so unpopular.

You know, you've got maybe a year or so.

I mean, it was just a fad,

and it didn't really last that long.

For whatever reason, the arcade as the place to go

just wasn't true anymore.

It is kind of sad.

I didn't see it lasting forever,

but I didn't think it was gonna crash the way it did.

It was almost like the stock market crash,

everything at once just gone.

I'm posing for the cover of my album,

Walter Day in a mellow mood.

I'd like to be on the stage doing the whole thing,

maybe a half a dozen show dates a year, you know.

I want to retire, because I want to do things that are now,

at this point in my life, more valuable to me.

'Cause the video game thing is a fun thing,

and it's an adventure.

But it's not the thing that's most important to my heart.

I have no excuses after that book's out

to stay in here any longer.

I will definitely be moving on.

Wow.

How can we improve on this thing?

That's how I remember Walter.

It's kind of funny to think that Walter is probably, what,

in his 30s at that point?

So today I'm as old as he was in that point.

Can you bring the wires so that that thing...

Closer.

Yeah, he's looking pretty good.

Oh, man.

Cover your mouth when you yawn, you dork.

I hope... there's Kent!

Holy smokes.

Two or three of us went to Ottumwa, Iowa,

to be with Walter.

And I remember waking up one morning

and having an event that still to this day

I consider to be sort of maybe...

If not the pivotal moment, maybe a...

Definitely a pivotal moment in my spiritual life.

I woke up about 6:00 in the morning

in this filthy attic

of Walter Day's above the arcade,

and I can't really put it into words very well.

But it was like I felt

the presence of God in that room.

And the message that I got from the Lord was,

"you're wasting your life.

"You are headed nowhere.

"You need to go home and settle down

"and go back to school and go to a Christian school

and do something with your life."

And that's what I did.

The video game player became someone

who needed to find a paycheck.

I stopped playing, I would say, about 1983.

I moved to Reno.

Todd perhaps, you know,

earlier than anybody else in our group

decided to pursue real life.

He had a real job.

He was a plumber.

So I don't know if you remember the game Bubbles.

So we all picked on him, saying, you know,

he's playing Bubbles for a living.

I began really a massive withdrawal,

and in '85 I was out.

They took the bull by the horns

and actually accomplished something.

Most of them seem to have nice jobs

and nice lives and nice homes.

I went into the military,

had a whole new set of problems to play with there.

I got a job traveling.

I've been in organized baseball now 54 years.

I buy computers.

I'm a senior technical specialist.

I've been a partier off and on

through different stages of my life.

I can't really devote too much time to doing an everyday job,

because I take care of my parents.

A sales rep for a payroll company.

Quality assurance manager for a company

that manufactures satellite communication equipment.

We were the first ones in our area to serve chicken wings.

So that's what I am; I'm a trial lawyer.

I'm not like a pimp or anything, but, I mean, I just...

I have a lot of friends,

and they happen to be good-looking.

And that journey ended when I found out

I was going to be a father.

And that was the end of almost completely

of playing video games.

I went to Romania, met my wife, and came back with two kids.

All right, let's pray.

Heavenly father, we thank you for this day,

and we thank you for our family,

for the many blessings that you have given us.

Our youngest baby, Elijah,

who just turned a year old

and is very fussy.

This is our oldest boy, Isaiah,

and Zachariah.

Isaiah is 12.

Zachariah is ten.

And I'm five.

And Josiah is five.

Are you helping daddy?

We've been talking about trying for a girl.

We've talked about adopting.

You think that's funny?

Trying to figure out why your child is screaming

is pretty good problem solving exercise.

Melt down, melt down.

I really didn't slow down extracurricular activities

a lot until my kids came.

And then my whole life kind of revolves around what my kids do.

I do have a son.

It was out of the only one-night stand

I've ever had in my life.

It's a story I really don't want to go into, but...

I always wanted to do something absolutely unequivocal.

But tremendous responsibilities keep pulling at me.

He's the Pac-man champion.

And he's beaten the whole level a couple of times,

or maybe more than a couple of times.

Maybe a thousand or maybe 2,000.

Maybe google.

That's the highest.

Billy, numbers never stop.

Do they?

Besar.

Besar.

To kiss.

Bajar.

Bajar.

To go down.

Oh, that's my girlfriend right there.

She lives in Mexico City.

She hasn't been as quick learning English,

so I'm trying to learn Spanish.

So we have to learn to communicate.

Desvestir.

Desvestir.

To undress.

I live at home with my parents.

Other than my cat, it's just us.

I've got two cats currently.

Their names are Impy and Sparks.

I've always preferred the sound of a purr

to the sound of a bark.

And I have a fiancee now.

So on a personal level,

my goal is to actually spend the rest of my life

with someone I love.

It turns out she's not a game player,

which is kind of interesting.

I never thought I would, you know, meet and fall in love

with someone who did not play or enjoy video games.

That's the lady frog.

500 bonus points if you bring her home.

There are a handful of video game players

that have made more money and achieved more success

and more notoriety than Walter ever has.

I see that really as sort of a cruel irony.

Sometimes I guess that happens to people

that they get their father-like energies

directed in a different kind of way than normally,

having their children.

I've been very aware of the fact

that I've been babysitting other people's kids for years

and that a lot of them might have even been my children

in a sense, you know, because of that same kind of relationship

where I've had a...

I've just had people under my wing.

They probably did impact each others' lives,

because it was all a common thing they all had.

They only had video games in common.

By finding that one thread they had in common,

to see where that commonality could take them

down such different avenues,

everybody was launched on a voyage by Twin Galaxies.

Who would have guessed at the beginning

where that voyage was gonna lead them?

Everything that we do is an experience,

because that was truly the golden age of video games,

and we were pioneers.

I wouldn't trade that for anything.

If getting old has to be being serious, being a grump,

I don't want to become that more serious grumpy person.

I want to be myself.

And if myself is unwinding and playing video games,

then that's me, you know.

I enjoy that.

Like, if I really look back,

I think video games really helped me.

I know how to win, and I want to win.

You know, I wanted to succeed in life.

I'm gonna keep playing and playing

until I have at least ten or more world records.

Joel, you have changed.

I have changed.

I went into the witness protection program.

You know, each experience, each day in a person's life

is something they'll never relive again.

It's like the pages of a fine book.

If you remember it, even though it's, you know,

much later in time, it is important to you,

the memory part.

As I look back on it, it was a lot of fun

to have all the fame and notoriety and so on.

But the only thing that has really stayed with me

for 23 years is the friendship

that I've got with Bill Mitchell.

And I treasure that.

Holy hair, Batman.

Is that little Benny?

Hey, just because I'm follicly challenged does not mean...

The game of Berzerk is like life.

You get too confident, you're gonna get wiped out.

And in point of fact, you die at the end.

And that's the great finality of it.

After your five lives are over, game over.

Game over.

Well, I talked to a few people about the name of the movie,

Chasing Ghosts,

and I talked to my wife and a few other folks,

and they said, "sounds like a horror movie."

If I had a vote or an opinion to put in,

I would just say that, search for something else.

I began racking my brain as to what would be a good suggestion.

So I envisioned an arcade and a kid walking by a machine,

and it scanned him, and then it said,

"coin detected in pocket,"

and he walked over and played it.

That's essentially how I got started with Berzerk.

So I suggested the name "Coins Detected in Pocket."

Everyone that I've talked to,

they really think that it's a more fitting name

for the project.

Coins Detected in Pocket.