Arcades and Love Songs: The Ballad of Walter Day

For Walter Day… it was simple

“I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be the center of attention. I wanted the glory. I wanted the fame. I wanted the pretty girls coming up and say, Hi, I see that you're good at centipede,”

You might know Walter Day from the 2007 documentary film, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. In the movie, we learn that Day is the head referee and scorekeeper of Twin Galaxies, an international video game scoreboard, and back in the 80’s a legendary arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa. While Walter wasn’t the true star of the movie, which focused on the world of competitive Donkey Kong, he’s become a fan favorite and if you ask me, the world of competitive gaming as we know it, is thanks to him and his work. 

After researching and practicing transcendental meditation, Day wanted to know what made a champion, a champion, so he got to work. 

“I started monitoring high scores as I traveled around the countryas a traveling salesman and I fell in love with video game arcades, and I decided I wanted to do an arcade. And when I did the arcade, I immediately started a scoreboard and tried to monitor who is the best in all the games. Next thing I know, I discovered that the video game industry had no scorekeeper and had no scoreboard so I volunteered to do it, and the video game industry went for it. So suddenly, overnight, my arcade Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa, Iowa became the world's most famous arcade. It became the mecca of video game playing. It became the crossroads. It became the Dodge City of video games, and people traveled even from other countries, even just to say they once played at the great Twin Galaxies. So suddenly we were the center of the video game universe. And everything we did was completely original, pioneering and now historically, looking back on it, it is the birth of organized competitive video gaming, which makes it the birth of competitive eSports.

You learn more about his story and influence throughout the rest of the King of Kong,  but his latest movie Arcades and Love Songs, directed by Ed Cunningham, is not a sequel. 

“I got pulled back in just before I learned about Walter's music, because Walter got pulled into a lawsuit. Billy Mitchell had been in a lawsuit with Twin Galaxies, which Walter had sold after King of Kong. And I actually, because some of that lawsuit, it mentioned the film. It specifically mentioned the film. And so I got back involved to help Walter defend himself from a lawsuit, from a movie that we produced, you know, almost 20 years ago that was really a strain on Walter's life, and I was there as a friend, and we reconnected through what was the hardship for him”

In 2014, Walter Day sold Twin Galaxies and moved on to focus on his music career, hence the name of the film, Arcades and Love Songs. Years after the release of the King of Kong, Billy Mitchell, one of the Donkey Kong players featured in the movie, was accused of cheating. Mitchell was even stripped of his high scores from Twin Galaxies, and eventually Mitchell filed a defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies. In 2021 Twin Galaxies countersued Mitchell and listed Day as a cross-defendant, accusing the pair of teaming up to promote the fake score in order to drive up the value of the company before sale. However, Day was later voluntarily dropped from the suit, which was also eventually settled out of court.

During all this Day was still nursing a broken heart

“Of course, in 1985 I had a glamorous girlfriend, and essentially, one night, I was very in love with her, one night, she called me up and said, Walter, I've been seeing a friend of yours, and we're done. So my heart was broken the first time, and actually the only time I ever had my heart broken. And it was a very, very big experience. But what became interesting is that a couple of weeks into the heartbreak, I started hearing music playing in me, almost like I was channeling a radio station, but that radio station was playing songs that were new, that were my songs that didn't exist in the outside world.”

Over 100 songs are the result of Day’s heartbreak back in the 80’s and it has been his lifelong goal to produce and perform those songs. But there was one catch…

“The voice is still a work in progress. When I got up on the stage, I got up there with more courage than I got up with skill in singing, because I'm brand new, because I never was a singer, never expected to be a singer, never thought of being a singer, never imagined being a singer. When I got up there on the stage, I was singing for the first time in my life in front of people, and that was a huge psychological, emotional adventure.”

Throughout Arcades and Love Songs, we follow Day on his journey with building his voice and confidence, even revisiting the inspiration behind all this music. But the film is more than just following around a man who has dedicated his life to the world of video games, it’s a story of perseverance and that we should never lose sight of our biggest goals in life. That sometimes the thing preventing you from what you’ve always wanted is yourself. 

“I actually began to have tremendous fears, and would even have nightmares about how, oh, it’s the end of my life and I never, ever, ever did the music and never shared it to the world so the world would find out how beautiful it is.”

When the word got out that Walter Day needed help making his album, the video game world stepped up

“I was at an event when a couple people came out of the crowd and they said, Walter, we recognize you from the King of Kong. Whatever happened to that music? Anything ever come out of it? And explained to them that it was still my dream to do, but it never happened, just because of all the difficulties of life. And they said, Well, we made a game called Color Switch. It's been successful. You know, we've got the money and we want to pay for your album as a gift, no strings attached.

And when Cunningham heard the news?

it only took me about 24 hours before I realized, you know, Walter mentioned the scene in King of Kong where he's talking about his music and he's playing his song. And it's great scene in front of this barn in Iowa in the winter. And I just thought, you know, this brings it full circle, and it's also a different story. We had no interest in doing King of Kong 2. Walter said this early on when we started filming. He's like, you know, the story is almost already written. And I think our cameras being there up to Walter's game, it made it made it a little more important, and I'm very happy with what turned out to be really it's a singer songwriter heartbreak movie about this guy with an interesting background in video games” 

I don’t want to spoil how the performance goes, but the film is a must for fans not only of the King of Kong, but for those looking for a little inspiration.

This is not an action film at all. This completely is devoted to impulses of the heart. In a sense, this is completely all about how the way people work together, and how their hearts fit together, which is becoming an important theme at this time in history, because the world is so crazy.

You can stream Arcades and Love Songs on multiple platforms, right now.

Paul Holden, KIRO News Radio

Stories and features from the news staff of KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM.