Twin Galaxies is the world authority on player rankings, gaming statistics and championship tournaments, with pinball statistics dating from the 1930s and video game statistics from the early 1970s. 

As the electronic gaming industry's premiere statistician, Twin Galaxies preserves the history of gaming in a historical database, which documents the historical milestones of the electronic gaming hobby as it evolves into a professional sport.

Founded in 1981, Twin Galaxies grew from modest origins as an arcade chain operator to gain recognition as the "official scorekeeper for the world of video game & pinball playing," invested with the authority to verify "official" world record high-scores and crown new world champions.

The Twin Galaxies scoreboard was the creation of Walter Day, Twin Galaxies founder, who, on June 6, 1981, embarked on a series of business trips that took him through 15 U.S. states in 4 months. Though his role as a traveling salesman was the focus of his trip, Day's real passion was to visit as many video game arcades as possible and record the high scores he found on each game.

Ten thousand miles and one hundred arcades later, Day, on November 10, 1981, opened his own arcade in the sleepy Midwestern town of Ottumwa, Iowa. It was called Twin Galaxies and its tranquil existence was altered when, on February 9, 1982, Day's growing database of high score statistics were made available to the public as the Twin Galaxies National Scoreboard. As the organizational center of competitive video game playing, Twin Galaxies received immediate recognition from the major game manufacturers of the day: Atari, Midway, Williams Electronics, Universal, Stern, Nintendo and Exidy, in addition to support from RePlay Magazine and Playmeter Magazine-- the two premier coin-op publications of that era.

Twin Galaxies' role as the scorekeeper grew in importance as "player-rankings" became a major focus of the media. As the pioneer in ranking the top players, Twin Galaxies was called upon to bring the superstar players together for many well-publicized contests and media events. For example, On November 8, 1982, LIFE Magazine visited Twin Galaxies to capture sixteen of North America's best players in a group photograph. Two months later, on January 9, 1983, ABC-TV's "That's Incredible" came to Ottumwa, Iowa, to film nineteen of the worlds best players competing in the first-ever video game world championship.

Then, on March 19, 1983, players from around North America came to Twin Galaxies to join representatives of Atari, the Amusement Game Manufacturers Association (AGMA), RePlay Magazine and Video Games Magazine as Iowa Governor Terry Branstad acknowledged Twin Galaxies' role as the official scorekeeper and crown Ottumwa, Iowa as the "Video Game Capital of the World."

As Twin Galaxies continued to rank top players, the first national video game team was formed to represent the United States, made up of a select cadre of the very best talent. Called the U.S. National Video Game Team, Day was the founding team captain and issued international video game challenges to Japan, the United Kingdom and Italy, even hand-delivering proclamations to their respective Embassies in Washington, DC. Eventually, the team toured the U.S., Europe and Asia during the 1980s.

By 1985, Twin Galaxies had enjoyed major media coverage in LIFE magazine, Marvel Comics, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Stern Magazine, the Washington Post and nearly 100 TV appearances, including ABC-TV's Entertainment Tonight and NBC Nightly News.

As Twin Galaxies' fame spread further, Walter Day was designated an assistant editor in charge of video game scores for the 1984-1986 editions of the U.S. edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Under Day's direction, Twin Galaxies wrote the first official rulebook for playing electronic games and established the rules and standardized settings for each game. Today, this rulebook has evolved into Twin Galaxies' most well known product: Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records (ISBN 1887472-25-8), a 984-page book containing scores from players in 31 different countries compiled since 1981. A second edition, totaling 1500 pages in a two-volume set, updated with today's hottest PC titles as well as modern consoles like the X-Box and PS2, is scheduled for release in 2008.

Today, Twin Galaxies is recognized as the world's premiere electronic games referee, having judged contests and high scores submitted by console gamers, arcades and PC gamers worldwide.

Now, in its 28th year, Twin Galaxies still creates the contests, enforces the rules, maintains the records and crowns the champions on home consoles, PC-based games and arcade games.