The Video Game Masters Tournament was an event that was created in 1983 by

Twin Galaxies Twin Galaxies is an organization and social media platform for people involved in the culture and activity of playing video games. It facilitates their interaction as well as their competition and recognizes their achievements. Twin Galaxie ...

to generate world record high scores for the 1984 U.S. Edition of the

Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

. It was the most prestigious contest of that era and the only one that the Guinness book looked to for verified world records on video games at the time. This contest was conducted under the joint efforts of Twin Galaxies and the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983, 1984 and 1985 and by the U.S. National Video Game Team alone in 1986 and 1987. During its first year, 1983, the event was called the North America Video Game Challenge (State Teams Tournament), but was changed to the Video Game Masters Tournament by the second year. In order to administer the contest, Twin Galaxies appointed the U.S. National Video Game Team to the task of collecting and verifying scores from the eight cities that participated in the 1983 edition of this event. The cities were Seattle, Washington; Lake Odessa, Michigan; Coeur D'Alene, Idaho; Omaha, Nebraska; Dayton, Ohio; San Jose, California; Upland, California and Chicago, Illinois. The 1984 event was also conducted in eight cities while the 1985 event was conducted in 35 cities.1985 Video Game Masters Tournament - Poster, June, 1985
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1983 Event - August 24–28, 1983

1984 Event - June 29 - July 1, 1984

1985 Event - June 28–30, 1985

The 1985 Video Game Masters Tournament was conducted as a fundraiser to raise donations for CARE. The fundraiser set aside half of all entry fees for the CARE/Twin Galaxies African Relief Fund.Twin Galaxies Sets 3rd Video masters Tournament - RePlay Magazine, Los Angeles, CA - April 1, 1985
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1986 Event - June 27–29, 1986

1987 Event - July 3–5, 1987

References

{{esports competitions Video game organizations Youth culture Computing culture Defunct esports competitions Video game gameplay 1983 establishments in the United States 1987 disestablishments in the United States