T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Walter Day, left, and Ed Cunningham, right, pose for a photo before a screening of the documentary “Arcades and Love Songs: The Ballad of Walter Day” at Dejardin Hall on the Marshalltown Community College campus Thursday night. Day, known as “The Father of eSports,” is the subject of the film, and Cunningham, a former college and NFL football player and sports broadcaster, is the director.

The entryway at Dejardin Hall on the Marshalltown Community College (MCC) looked like an arcade on Thursday evening with vintage machines set up in conjunction with the screening of a new documentary about the man known as “The Father of eSports,” Walter Day.

Day, who resides in Fairfield, rose to national prominence as a key figure wearing his signature referee jersey in the 2007 documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” a chronicle of competitive arcade gaming now widely considered a modern classic. Ed Cunningham, a former collegiate and NFL football player and sports broadcaster, produced “The King of Kong” and returned to what he described as the same cinematic universe to make “Arcades and Love Songs: The Ballad of Walter Day,” his first documentary feature as a director. And there was a reason they swung through Marshalltown: Day’s 2022 visit and presentation on campus when he took off his referee’s jersey and gave it to MCC eSports Head Coach Nate Rodemeyer are featured in the new film.

“It’s a huge part of the movie,” Cunningham said.

As he reflected on his life and career before the screening on Thursday evening, Day, the founder of Twin Galaxies — which is now viewed as history’s first eSports organization — expressed sympathy for the players in the early days who flocked around him and harbored hopes of playing video games professionally. Unfortunately, they eventually realized they were born three or four decades too soon.

“They’re all around 60 years old now, and they’re amazed but not surprised by the huge dynamic engine of commerce and industry that surrounds competitive video game playing,” he said.

Day was born in Oakland, Calif., went to high school in Massachusetts and moved to Fairfield in the late 1970s because of his interest in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental Meditation.

“Lots and lots of people were getting together (in Fairfield) to be part of a scientific experiment to study what happens when a big group of people get together and are taught to practice transcendental meditation. So they got all these scientific measurements that were going on that determined that the rest of the world starts behaving differently. People start behaving differently,” Day said. “Things actually get better, smoother, lower crime rate, lower instances of fires, all sorts of things that create chaos and are problematic become less and less and less. So I became part of that experiment, and I stayed because Iowa’s so nice, and so I’ve been here for 46 years.”

The seed for “Arcades and Love Songs” was planted in Cunningham’s mind during the filming of “King of Kong” when Day shared that he had been hearing love songs in his head since he had his heart broken back in the 1980s and played one of them, “Three Lies.”

Over a decade after “King of Kong,” fans saw Day at a convention and asked him what had happened to his music. They eventually banded together to help him fund the recording of a full-length album, a process chronicled in “Arcades and Love Songs.”

“I just felt like it was full circle. Our earlier movie, which became a classic and benefited my career, here was a chance to go full circle with this guy. (We) filmed him making his album, filmed him performing live in Fairfield, and the movie turned out great,” Cunningham said. “‘King of Kong’ fans love it. It’s a much broader story. It’s a singer-songwriter story.”

Day described the new film as sharing enough common elements with “King of Kong” to be considered “a close cousin,” but he still feels that it’s ultimately a unique adventure.

“We realized that the spirit of the movie was that it’s never too late. If you don’t just give up and believe in your vision, it’s never too late. That’s, like the spiritual mantra of the whole movie,” he said.

The album was released around the same time as the theatrical release of the documentary earlier this year. Cunningham has found himself encouraged by the way Day’s romantic pop songs have resonated with audiences and the reception the film has received, particularly in Iowa.

“Everyone who watches this film, everyone who experiences this film says ‘Thank you for making a nice film about nice people,’ especially at this moment. Everybody is moved,” Cunningham said. “He reconnects with the woman who broke his heart and is the muse. She plays along. We have one of the best breakup reconciliation scenes in the history of cinema in this movie, so it’s really full of heart. ‘King of Kong’ has a big audience, but it’s a niche audience — gamers and sort of tech geeks. This movie is about a singer-songwriter who got his heart broken, reconnects with that woman, and oh, by the way, happens to have this incredible past as an icon in video games.”

To learn more about the film and upcoming screenings, visit https://www.arcadesandlovesongs.com/.