Iowa city sees video games in its future

OTTUMWA, Iowa, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Ottumwa, Iowa, once the home of the Coal Palace, hopes to build a future on an International Video Game Hall of Fame.

An actual building is still a few years and millions of dollars down the road, The Wall Street Journal reported. But this weekend, top gamers gathered in Ottumwa for Big Bang 2010, a festival of video games and celebration of Pac-Man's anniversary.

"We want to be the most complete archive of video-game history," Dan Canny, vice president of the Hall of Fame board, told the Journal. "Maybe we had no business stepping up and doing this, but we're doing it."

So far, the Hall of Fame has raised $75,000, with most of the money going for Big Bang.

The city, on the Des Moines River, has a population of 25,000 and an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent. In the early 1890s, Ottumwa was known for the Coal Palace, a temporary exhibition hall.

Ottumwa has its own claim to video game fame. In 1982, Walter Day, owner of the Twin Galaxies arcade, called game makers to see if he had broken a record. He was told they did not track high scores, so he began doing it.