EPT
BEFORE ESPORTS
America's National Team
America's National Team
When digging around for info on the Nintendo World Championships (an event for which I am now the proud owner of a signed poster), I got curious about earlier events. Sometimes the sentiment around here that competitive gaming is a relatively new phenomenon irks me a bit, so here is the story of something briefly mentioned in one of my favorite documentaries, Chasing Ghosts.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kspcR.jpg)
Look at that logo, so...8 bit.
-p4NDemik
That's right, The U.S. National Video Game Team. Badass. You can infer from the poster they were traveling to the White House, presumably challenging everyone in their path. The vision for this likely involved going on all sorts of wacky adventures in themed clothing, challenging roaming gangs in their quest. Maybe while discovering true love like Fred Savage. Perhaps engaging in a few practice montages, ultimately culminating in a colossal battle against the ultimate arcade terror - the Japanese. Supposedly they had to mint more coins after the advent of Space Invaders, so surely they were viewed as quite the formidable foe.
That turned out to be sort of true -- they did travel the country in a bus playing people in arcades. Unfortunately, the Japanese Embassy didn't really get it and there was never any kind of official match. The project lasted for several years though, despite sounding like a bizarre fever dream.
This is their story.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1TXpd.jpg)
Ben Gold (far left) was a serious badass at 17. Now he has kids and is a pushover.
The USNVGT (nice acronym!) was the ultimate realization in a line of ideas from Walter Day. You might recognize him as the lovable, eccentric game referee from King of Kong, Frag, and Chasing Ghosts. He also started Twin Galaxies, the arcade competition world's Team Liquid. Despite being 60 years old he has a passion for competitive gaming that rivals even our most devout. I like to imagine this is who Nazgul becomes in 30 years.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hErLL.gif)
Poster says 1982, cool. The tournament was held January 1983.
An entrepreneur who thought video game players could become sports stars, he was constantly looking for ways to promote. That's Incredible! contacted Walter about doing a special on games after a successful show featuring Ms Pac-Man (aside: this is probably the first real multi-region gaming event ever). After pitching the idea several times, he eventually turned the event into the Video Game World Championships held in January 1983. The format is smart: compete in 5 games then normalize and add totals, with the 3 top finishers moving on to a filmed TV event.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO3ctKcI8Kg
ESPORTS
ESPORTS
Later that year, Walter was approached about rounding up players for The Electronic Circus. In a field full of unbelievable events, ill-placed money grabs, and poorly thought out concepts, this thing is one of the most unreal stories I've come across.
Someone decided it would be a good idea to run a huge, traveling show that centered around arcade machines. They would hire a team of players to demonstrate the games, entertaining visitors with their skill and competing for high scores against each other and challengers. They were promised up to $3,000 per week in salary plus "endorsement deals". The grand vision involved a tour of 200 cities in 40 weeks. Exactly how they intended of averaging less than a day and a half in each location is anyone's guess. The man who originally gave the pitch is remembered for saying it may take us five years to get video gaming as popular as tennis, but we're going to work toward that. 5 years! You couldn't scream ESPORTS louder if you were shouting it from a mountaintop with a megaphone.
Shockingly, it lasted exactly 5 days before being shut down. The expenses were absurdly high, it was promoted poorly and no one came for their inaugural week in Boston. In a pleasant turn of event the players were actually paid for the days they worked (contracts which had been reduced to $1,500 a week). As near as I can tell this is the first instance of contracted play, it included some kind of morality clauses that forbid the players from "performing unjust acts".
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.
-Walter Day
-Walter Day
Day's idea was to keep the main focus but cut the flab, he was determined to succeed where the Electronic Circus men had failed. They would tour the country, visiting arcades and challenging all comers, setting high scores and gaining the respect and admiration of women and sponsors (his words).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/w1d5K.jpg)
The master tournament series went through a few name changes.
At the same time Twin Galaxies was running a tournament called the 1983 Video Game Masters Tournament, essentially a way to gather up high scores for the Guinness World Record book. The plan was to take this newly formed team and drive to each city the event would be held in, 8 total, to talk to the media and do demonstrations. Typical promotional stuff to spark interest.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/5ZpqS.jpg)
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.
Innocent enough start. That part where he says it was the last of his cash is interesting but we're not here to judge. They began in August of 1983, loading up a rented bus with nine arcade machines hooked up to a generator. They played games in the bus and brought mattresses to sleep there at night, though occasionally they slept in the homes of friends of their cause. They were basically road hustlers but with video games.
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.
Paradise doesn't last forever. They ran into problems with the bus and it completely broke down on their way to Minnesota. They briefly used a school bus but the kids hated that, so they ended up switching to roaming around in a rental car. The stops sound like they mostly went as planned, the kids weren't great with media but learned how to handle the press along the way. Disappointingly this video is the only one that has found its way to youtube.The end of their trip had them visiting Nintendo and Sega factories, talking about games with them and playing some prototypes. Their trip ended with them hightailing it out of the Sega factory right as the employees were being told they had been sold to Bally/Midway and were being shut down. A fitting end? They went their separate ways, scattered across the country until the next season.
They never were able to crack the Japanese Embassy, though they successfully challenged the country of Italy in a confusing situation where they never actually met face to face and played. Apparently there was some kind of rivalry at least.
In the following years Walter went off to do whatever it is Walter does (think up increasingly offbeat promotion ideas hopefully). Steve Harris, one of the original six members, assumed control of the team and oversaw their activities until its death. Around the same time he also formed Electronic Gaming Monthly, the magazine that kept the team in print journalism for several years and probably did a better job of introducing them to the right audience than any other outfit.
Exactly how and why the team descended into nothingness isn't anything I have been able to clearly piece together. Most of the members were reluctant to accept console gaming, not believing they challenged a player's skills enough to matter. Pretty sure that makes the skill argument literally the oldest on in the book.
As arcades waned in popularity through the last 80s and Nintendo plowed the way for a new generation of home systems it seems their relevance must have simply disappeared. Unable to fetch sponsorship directly from game companies, their goal at the start, they really had no purpose when arcades began to shrink. That is pure speculation though, I really have no idea. The period between the mid 80s and mid 90s is largely dark to history. The only thing for sure is that 1986 was the last year they added new members.
Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here, now that we are facing ESPORTS growth in the west. Maybe. It is, at the very least, a good reminder of how fragile these scenes are. All of these men dreamed of making video games their career and none of them were able to do it, all becoming the boring kinds of middle aged men their teenage selves hated and feared.
the way i read it anyway, poor gaming scene in the 80s 
