The results of other contests planned this year by iGames.org and Firingsquad.com will also be published in the Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, among them are: the Medal of Honor National Championship, the MechAssault National Championship and last year's Halo National Championship

The Battlefield 1942 National Championship -- scheduled for March 18th through May 25 -- will be conducted in hundreds of gaming centers around the United States and the top eight teams will split $50,000 in cash and merchandise with the first placed team taking home $6,000 in cash in addition to Plantronics DSP500 headsets and Shuttle SN41G2 XPC computers with NVIDIA nForce chipsets. Every paid participant in the Battlefield 1942 National Championship will receive a one-year subscription to Computer Gaming World magazine and regional qualifiers will take home T-shirts from Nvidia, Asus, iGames and Firing Squad.

"The alliance that iGames.org and Firingsquad.com have created is very significant," explains Walter Day, Chief Editor of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, the industry's official book of statistics. "By uniting hundreds of gaming centers as they have, we are satisfied that the event is, indeed, a genuine "national championship," which will attract player participation from all corners of the country and will include the top players."

Day laments that fact that too many important PC games are released that never enjoy the benefit of a large scale contest to crown "national" or "world" champions. "As the editor of the Book of Records, I can say that this is a serious problem for the gaming hobby. Game-play that is based on head-to-head competition is harder to score than games based on high scores. With high scores, you can always revisit a game and try to beat the record, even years later. But, the true champions on most PC-games can only be identified by having the top players play each other in the same event at the same time. And, for the event to be deemed a true "national," or "world" championship, a major effort has to be undertaken that makes the event accessible to players in all locations - a feat which has rarely been done."

Robert Mruczek, Chief Referee at Twin Galaxies also believes the alliance between iGames.org and Firingsquad is a tremendous boon for the hobby. "Before this contest architecture was put in place, many games were passing through their prime without a significant tournament to identify their champions. And, once the game goes through its initial marketing cycle - usually about 2-4 months, the game is forgotten and the best competitors on the game move onward to a new title -- even before we have a chance to identify them for the book of records."

Twin Galaxies, based in Fairfield, Iowa, has been tracking gaming statistics for the worldwide electronic gaming industry since 1982 and will be releasing later this year the 2nd edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, the industry's book of records. Twin Galaxies also conducts an Annual Video Game Festival at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. Twin Galaxies can be found on the Internet at www.twingalaxies.com.