Walter Day, a former oil industry executive so captivated by the video game craze that he founded an arcade that would later become the international sanctioning authority for record high scores, has retired from his creation, Twin Galaxies.

Less than a year after it was first conceived, the International Video Game Hall of Fame and Museum at Ottumwa, Iowa has announced its first class of enshrinees, who will be inducted during a four-day gala event in August.

Billy Mitchell, the world record holder in Donkey Kong and one of gaming's original stars, will be in Ottumwa, Iowa today as the city announces its intention to create a video games hall of fame.

These days, a big weekend in Ottumwa, Iowa, population 26,000 or so, is defined by the line out the door at its Applebee's. On its chamber of commerce's list of 101 things to do there, you'll see attractions like genealogy research, pumpkin picking, and a tour of the John Deere factory. The same as most towns spread out on the frying-pan flat Midwest of the United States, Ottumwa is the kind of place whose charm you'd come to understand not if you bothered to visit, but if you cared to stay.