OTTUMWA — Despite the names Video Game Capital of the World, Video Game Hall of Fame and Video Game Walk of Fame, the tradition established in Ottumwa is not about electronics.

Several speakers made that point Sunday morning during the opening of Ottumwa’s new Video Game Walk of Fame.

“Walter Day took the focus — and rightly so, I believe — off video games and put the attention on people,” said Kevin Bachus, who co-created the Xbox while working for Microsoft and is now a senior vice-president in charge of the games at Dave & Buster’s.

Because when gamers called Ottumwa in the 1980s, it was their name that went on the list of high scorers. They were the ones who were interviewed and they were the ones who went on tour or were pictured in Life magazine.

“In the Bronx, we heard about Twin Galaxies,” said Triforce Johnson, a Jamaican-born, New York-raised video gaming star. “It isn’t the video games that are the history of Ottumwa. It’s the people.”

Not that anyone was complaining about the first “inductee” onto the Walk of Fame. Twin Galaxies founder (and first arcade owner to keep high scores nationally) Walter Day, now of Fairfield, said with more than a dozen Hall of Famers from the last several classes to choose from, “it makes sense” to pick an arcade game: Pac-man.

“Pac-Man became a phenomenon,” said Namco vice president David Bishop. “I’d like to say it was something we planned. It wasn’t — it just happened.”

The game was designed in Japan, then licensed in the US. But the high scores? The fame accorded to players as being the best in the world? That, he said Sunday, happened in Ottumwa.

“This really is the birthplace of competitive eSports,” Bishop said.

Staff writer Mark Newman is on Twitter @couriermark and can be contacted at MNewman@OttumwaCourier.com.

Reporter Mark Newman can be contacted at mnewman@ottumwacourier.com and followed on Twitter @couriermark.