Twin Galaxies, the organisation featured in documentaries Chasing Ghosts and King of Kong and founded back in the early 80s by videogame score keeping pioneer, Walter Day, has now reopened its doors for accepting scores – after a six month hiatus – but now it wants you to pay for the privilege.

But no, everyone's favourite singer/songwriter/score keeper Walter Day isn't selling out, he's been retired from Twin Galaxies for the past three years. Since then it's changed hands a couple of times, but last October, two arcades in Denver and New Jersey took over joint ownership and they're asking for a small fee for each record submission.

Twin Galaxies' website also went through a recent backend revamp and style change. It now looks far more contemporary

If you want to submit a score for one game and/or a recording of a maximum length of two hours, that'll cost you $25 (£16). For three times that number, six hours or three games, it'll set you back $60 (£40), while five submissions or 12 hours, will cost $75 (£49). Anything that lasts more than 12 hours falls into the “marathon” category and must be especially arranged with the owners.

You can also pre-purchase these submissions, getting yourself a year in which to officially send the scores in.

According to the new owners, Richie Knucklez and Jourdan Adler, talking on the Twin Galaxies blog, they inherited a “damaged yet not completely irretrievable database.” Believing that gamers should get a faster response to their score submissions, they implemented the new feature and presumably now pay people to watch the record attempts.

I can understand the point of the fee structure, as running an organisation like this must cost at least a bit of money. It'd be nice to see the arcades responsible hold a free event once a year or something though, where live records are accepted without payment.

KitGuru Says: It looks like there's a few gaps in the score charts however. For example, if you fancy being one of the top 100 players in the world for Donkey Kong, all you need is an arcade machine and to rack up a few thousand points. Hell, my personal best of 74,000 puts me at 60th in the world. What's the best you guys ever reached?

[Thanks Kotaku]

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