Atari and Twin Galaxies announced they have moved a competitive gaming media project into development to find the world’s best Atari players in five classic games.
Atari has enlisted Twin Galaxies to develop a new gaming competition, the Atari World Championships, that will feature five iconic Atari games kicking off with an open online play-in tournament that culminates in a live, in-person Grand Finals competition.
“It’s super exciting and quite a bit of time in the making,” said Zachary Rozga, senior executive at Twin Galaxies, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“Rozga said, “Atari and Twin Galaxies are bringing the original, retro spirit and arcade energy of competitive gaming back. The World Championships model we have co-created builds a modern stage where gamers of every type can earn their place on the leaderboard, get recognized for their achievement and tell their story.”
The competition will leverage Twin Galaxies’ 40-plus years of experience in competitive gaming
and record authentication, including the Twin Galaxies Submission and Adjudication Process
(TGSAP) to manage the online play-in tournament, ensuring that while anyone can enter, only
the best advance.
Atari played a pioneering role in the development of the arcade game, game console and personal computer industries. Atari’s iconic games, including Pong, Asteroids, Centipede and Missile Command, have been played by hundreds of millions of unique users over the years, while the brand continues to bring joy to gamers with its expanding portfolio of PC, console, and mobile games.
“Atari has a rich, fifty-plus year history that fans continue to celebrate and explore,” said Wade
Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari, in a statement. “We are looking forward to working with Twin Galaxies to celebrate competition with our existing fans and bring new fans into our growing community.”
The tournament takes shape
Twin Galaxies is actively recruiting a limited number of founding brand partners to participate
in the North America Pilot of the Atari World Championships. The Championships will feature co-branded social, influencer integrations, and direct engagement across all Championships
channels.
With brand partners, Rozga said he thinks of Twin Galaxies as bringing American Ninja Warrior to gaming, where amateurs get their shot at being the best in the world in a course.
The idea is there will be five leaderboards with five different game titles, and then there’s going to be an aggregate leaderboard, and so you get to play at home. If you top one of the five leaderboards, you’re automatically qualified to the grand finals. The aggregate leaderboard will be used to pick the final set of players.
It hasn’t been decided yet if there will be consoles only or arcade versions allowed too. The dates are also up in the air. There will be a homepage where everyone can see the standings. Twin Galaxies learned a lot about setting up the tournaments from its previous Mortal Kombat competition, where Twin Galaxies worked with Warner Bros. Games.
How it started
For more than four decades, Twin Galaxies has served as the definitive scorekeeper for gaming, operating premium leaderboards and competitions at scale through a rigorous adjudication process that verifies performance, protects competitive integrity, and ensures players receive official recognition for earned achievements.
Founded by Walter Day in 1981, Twin Galaxies is the world’s most trusted authority for video game player rankings, world records, and competitive gaming achievement. Day, who became famous from The King of Kong documentary film, about the years-long grudge match between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe over who was the best in the world at the Donkey Kong arcade game.
Twin Galaxies changed hands, and Jace Hall, former head of Monolith Studios (now shut down), acquired it in 2014.
And for a decade, he worked on the fair online tournament technology for the modern Twin Galaxies. Rozga’s Thece startup supplied the final piece with ThecePlay, a tournament structure where players could compete in single-player games where their scores could be verified in a larger competition with people from around the world.
A few years ago, Twin Galaxies shared its origin story with GamesBeat. Now it’s been growing despite the tough times in the game industry.
They kicked off the first tournament with Logitech and Counter-Strike 2 in 2025. Twin Galaxies oversees and authenticates competitive engagement for some of the world’s most recognizable companies and brands, including Bentley, Warner Bros., Scotts Miracle-Gro,
Logitech G, and Microsoft’s Forza franchise.
Twin Galaxies’ platform connects global audiences, players, developers, publishers, and iconic brands through meaningful, achievement-driven participation across the gaming ecosystem.
As a new generation discovers competitive gaming and seeks validated recognition, Twin
Galaxies continues to set the standard for fair play, authenticity, and the stories that elevate
players into legends.
Rozga said Jace Hall, CEO of Twin Galaxies, started talking with Atari leaders and those at its Night Dive game studio late last year. Hall suggested they do something “epic” like the Atari Olympics. David Lowey in Atari’s sales and marketing helped to move it along. The pitch eventually floated up to Rosen.
“We settle on doing five games,” Rozga said.
They decided to call it the Atari World Championships, but the first version will be focused on North America. After that, it is expected to expand to other territories.
The company has about a dozen people. Twin Galaxies is the executive producer of the show, and Atari is licensing its brand and supporting the tournament through marketing.
The goal of the tournament
The idea is to surface new talent that might never have had the chance to get discovered.
So far, Rozga said, “There’s one thing that is fascinating. So far, everybody who has won our competitions are people that nobody’s ever known about. We’ve never had the pros make it to the top of the leaderboard.”
Rozga added, “What we’re building with the Atari World Championships is what got me excited to join Twin Galaxies in the first place, which is this really changing the dynamics of competitive gaming into the individual competition and then being able to scale that.”