Arcades and Love Songs: The Ballad of Walter Day

For Walter Day, it was simple.

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

Walter Day and Twin Galaxies

You might know Walter Day from the 2007 documentary, “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” In the film, we learn that Day is the head referee and scorekeeper of Twin Galaxies, an international video game scoreboard and, back in the 80s, a legendary arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa. While Day 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 owes him and his work a thank you. 

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 country as a traveling salesman. I fell in love with video game arcades, and I decided I wanted to do an arcade,” Day said. “When I did the arcade, I immediately started a scoreboard and tried to monitor who was 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,” Day continued. “Suddenly, overnight, my arcade, Twin Galaxies, 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, just to say they once played at the great Twin Galaxies.

“So suddenly, we were the center of the video game universe,” Day added. “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.”

Arcades and Love Songs

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,” Day said. “Billy Mitchell had been in a lawsuit with Twin Galaxies, which Walter had sold after ‘The King of Kong.’ Some of that lawsuit specifically mentioned the film, so I got back involved to help Walter defend himself from a lawsuit, from a movie that we produced almost 20 years ago.

“That was really a strain on Walter’s life,” Day said. “I was there as a friend, and we reconnected through what was the hardship for him.”

In 2014, Day sold Twin Galaxies 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. 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 collaborating to promote the fake score and drive up the company’s value before its sale. However, Day was later voluntarily dropped from the suit, which was eventually settled out of court.

During all this, Day was still nursing a broken heart.

Day’s step into a music career

“Of course, in 1985, I had a glamorous girlfriend. One night, while I was very in love with her, she called me up and said, ‘Walter, I’ve been seeing a friend of yours, and we’re done.’ My heart was broken for the first time, and actually the only time,” Day said. “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. They were my songs that didn’t exist in the outside world.”

More than 100 songs are the result of Day’s heartbreak back in the 80s, 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 had with the skill of singing. I’m brand new. I never was a singer. I never expected to be a singer. I never thought of being a singer. I never imagined being a singer,” Day said. “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,” Day’s journey to build his voice and confidence is evident as he revisits 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. 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 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,” Day said.

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

“I was at an event when a couple of 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?'” Day said. “I 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. We’ve got the money and we want to pay for your album as a gift, no strings attached.'”

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 is completely devoted to the impulses of the heart,” Day said. “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.

Read more of Paul Holden’s stories here.