I haven't seen them online for... 6 months, now? Anyone got the skinny on what happened to them?

As I started writing this, I double checked and see they are getting ready to reboot, but I'm still curious as to why they went down for so long.

According to the documentary I watched on them their founder, cant remember his name, is leaving to write a book, or do music, or something. I'm sure they are just restructuring. It was a really good docu btw.

youd think they could have atleast kept the site up

If you go to their site, they explain that they're redoing some things and plan to be back up and operation by the end of November. That's what happened.

I seem to recall Walter Day had sold the rights to TG a couple years back. I used to work for TG some years ago, but hated it. My brother I and were constantly having to fight with what I call "the old guard" comprised of record holders from the early 80's. First, they resisted every one of our innovative new ideas like speed-gaming records for consoles, and then later we discovered a lot of the records from the '80s were bogus because video proof was not required back then. The worst was "Mr. Activision" (aka Todd Rogers), where I and several others were able to prepare a case and conclusively prove Todd had been completely fabricating world records for various Atari games. To name a few:

Barnstorming (2600): Todd's record, which stood for many years, was proven to be impossible once we broke down the game code and stripped the stage of any obstacles. With the stage completely blank, flying a straight line to the finish was slower than Todd's record. When we presented this evidence, we were attacked by fans and supporters of Todd, and eventually an excuse was cooked up that I lovingly refer to as "the coffee stain excuse". Yes, after being attacked and told we were clueless about how good Todd was, one of the referees covered for him and claimed the 'document' detailing his record had a coffee stain on the part where the record time was listed. Instead of throwing the record out and forcing Todd to do a legit one on video tape, they just simply adjusted the record to be MAYBE possible by adding a half-second to the time.

Sky Jinx (2600): Todd's record time for this game also proved to be bogus, and I showed how it was physically impossible when a modified version of the stage that required only 10 banks instead of 16 showed the plane always came in slower than Todd's record.

Donkey Kong (2600): Todd's record was entered as 15 million. I immediately suspected it was bogus, since the best results from professionals at the game were well under 1 million. I protested the record and Todd claimed there were full video tapes documenting the marathon session. One of the refs (the same one that came up with the coffee stain excuse) claimed indeed there was a set of tapes. I asked one of the lead referees to investigate and verify these supposed tapes of the records. After several months, the lead ref concluded the tapes never existed and removed Todd's record from the database.

Who knows how many records were fudged back before more strict requirements got put in place. After a while of constantly banging heads with the often corrupt "old guard", my brother and I both had enough and quit TG entirely. Eventually the one lead referee we could trust at the time also quit, and that was a major loss for the site.

Right on. Just seemed like a long, long, looooooong time for them to be away and not have records posted anywhere.

Walter Day was the founder.

He's off doing his own thing, although still active in the gaming community.

Twin-Galaxies was sold to some other guys. They are very big in the arcade community, and I think it's in great hands.

http://donkeykongblog.blogspot.co...

Me and a friend where playing Custer's Revenge (2600) a couple weeks ago and he got 1523 and I was like damn that is a very good score. I wanted to see the world records but it was down. I think he would be 2nd or 3rd with a score that high wish I knew.

Basically Twin Galaxies has been a joke for the past few years and they finally sold it to some people who actually care and will take care of it.

There are now four partial owners. Walter Day, Richie Knuckles, Jon eXidy, and Jourdan Adler, the owner of the 1up Arcade in Denver.

The site is down because the site has been a joke and a piece of crap and they're re-doing the whole thing. There will be a new submission process for scores, but they haven't yet revealed what that will be. What they did say, however, is that you can now go to one of nine (so far) arcades and play in person and your score will automatically be verified on the spot. They are trying to get more verified locations added, so that number will grow.

The Kong Off II Tournament starts tomorrow (Friday) and runs through Sunday, so they are supposed to be announcing a lot of new information regarding Twin Galaxies during the tournament. As someone mentioned previously, the site should be back up and running by the end of the month.

The thing that always stopped me from submitting scores is that they required video proof. I'm not one to record my gaming, plus, you never know when you're going to hit that sweet spot and just go crazy in whatever game. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I hope they have a different/better method.

You just record your gaming session with a VHS tape and that gives you hours of attempts on one tape alone. It's really not that big a deal, and I used to do it myself all the time. In fact, I still have a box of tapes I never got around to sending to TG, all of which contain new world records if I ever did send them in.

But anyway, there really is no better method, and trust me when I tell you as I used to work for TG that we got people trying to fudge bogus records all the time there. It's gotten to the point where in some cases, a video recording still isn't enough to remove all doubt. That's probably why they are encouraging in-person referee verification along with a recording of the event.

I remember when a new site started up to try and hold their own databse of record scores, and they only required photo proof. I helped the guy running it by advising him on potential new records, and over half the photos I looked at were poorly photo-shopped. One cheater did a screen cap of an emulator score, except I discovered the bogus score had a digit aligned one pixel too far to the left compared to how the actually game displayed the score. It's amazing just how many people will cheat and/or lie to get a world record.

I don't own a working VCR (haven't in the last 8 years), or any VHS's to watch or record (I do own 2 star wars trilogies, but I have them digitally, so it's more for the fanboy in me). And yes, I know they're cheap, but, I can't justify buying one just to record my gaming. Besides, you can't hook up a GBA to a VCR And while I do hate handhelds, I do use my GBA in places where the Gamecube isn't possible.

I get why they do it, and it sucks so many people feel the need to lie and cheat about it. There's a few scores I know I've broken in the past and could very well break again, but some that I know I've broken but would be a longshot to do again. It just sucks for the honest players.

People who are obsessive and want recognition for their hard work have no problems buying a cheap VCR. My take on it is if you're not really interested the minor inconvenience of recording a world console record on video, then you'd mostly likely get beat by an obsessed fanatic that is. I don't mean to direct that to you specifically, rather I just speak from prior experience. The people that took the time to record their efforts on video had generally turned in incredible work.

As for handhelds, I seem to recall in the past that there were provisions for such cases like specially approved emulators. It's been a long while since I worked for TG, so they may have entirely different requirements for those now.

I'd disagree with that sentiment.

There are plenty of us that have bested quite a few of the official world records while doing our own high score contests on the site, and simply don't want to deal with the inconvenience of recording everything we do.

Since only "obsessed fanatics" record everything they do, then it's demonstrably false that those obsessed fanatics have unbeatable records.

I agree with Nathan.

On top of that, I hate emulators. Why switch to a crappy controller or keyboard when I actually have the console? Makes no sense what so ever. Besides, do you know how easy it is to run a program/script in the background to make it seem like you're playing the emulator to get the high score? Look at all the TAS speedruns and score runs. That, to me, seems like the least verifiable way out of anything else.

I've had this argument before and it comes down to a saying my brother came up with:

What people claim and what they can prove are two completely different concepts. If you want to be recognized as the official record-holder, you'd surely want that organization to have strict requirements in place so that your score is bumped off by someone's complete fabrication. As such, you should be thankful such strict requirements are made. It keeps your record safe while a lot of people merely claim they beat it, but are never willing to prove it because "it's a hassle to do so".

BTW, the crappy keyboard and controller are a moot point. Anyone can get an adapter to use whatever controller they want on an emulator, and I already told you I have no idea what the current requirements are for handhelds anyway.

A moot point today, I agree. A few years ago, it's a very valid point, but using emulators still employs the ability really fabricate so much, I'm surprised they'd even allow it.

Nobody is asking to be recognized as the official record holder.

We are simply stating that many of us have solidly beaten many standing official records, and don't care enough about receiving that recognition to go through the process of proving it.

You should watch how you frame your argument, since it's starting to sound like you're calling us liars.

All I'm simply stating is that I *could* be on there for a few games (maybe not #1, but certainly in the top 10, and in some instances, the top 5), but going out of the way to record each session of my gaming is way out of my interest range. Plus, where the majority of my consoles are hooked up, I'd have to rearrange the power cables every time I switched consoles, so it's beyond more effort than it should be, IMO, and not worth it to me, and I'm certain many others as well.

I think the world really is ending soon, I completely agree with Nathan.

I have no problem being the world record holder on games that others are too lazy to record themselves beating me at.

lol

The site is still under construction.

???

I got an email from Walter Day just a couple days ago so thats a sign of life I suppose. I'd love for the site to get back up and running soon though.

Not that hard to record yourself playing. You can do it with a digital camera if you don't want to buy a VCR (That's what the arcade peeps use). If it's a game that you need a lot of practice on, you would wait until you knew you got good enough at it. Then go for it... might take a couple tries recording.

And just for the record, Emulators are NOT allowed (Except in the case of MAME, which in itself is an emulator for most/all arcade machines, not my thing, but I guess it keeps the arcade people happy). As consoles go, most of what I read is that the general consensus is that emulators are crap and not really worth it, controller or not (of which I would agree)

So, where are the past contests located? I'm always interested in seeing some high scores. Whether it's recorded or not, I don't really care. I hold alot more legitimacy in a recording done on an actual NES console, in it's entirety. I could easy take a picture of my high score after dominating a game with the game genie, or leeching all the way. A full recording shows exactly the game and allows for critique. I think even SDA requires a recording... that's what the sites based around.

Editors Note: How EASY is it to find gamers recording themselves on Youtube purely to show games or do a review?? If you are good at a game, just pick up a camera/VCR and let some people know. I for one find it prettty cool to see some incredible feats of gaming on youtube. Adventure Island front to back, speed runs of Battletoads.... much more.