RetroWorldExpo 2023 Recap

Another year and another RWE. A lot has happened since the last show for me. At the end of last year, I changed jobs and some other life changes happened. And so I have not been as active on here as I would have liked. But I was excited to get out to this show as the opportunity afforded and I was thankfully able to make it out.

This year had one disappointing thing, and that was unfortunately for reasons they couldn’t go into (likely due to NDAs) very deeply, Headcannon was unable to come to the show. For those who don’t know, this is the developer who brought out the very well-received Sonic Origins a few years ago. But things understandably happen in every profession and sometimes plans just have to change on the fly.

Thankfully, this year there were still plenty of other guests and events to see. Some of the guests who made a return included the folks from RetroRGB and Retroware. The voice of NBA Jam Tim Kitzrow came back as did Big Bucks Entertainment and Blitzkrieg Pro Wrestling. Dan Larson of Toy Galaxy was there. 1Up alumni Jeremy Parish and Nadia Oxford also came back. The folks at Retroware had a booth with some demos (I didn’t get the chance to check out.) Some of the newer guests included voice actor Ian James Corlett (of Mega Man and DBZ fame), YouTubers Phoenix Resale, Retro Rick, as well as Tito of Nacho Nacho Productions. Terry Torok was also there. There were also many, many tournaments this year.

Despite not seeing as many returning names as some would have liked, this year still had a very high attendance. More people possibly came out to this year’s show than last year’s. As I entered the Hartford Convention Center this year the line was pretty massive. I spent close to an hour in line to check in after prepaying months earlier.

With that one minor inconvenience out of the way, I made my way to the floor and was immediately in the midst of a slew of vendors. This year leaned heavier into video game vendors than last year, something that oddly enough helped me less since I have a lot of what I want on my vintage console platforms. Still, throughout the weekend I did spend a fair amount of time looking over the booths several times over as it was so busy I was all but guaranteed to miss something good at any given vendor upon a first pass.

My buddy Russ Lyman brought back his venerable Mario Kart ride as well as his Yoshi Bike for display. I spotted the former on my way into the building. As I wandered past the vendor section I spied the returning Blitzkrieg staff setting up the ring for the matches they would hold throughout the show. I got in some early time in the free play area this year. This year they had a Frogger machine so as bad at that game as I am, of course, I had to give it several pathetic attempts at getting on the board. I didn’t make the cut. I managed to get a couple of boards in, but that was nowhere near the scoreboard.

But I didn’t do too bad when I stumbled upon an Atari 2600 running Yars’ Revenge. And who wouldn’t love to play Yars’ Revenge? I put some time into that game over the weekend. Periodically I would take another crack at the game to see how well I could do. I ended up somewhere just shy of 50,000 points.

There was also an impressive sight as there was a Sega Saturn set up with a multitap and 8 original controllers running a copy of Saturn Bomberman. This is something you very rarely see set up in the wild. And so seeing one for the first time in the wild in decades was awesome.

Of course, with the way Saturn aftermarket prices are going, I could never go get one of these for myself. So being able to play it in some capacity in public was remarkable. This was one of the more popular setups in the free play area with good reason. Saturn Bomberman is a classic.

After getting in some time with the games I discovered Big Bucks Entertainment had returned. They were doing a live Press Your Luck contest again so I joined the live audience. Two kids were taking on a college student and only lost due to a late game Whammy. It’s always one of the presentations I look forward to at RetroWorldExpo because it’s something you don’t see done at a lot of shows. It’s the same reason the inclusion of an independent wrestling show is a welcome addition for a lot of attendees.

One of the vendors, Pac-Family Games also did something a little interesting this year. They set up a small display of pre-NES-era platforms with some nice overviews written out about each of them. They thought to include some of the more esoteric machines like the RCA Studio II as well as some of the interesting PONG clones like Nintendo’s Color TV-Game 6. There was also a Vectrex along with Atari’s 2600 and 5200 which made me smile. I had a lot of 2600 stuff growing up, but never had the 5200 or the Vectrex. The Vectrex is one of those really great platforms that just came out at the most inopportune time.

But seeing all of these certainly reminded me of my early childhood. Seeing things like the Colecovision, 5200, and Intellivision games in a store back then blew a lot of people’s minds. But that was short-lived as the crash began and games moved to home computers. But of course, we didn’t know about any of that until our parents brought home a Commodore 64, Atari 400, or an Apple II. It was a while before many of us ever had an NES. Even after Nintendo took the US by storm a lot of the same games were on these computers of varying quality. So many kids didn’t get an NES until a few years after it came out.

It was especially nice seeing a couple of the failed consoles of the era as well. Not many people had the RCA Studio II, Bally Astrocade, or the Emerson Arcadia 2001. And so they’re not really known by most people. So having them out there was really cool.

I didn’t make it into as many panels this year but I did manage to make two on Saturday. The first of which featured Terry Torok. For those who don’t know he was the producer of the original Nintendo World Championships tour and finals presentation in Hollywood. In the panel, he talked a bit about his experience pitching the idea to Nintendo as a means to get parents to take a bit of an interest in their kids’ hobby at the time while also building interest from the general public. And he spoke of some of the parallels between what they accomplished with the NWC and with what many of today’s eSports events have done. He talked a bit about his hopes that collaboration could be a major factor in future events. Where eSports could not just focus on the games themselves, but how players could be incentivized to help each other get better, resulting in more people playing at a higher level. He also went over four main pillars of eSports, how there are pillars for the games themselves, the players who become personalities, the core audience, and the general audience. Bridging all of those is a major part of an organization’s success. He also talked about some of his work building events up in other parts of the world and a new analog board game in development. Two lucky winners got early versions as prizes. All in all an interesting panel, even if you aren’t following competitive gaming scenes of the past or present.

After that panel, I roamed the floor again for a bit and I managed to catch one of the undercard matches Blitzkrieg was putting on. It was a solid match with some old-school spots featuring a big man heel and a smaller performer in the face role. There was a fair amount of the face fighting from underneath and building up momentum. There was a swerve finish when both combatants knocked each other out for a Double K.O.. Overall not bad even if the finish was a little confusing for anyone unaware of a larger program between the two wrestlers. At certain points throughout the convention, former Brood member Gangrel made appearances, but I didn’t get the chance to see him.

After that, I caught some of the Street Fighter 6 tournament. While I didn’t see anything as crazy as one might see at a big show like EVO I didn’t expect to. What I did see was a lot of very good players that could still easily defeat me playing some very close matches. Not very many of the rounds were lopsided and for every one of the handful of Perfect K.O.s was a very close match to follow it up with. Alex Smith clinched the final spot, while Kite made an impressive run through a loser’s bracket to make it back to the top. But ultimately lost. But what a great showing it was with things culminating in a Juri mirror match.

I wandered around the floor a bit before going off to the next panel. I stopped by my pal Antionette’s booth and found a hilarious Silent Hill 2 parody featuring Doug Funny. She does all sorts of great pop culture-themed art. You can check out her Etsy shop for some of her work and get some items for yourself. Next to her was Hitbox Designs, which had some very impressive Splatoon-inspired pins I pretty much had to buy. Also returning was Tom Ryan Studio and he had a few great Masters Of The Universe pieces of art as well as pins. So I made sure I got myself an Orko pin.

After that, it was off to the next panel. Tim Kitzrow was back for a Q&A panel and it was quite entertaining. He was also very kind and down to Earth talking to a few of us before the panel started about growing up in Albany, NY, and visiting family in Connecticut and Rhode Island often before he moved out to Chicago. In the panel, he elaborated a bit on how he found work with Midway while working at a restaurant in Chicago as he was lining up other work at Second City. Yes, the same venue that gave us SCTV alumni. Some of his earliest jobs with Midway were voice samples for Pinball machines. Eventually, he would get the job on NBA JAM as the announcer which would carry over into many of Midway’s other arcade sports franchises like NFL Blitz and NHL Hitz. One of the questions he was given was if he got to meet NBA players during the creation of the game, and he said those meetings mostly happened after the game was out. He told us one story about how he waited on Michael Jordan which led to a custom NBA JAM machine being produced for himself as he had wanted to be a playable character in the original release but wasn’t included due to clauses in his licensing deals at the time. Interestingly someone found the Jordan player data still in the ROM files years later and was able to make him playable on a stock NBA JAM cabinet. I got to ask him what he does in terms of hobbies and it turns out he plays music for fun even to this day as well as outdoor activity.

After that panel, it was back on the floor for a bit before the first day ended. I was finally able to get the Splatoon 2 Inkling Girl Amiibo I’ve been hunting for a few years now thanks to one vendor having a sole mint on card figurine. They also had a mint-on-card vintage King Randor from the original Masters Of The Universe line, but I simply could not afford to buy it as even a loose figure goes for almost as much as a AAA video game these days. Still, it was awesome to see one not only carded but with a card in such great condition.

With day one under my belt, it was off to get some food and then some sleep as I would be commuting back to Hartford for day 2. I stopped off at Rosy Tomorrow’s which is an institution in my area of the State. The food is pretty good and the atmosphere is rather nice. They often have live music going on, but this particular weekend they didn’t. Still, I had some loaded chicken tacos and a nice pint of Guinness.

When I got back to the show for day 2 things weren’t quite as crammed with visitors but it was still a fairly busy floor. I got in some gaming before the free play area filled back up again. I was able to clear Third Strike on about 4 credits which is unheard of for me. Especially since Gil is one of the cheapest bosses in video game history. And I gave some love to Killer Instinct 2 along with a few more sad attempts at Frogger.

Somehow I had missed the panel with Ian James Corlett, but he was kind enough to sign a figure I had picked up for a coworker who is a huge DBZ mark. And he was also kind enough to do a few quips from the old Ruby-Spears Mega Man show, where he played the Blue Bomber himself. A very pleasant interaction.

I had also somehow overlooked the fact that Canvas Quest was back with its excellent line of video game-themed pins. So I picked up several of them for family members. We had a nice interaction about the T-shirt I’d gotten from Neatoshop. They turned out to be fans of both Duran Duran and Masters Of The Universe so the mashup really appealed to them.

Another booth I checked out was for a game called Below The Ocean a quirky puzzle platformer by Ismael Rodriguez. And after playing the demo I came away pretty impressed. At first glance, you may confuse it for Doinksoft’s Gato Roboto as it shares a similar vintage home computer look. But it plays nothing like it. For starters, it is not a search action game like Gato Roboto was. There are no cats driving vehicles either. Instead, I was reminded of classic computer games in the vein of Thrust and Bubble Ghost. The idea is you’re a deep-sea diver who consistently needs to find oxygen tanks to refill your air supply. Not only do you need to find these tanks for air you also use your air hose in a variety of ways to solve puzzles to progress to the next screen. It’s really cool.

He also had a demo for Tuttle, a game that combines 80s arcade platforming with inventory management as you grow giant flowers and then cut them down for their seeds so that you can grow bigger flowers for points. Before long there are giant insects trying to eat the plants and so you have yourself something unique that sits somewhere between something like Activision’s Pressure Cooker and Sega’s Fantasy Zone. Both of these are out on Steam, and I hope to eventually get to Below The Ocean. I know this past year has not gone the way I wanted in getting writing done. But I hope I’ll be able to adjust soon.

My pal Doug Mandeville was at the show vending and while I didn’t get a photo he had an elaborate hoax of an item as a conversation piece. He had a package of Super Mario Bros. Oreos in a plastic box with a grade facsimile on it. At first glance, you would be forgiven for thinking he’d actually sent a bag of cookies out to be graded, but upon further inspection, it was quite the convincing troll. That said, he did have some decent pieces including a sealed big box DOOM Shareware and a number of sealed 2600 games.

I was also able to see the tail end of a Deal Or No Deal that day. The contestant managed to get all the way down to the final two briefcases before making a deal with the bank. I didn’t see what he ultimately got for a prize, but it was really cool seeing someone do that well.

I did manage to get into my buddy Mike Levy’s panel. This year he discussed the EGM Fax he famously discovered which showed off some of the creative direction some of the Konami staff considered taking Castlevania in at one time. He’s a massive fan of Castlevania and is a wellspring of information on the series’ lore. As such, the rest of the panel focused on the earlier style of Castlevania games where the focus was predominantly on action platforming with exploration elements being secondary save for a couple of examples like Simon’s Quest. Then he analyzed why the series has shifted focus to more exploratory games like Symphony Of The Night before ultimately trying to clone Sony’s God Of War franchise with later PS2 releases and games like the Lords Of Shadows series. All in all, an interesting breakdown of the franchise and some of its spiritual successors past and present.

After that panel, I caught the tail end of an auction where I saw a few items of interest like a sealed Metroid Prime for the Nintendo Gamecube, a few Disney display standees, a case of unopened Kingdom Hearts figures, and a sealed Marvel 3 fight stick. With that, the end of the show was just around the corner. With that, I said my goodbyes and left the Convention Center.

But my weekend wasn’t completely done. I headed over to City Steam Brewery for my semi-annual visit. This year no one was able to meet me over there due to commitments but it was a good visit nevertheless. I had some of their Alan Is More Stout and an awesome Mac and Cheeseburger. The stout is terrific, with some notes of chocolate and coffee. I ended up getting a growler to take home with me and a pint glass to boot. Every time I have ever gone there the service has been great, the food has been amazing, and the beers are some of my all-time favorites. If you ever find yourself in Hartford and you’re of legal age give them a visit. They even have frequent stand-up comedy shows and karaoke nights.

But with dinner taken care of it was time to leave the State capitol. I had a great weekend and I can’t wait to see what they do next year. Hopefully, some of the previous years’ guests will return. Hopefully, some of your ideal guests will get booked. Hopefully, there will be some other attractions and even more tournaments. Hopefully, I can stop saying “Hopefully.”. In any event, I’m looking forward to next year’s event already.

Another 10 great beers to pair with games

I apologize for the lack of updates last week. When you crash your car, you tend to do a lot of phone tag on the free days until it’s time to get the thing into the body shop. And no before you ask, what I’m going to talk about in a paragraph was not a factor. It wasn’t a horrible accident, and everyone walked away fine. But now I’m paying the price for not paying enough attention. Also to rent this Nissan while my Dodge is in the shop.

Anyway, a while ago for something a bit different I combined my interest in gaming, with my interest in beer. It went over fairly well, though some pointed out I could have had a wider variety of genres. India Pale Ale was, and still is the king of the hill these days. But there are plenty of great Stouts, Porters, Lagers, Pilsners, Ales, out there too. For a while I’ve been thinking about taking another crack at this idea so here we go. Another ten great beers to check out. Again, I have to preface this  with the fact that not all of these will be available to you. Unfortunately the world of distribution is rather convoluted between contracts, and each State’s regulations. Still, if you do see one of these, pick it up!

10.) Armada brewing – Liberty Abandoned Stout

Armada is a small but growing outfit out of New Haven, and could easily take half the slots in this feature. They make a lot of great stuff in any style you can think of. One of their best is also one of the best stouts I can recommend. It’s thick, rich, with notes of chocolate, and coffee. It’s also 10% ABV which packs a wallop. But it packs that wallop without tasting boozy. It’s the perfect kind of wallop to nurse through long sessions of a JRPG. Perhaps one of the longer Final Fantasy games, or something in the Xenoverse.

09.) Sloop brewing – Sloop Juice Bomb IPA

Based out of Hopewell Junction, NY. Sloop has two major locations, one of which is built upon the former IBM semiconductor plant in Fishkill, NY. So right away there’s a hint of PC Gaming potential. All of their beers are pretty great, but their attempt at a New England style India Pale Ale is a nearly flawless performance. The hazy textured beer doesn’t lie. You do get a figurative bomb of juicy taste in every gulp. And it transitions to a hoppy bitterness at just the right level. Their Brew Master must be some kind of evil genius. Which makes this a wonderful pairing for some vintage DOOM, and Quake. At 6.5% ABV it’s not so heavy you’ll be too slow to react, but also strong enough for fighting imps, pink demons, and cacodemons.

08.) Clown Shoes – Octofest Oktoberfest Lager

Clown Shoes has a long storied history of marrying pretty great brews, with over the top label art. In the fall, they make their own North American take on the German staple. This one has just the right amount of spice, and sweetness atop the light, delicious lager you would expect such a brewery to make. In my opinion, it’s a good step or two up from many of the other North American takes on the style, many of which are also quite nice. But this one is just that much better. And it has a giant Octopus on it drinking eight pints of it. This was the obvious pairing for me last fall when playing in the Halloween Splatfest for Splatoon 2. With another coming up this weekend I wish I had some left. That said, if you’re an Inkling, or Octoling looking for something in six months, make like Marie, and DRINK FRESH! While staying fresh of course.

07.) Weyerbacher – Sunday Mole Stout

Here we go, another crazy, high-octane stout on the list. This one from Weyerbacher, a Pennsylvanian brewery known for crazy, high-octane beer in general. Based off of their already solid Sunday Morning Stout, this variant adds a spicy kick, and subtracts the barrel aging. The result is something less syrupy, but equally potent, and spicier. So it brings the heat. Not too much though, where other beers go overkill on spicy peppers, or barely bring any to the table this one finds a great balance. You’ll get the chocolate notes you love, a bit of spicy kick, and a bit of roasted aftertaste. At basically 12% ABV it isn’t something for fast paced NES Batman. But it is something you can take your time with as you take your time with the Batman Arkham games you have in your backlog. Plus it also has an evil clown on the cover waiting to be served Bruce Wayne on a silver platter.

06.) Narragansett – Lager

Not every beer needs to be eccentric. But for many people the mass market stuff everyone sees on TV just won’t do. It’s fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. But we’ve been spoiled by the independent brewing revolution. Still, sometimes you’re in the mood for something that isn’t complicated, but want something better than the bog standard too. Enter Rhode Island legends Narragansett. Their Lager is just that. A great Lager. No gimmicks, just succinctness in beer form. Which makes this the perfect beer to buy for get together events where you’ll be playing Warlords, Mario Kart, Mario Party, You Don’t Know Jack, Wii Sports, or Monster Prom. (And yes, you DO want to have 4-player Warlords at a party.)

05.) Victory – Golden Monkey

Belgian style ales may not have the popularity of other genres these days (at least not in my area), but that doesn’t mean one should rule them out. Another Pennsylvanian brewery Victory, makes one such beer. This one has a terrific hint of sweetness on the backend of a light, and crisp texture. At 9.5% ABV it isn’t quite the wrecking ball some of the other entries are, but it does give a nice punch, while being relaxing. It’s pretty versatile in terms of game selection too. Whatever game you’re in the mood to play, it’ll probably go along with it. So I’m rolling with the obvious  pairing: Golden Monkey, and Golden Axe. Plus it’s by Victory, and you’ll want to wash down Death Adder with it. That was a terrible joke. But the beer isn’t.

04.) Collective Arts – Stranger Than Fiction

Deep within Ontario Canada, lies a brewery that often seeks out artists from all over the world to find art work for its decorative labels. They don’t look to get it Scott-Free either. They buy it, and promote it. But they don’t just sell fancy cans, with art by really talented people. They fill those cans with delicious beer. One of those beers is a really nice North American porter, a dark beer with a nice aroma, and notes of chocolate balanced by a nice hop composition. It’s a nice one to have when playing some classic shmups like Gradius, R-Type, or even Zaxxon!

03.) City Steam – Starlit

City Steam Brewery is in the heart of downtown Hartford where they make some of my favorite brews. One of their newer ones is this experimental New England style Pale Ale made with wheat, and oats, while having citrus, and mango notes at the same time. And at only 5.5% ABV it’s not a weak session beer, it still has a nice kick, but it also isn’t a double-digit monster you’ll only want one of.  It’s got a great all around balance of all of its elements. Making it great for fighting games. You may want to have some around when Mortal Kombat 11 comes out, or when those Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC characters hit.

02.) Bad Sons Brewing (Featuring Armada) – Candy Castle

Bad Sons Brewing is an upstart in Derby, CT that has quickly gained popularity. Not only do they have a bitching logo (A skull with a hop growing out of it), but their beer is fantastic to boot. This entry is a collaboration they’ve done with Armada. Candy Castle takes the IPA tinkering to the point where you’ll wonder if it’s something else entirely. But if it is that something else, it’s a damn good something else. It’s a Milkshake IPA, a style where they use lactose milk sugars in the process. This adds to the texture. But they also throw a slew of candy into the brew.  This gives it the properties of getting a mystery flavored carnival drink. All while retaining the properties of a beer. It still tastes like a high-profile IPA, and yet something different at the same time. Trust me, it’s way better than it sounds. Easily something you’ll want to have on hand when attempting to beat Cuphead again.

01.) Thimble Island – Mutually Assured Destruction 

I have to close this out with one of the best pairings of all. This is a beer that goes perfectly with Atari’s classic: Missile Command. It’s a rich, thick Russian styled stout with some coffee, and chocolate notes. But it doesn’t end there because there are several versions of M.A.D. that you can find in the wild. The standard one is delicious, and potent enough. But the more expensive barrel aged version is even better, as it takes on some of the properties of the barrel. Then they also make a variety pack of experimental flavored versions, a Cherry one which is the weakest, but still good. Also a Smores one which is quite nice. A peanut butter, and chocolate one that gives some of the more well-known PB beers a run for their money. Finally, there’s the Chipolte Ginger version that you’ll have to taste to believe. All of these are 10% ABV or more, but all work well in any game where geothermal nuclear disaster is in the backdrop. Missile Command, Metal Gear, Countdown To Shutdown, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you name it.

Many of these are in New England, and East Coast territory, but some do make their way outside of the area. And with things growing in the craft scene you never know how distribution will change. Still, take note in the event you ever come into the region. Also, over the past few months I haven’t always remembered to take a photo of whatever beer I’ve purchased. So I apologize for some missing photos. But rest assured all of these are pretty great releases. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through this list! Thank you for checking it out, and feel free to post your own beer, and game pairings below!

 

The crossover event of the year

Well okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole. But I was invited to do a crossover with the folks over at The Well-Red Mage. A gaming blog that puts out some of the most intricately detailed articles you will ever read. It’s great stuff. Even your favorite magazines as a teenager covering the latest Mortal Kombat game never went this deep in the weeds.

Anyway, they’re doing a massive event this month highlighting games on different systems you should consider adding to your collection. I was asked to help by going over some classic Commodore 64 goodness. So crack a beer, click the link, and enjoy. And while you’re there you may want to check out the other articles throughout the rest of the month. They’ll feature some other great guests you ought to check out. Thanks to The Well-Red Mage for the opportunity.

https://thewellredmage.com/2018/06/03/console-challenge-day-3-top-7-best-commodore-64-games/

Retro World Expo 2017 Recap

Now in its third year, RetroWorld Expo has slowly built up momentum over its humble beginnings. While it still isn’t the size of something like one of the PAX shows, it has made quite the impressive successes over the first two iterations. The biggest change this year was the move from the Oakdale center in Wallingford, CT to the Hartford Convention Center in Hartford, CT. Due to this, the show was able to increase the floor space, and use conference rooms for panels.

Getting into the show was very smooth, and easy. I didn’t have to go through two or three different lines to get in. I simply showed my ticket receipt to the volunteer at the booth, got my wristband, and got in. Of course, I would hinder myself a little bit by not gassing up the car before making the drive. (More on that later.)

 

Upon walking onto the floor, I saw a few familiar faces as I took a quick gander at some of the vendors’ booths.  One of whom was Tom Ryan. I’ve talked about him in the past, as he does phenomenal artwork. A couple of years ago I got an awesome Thundercats print from him. This year he had an amazing Masters Of The Universe print! It features a very detailed Castle Grayskull, while a Darth Vader-esque Skeletor appears in the background. In the foreground there’s a really great silhouette of He-Man with the Power Sword. It’s awesome. It looks even better in person.

After catching up with a few people I headed upstairs, as “Pixel” Dan Eardley was back again, and I wanted to get into his panel, as they’ve always been entertaining. This year didn’t disappoint, as he talked a bit about some upcoming crossovers. I can’t really go into too much detail about them as I don’t want to spoil anything for anybody. Suffice it to say, you’ll be pretty impressed with the first of these. After showcasing it early to those of us in the panel, he was also kind enough to show off a small home video clip that was quite heartwarming.

After this, he showed off some teaser footage with The Gaming Historian, and Eric Lappe of Let’s Get. There will be a few new episodes of From Plastic To Pixels coming down the pike. This is a series that focuses on showing off video games based on toy lines. It’s a fun show because it goes beyond a typical Let’s Play show by bringing in some of toy, and game knowledge. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. The panel closed out with a short Q & A segment with attendees. Some of the questions revolved around the upcoming episodes, that I don’t want to spoil. But a few questions were asked about some vintage toys, and games.

I was a guest on Big Bucks Entertainment’s Super Millionaire. This is a company that does covers of the Game Shows you likely grew up watching. They did two of them throughout the course of the show. One being the update of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and the other being Press Your Luck.  To get on the show, the company put up question challenges on its Facebook group. Leading up to the show, I had taken a shot in the dark, and answered a question. Well, it turns out I was right, and was put into the pool of potential guests.

So I showed up with my buddy Jordan as my lifeline. We were given a rundown of the game rules, and stage procedures. There were three of us who made it on. One of whom turned out to be a member of Super Retro Throwback Reviews. They had their own booth nearby. One of the judges turned out to be one of my good friends Russ Lyman, who was also in a panel later on in the show. He has a swell YouTube show where he combines VLOGs, DIY repair, gaming into one entertaining channel. He’s the one who got this snapshot of me on stage! He also brought his custom car to the show for everyone to see. None of us got very far into the game. Of the three I actually did the worst. I got all of the questions up to the first tier nicely. But upon reaching that first checkpoint I got the question wrong. I didn’t want to waste my lifelines. In hindsight I probably should have. But it was still a very fun experience.

But it didn’t end there because they kept the show going with audience members. Most of them didn’t fare much better than those of us who played initially. My lifeline got to go on, and had to use all of the lifelines on the first three questions. None of which covered game knowledge. (Thankfully when he called me up, I guessed the question right.) But after he lost, there was an attendee that came within inches of winning the entire game. Unfortunately the Judges were wrong about the voice actor who played Sinistar (It was John Doremus), and he went with their guess. Nevertheless, as I said before it was a lot of fun, and the quality of the set props was pretty good. It made for a great facsimile, and even the Press Your Luck set was pretty awesome.

I got in a little bit of shopping with a couple of friends after that. We found one husband & wife run vendor booth with a ton of vintage Atari games in addition to the NES, Master System, Genesis, and Super NES games on display. Many of them were boxed, and complete! I found a complete copy of Fatal Run which is one of the late life 2600 releases. There was also a complete copy of Kung Fu Master my friend Jordan picked up. There was also a rarely seen complete copy of Red Label Space Invaders. These were just some of the 2600 highlights. There were a ton of great games for all of the platforms, but the 2600 selection was unreal.

I found an old 7800 Alien Brigade Ad from an outfit called Glossed Over. They find vintage ads in great quality, and preserve them in laminate. They had a ton of memorable Nintendo, and Sega print ads. But there’s something special about the old Atari game ads. A few tables from where I found Fatal Run, I finally procured a copy of Tapper for the 2600! Up until the convention I had only ever seen it once before, so I picked it up on the spot.

But there wasn’t a ton of time left to keep shopping, the RetroWorld Expo brought back the auction from last year. Hosted by TV’s Travis Landry, the auction went on for three hours. I saw some of the items before they went up, and most of those seemed to be in decent shape. There was a really nice Commodore 64 set up among the items that included a Bread bin NTSC Commodore 64 model, a First-party joystick, a 1541 Disk Drive, and it had the box, and manuals. The box looked beat up, but everything else looked pristine.

So I sat through the auction with a few friends, and of course I didn’t win the C64 set up. After it got beyond the aftermarket value, I had to give up. But it kept climbing. In fact many items got spectacularly high. Not as crazy as last year’s auction. But still pretty high. There was a Nintendo World Championships cartridge that nobody bid on because the opening bid was astronomical. It was nice to see one in person though! Some of the highlights for me were the bidding war that broke out over a Little Samson cartridge, which ended around $800. (Which is oddly enough a steal considering it goes for over $1,000 in many cases.) As well as the fervor over a really nice Sega Sonic store display sign, and the fact there were TWO copies of Mega Turrican up for grabs. Those were the other two items I took a shot on, but lost both.

Some other items that went up included a few lots. One was a box of NES common games. Another one was a bunch of Master System games. Beyond that, a pretty nice Atari 5200 bundle, and a copy of Power Strike on the Master System. I’m sure there are a bunch of other items I’m forgetting. It was still pretty exciting though. It’s a shame not many toy collectors were on hand, because there were a bunch of figures, and busts that went for well below what you’d typically expect to pay.  A couple of NES Classic Minis went for auction too, and went for a bunch of money. With the announcement that they’re going to be re-released again at retail, this kind of surprised me. Still, it was nice seeing some of this stuff. Like the Nintendo branded retail case I still remember seeing in Bradlees back in the day.

I spent some more time on the floor, I got in a few rounds of Missile Command, and Street Fighter II in the arcade. I also found my buddy Bijhan had a booth where he let me have a complete boxed copy of Gunship for MS-DOS. My friend Jordan also hooked me up with a Shadow Warrior 2 scroll, and bag. As the sales floor started to close up for the night, I managed to find a copy of Pac-Attack for the Super NES. There was another after party this year, but I had to skip it due to the low amount of gas in the car. Since I commuted to the show, I wanted to make sure I got fuel before the stations might have closed. A few people were kind enough to point me to a couple of options. I managed to get to one, gas up, and get back to town.

Day two I went back to Hartford, for the rest of the show. I got there a little bit early, and I bumped into Pat “The NES Punk” Contri walking the floor. Just as last year, he was very kind, and cordial. I politely asked him if he had another copy of his NES Guide book. He took me to his booth to get one, and on the way over I told him where I’d found my deals the day before. He thanked me for buying a copy, I thanked him for his time, and let him get back to his game hunting. After that, I ran into my friends Chris, and Brian who had a small vendor booth for the weekend. Somehow I’d missed it the first day. They had a few coveted items, but I ended up getting some deals on some slightly less common games. I found RoboWarrior for the NES, and Desert Strike for the Super NES for a pittance. And it wasn’t just because I’m friends with them, they gave anyone who came by, bundle pricing if they bought multiple items. It’s part of why they do pretty well for themselves at events, and meets. I also got to catch up with Noah, and Paul from Retro Gaming Arts, and Rax The Great.

There was another booth I can’t remember the name of, but the business was another really nice group of people. They had noticed all of the stuff I was carrying along with my camera, and offered a bag before I even started shopping. And when I did peruse their racks not only did I find a Joe & Mac cartridge for the Super NES, at a really good price (The first one, not the obscure sequel), it came in a protective plastic box. In fact every loose cartridge they sold did, and they were in excellent condition.

After this though, I went back up for several panels. The first one was the RFGeneration Collectorcast Reunion show. Bil McGee, Duke, and Rich Franklin did a live podcast where they talked about collecting tips. Budgeting for items at conventions. Networking, and making friends. Helping those friends find things they need. As well as reminiscing about road stories, and times where they had to go into some strange, or even scary places to find those coveted titles. All of which resulted in a lot of funny moments. Bil McGee does a lot of behind the scenes planning of RetroWorld every year so there was some time spent on what is involved in the process. It was a really entertaining, and informative panel overall. Plus their site is a pretty good source of information for collecting games.

Especially their databases. At the end of the panel there was a short Q&A session. Some people asked about some of the topics discussed. I asked them to pair a beer with their favorite classic game. Duke didn’t drink so his answer was soda, as in many old games there were billboards in levels advertising fictional ones. Rich, paired stout with Tempest (which is an excellent choice.) Bil loved the question, and gave several examples that I can’t remember. But one that did stand out was drinking Lord Hobo Boom Sauce, or Consolation prize for any game that had shotguns. Because this would reference the cult movie Hobo with a shotgun. One can’t argue with that logic, although the audience erupted into laughter when Duke said he wouldn’t drink from anything called Lord Hobo.

The next panel was The Gaming Historian panel. This year, Norman Caruso went with a similar format to the panel as he did last year. But this year he went with a topic that wasn’t child friendly. To which he warned the parents in the audience who promptly took their kids out. He went over a major Rock star scandal from several years ago, and cleared up a lot of the misconceptions about it. He also told us about an upcoming episode of The Gaming Historian, which like the Pixel Dan panel, I can’t really talk about here, as I don’t want to spoil episodes. All I can say about it, is that it’s going to be longer than most of his usual episodes are. He rounded out the show with a quick Q&A where most of the questions centered around the subject matter of the panel. But he was also asked about what happened to his episode about Nintendo’s purchase of the Mariners.

Major League Baseball was immediately livid about it, and actually sent him a cease, and desist letter. So he tried to get into contact with them to iron things out. One representative liked the episode, and considered buying the episode. But only if things were cleared with Nintendo. Nintendo was fine with the episode. But when he went back to Major League Baseball, they ultimately decided they weren’t going to make any deals, and demanded the episode stay pulled. MLB is notorious for going after people, and fining them for seemingly innocuous things. In the 80’s they often sued people for taping games to a VHS tape to be viewed when they got home from work. All because they were that afraid, someone would try to sell the taped game. So as the potential debts piled up, Norman had to pull the episode.

The panel ended with another Gaming Historian Jeopardy match. This year’s contestants did battle for a free Gaming Historian T-Shirt. Most of the questions were new, though there were a few repeats from last year. At first one of the contestants was running away with it, but before long all three were in the running. When Final Jeopardy hit though, two contestants gave Celebrity Jeopardy SNL Skit-esque answers, allowing the victor to claim the prize.

After the panel ended The Game Chasers panel started, and they invited Norman to stick around for it. It was a really fun panel because it felt like a really good podcast. The banter was really good, and it led to a lot of hilarious road stories. One of the stories was about a debate over what really constitutes slippin’. Another was an argument Jay had with a cast member about what the official credentials for guacamole are. One moment that stuck out was when Norm told Jay about how great The Golden Girls is, and Jay thought he was being set up. But the audience reassured him it’s a timeless show. There were of course a few gross out stories that wouldn’t make the show. But overall it was a lot of laughter, and a lot of fun.

After that panel came the Connecticut Local YouTubers panel. This one featured my buddy Russ Lyman, Culture Dog, Miketendo, and Retroware TV’s own John Delia. After giving an overview of what each of them covers, they opened things up for questions. There was a lot of good advice in the panel, trying to know your audience.  How to discern constructive criticism from noise. Showing appreciation for those who appreciate you. I got to ask John about his experience with getting The Video Game Years on Amazon. He told us that the way the payments from Amazon work, is much better than the way it worked on YouTube. In a couple of months the show made more than it did on YouTube. This also led into the topic of finding new audiences. Because he found a lot of people on Amazon like to binge watch more than they do on YouTube. So a whole new group of people discovered it, and watched it.

Some of the challenges he ran into had a lot to do with closed captioning. Amazon requires every show creators put up include the feature. So getting the show on the service took hundreds of hours of added work. Once they got the captioning done, the show got rejected again because of the static images. So they had to edit out some of the static logos to get it ready. When it finally did get submitted in the right state, they still had to call Amazon, and explain everything they just went through. The company then looked, said “You’re right”, and launched it, where it has been a success.

Some of the other attendees then asked the panel if they would just move to Amazon, and the answers were no, because of the different groups who watch or listen. Culture Dog, and Miketendo brought up the importance of one’s authentic self. People can tell when you stray from it. Russ mentioned that even if you do a bunch of different content, there should be something that ties them together. As an example he noted how much of his Do It Yourself content references gaming. That means a few of the viewers who come to the channel for game stuff might check out some of the DIY episodes. Everyone on the panel talked about doing YouTube shows out of the love of the hobby over coming out of the gate looking to be an overnight success. For a variety of reasons.

After that wrapped up,  Joe Granato returned from last year’s convention with a major update on his NES Maker, and Mystic Searches, projects. He briefly showed off a trailer for his New 8-Bit Heroes documentary, and then jumped into the updates. He started out that process by explaining how the project started out. He, and his team found his old childhood ideas for an NES game, and decided to make that dream a reality. What they found in the process was just how complicated MOS 6502 assembly coding truly was, and after a short time found the project was going to take a very long time. So in the process they ended up coding their own editor to deal with mapping, objects, characters, and other assets.

So while using the tool to get the game made, they found potential in selling the editor as a standalone product when it’s completed. This will let people make their own NES games, and flash them to an actual NES Game Pak. Joe did concede there are some limits in it, as it was made to cater to RPG, and Adventure genres. But that people have demonstrated other genres can be done with it, though you may need to take up coding for some of that.

He also showed off some more of Mystic Searches, and the progress on it. The over world appears to be finished, and everything looks pretty tight. They’re shooting to get it out by early next year, and the three versions of the Game Pak were shown again this year. He also noted they’re also looking for a Steam release, and they’re in the process of getting a Nintendo Switch license. There aren’t any planned ports for other vintage platforms like The Commodore 64, Super Nintendo, or Atari platforms. Hopefully the final game, and utility turn out well. It is pretty apparent a lot of love has gone into making it thus far. There were even some real world locations referenced in the game’s over world. But keep an eye on this one. Mystic Searches, and NES Maker could be quite the homebrew titles when they come out.

I finished out the day by heading back down to do  some more hunting for the last hour or so. I stopped by Bijhan’s booth again, and he let me have a MOC Smash Mario Amiibo. Which was super cool of him. I was also a million times grateful to Norman Caruso. I stopped by his booth to pick up his Gaming Historian Blu Ray, and thank him for coming to the convention again. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I left my phone there like an idiot. I bumped into some of my pals in The Best Spuds, and played some WWF No Mercy before leaving the show. I couldn’t find my phone, but of course the convention center was closing up. So all I could do was quickly check the Lost, and Found before leaving. Of course the phone wasn’t there. Well when I got home, I found a message from my friend Antoinette in our trade group. Norman had found my phone, and asked around to see if anybody knew who owned it. She recognized it as mine, and tagged me. I’m super thankful to the both of them, as I’m not quite ready to go get a new one just yet.

That’s one of the best things this convention showcased to me this year. The wonderful sense of community here. People from all backgrounds coming together over a love of classic gaming. Every year I get to meet new people, and go to events. Even if you don’t see anything to buy, and you aren’t interested in the panels, there are tons of arcade games to play. There are a lot of  console, and computer games to play. There were even a host of tournaments hosted by my buddy Aldo this year. Including a big Overwatch tournament, Super Street Fighter II, Super Smash Bros. Wii U, and Mario Kart 64 among others.

They even had a couple of high-profile Cosplayers Midge Scully, and Maya Gagne there. I didn’t get a chance to see them, but they were there. Some other guests I didn’t get to see were Wood Hawker, and RGT85. Also Daniel Pesina came back with John Parrish this time. I also unfortunately didn’t get a chance to see them. If you’re not familiar with them, they were two of the motion capture actors in the earliest Mortal Kombat games. If you get the chance to see them you should.  Hopefully everyone returns next year, and I can rectify missing some of them.

Honestly as small as RetroWorld Expo is compared to larger conventions, it still has so much going on it’s impossible to see it all. Really, the only nitpick I really had this year, was the gap of time between the first night’s shutdown, and the after party I missed due to my own incompetence. Mainly because it breaks up the flow. There’s an hour-long window of nothing to do. I feel like if they could have either started the after party right away, or had a small panel to fill that gap problem

That said some of the stuff in the after party would have been fun. There was a drink, and draw event, one room had Culture Dog playing movies on LaserDisc, and then there was another spot for club music, and mingling. Again, in the grand scheme of things a very minor nitpick, and due to my own ineptitude didn’t matter anyway. The good vastly outweighed the bad this year. A part of me already can’t wait to see what they do next year.

ConnectiCon 2017 Recap

Have you missed me? Well, I’m back after a packed three-day weekend. It was this year’s ConnectiCon, one of the higher profile conventions in my neck of the woods. For those who don’t know, it’s a three-day convention that aspires to be as varied as possible. The show makes an attempt to have representation from comics, anime’, film, television, books, online personalities, and gaming.

Last year’s show was a tough act to follow, as it had many more recognizable names to the casual observer. But there were plenty of good, and even great things for visitors to look forward to this year. Operationally, I can only speak as a paying visitor, but I saw improvements in terms of managing lines, addressing concerns, and trying to make things a bit easier to navigate. Getting my weekend pass was pretty seamless. The pre-registration line was easier to find. Wait times went down, and it looked like even though paying at the door was more complicated, I didn’t really see any outbursts from customers about it.

 

Line management to get into panels was easier to follow. There were a couple of panels that probably should have been scheduled in bigger rooms though, as a number of the guests they had, were pretty big draws. If you didn’t find out about some of them early enough, you weren’t getting in. Among them being Sylvester McCoy (Dr. Who), Jeremy Shada (Adventure Time), Courtenay Taylor (Regular Show), the cast of The Nostalgia Critic, Andre Meadows (Black Nerd Comedy), and Team Four Star (Dragon Ball Z Abridged). That being said, there were still plenty of great panels in addition to these, hosted by some talent some may not have been aware of.

Friday

My first day went pretty swimmingly. After waiting in a long, but quick-moving line, I had my badge, and began walking the floor. I started out with the Opening Ceremony panel, where there were a few segments covering the general behavioral rules, reminders to stay hydrated in the heat, and a fun game of Mad Libs. They also introduced Bruce Nesmith of Bethesda, who was doing a game industry panel. Unfortunately it was one of many panels I didn’t get into. I also missed the Andre Meadows panel that day due to panel overlap.  As I mentioned earlier, while there may not have been as many big names this year, there were still a ton of great panels. I managed to get into the Art The Hypnotist panel this year. It was a very interesting one. Hypnotism isn’t something I’m very knowledgeable about. Up until this panel, I’d only had a bare-bones, stereotypical movie understanding of what exactly it entails. I’m not a sudden expert on it now either. But I did get a bit of entertainment, and education out of it.

Art started out by explaining the process. Everyone would be tired out, and put into a sleepy state through a combination of soft music, and meditation. Then he would go around the room, find people who were in a deeper sleep state, and ask them if they were comfortable going on stage. Eventually, when there were enough volunteers the show began. Over the course of a couple of hours, Art would demonstrate that he could make them think they didn’t know the number 9, which perplexed the volunteers. There was also a point in which three volunteers were asked to go on stage in front of the hypnotized, and the subjects were made more or less attractive using the words Iced Tea, and Beer.  There were a bunch of other tricks too. But the great thing here, is that by the end all of the volunteers would remember everything, and everyone in the room was in on it. So it was funny, and exciting. But it also didn’t leave anybody feeling embarrassed or mortified. If he ever does a show near you, check it out. It’s something different from the norm. At least it was for me. My buddy Dan from The Best Spuds was also there, and he loved every minute of it.

I spent a good amount of time after that panel checking out the gaming section, and this was greatly expanded this year. Not only were there even more arcade games than last year, they even added some pinball machines to the mix. So I spent a few times over the weekend playing the Simpson’s Pinball Party Machine, Double Dragon, and Street Fighter II. They also had a pretty cool Gundam themed fighting game I’d never seen before. So that was pretty awesome. Of course I was surprised, and overjoyed to see one of the many PS4’s they had set up was running Rogue Stormers. If you still haven’t played this one yet, you really should.

This year the convention also coincided with Hartford Riverfest  So the Best Spuds, and I checked out some of the food trucks in attendance. We found one called Chompers, that served bacon cheeseburgers, and chicken parmesan in deep-fried ball form. They’re deceptive in that the size of them makes you think one order isn’t going to be enough. One order really is. But I’m still glad I bought one of each kind. They were awesome.

Saturday

On Saturday, I managed to get into a couple of panels. The first being the Nostalgia Critic Q&A panel. Doug Walker has said that ConnectiCon is one of his favorite conventions to attend, and so this year he returned along with his Father Barney, Brother Rob, Tamara Chambers, Jim Jarosz, and Malcom Ray. But there was also a surprise appearance from Andre Meadows who would arrive before Malcom arrived, as Malcom was feeling a little under the weather. As in previous years, fans got to ask questions to the cast about the show, which is in its tenth year. As well as any other questions. There were some you’d expect, and some you wouldn’t. But the best part of the panel was when a nervous child was reassured by a kind Doug who traded places with him. The kid sat at the desk with the other Channel Awesome players, and Doug would sit in the audience while the kid asked everyone his question. Which escapes me as of this writing. But it was a kind moment.

One fan asked the group what their favorite guilty pleasures were, which elicited a number of answers. The first Transformers movie. Moulin Rouge. Watching a child do better at running a panel than Doug Walker. (That was Rob Walker’s answer.) But through it all, the panelists were very kind, and appreciative of the fandom.

After the Nostalgia Critic panel I found a short panel on Hip Hop music. Basically, it was a short history of the genre, and some of its subgenres. But later in the panel it covered some newer subgenres like Nerdcore, as well as some of the experimentation going on in some of the more obscure circles of Hip Hop. Overall it was pretty decent for anybody looking to get more into the genre. Later on I would get into a content creation panel hosted by Mark “Cornshaq” Davis the 3rd. Which was a very insightful look at getting a foothold in making YouTube video content. But the really great takeaway from it, was just how much of the knowledge presented is applicable to most any creative endeavor. How to interact with readers/viewers/etc. properly. How to get the word out, and advertise without coming off as desperate. Digging deep, and having the courage to try new things. Differentiating between genuine criticism, and those who just want to be jerks. Listening to genuine criticism. Differentiation. Links to other resources. The importance of branding. How seemingly small, unimportant details can actually be a great assistance at times. As well as practices to avoid! Obviously, for the purposes of a recap, I can’t go into great length here, but there was a lot of useful information. If you like game content in video form, check out his channel too. It’s pretty good stuff, and he often mentions things you may not be aware of.

After the panel, I got a chance to talk a bit more with Cornshaq, and the guys over at Nerdfit Network. We just had fun talking conventions, pro wrestling, and craft beer for a while. I had a really fun time talking about the events leading into WWE’s Great Balls Of Fire Pay-Per-View. Like the sometimes hilarious over-the-top levels of violence between Roman Reigns, and Braun Strowman. Like when Braun tipped an ambulance over with Roman inside. All of whom were very kind, and friendly.  If you haven’t seen any of their material, give them a shot. They were a really swell group of people.

Speaking of swell people, when I was in the dealer area, I met some of the creators from Darby Pop. They were very cool people, and they have some interesting spins on traditional comic book themes. Writer Jeff Kline was even kind enough to sign the Indestructible trade I picked up at their booth. It’s a really cool premise, about a man who is mistakenly identified as a super hero, and is suddenly thrown into a world of celebrity. All the while wondering how he is going to last before everybody learns the truth. I haven’t gotten that far into it yet, but so far I really like what I’ve read. The artwork is pretty slick too. You can find their stuff online if it sounds like something you’d be interested in checking out for yourself.

 

Every year that I make it out to ConnectiCon I look forward to meeting up with friends at the City Steam Brewery. They make some of my favorite beer, so when their old Brewmaster retired, his successor had a tall order to fill. Well since then, the current Brewmaster has made a bunch of new recipes. On top of that, the food in their restaurant is as awesome as ever. I tried their new IPAs, Jungle Crush, and Woo! (Which immediately made me remember The Nature Boy Ric Flair.). Both of which were excellent, though the fruity, citrus notes in Woo!, make for one of the best new things I’ve tried recently. I can only hope they start bottling, canning it, and getting distributors to pick it up. It is really good. Also really good was the Macaroni & Cheese Cheeseburger.

Sunday

Sunday was surprising because it was a much shorter day than previous years. For all intents, and purposes the day was over by 3pm even though the Convention Center was open until 6pm. But that being said, I did get some panels squeezed in. The biggest being the Team Four Star all-ages panel. These guys are hilarious online, but even funnier in person. I was unable to get into their 18+ panel the prior Friday,  but this panel was still really good. It was another Question, and Answer format. But there were a lot of varied questions this time around. Not only about their work on the long running Dragon Ball Z Abridged series, but about what is coming next. As the DBZ material begins to run dry, the group is looking to branch out into more original series. They didn’t give much in the way of details. But after getting to ask them if they had considered doing mash-ups or skits like Nicolas Cage as Robocop, Anthony Sardinha immediately did a spot on impersonation. Scott Frerichs also stated they’re steering away from doing much with Dragon Ball Super, as the show is newer, and involves a lot more red tape. Throughout the panel there were many jokes, character voice gags, and friendly banter. A lot of fun.

After that panel, I made it into Jay Little’s panel on making gaming more accessible. Which was pretty insightful. He’s been designing both video games, and table top board games for over 20 years, as well as teaching design in Wisconsin. The experience came through in the panel.The presentation went over how creators could make steps toward making design decisions that would make things more palatable to those with a disability. Or taking balance into consideration to make things deep enough for die-hard fans, but not so difficult to turn off any potential new players. As well as making games more appealing to players of all stripes, and backgrounds. There were also some figures about how much more a game’s development costs rise when a team decides to add these features further along in development, rather than including them in the planning stages. For anybody who follows the creative or business end of video games, it was a really good panel. If he’s slated to give one of these panels at a convention in your area, you should check it out.

My day closed out with a cool panel about creating pixel art. It was hosted by the same person who gave a tutorial on creating levels for the original DOOM at last year’s ConnectiCon. It was an interesting look at the medium, and the creative benefits of limited color palettes in retro games. Be they the JRPGs that graced the NES, the deep adventures that awaited on the Super NES, and Sega Genesis. Or even the vintage computers like the Commodore 64, or Atari ST. There were even some examples of creating sprite sheets for animation, and layering.

After the final panel, I took a final run through the dealer’s area, and gaming area. I didn’t get into as many panels as I would have liked this year. But while there weren’t as many celebrities this year, there were still a lot of excellent guests. Steve Lavigne was there. He did a lot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stuff for Mirage, and Playmates. He still does. Guy GilChrist was there. He’s done a ton of work for Jim Henson. I didn’t get to meet either of them either. But the point being, there were still a lot of interesting people. Even if meeting creators or celebrities wasn’t your thing, there were other things to do. the RKO Army Shadowcast show came back again. The Cosplay Death match was back, and if you were over 21 you could buy beer while watching it.  The annual AMV contest, and masquerade were back too. And if all else failed, there were the karaoke, and expanded gaming areas to take part in.

Still, there were a number of workshops, and panels from previous years that didn’t return this year. So for some attendees things might not have been as exciting as in previous years. Hopefully next year retains the pluses of this year’s event, and brings back more of the stuff that this year didn’t seem to have. I was also perplexed that the program book for this year didn’t list any of the panel descriptions or schedules. The book just directed readers to look at the times on their computers, tablets, and phones. The thing is, this isn’t always as convenient as a book, and not everyone has a modern smart phone. Those with a prepaid phone, or without a phone at all, basically had to walk to every room in the building to see what panels were going on. Some of the panel titles weren’t listed on Friday too. Which meant that if you didn’t have your phone, or if it was out of battery power, you couldn’t see what panel was happening.  It was the one big grievance I had with the show this year. Even if it hadn’t affected me, it still would have affected some.  That said, I still had a fun three-day break from every day life. So overall I can’t complain too much. 2017 wasn’t as good as 2016. But it was still worth the annual commute to Hartford.

10 Beers that pair well with video games

This time around I wanted to do something a little bit different. Every now, and again Mark over at Classic Game Room has reviewed beer in between some of his regular episodes.  This gave me an idea a while ago. Since I work with beer, and I review video games on this blog I’ve thought about the kinds I’ve tried over the years, and which ones really seemed to hit the spot during a gaming session. Don’t worry, I’m not transitioning the blog into a weird Cracked clone, that nobody will read. Rather, this is a part one, of a two-part one-off project. I haven’t abandoned reviews. So you can calm down, and breathe a sigh of relief. After this article, I’ll go down a list of sodas. Because not everybody enjoys beer, and even those who do like to switch it up from time to time. Obviously this entry is geared to those who are over 21, so if you’re underage you should skip this article, and check out the list of sodas when that comes out instead.

Keep in mind this is not a *TOP* ten. These are just ten that I happen to really like. There are a TON of really good ones not on this list that are just as good. Again there are also a ton I’ve never had. Also, not all of these will be available in your area. Many breweries are regional. So unless you’re able to go all over the world all of the time, you won’t see some of them. But hey, the inverse is also true. There are thousands of beers I’ll never see in my lifetime. I also apologize in advance, I don’t have photos for every entry on the list. Be that as it may, I’m going to kick things off.

10. Ballast Point Commodore Stout

Seeing how I’m a big Commodore fan (I mean come on, my blog title is a C64 reference!) The name automatically drew me to the bottle. But the art will show you that the brewery was referencing the Naval rank, as evidenced by the skeleton sailing a ship. Be that as it may, this stout really does go nicely with a play through of The Great Giana Sisters, or a few games of Mail Order Monsters with a friend. It’s got the heft you would expect the texture of a stout to have. Plus it has a delicious roast coffee aftertaste. There are some vanilla notes in there too, but not enough to overpower the flavor of the beer. It’s also around 6.5% ABV, so while it’s above the 5% ABV of a typical beer, you aren’t going to be unable to function after one. It’s not one of the cheaper options here, as Ballast Point tends to command a premium. But it is pretty nice to break out once in a while.

09. New Holland Hoptronix Double IPA

They should have called this Hop Invaders. Because the first thing you will see on the box is a love letter to Space Invaders. It features some really fun pixel art, with hops replacing the aliens, and an 8-bit beer bottle in lieu of a cannon.  As for the beer itself, this is a Double IPA. As such there will be some bitterness as that is indicative of the style. However, this goes neither the ultra-bitter route nor does it go the dry, yet juicy route. Instead, as the description on the box says, it goes for a dank approach. It has elements of bitterness, and dryness. It stands out for being different. At 9% ABV it’s a bit more potent than some of the other ones in the list. But still complements Atari 2600 night wonderfully. Grab the paddles, and that copy of Warlords!

08. City Steam Naughty Nurse Amber Ale

Here we go. Sometimes you want a great all around beer. A big cut above the mass market stuff you can have any time. But also not something overly complicated. Naughty Nurse fits that bill perfectly. It’s an amber-colored ale, giving you a rich flavor thanks to the combination of English hops, and crystal malt. It has a very distinct aftertaste, and it is neither too heavy or light feeling. It’s just good. Sometimes good is all you need. And, at 5.5% ABV you can have a couple of them whether you’re going for the high score on Centipede, or exploring the countryside in The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.

07. Lagunitas The Waldos Ale

This one is kind of cheating because you can’t get it all of the time. Lagunitas puts this one out under their One Hitter series which means they make one small run, and then they don’t make it again until the following year. It’s out now of this writing, but since it’s a small run, you may have to check a few places before finding it. Assuming you can find it. If you do though, it’s worth picking up. It has a fruity quality to it, and tastes like nothing else. At least nothing I’ve tried. There is also a very mild burn to it which may sound weird until you realize it has an 11.9% ABV. Suffice it to say, you’ll really only want to have one of these on game night. But you’ll enjoy nursing it along to many rounds of the re-release of Street Fighter II on the Switch on game night in a few weeks. That is if you don’t drink them all before then.

06. Bear Republic Racer #5 IPA

This is one of the ones Mark Bussler reviewed, and it isn’t something distributed in my area. But luckily for me, going over the State line brings me to an area where it is. Upon having some, I have to say Mark was spot on in his review. It is light, crisp, and delicious. it’s got a nice balance of bitterness, and citrus notes. It isn’t potent. It is a good, reliable Californian IPA that goes very well with a game of Ribbit King against your friends. Distribution for this one is spotty, (unless you’re on the west coast) but if you do see it in your area, check it out.

05. Thomas Hooker #NoFilter IPA

This. This is something you’ll want to check out if you’re in CT, MA, or PA (They’re small, and don’t have a massive distribution right now) but the hashtag beer is splendid. It has a very citrus fruit flavor profile thanks to the fact it isn’t filtered. It’s very cloudy. If you pour it in a pint glass you won’t see through it. It’s really good, and punches you with its juicy flavor. It’s also the perfect thing to break out when you have your next BYOB LAN party for hours of Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, death matches, and Serious Sam in 16 player co-op. Unfortunately, it’s short packed. So  a store might only get 1 case of the #NoFilter. But if you can find a six-pack, check it out. It’s pretty great.

04. Alpine Maharaja Double IPA

Here’s another rare one on the list. But it’s one of the few unicorns worthy of the hype. At 10% ABV The King will probably get you drunk pretty fast. But it tastes great doing it. It takes a similar route the Hoptronix does, being neither too bitter or too citrusy. But between the unique blend of hops, and spices it comes off as completely different. The higher ABV does make it a tad hefty. But not enough to ruin it.  This one could potentially be popular with Entropist mains in the upcoming Mirage: Arcane Warfare. Assuming the final game is as fun, and addictive as Chivalry: Medieval Warfare was when it came out.

03. Pipeworks Blood Of The Unicorn Hoppy Red Ale

Pipeworks is a great outfit out of Chicago, and pretty much everything they make is pretty good. This one stands out though because it has elements of both a red amber ale, and an IPA. As such you’ll get some bitterness, as well as some nice malty flavor. it’s also around 6% ABV so this is something you can have a couple of without knocking yourself out or making yourself sick. The package art is also really cool. Perfect beer for a summer day on the deck trying to get that high score in Robot Unicorn Attack.

02. Relic Dreamrise Double IPA

Relic is a very small outfit out of Plainville CT, and not every beer they make is always available. They change-up the line up every few months, presumably to not over produce any one beverage. That said, most of them are pretty good like their Dreamrise Double IPA. It veers more toward the citrus end of IPAs, with a very rich taste without feeling too heavy. At 8% ABV it isn’t overly powerful, allowing you to enjoy it while playing through the classic Mega Man game of your choice.

01. City Steam Naughty Nurse IPA

This one is my current favorite beer, and has held that title almost as long as it’s been out. It is a terrific IPA. It has just the right amount of bitterness. It has some crystal malt like its amber sister. It has a citrusy aroma, and after taste on the back-end. Similar to the Racer #5, it too, has a light body. It’s a refreshing IPA. It won’t be everyone’s favorite. I’ve shared it with some who feel it’s good, but not great. But I’ve also shared it with many who loved it as much as I do. It’s around 6.5% ABV too, so it strikes a nice balance of profile, and potency. If you come out here for Retro World Expo be sure to visit City Steam’s brewery pub, and have some. It pairs well with everything from Berzerk to Super Mario World to The Wonderful 101. It’s also a nice companion to any party game. Like Dokapon Kingdom or Wario Ware Smooth Moves.

So there you go! Again, half of these you may not be able to find in your area, but if you do see any of these, give them a spin. And if there’s a beer you really enjoy cracking open during a marathon of Overwatch matches, let the world know below! Next time, we’ll go over some really good colas!

Retro World Expo 2016 Recap

Last year’s inaugural Retro World Expo was a rousing success. It gave fans in New England a chance to meet YouTube celebrities, gorge on classic gaming, and mingle with thousands of fans. Not to mention the droves of exhibitors who showed up to sell their products. It was a great time last year.

Well, that success translated into an even better convention this year. This time the event took the course of a weekend, rather than one single day. Again, there were some great guests. Returning from last year, were  many of Retroware’s finest. Creators Lance Cortez, and John Delia were back, along with”Pixel” Dan Eardley, The Gaming Historian (Norman Caruso), and The Game Chasers. But joining them were Pat “The NES Punk” Conti,  the creators of Stop Skeletons From Fighting, and Mortal Kombat’s own Daniel Pesina.  Josh Tsui also made an appearance. He was one of Midway’s Mortal Kombat 4 designers. These days he heads up Robomodo, a small developer known for mobile. But they’ve also done some of the later Tony Hawk games.

But there were even more guests! Nick Mueeler, and Ste Kulou were there. They began HD Retrovision, a company known for component cables for old systems. They returned this year with Robert Neal of RetroRGB fame. They were there educating fans on signal types, cable types, the differences between them, and performance.

Wood Hawker was back again too. You may know him from his show The Game Quest where he travels the world hunting for games. He’s even done a number of crossovers with some of the biggest names on YouTube.

Antoine Clerc Renaud also made an appearance this year. He wrote much of the Complete History of Coleco, a book about the company behind the Colecovision. As well as the Adam, and several memorable toy lines.

Eric Lappe of The Video Game Years fame was also there, as well as cover sensation Banjo Guy Ollie! Rounding things out were RF Generation who have a database archive site where you can pull up information about games for a vast variety of platforms. They also do a solid podcast.

Beyond the guests were a host of bands who played shows throughout the two days in the arcade area. Epic Game Music was the most popular, but Lame Genie, The World Is Square, and You Bred Raptors were also heard during the convention. All of the bands absolutely crushed it, gracing the arcade with driving blends of hard rock, and (in the case of TWIS) folk. On the main show floor, Radlib was playing throughout both days.

The arcade was bursting with classics this year. Centipede, Missile Command, Asteroids Deluxe, Crystal Castles, and The Star Wars Arcade game were on hand representing classic Atari. Representing Nintendo’s arcade heyday were Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye. Sega classics were there too. Turbo Outrun, After Burner, Thunder Blade, and Shinobi. There were a lot more games on hand beyond even those! Taito’s Jungle King/Hunt. Konami’s Gyruss, and Frogger. Capcom’s Final Fight, Street Fighter II CE, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Knights Of The Round, and Ghouls N’ Ghosts. Still need more? On the Midway/Williams front NARC, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat III, and Mortal Kombat IV could be seen. Namco’s Ms. Pac-Man was also on free play.

The arcade also had a pretty decent selection of Pinball machines. I couldn’t get them all listed, but the Nightmare On Elm Street machine was especially fun to play. Even though I’m terrible at pinball, I had fun failing miserably. Thanks in part to the great sound effects, challenging design, and fantastic aesthetic.

The console game room also returned, though this time it was given a different area, rather than share the floor space of the arcade with the cabinets. Again, there were a lot of great classic systems set up. Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis,  Atari Jaguar, and other old systems were prevalent. Although I didn’t see as many pre NES game consoles this year. A little disappointing for old timers like me, but the plethora of vintage arcade machines more than made up for it.

The console area also had a lot of tournaments run by Game Haven, which is this really cool LAN center in Norwalk, CT. They let you go in with friends, and rent time on computers, and consoles for tournaments, practice, or just to play for fun with friends in a local environment. So having them run the tournament ladders seemed like a good fit. There were tournaments for NHL ’94, and NBA Jam on the Genesis. A Mortal Kombat II tournament, and Super Street Fighter II tournament on the Super NES. For the competitive wrestling fan, there was also a WWF No Mercy tournament on the Nintendo 64. There was even a bonus challenge centered around the infamous E.T. The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.

Plus on top of all of these, was a Super Smash Bros. 4 tournament, which drew quite the following at the show. This one was hosted by Legacy Tournaments which specializes in regional Smash Tournaments.

Of course there were also countless returning vendors. But among them were a couple of indie developers showing off some of their upcoming games. The first of these was a company called Giant Evil Robot. They were showing off a game called Mecha-Tokyo Rush. The version at the show was a nearly final version in a demo mode. Mecha-Tokyo Rush is an endless runner. But to set it apart from the plethora of other endless runners on the market, it implements elements of the Mega Man games. So you’ll be able to select stages, earn items from boss fights, and blast robots. But, being an endless runner you never bother with moving. The game just moves along, and you time your jumps accordingly. But you’ll do so while shooting . Visually, the version at the show didn’t look half bad. It had a decent 16-bit look to it. The full game will let players choose different characters, and items. The keys on the demo laptop weren’t ideal so I asked the representative if it would allow players to use a game pad, and I was told they may add functionality down the line. At launch it won’t. The game will be a F2P game with things you can unlock with game credit. I wasn’t given any specifics about it. The game does look a cut above some other F2P stuff you may have tried, so hopefully the final game turns out well.

The other developer booth was interesting because it was both about a documentary, and an upcoming game. The New 8-Bit Heroes is the documentary. It follows the designer of a new game called Mystic Searches, and the progress of developing the game. That designer’s name is Joe Granato. He found old design documents he made as a kid, and decided to make his childhood dream game. But here’s where things get really engrossing. The game was made to run on an NES. The NES like a lot of platforms in the 1980’s ran on a MOS 6502 processor, or variant. The Atari 2600, NES, Commodore 64, and many other platforms used it. Back then, most programs were written in assembly language, and translated into machine language. Which meant they had to be written in a language like PASCAL  or a complicated Hex system, and pretty much everything had to be coded in. Even the graphics, and sound.

These days, most games run on an engine. Many games share one. Unreal Engine, Unity, and others are used by countless games, which lessens some of the workload as an engine does a lot of background work freeing up programmers, artists, etc. to focus on other things. That’s probably an oversimplification on my part, but the point is, this makes things easier.

Anyway, during the course of making Mystic Searches, the designers quickly realized how long writing a game in  6502 assembly language was going to take. So they wrote their own Graphic User Interfaces for things. Things like placing graphics tiles. Things like attributing properties to objects. Eventually, they had enough GUIs made that they essentially built their own game engine!

So they’re going to be launching a Kickstarter for the engine. Not only will it let end users build a game with the included assets, but advanced users can import their own sprites, music, and content. It’s simple enough that an average person can make something on their own. But deep enough that aspiring developers can make something very involved. The hope is that the final revision will let people do different genres. RPGs, Shmups, Platformers, and more. But the most exciting part of all of this is that the program will allow end users to flash their games to an actual NES Game Pak!

They had a working prototype set up at the convention so that show goers could check it out for themselves. After trying it out, I was very impressed with what I was shown. I grew up typing game programs out of magazines in BASIC, or into Hex address compilers. Suffice it to say, I was pretty terrible at it. Even though technically all of the work (aside from hours typing it in) was already done for the reader.Plus playing a game, is more fun than typing in a game. But here, the tools, while still requiring a bit of learning, and experimenting, were still understandable. You don’t need to know how to code anything in order to use it. It reminded me a lot of using map editors for the original DOOM. Or games like the Shoot ’em up Construction Kit.

I asked a few questions during my time with it, and got a few details in the answers. I asked if there were any plans to have a business level license for other developers, and was told there really wouldn’t be. Anyone can pretty much buy the utility, and do what they want. The license does say however, that anyone who wants to sell a game they make with the utility cannot use any of the utility’s assets. Meaning they have to draw all their own sprites, background art, etc., as well as write their own music. The reason being that the utility was used to make Mystic Searches, and as such the assets are intrinsically tied to that IP.

But they want as many developers, and hobbyists as possible to use the product. So they aren’t looking to have the typical Business, and Consumer licenses many other software utilities do.

I asked if there was a way to import one’s own content, or even piggyback their own code onto the utility, and was told one can definitely do it. They really want the product to be as open as possible while keeping things simplified for beginners.

Another person asked about pricing. Nothing is set in stone, so they didn’t have a finalized price at the time of the show, but they were shooting for a sub $100 mark. This would give the customer the hardware to make their NES Game Pak when they were ready. They also said they may have one SKU for just the software utility, and a separate one for the hardware. They added, that there would be a list of suppliers for the hardware so that if one doesn’t want to buy it all from the developer, they can get the hardware elsewhere if they wanted to. Mystic Searches is shooting for a holiday release, while the utility release isn’t as concrete.

I asked about any plans for retailers, and was told they were discussing ways to possibly have a program with small businesses to print future games on demand. This could take some risk away as a small store wouldn’t have to buy a case of copies of Mystic Searches or future titles. Instead the store could print as few or as many as they needed. This would be an entirely different venture than the utility they were showing off however.

If the final products turn out as well as what I saw during the show, the homebrew community is going to be very pleased. Mystic Searches is looking to be a really good send up of games like The Legend Of Zelda, Ys I+II, and Crystalis. It’s also coming out in three different Game Pak casings. A standard gray color for $40. A black color with custom artwork by Morgan Davidson will set you back $64. Finally, there’s the limited edition wood grain version, which brings a hint of Atari 2600 heavy sixer to the Nintendo Entertainment System. This one is an expensive $128 as it is hand carved. Aside from the special cartridges it seems about in line with what most other homebrew games cost.

There were a lot of panels this year, and I managed to get into three of them. The first of which was The Gaming Historian panel with Norman Caruso. This year, he did a live entry into The Gaming Historian series where he talked about the making of the infamous Super Mario Bros. movie. He went over many things that happened behind the scenes. Tension between the cast, and the directors. The constant rewrites to the script, some of which even happened during filming, and of course Nintendo’s involvement in the film.

After the history lesson, Norman took volunteers for another game of Video Game History Jeopardy. This year I was actually selected as a contestant! Competition was stiff though, as both of my opponents were very keen. One of them could have been a professor when it came to Sonic The Hedgehog which was one of the categories. After a very exciting game came the final Jeopardy question that nobody got right. But luck shined on me when it turned out my two opponents put everything on the line, and I had put all but one dollar on the line. I suppose watching a lot of Jeopardy as a kid paid off.

After the Jeopardy game, Norman took a quick Q & A session. One of the questions that stood out was when a fan asked what had happened to The Nintendo buyout of the Mariners episode of The Gaming Historian. Apparently it wasn’t Nintendo that had tied things up. It was the MLB. But not all hope for the episode is lost, both parties are trying to work things out.

The second panel I managed to get into was Pixel Dan’s panel. Dan is the proprietor of a YouTube channel where he reviews toys. He also goes to toy shows all around the country, and interviews toy designers, and toy company representatives about upcoming toys. In the panel he talked about some of the more esoteric toy lines of the 80’s, and 90’s. Some of the stand outs were Food Fighters, a line where food items take the roles of opposing armies. He also brought up the Rock Lords line, a subset of the Go Bots line where robot warriors turned into rocks as opposed to vehicles. He also gave overviews to Army Ants, a line of army themed ant figurines  and Computer Warriors. This was an interesting if failed line of toys that transformed ordinary household items into secret military installations, and vehicles.

Rounding things out were the Stone Protectors, a line that combined the action of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with the classic wishing troll dolls. The end product was a group of Troll superheroes who fought aliens. The toys also had flintlock embedded in them so that when you used their action feature you could see sparks light up the gems in their chests!

It was a nostalgic look back at a time when toy companies were a lot more willing to take chances. A time when people designing toys had a lot more creative, and artistic freedom. These days companies are more risk averse since they no longer only have to compete with each other, but with game, and tech companies too. This results in a large reliance on licensed IPs like movies.

After looking at some great toy lines, Dan brought in Norman Caruso to show off the premier episode of From Plastic To Pixels. It’s a new project the two are working on, highlighting video games that have been based on toys. The first episode showcases the M.U.S.C.L.E. NES game.  They mentioned some of the games in future episodes, but you’ll have to watch the show to see what they are.

The third panel I attended on Saturday was Pat Contri’s. Pat talked a bit about his new book,  Ultimate Nintendo: Guide To The NES Library 1985 – 1995.  In it, you’ll find every commercially produced game ever made for the console. Pat has painstakingly collected, and rated each title as well as given a rarity rating to each title. The titles don’t just end with the games Nintendo licensed. He included unlicensed games, and even the European PAL territory exclusives.

I asked him how long it took to make, because the production values ate amazing. He said it took him three years to do, and it had an impact on his primary projects like Pat The NES Punk episodes. Another person in attendance asked him if he would be doing a Super Nintendo guide. He didn’t rule it out entirely, but it isn’t anything pending right now. He did reveal however that there is a companion app being made for smart phones. The app will have the information in the book, as well as ties to online price guides.

At the end of the panel Pat selected fans to take the Pat The NES Punk challenge. There were three sets of fans put in one on one match ups. My friend Jordan managed to get into the first challenge, where he played Sky Kid against an opponent. There was an issue with the second controller though so instead the challenge was changed to Ghosts N’ Goblins. Whoever got the furthest on one life would be the victor. Jordan won this handily by getting to the first boss.

The second challenge was a Vs. Excitebike matchup on the Famicom Disk System. The players in this round kept pace with one another going back, and forth a lot in a one lap race. The final challenge was an entertaining bout of two player Donkey Kong Jr. Math. The winners each received a digital version of Pat’s new book, and the losers won a bad game to rip on.

At the end of the first day there was also an auction for some really cool gaming items. A few of the arcade cabinets in the arcade were up for auction. After these were auctioned off, things moved into the panel room, and continued. Some of the items that went for huge money included old storefront Nintendo, Sega, and Sony neon signs. Some of these went for several hundred dollars. The first three Mega Man games were  sold, as well as the very rare Flintstones Surprise At Dino Peak NES Game Pak. This game went for $750, which is actually a little bit lower than the current average online price. I was really excited to see a boxed Commodore 128, and 1571 disk drive. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to be the winner of said computer. But it was great getting to see one  in such great condition. The winner also won an auction for the Coleco Adam computer.

After that was a karaoke session in the arcade room to close out the day.

Sunday, there were a few other panels including one with the Game Chasers. I unfortunately was unable to make it back in time for that panel. But I was surprised to see pro wrestling legend Tony Atlas walking the floor! He was very cordial, and was willing to make a second attempt at taking a photo when I had an issue with my camera. I bought a signed print from him. Really awesome experience.

I got the opportunity to talk to Pixel Dan, Norman Caruso, and Pat Contri over the course of the show as well. All of them were very kind, and very cool. If you haven’t seen any of their material definitely check it out. They’re very good at what they do. I also picked up Pat’s book, and I can say it is worth every penny. As I said earlier, it is a very impressive guide for anybody who likes to go back, and play or collect NES games.

Speaking of picking things up, there were a lot of excellent vendors at the show this year. Two Nerds returned from last year, selling some awesome screen printed glassware. Last year I’d gotten a great Samus Aran beer stein, which I use all of the time. I introduced one of my friends to their rep, and he immediately bought a Jack Skellington themed glass for his many servings of Pepsi.

Of course, Retro Games Plus was back, and if you’re ever in Connecticut it is always worth visiting their store for old games. They have some of the best selection, and pricing in the area. Level 01 was also present again, as well as one of the area Game Xchange  franchisees. These are also pretty good places to go hunting. Another area small business called 1UP was there as well. Which I can also recommend. It’s run by a husband, and wife duo who try to get out to as many conventions as possible. I’ve gotten things from them before, and it has always been in great condition.

But there were also a TON of new vendors this time around with a lot of great stuff. Some of which has generally been impossible for me to find locally. I was pleasantly surprised to find many of them had a great assortment of Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, and other platforms from the early days many of us grew up in.  My buddy Chris Trentham was there with a booth of his own. I got some nice deals on some Commodore 64 cartridges, as well as a copy of the scarce Frogger II for the Atari 2600.

From one of the vendors (I feel bad that I can’t remember every one of them) I managed to snag a copy of Tac-Scan, and Jr. Pac-Man for my Atari 2600 collection, and I also found a great deal on the VCS version of Congo Bongo from of all vendors, a graphic design vendor called  DSquared. One of their artists, Doug Chapel was selling some Atari cartridges in addition to his artwork. We talked about VCS collecting, VCS homebrew for a few minutes. He does some nice stuff. If you need some custom art give their site a look.

While on the subject of art, there were a lot of artists among the vendors this year as well. Some of the other standouts were Justm3hStudios, an artist who does a lot of custom buttons, and sketches. A guy named Chris Vales was doing some impressive Overwatch themed work, and Tom Ryan Studios was there. I saw him previously at ConnectiCon. Another fantastic art duo you might want to check out is  East Of Haven. They had some terrific pencil work on display, and were doing commissions.

Russ Lyman was on the floor getting some footage for his always fun, YouTube channel, and he may have received a few surprise cameos for an upcoming video. I also spent some time talking about games far worse than E.T.  with the terrific guys from RF Generation. Stuff like the Data Design Interactive stuff on the Wii for instance.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see or do everything. There was so much this year. I didn’t even mention the cosplay contest or the Table top gaming.  I really hope this year was more successful than last year, because this convention has the potential to become an annual tradition. It could also become as big as some of the other major conventions in time. It was a blast of a weekend, and with any luck at all I’ll be visiting again in 2017.

ConnectiCon 2016 Recap

Ah, ConnectiCon. As a resident of CT, it has become my annual mini-vacation. It isn’t too expensive as long as you buy your passes early. If you’re willing to commute, the cost of gas, and convention center parking is far less than area hotel fare. Plus it always seems to coincide with other fun events in Hartford, so there’s generally enough to do most of the time. There are usually a pretty nice list of celebrities, internet personalities, writers, and artists to meet. There are a lot of panels, cosplayers, rooms devoted to gaming, and tournaments to enter.

This year they had a few changes. First, the convention center changed its hours. In previous years, events the first two days went on to 10pm or later. This year the convention center closed up shop at 9pm. There were after hours events in the area hotels, and restaurants. But attendees used to late night panels would find themselves disappointed. It probably wasn’t the convention’s doing. But they’ll sadly get some of the blame. One thing they could have organized better were the lines during the Friday opening. In my experience, the first few staff members I talked to didn’t explain where the pre-registration line was very well. Both prepaid, and yet-to-pay lines were in the garage. I spent a confusing few moments until someone led a rallying cry that gathered those of us who pre-registered online, into the proper line.

But beyond that, I really didn’t have too much to complain about over my three days. None of the staff came off as snippy or ornery. Even in that confusion.

I pretty much stick to panels at conventions. They’re typically the most interesting parts of a convention to me. Though I did spend some time getting photos of some of the more impressive cosplays I bumped into. There were a lot of pretty good ones this year. Sadly my camera’s motor decided to start acting up on me this year. So I didn’t get the number of photos I would have liked to.

Still, there were a few pretty good ones I managed to snap. There were also a lot of great panels I managed to get into. I didn’t get into every panel I wanted to due to conflicting schedules. But overall, I did get to see most of what I wanted to. On Friday I  made it into two main panels.

The first was the Channel Awesome panel. This was a lot of fun. Doug Walker reprised his role as the ever popular Nostalgia Critic. This year his brother Rob, and actors Malcolm Ray, and Tamara Chambers came along for a question, and answer panel. A lot of the questions were some you might expect. About their favorite episodes, favorite, and least favorite movies. But there were some unexpected ones, like personal childhood memories. Malcolm, and Tamara loved doing plays early on. While Rob enjoyed a trip where he learned his mastery of impersonating Jeff Goldblum.

The audience also got to participate in a sight gag for an upcoming episode of The Nostalgia Critic, and the cast was there all three days feverishly meeting with fans, and signing autographs. I didn’t get a chance to speak with any of them this time around, but in previous years I have. They’ve always been appreciative of their audience, and generally very nice folks in person.

I also attended the Uncle Yo standup routine panel which did have most everyone laughing a lot. The material had a couple of funny political barbs. But a lot of the jokes ended up centering around cat ownership when the room was given an option.  He did plenty of gaming jokes too. Mighty No. 9, Pokémon, Zelda, and the Game Boy were all subjects of some funny gags. There was also a lovingly crafted tribute to his family. Really great stuff. If you have the chance to see him in your area, check it out. He has some pretty nice material. Particularly if you dig games.

The convention also coincided with the Hartford Riverfest event this year. So I followed some friends, and acquaintances over to that event when I began to feel hungry. If you’re ever in the area when this is going on, I highly recommend you check it out. Get this, they have a smorgasbord of interesting, different food trucks. Typically, many of us hear “Food Truck”, and we just think “Carnival food.”. We think about corn dogs, burgers, and ice cream. This event had a bunch of stuff beyond that. There was one truck that was centered around making custom slush drinks. There was a truck centered around Irish themed foods. I bought a corned beef grilled cheese sandwich. It came on grilled rye bread, and it was awesome. There was one truck that served barbecue. Pulled pork, ribs, drumsticks. If it had barbecue in the title, it served it.

Aside from a bad heat headache by that point it was a pretty good day. I spent most of the rest of it mingling with fans, and wandering the dealer room. Next to that was the electronic gaming area, half was made up of console, and PC gaming stations, while the rest was composed of arcade  games, and a tabletop area. Most of the arcade games were rhythm games, though the table flipping game from last year made a return. They also had arcade versions of Pokken Tournament, and Street Fighter V set up.

In the console area I saw Super Smash Bros Wii U, Street Fighter II HD Remix, Call Of Duty AW, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 Ultimate, Ultra Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat X, Killer Instinct, Mario Kart 8, and a smattering of other games. On the PC side there were huge set ups for League Of Legends, and Overwatch. There were ongoing tournaments for Super Smash Bros Wii U, and League of Legends which were being live streamed. Over in the adjacent hotel they had one main room devoted to RPGs. Pen, and Paper, and Card games.

 

Day two started out with a bang. I went to a panel centered around the Atari 2600. It focused on game design, and how the limitations of the VCS forced early game programmers to be even more creative. Creating not only game ideas, but techniques to squeeze those ideas into a very limited amount of memory, and storage space at the time. It served as a lesson to aspiring creators that limitations can be a motivator. It also served as a reminder that one should start small, focusing on a core game play idea to build a game around. Even if you weren’t a budding programmer, it was a great showcase of just what makes the Atari 2600 such a fun console.

 

After that I made it into two Star Trek panels. The first one was a smaller panel focusing on the future of the franchise. Star Trek is about to become 50 years old. There was a moment of silence for the late Anton Yelchin who tragically passed away in an automobile accident recently. After that discussion moved onto the upcoming film Star Trek Beyond, the new series coming to CBS’ streaming service, and the legal battles many of the fan projects are facing. One of them is in the midst of a lawsuit over the money that was raised on Kickstarter to complete it. Even though it was to pay the actors, and supplies to build sets, props, and make costumes. CBS apparently sees this as infringement. So much so that they released a set of guidelines that they want fan projects to abide by. These guidelines are so insanely restrictive, they basically disallow fans to make fan films. One high-profile fan project had to basically retitle the project, and make a laundry list of alterations to keep itself alive. Unfortunately many of the backers jumped in for a Star Trek project, that they’re no longer getting. The entire thing is a mess, but something that could see how fan projects by fandoms are going to be treated going forward.

There was also some discussion centered around the many changes, and updates to Star Trek Online over the past couple of years. It’s also being ported to the Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Even the newest expansion Agents Of Yesterday, which ties the game into the Temporal Cold War storyline that was prevalent in Star Trek Enterprise. Things do seem to have been improved immensely since the game originally came out back in 2010. You can grind for chests that will have crew members, resources, or star ships in them. Since the game became a F2P title, you can try to play through the game without spending money on chests, but it can prove very difficult. The storyline takes place after the events of the 2009 reboot, making the game part of the original TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY time line. You get to see how ships, and races evolved in that time line. There are ways to play classes from every era as well.

After that panel I got to see another Star Trek panel with Nana Visitor, and Michael Dorn. This was a great panel where the two actors took questions from the room. Discussions about behind the scenes practical jokes, disagreements on the set, the shock of Terry Farrell’s departure from DS9, and other anecdotes. Nana, and Michael both reminded us that Star Trek has always been a show about morality plays. A show that made people think. Sometimes about subjects that can be uncomfortable. One can only hope the upcoming series, and film will retain that quality.

In between panels I often returned to the dealer’s area. I got to meet artist Tom Ryan while I was there the previous day, where he had some amazing work on display. So I returned the second day when I hadn’t left my cash in my car like an idiot. You should really check out his work at Tom Ryan’s Studio. It’s really amazing stuff. I ended up buying a really cool original ThunderCats print. He does all kinds of  work. Including commercial art commissions for breweries. He’s very kind, and very talented. Definitely check out his booth if he comes to a convention near you.

I also briefly got a chance to speak with Honest Trailers’ own Jon Bailey. He was really friendly, and genuinely enjoyed interacting with people. He also does a ton of voice work for commercials, shows, and video games. Just like the case with Tom Ryan, If he shows up at a convention near you, pay him a visit. He’s pretty swell in person.

One of the  most entertaining panels I attended was for voice actor, Jess Harnell it opened up when a young fan led the room in an introduction by singing the Animaniacs theme. Around half way through, he forgot a word or two, and faked his way through it but still did a really good job overall. Jess was pretty impressive. He talked a bit about his band Rock Sugar. Unbeknownst to many, he has a music career. He loves hard rock, so his band came up with an idea. “What if a hard rock band thought that the pop rock, and ballads were hard rock?” So their project was born. It’s pretty great stuff. The results are some very fun mash-up covers of pop songs, done in the vein of metal songs.

These mash-up covers are so good in fact, that if you put them on without telling your friends what they are, they’ll be shocked when Enter Sandman turns into Don’t Stop Believin’. He has also been able to open for a lot of hard rock bands like AC/DC. It’s really impressive, and if you have the opportunity check it out. It’s pretty great.

He also talked a bit about how William Shatner once confused him for Gene Simmons, his first time meeting Steven Spielberg, and an odd time helping Pierce Brosnan record lines in Quest For Camelot. He’s also done some roles you may not be aware of, including the voice over on America’s Funniest Home Videos. 

Another really cool thing happened in the panel, Rob Paulsen ( most known as the voice of Pinky of Pinky, and the Brain) called into the panel to talk to the audience! He, and Tress MacNeille  were originally going to be guests at the con, but unfortunately became ill before the show. So they couldn’t make it. But he did want to thank all of the fans personally, and he hopes to make it to next year’s convention. Rob, and Tress also pre-signed a number of photos so that if you wanted Jess’ autograph, you also got theirs.

After the panel nearly all  in attendance of the panel went to Jess Harnell’s booth. He was very kind to everyone. He went above, and beyond in his interaction with the fandom. I bought a copy of his band’s Reimaginator album, and he was even kind enough to sign it with a personalization. If any of the Animaniacs cast shows up at a con near you, pay them a visit. I got to meet Maurice Lamarche last year, Rob Paulsen the year before that, and they’ve all just been wonderful people.

After that it was time for our annual trek to City Steam Brewery in Hartford. Not only do they make some of my favorite beers, they also make some of the best pub food in Connecticut. They have a huge restaurant built into the brewery, as well as a comedy club, business meeting rooms, and a bunch of stuff. It coincides with my buddy Dan’s birthday nearly every year, so he tries to get as many friends, and acquaintances as possible to have dinner together there. Dan also helms the Best Spuds channel on YouTube, and all of the spuds were there. I can’t say enough good things about the food, or service there. So often people only want to talk about bad experiences. I can’t say I’ve had a bad experience there. The food is always good. If in a rare instance they’ve gotten an order wrong it’s been promptly fixed.

Plus there’s nothing quite like getting your favorite beer fresh. It might taste great out of a bottle or can into a frosted glass. But getting it fresh from the brewery is even better. I had some Buffalo chicken nachos, a black bean burger, and thanks to my friends getting full, two fish tacos. All of which was very delicious. I added another City Steam glass to my beer glass collection, as well as a Naughty Nurse IPA T-shirt to my closet full of T-shirts. Speaking of the beer,  Their new Wacked Out Wheat is really good. It has elements of both an India Pale Ale, and a Hefeweizen blended with mango, and pineapple. It was spectacular. I also went with a nice glass of Naughty Nurse IPA. It’s light, bitter, yet full of citrus notes. It’s fantastic bottled. Again, it’s even better fresh.

The final day of ConnectiCon is always shorter, and usually, they put all of the best panels in the schedule for the first two days. Last year they tried to alleviating this by having some stuff on day three. This year, they did a little bit better by once again having some of the bigger guests do panels on the final day.

The first of these was a riveting panel by John Rhys-Davies, where he  talked about some of the challenges the crew faced during the filming of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and how they were able to overcome them. As well as how much one can benefit from optimal management skills, and the effect of scale in many topics. He also talked about some of the debates he had with writers in his time on Sliders, as well as his passion for theatre. Particularly Shakespearean plays. He even spent time talking about how Tolkien’s wartime experiences influenced the Lord of the Rings, as well as some time talking about general world history.

The second was a Q&A session with Michael Dorn. This one differed from the previous panel in that he was the only guest. A lot of similar questions were asked this time around, but he also spent some time talking about his love of tennis, and his love of aviation. He told the crowd about some experiences he had when accepting invitations from branches of the armed forces. He was humbled, and grateful for the opportunity to fly F-16’s, F/A-18 Hornets, and be a guest pilot with the Blue Angels. But he is especially appreciative of the young men, and women who work in the armed forces, doing dangerous jobs on carriers, and other means. He also talked about how seriously he takes all roles including comedic ones. He also really enjoys watching South Park, and cited how it can be edgy, without doing so just for the sake of doing so. Rather to illustrate a point.

The final panel I got to see during the con was a panel on level design using Doom builder. This was hosted by aspiring indie developer Zodiacw who not only gave a nice tutorial on some of the basic tools, but gave an in-depth look at the importance of map design. Which also brought about conversations on how map making, and game design are intertwined. A map designer can set up game rules by setting expectations with a simple wall texture. Or easily lose players by not following the rules they’ve set up in previous stages. They also discussed how one can still impress medium, and large studios by pushing the boundaries of an older engine with a keen understanding of map design. As well as carrying the knowledge taken from making maps for Doom into newer, and more complex engines. Even if you aren’t someone who would want to make a career out of making custom content, the panel made even doing so for fun quite palatable.

Aside from some confusion surrounding the pre-registration line on the first day, I had a pretty great time at ConnectiCon. Sure, I would have liked to have gotten into some of the other panels like Tom Kenny’s (SpongeBob Squarepants), Walter Koenig’s (Star Trek), or Sean Astin’s (Goonies, LOTR) but this is a convention that seems to get a little bit bigger every year when it comes to getting big names. So it simply isn’t possible to see every panel. But what I did get to experience was great, and as in year’s past many of the panels felt inspirational.

For those who aren’t interested in the celebrity, and internet personality aspect, there was still plenty to do. There were a number of cosplay events, like the always popular masquerade, belly dance off, and death match. The video game area was populated the entire three days, and there were a lot of participants in the League Of Legends, and Smash tournaments. There were the aforementioned tabletop, card, and RPG game areas, and they even had an all day karaoke stage set up. I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch of other things. The convention center closing earlier this year was a bit of a bummer for the older portion of the crowd. But that was partially made up for with area restaurants, movie theatres, and a brewery to boot. Still, having the late night events moved to one of those places, or eliminated was a little bit disappointing. But overall my complaints are fairly minor. I still had a great three-day weekend leading into a week away from working. ConnectiCon is in many ways an inexpensive vacation for me. If this year’s experience is any indication, this will continue to be.

If you’ve stumbled upon this recap, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you’re interested in attending the convention you can get more info at ConnectiCon’s own website.

 

It’s the end of an era at the intergalactic space arcade.

If you hadn’t heard the news earlier this week, fans of video game themed YouTube shows got a bit of a shock. Classic Game Room is shutting down. Well mostly. Mark Bussler will still be writing, and shooting episodes, but at an unknown pace. On the CGR website forums, he made the announcement that he’s moving into a newer career soon, and subsequently the CGR store, site, and its sister show CGR Undertow are going to be phased out by years end.

On the one hand I, and many fans are certainly happy that Mark has found an opportunity. But on the other hand it’s sad for a  number of reasons, the biggest being that all of the wonderful people who made the channel work behind the scenes need to find work. I hope every one of them does. As someone who has experienced a company closure twice, as well as a layoff during a downsize, it is a tough go of it, even tougher these days. The upside for them is they have enough experience to not only do work elsewhere, but some may be able to transition into doing what they love for themselves. So we may see a new venture composed of CGR talent. One can only hope.

But losing Classic Game Room is a huge void in the realm of YouTube channels. Many people don’t realize it, but Mark Bussler’s review show was actually one of the earliest. It may have even been the first by some accounts. It started online life back in 2008. But it started life even before that; in 1999. Classic Game Room is also unique. The show didn’t try to come off like a games publication. There weren’t scores, or breakdowns. Mark (and later the Undertow crew) would simply talk about how much he enjoyed, or didn’t enjoy a game, or a console, peripheral, or computer. It was also unique in that it didn’t go the route of riffing. Many really good shows took the approach of reliving bad games, and making jokes about them. Over time they added well thought out critiques, and perspectives to the comedy. Classic Game Room didn’t try to jump on trends. That isn’t to say there was never comedy. There were jokes, and references. But like the rest of the show, it was lighthearted. One of the staples over the years was a bit where a game or device would be attempted to be connected to an incompatible console. The show incorporated its own comic books, and recurring characters. The set had a retro kitsch many times, including disco balls, lava lamps, and other items in the background. It was rare an episode was ever more than a few minutes in length. Again, concentrating on the experience, and whether or not it was enjoyable to the host.

The show also had a great soundtrack, from the iconic theme song to the background tunes. Everything had an old school, needle drop quality you’d find before, and after commercials on radio shows back in the day. These were called bumps. Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block has also continued this tradition. But now I’ve begun to ramble. The point is, that Classic Game Room was a great show, and it is going to be missed greatly by a lot of people who love video games. Not only did it cover a lot of the classics, and new releases, it also covered a lot of underrated gems. There are a lot of people who discovered a lot of really great games on that show over the years. It wasn’t only wistful older gamers like me who loved it, but many younger generations interested in what came before. Classic Game Room certainly isn’t the only show that has had that effect, but it is one of the most notable. If you haven’t watched this seminal series, you should really check it out while you still can. As for myself, I’m going to pour one out for the CGR crew, binge watch some reruns, and then fire up some TRUXTON.

Thank you Classic Game Room for years of entertainment, education, and giving us reasons to purchase some craft beer.