Chapter Ten - reproduced from the 1998 edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records
The United States
National Video Game Team
“We found ourselves in the unbelievable position of being
the world’s only video game attraction.”
Excerpt from an Associated Press wire story
(October 9, 1983)
Of all the adventures that befell Twin Galaxies during the golden age of video game arcades, the story of the U.S. National Video Game Team is my favorite. I didn’t realize how dear this story was to my heart until I had a chance meeting with a fellow video game player at a Knoxville, TN, game auction in July of 1996.
Nearly 1,300 games were being auctioned off and I had over ninety minutes before pieces that interested me would be called by the auctioneer. As I sat there waiting, I struck up a conversation with a stranger who also was a classics game collector. He was old enough to remember Twin Galaxies and recalled the high score pages appearing in the magazines in the early ’80s.
He listened politely as I did some bragging about how important we had been. Something made me mention the U.S. National Video Game Team and he lit right up and said, “Wait a minute, that didn’t really exist, did it?”
“What didn’t exist?” I asked.
“The U.S. National Video Game Team was just fiction, wasn’t it? Something made up by a magazine called Electronic Gaming Monthly?”
I was confused, so he explained how for the last eight years EGM had constantly referred to a fabled cadre of players called the U.S. National Video Game Team, but never identified the individuals in the team. “Nobody ever believed the team really existed,” he concluded.
Understanding dawned on me. “Oh! EGM! That’s Steve Harris, isn’t it? Yes, that’s the U.S. National Video Game Team – and it does exist. I know because I started it. In fact, I’ll tell you the story now, if you want to hear it.” The player listened and I talked for over an hour and a half and even managed to miss bidding on a Congo Bongo game, which was the prize I had been waiting on.
The inspiration for the team started with the LIFE photo session and became an obsession by the time “That’s Incredible” was aired. But the spark that set me in motion was The Electronic Circus.
Jim Riley, the creator of the Circus, had great ideas and millions of investors’ dollars behind him, while I had great ideas and only $60 to work with. I felt that there were significant lessons to be learned from the demise of The Electronic Circus. Riley had had many right ideas but his overhead was way too high.
I started with a simple concept. I just made T-shirts. Six of them; six red and white shirts, each with the last name of a player emblazoned on the back and the Ottumwa logo on the front. The back of my shirt said “Day” of course. Billy Mitchell, Steve Harris, Tim McVey, Jay Kim and Ben Gold each got shirts, too. I paid $60 for them – all the money I had. This was my first investment in the team.
The idea was alluring. 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.
Twin Galaxies was financially hurting and needed a PR home run. We needed to roll out our biggest publicity stunt and use the video game team angle to make it work. Our main plan to gain notoriety was to go after the Japanese market. We went to the Japanese Embassy and asked them to pass on (to their countrymen) our challenge for an international face-off between the two video game superpowers – us and them. But first, we scheduled a tour of the contest locations selected for the 1983 Video Game Masters Tournament. We planned to visit each site and put on game-playing demonstrations to spark public interest in our contest. (Actually, at that time the contest was called the 1983 State Teams Tournament – one of many name changes implemented before the name Video Game & Pinball Masters Tournament was finally selected.)
For the trip, we leased a bus that was filled with nine video games. It was equipped for fairs and carnivals, but would do fine as the official team bus. The bus was pasted with flyers announcing “The 1983 Tour of the U.S. National Video Game Team en route to the White House and the Japanese Embassy.” We were going to make the media and the video game industry pay attention to us by calling the Japanese on the carpet.
But first, practical considerations were on the agenda. Our tour would focus on the contest sites. After the contest was over, we’d swing the bus in the direction of Washington, DC.
The seven contest pieces in the tournament included Sinistar and Bubbles by William’s Electronics; Congo Bongo, Buck Rogers and Star Trek by Sega; Mario Brothers by Nintendo; and Spike’s Peak, a home game by K-Tel. To help finance our trip, all three manufacturers, along with K-Tel, contributed money to the contest.
The home game entry was a new experiment. Most serious game players had low opinions of home games and it took a little work to get them excited about Spike’s Peak. K-Tel – under the name XONOX – had shipped off copies of the game to all eight contest sites. Fortunately, after some time practicing the game, the players relaxed and accepted the new home game into their contest.
We decided to give the event more power by making the contest a fundraiser. As early as 1982, non-profit charities had been calling Twin Galaxies for advice on organizing video game contests as fundraisers. One such group was the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, who we had kept in touch with. It was arranged that we would publicize the CF Foundation during the first five stops of the bus trip and encourage each contest site to pitch in donations as well.
The Bus Trip
On August 11, 1983, I took the U.S. National Video Game Team out on the road in a 44-foot 1953 GMC city bus equipped with nine video games hooked up to an internal generator. We jammed mattresses between the games and slept on the bus to conserve our money. I did all the driving. It was a strenuous ordeal.
Mere moments before embarking, Cynthia Benjamin, an Associated Press reporter, stepped out of the crowd – yes, there was a crowd to see us off – and stated she was sent to do a wire story on Twin Galaxies. At that moment, it dawned on me that AP had never covered Twin Galaxies as a feature story, but had only included us as a subsidiary plot in a dozen other stories.
Benjamin and I talked in a room above the arcade while the players finished loading the bus. She quoted me as saying: “We found ourselves in the unbelievable position of being the world’s only video game attraction. People come from everywhere to say they have been here and played here … it gives me great mirth.” My favorite quote – which was also published in RePlay magazine – was: “Having the video game capital here among the hogs has a certain charm.”
The story didn’t come out for two months. Released on October 8, 1983, the article received the widest circulation of any news story ever written about the International Scoreboard. It was published in hundreds of major daily papers, including the Stars & Stripes in Germany, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the San Francisco Chronicle.
The interview delayed the start of our trip until after darkness had descended. I drove all night as we needed to be in Dayton, OH, the next morning. Our trip was planned to take us to six of the contest locations, getting us to the southern California site in time for the actual dates of the tournament. However, even the best laid plans can easily go astray. Somewhere in Indiana the bus broke down – for the first time.
It was very late and the bus wouldn’t work, so I started doing my TM practice. I was still meditating, parked in a shopping center parking lot, when the players came back from exploring.
“We gotta go,” they shouted. “Come on, come on, let’s get out of here,” Ben Gold shouted. They had gotten into some mischief, I could tell, but the bus wouldn’t start anyway. The gears wouldn’t shift correctly – we were stranded. The police pulled up, looking for a group of strange kids. I explained that this was the U.S. National Video Game Team, on their way to the White House and the Japanese Embassy.
The police were impressed and left us alone. I was left wondering what the kids had done. After an hour, the bus inexplicably started working again and we continued onward.
Dayton, OH, at sunrise is Dayton, OH, at sunrise. I was exhausted. Video City, the host arcade, was big and well-equipped with the hottest new titles. Tammy Epstein, the owner, was very kind and gracious to the team and let us stay in her home, sleeping on the couches in her living room.
Right from the beginning, two TV stations arrived to do early morning news interviews. In spite of my bleary-eyed countenance, I think I did a respectable job of introducing the team to Dayton’s TV viewers, inviting them to come to the contest. Over the next two days, my video game team got a lesson in handling the media as we appeared on radio shows, TV newscasts and met with the Dayton Daily News.
As the Dayton promotion unfolded, I discovered that the players were ostracized by the local clientele at the arcade. They thought we were aloof. It was a new experience for the team – not being treated respectfully.
The bus broke down a second time before we even left Dayton, OH. We couldn’t get it to change gears in the arcade’s parking lot. We were still enjoying a charmed existence, however, as a mechanic managed to figure it out (at no charge) before too much time was lost. Driving across Ohio in daylight, with our U.S. National Video Game Team emblems flapping, was a great high. Everybody saw us, kids pointed, cars honked, girls waved. We were gods.
We continued onward to Lake Odessa, MI, a small town near Grand Rapids. Though the smallest contest site, Lake Odessa was representing all of Michigan. It was the site the Detroit players migrated to for the event. Lake Odessa’s claim to fame was Roogie Elliott, recognized by the scoreboard as the world champion on Rockola’s Eyes. Lake Odessa also had some creative promoters: Don and Sue Lalonde, who had managed to obtain proclamations from state legislators which declared the contest week as “Cystic Fibrosis Video Game Challenge Week” through-out Michigan.
By August 17, we were in Villa Park, IL. This suburb of Chicago was the home of the Video Wizard Arcade. All of Chicago was invited to play at this site. The players honed their PR skills in interviews with the Chicago Suburban Tribune and NBC-TV. Newsman Barry Berensen visited the team bus and produced a news package that was carried by NBC National News. Friends and relatives throughout the nation recognized us and called Twin Galaxies to offer their congratulations.
Our luck, however, now began to turn sour. The bus wouldn’t switch gears any more. We had an appointment with K-Tel, the manufacturer of Pike’s Peak, in Minneapolis, MN, the next morning and needed to get on the road. The bus was towed to a repair garage across the street from Bally/Midway in Franklin Park. The problem was fixed by midnight, but the repairman failed to put the gasket header back on properly and the oil spewed out during the next three hours of driving. The engine blew up on the highway near Portage, WI. I stood on the road behind the dead bus, my eyes following a trail of oil that extended as far back as my eyes could see.
Less than a minute later, a state trooper pulled up and started making a list of all the codes I had violated. Then he saw the kids asleep in the bus and said, “You already have enough problems on your hands without me hassling you, too.” The trooper proved to be our guardian angel. He arranged for the bus to be towed into Portage, WI, and drove the players to places where they could eat and sleep.
We were there for two days until the owner of the bus sent a car to bring us back to Ottumwa. The next day, we continued onward in a little yellow school bus to Omaha, NE. The kids hated the bus because it smelled bad and was as hot as an oven. Worse, we all became hoarse trying to communicate over the deafening noise of the engine.
Space City, owned by Steve Latch, was Omaha’s most promotional-minded arcade. Latch smiled painfully when he was teased about the name. It was at Space City that the team saw its first Monster Bash game, a rare title manufactured by Sega. Latch previewed it for me and I was impressed. The team was always watching for rare games so we could establish the contest settings that the players had to follow.
Quite often during our journeys, we would come across one-of-a-kind prototypes, like Speed Coin and Gridley – games that were thrown together by the manufacturers but then failed their trail period. One prototype we kept watching for was Clone, which had a camera placed on top of it. The camera would take a photograph of the player whenever a new high score was achieved. When the next player put a quarter in, the demo screen would show the picture of the player who presently held the highest score. As a marketing stunt it was brilliant. However, the game had to be pulled because players began to open their clothes and expose their private parts to the camera. Needless to say, it was quite a surprise when the next player put his quarter in and saw such a picture of the current champion. Even though Clone was tested in nearby Chicago, IL, we didn’t find it at Space City. However, we did find Monster Bash and a few other obscure titles manufactured by Sega.
Six months earlier, Steve Latch had visited me in Ottumwa with the player who had discovered the flaw in the first Joust chip. This flaw was first demonstrated at Twin Galaxies and then revealed to Williams Electronics. We banned the trick immediately. It was just another headache to watch out for which required witnesses. The trick was quite simple. You merely stood on the center ledge and let Pterodactyls run into you forever, while building up a score.
Latch was not pleased that we were going to use the bus as a promotional tool to raise money for the continuation of our trip. He offered us money not to do it. We took him up on it. The players were demoralized by the extreme discomfort of riding in the new bus. They rebelled. They didn’t like the second bus and demanded a different mode of transportation. It was the end of the historic bus trip. From then on, we would ride in modern, high-powered comfort. We left Omaha, NE, in a new 1983 car – a perfect fit for the four players and myself. When the car was returned, the rental agency was furious when they saw 8,000 additional miles on the odometer.
But, we had complaints, too, so both sides settled amicably. The car had broken down in the Arizona desert in the middle of the night, in an area allegedly dangerous to travelers. So, we had a stalemate as our complaint offset their complaint.
Leaving Omaha, Billy Mitchell did the driving – ninety miles per hour all day and night, all the way across South Dakota, Montana and Idaho. We reached Coeur D’Alene, ID, the contest site for that state, at 5:00 a.m. on August 22, 1983. By noon, we were being simultaneously interviewed by Bill Geroux of the Coeur D’Alene Press along with reporters from KREM-TV and KHQ-TV and two radio stations. Five media interviews at once would be the team record, matched only one more time – in Seattle, WA, the next day. In fact, I found myself doing two live remote TV broadcasts at the same time from Arnold’s on the Ave in Seattle. I stood looking from camera to camera, hoping that I was doing justice to both telecasts.
Arnold’s owner, Gary Cichy, took me to his second arcade location to show me two new games, Elevator Action and Change Lanes, which were there as test pieces. Arnold’s on the Ave was one of the premier test places in the northwest for new games. He pointed at a Mario Brothers game. “What do you see there?” he asked.
I thought, “What is he getting at?” But I just said, “Mario Brothers – in nice shape.”
“I’ll show you something very interesting.” He pulled the game out of the line, swiveled it around and began unlocking the back door. “Look,” he said, pointing dramatically. I saw the serial number on the game. This was the first Mario Brothers – number one – which had come straight from the factory and had never left.
The next morning we visited the Nintendo factory, guests of Jerry Momoda, Vice President of Marketing. We arrived at Nintendo just in time for lunch as Jerry’s guest. The players were wildly ravenous at the Nintendo-sponsored lunch; we were running out of cash and eating below our normal levels. Jay Kim, the Q*bert fireball, though only 5' 6" tall and weighing just 118 pounds, ordered six tacos. These tacos were monstrous – everybody else could only eat one. Jerry watched in fascination as Jay ate all of his six tacos.
Jerry liked us a lot. He consulted with Billy Mitchell on the phone regularly about ideas to improve Nintendo’s games. Nintendo was absolutely aware that Billy was the best Nintendo player in the entire world. (Billy himself made sure they were aware of it.) They respected Steve Harris, too, who was in the Guinness book as the Popeye world champion, another Nintendo game that was frantically difficult.
Nintendo has a great history, as we found out when Jerry took us on a tour of the factory, showing us all areas of development, production and design. Then, we went to the in-house arcade. While there we saw one of only two existing Sky Skippers and an early Donkey Kong prototype that was never followed through on and eventually cancelled. When the time came to leave, Jerry gave us hats, shirts and hand-held games as gifts. Their buzzing and beeping sounds drove us all mad for most of the rest of our trip.
Billy continued tearing up the road at ninety miles per hour. Thinking he was smart, he paced himself with a red Camaro, staying behind one mile, as a tactic to not get a ticket. Red lights appeared behind us anyway and Billy soon found himself being pulled over. The trooper was very polite. “Good morning, sir, I am Officer Johnson. May I see your driver’s license and registration form?”
Billy couldn’t find his license – we believe that it was stolen when the bus was burglarized back in Omaha, NE.
“See, son, it’s like this,” the Officer explained. “I clocked you at ninety-four miles per hour. If I write down here (as he pointed at the ticket) that you was going ninety-four miles per hour, then you’re going to have to go into town and post bond.” Billy just nodded.
I thought, “Oh no, we don’t need this problem.” The officer smiled and continued, “So, I’m going to write down here that you was doing seventy miles.” The officer had let us off the hook – partially. We drove all night to make up for the lost time. The next day, driving south, Ben Gold got sick in northern California.
“What’s wrong with Ben?“ I asked, noticing his moans.
“Ben’s sick,” said Billy.
“Ben’s sick” said Steve.
“I’m sick,” moaned Ben. He then started to throw up.
We stopped at a farmhouse, in the middle of nowhere, asking for directions to a doctor. It was Sunday, and I was worried there would be no place open. The next town, fortunately, had a clinic that was indeed open on Sundays.
We took Ben into the clinic. I went back out to the car for a moment and then went back into the clinic. I noticed something was amiss. All the patients were standing in the waiting room, talking excitedly.
Then I heard it. It was a blood-curdling scream – the kind you hear in horror movies. It went on, again and again. It was Ben. The entire clinic was in an uproar. A doctor came out, absolutely red-faced. He started apologizing to me, trying to explain what had happened.
“The kid was unbelievable. I didn’t do anything. I just gave him a booster shot and he went nuts with terror.”
We drove in silence for the rest of the day, except when the other players would break out in blood-curdling screams with no warning. I warned them they were dead if they didn’t stop this. They didn’t stop.
The Upland, CA, contest site – a place called Starship Video – was billed as “The Arcade Shaped like a Starship.” This contest site had lots of players with lots of enthusiasm. Starship Video was fairly mobbed. Many winners would come out of this location, including Jeff Peters, who would prove to be a national contender during the next few years.
Unfortunately, we could only stay at Starship Video for a few hours because we had an appointment with Sega the next morning. The visit to Sega in San Diego, CA, was important because Sega had loaned Twin Galaxies four of their current hot games. Also, Sega was one of the financial sponsors of the contest. I drove all night, as usual, and arrived exhausted. We cleaned up in a gas station and put on our team shirts.
“Look at that,” said Steve Harris as we pulled up to the front of the building. Across the front of the Sega building was a large banner that said: “Sega Welcomes Twin Galaxies and the U.S. National Video Game Team.”
This single moment was perhaps the highest point in our trip. Twin Galaxies had certainly reached the top. I stood below the banner, looking up, hoping a photographer would come along and take a picture of me and the banner. (Actually, I think a picture was snapped, but it never reached the scoreboard.)
Brooke Dunn, an executive at Sega who had been a staunch supporter of Twin Galaxies, welcomed us and arranged a tour for us. But not for me. I was done. I fell asleep in a chair while the players were shown around. I remember getting up later and watching a demo of Sega’s newest game, Ixion, which was due for production later that month. I think it resembled a much later game called Attaax. (Anybody out there have an Ixion? Only four copies were made – two were traced to the Captain Video arcade in Los Angeles, CA, in 1985 but they then disappeared.)
The players were called upon to test the latest Sega prototype, Razzamatazz, which hadn’t even been placed in a cabinet yet. The players liked it, finding it similar to Carnival, a popular hit from 1980. I got up and joined the group as Dunn showed us Pig Newton. “Only twelve were made,” he said. “Six are on aircraft carriers,” Dunn said with a grin. “The Navy ended up being a hog for Pig Newton.”
I went back to sleep. When I awoke, people were crying and hugging in the hallways. I thought, “Now what have my players done?” By stupendous coincidence, we were in the halls of Sega at the moment the news was revealed that they had been sold to Bally/Midway and that they were being shut down. We left early, leaving them alone with their sorrow.
It was now time to end the trip. I started dismantling my team by driving Steve Harris to the San Diego airport. He caught a plane back to Gladstone, MO. Next, I took Billy Mitchell and Jay Kim to the airport in Dallas. Then I dropped off Ben Gold at his parent’s house in Addison, TX, and drove back to Omaha, NE, to deal with the car rental people. Finally, Steve Sanders, my great friend, bought me a bus ticket from Omaha to Ottumwa. It was now all done.
But, wait! What about the U.S. National Video Game Team? The team continued onward. It went to the AMOA Expo (September of 1983) in Chicago and did a special report for Playmeter magazine.
Playmeter agreed to publish game reviews prepared by five of our top players, analyzing cabinet art, game graphics and the game play of new titles released at the show.
I invited Eric Ginner, Mark Hoff, Leo Daniels, Billy Mitchell, Steve Harris, Ben Gold, Tad Perry (Seattle, WA) and Chris Emery (Winnipeg, Canada) to come with me. Nine games were ranked in this order from best to worst: TX-1, Star Rider, Track N Field, M.A.C.H. 3, Blaster, Marvin’s Maze, Cube Quest and Major Havoc.
Talk about irony: Major Havoc was given the lowest rating, yet it eventually became one of the most sought after collector’s items in video game lore. Marvins’ Maze and Cube Quest, which we ranked higher, are not even represented among the collections held by the 750 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society.
The team pressed on. Again I tried to get the U.S. National Video Game Team recognized as a promotional asset. The ACME Show (February of 1984) in New Orleans, LA, was our first stop. Then we went to the AMOA Expo (November of 1984) in Chicago, IL. We had no luck at either show.
The final team story for this chapter is the great trip made by Billy Mitchell, Tom Asaki and myself to the Japanese Embassy. Before going to the Embassy, we first drove to the White House and presented our “Japanese Challenge” to some White House aides, who promised to deliver it to someone important. Of course, nothing ever happens when you deal with the White House.
The Italian Embassy was next on our list. We delivered official documents to a distinguished looking Secretary, challenging the country of Italy to an inter-national video game contest. We were very well received and treated very respectfully. Each one of us were then personally thanked for coming. They acknowledged that this was a cultural exchange worthy of pursuit.
Finally, we found the Japanese Embassy and hand delivered our challenge. I had called numerous times and had even sent a few letters to warn them of our impending visit. However, they seemed confused and surprised when we came in. I wanted them to accept our challenge for a world-championship contest on video games on behalf of the Japanese people. It was presented as a very light-hearted cultural exchange.
“Why do you come?” the secretary shouted at the three of us. “I no have time to play video game.” (His English was slightly off.)
“Oh, no,” I tried to explain, “we don’t want to play you. We just want you to tell your fellow countrymen.”
“My entire staff,” he yelled, “too busy to play your foolish games. You should not have come.”
“This is just symbolic,” I assured him, “not for your staff.”
“Take video games and go, we no want to play your contest, your games.”
So, we left. It was funny – for an entire year, I thought we’d get headlines as we challenged Japan to a head-on contest of video games. Somewhere along the line, I thought, sponsorship would emerge that would help the U.S. National Video Game Team become a major attraction. This idea had come to a quick death. It wouldn’t be much longer before I went into retirement while the team continued to exist under Steve Harris’ direction.
Years later, I picked up a copy of a prominent and successful video game magazine and inside found a photo identified as the U.S. National Video Game Team. I recognized a couple of the faces, but the others were unknown to me. They were long-haired, clad in outlaw leather, unshaven and looked like they might have even smoked cigarettes. They must have been calling themselves the U.S. National Video Game Team Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.
That’s the story of my video game team – the first United States National Video Game Team.