RetroWorldExpo 2021 Recap

After being shut down last year, and some delays RetroWorldExpo was able to return in 2021. There were a couple of concessions this year, there were no hyped after-hours events as in previous years. But there were a couple of surprises in the roster of guests this year. Beyond that, there was still a lot of fun to be had, and Hartford still had some nightlife beyond the convention center to take in after hours.

Still, there was a lot packed into the two days and it wasn’t possible to get to everything I wanted to but I still got to see a lot. One unfortunate thing is on day one my phone’s battery was low pretty much all of the day, and so I didn’t get as many photos as I would have liked to. I pressed on anyway getting in a few notes where I could. The panels started a little bit later this year and so I was able to start out my Saturday on the main floor perusing the vendors.

Getting down the guest booths I saw Pixel Dan again, who returned. This year he brought his new book The Toys Of He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe Where he and Val Staples (One of the main people behind He-man.org ) compiled every Mattel-produced He-Man toyline piece from the original line through the recent Classics line that ended last year. It’s a pretty deep dive into the various toylines as you’ll hear later. I got to talk with him a bit, and as every year I’ve gotten the opportunity he was nothing but friendly. I bought a copy from him for myself and had it signed which was really cool.

Timothy Clarke was there too. He was the man behind the Boglins toyline, and in recent years has been able to reclaim the rights to produce them. So he was selling some entirely new ones. Pat Contri and Norman Caruso of Pat The NES Punk and Gaming Historian fame were back as well. And new to the show was a YouTuber who probably doesn’t need an introduction: MetalJesusRocks.

Some of the other major names that made it out were the returning My Life In Gaming’s Coury and Tri. As well as RetroRGB. LON TV’s Lon Seidman was there, the members of Hack The Movies, Kieran and Justin from the Cinemassacre podcast also made the trek. Destiny Fomo was there this year. As well as Bonzai Pop’s Mike Pixley and Boundary Break creator Shesez.

But I got to also see a number of local content creators who were on the floor. My pals Russ Lyman and Mike Levy were there and had a couple of panels I sadly didn’t get into. (Sorry guys.) I also got to see fellow Twitch streamers ConsoleKev , Kobayashi Riku, Dan from BestSpuds , 1UpJohn , and I got to see DNick55 in person for the first time. All on the floor over the weekend Which was really cool. All of these guys are fantastic people you should check out if you haven’t already.

Big Bucks Entertainment was back again too. Over the two days, Davira Kuy hosted recreations of Press Your Luck and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This year they had somebody make it all the way to the end of Millionaire where they won the big prize at the end which was a Power Rangers DVD signed by the original cast!

I also ran into Tom Ryan who had a booth up again this year, and a new National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation-inspired print that I just had to pick up for my Brother who loves that movie. He seemed to be doing pretty well this year, and he had a large assortment of newer pins in addition to prints.

And I got in some time with the arcade cabs and console games this year. Over the course of the weekend, I found myself getting in a few games of Tempest, Killer Instinct, Popeye, and Double Dragon. Which actually crashed on me during the second day,. Not sure what happened, but by the end of the show it was working again. I also got in a respectable score in River Raid on the Atari 2600.

My buddies over at Imaginary Monsters were there along with a lot of other independent developers. Imaginary Monsters showed off an interesting take on Robotron 2084 called Grindblood’s Gauntlet where you play a tormented character gunning down waves of monsters and demons. The current build played pretty nicely with some excellent twin-stick controls. Hopefully, some of the ideas can be expanded upon to flesh it out a little more. But the foundation here was pretty good.

Another indie game I got to check out was When The River Runs Dry, by a studio called ZwinzlerGames. In it, you play an anthropomorphic horse character who wakes up in a forest where drought is taking place. You use the keyboard to navigate your character and the mouse to do certain things in the environment or cast items or attack certain enemies. And it isn’t really a fast-paced game. Rather, you have to take your time and explore like you would in something like The Legend Of Zelda. But a lot of the pointing and clicking reminded me of old-school Sierra games like Police Quest. But that doesn’t mean you can dawdle either because there is constant pressure to find water sources too. Taking too long means it will drain out and your character will collapse. You’ll know if you are taking too long too because the screen slowly grows dark all around you as a cone shrinks. The controls seemed a little confusing at first. But it’s something you may want to keep your eye on.

Possum House Games was there as well with a demo for Space Cat 9, a roguelike platformer where you play as a kitten going up against an army of mice. They also had some trailers for their previous releases on Steam. First up; Shot In The Dark, a really interesting take on stealth platforming where you need to use contrast in battle. And I mean contrast in terms of black levels on your display. Because the color scheme is composed of mostly black and white graphics with bright reds for certain atmospheric moments. You move your character with the keyboard while using the mouse to click and shoot enemies. You play a cowboy with a revolver who ends up going on missions that become more and more bizarre.

The second trailer was for their first major release called The Sword And The Slime. In that one, you play a sentient magic sword that is accompanied by a gelatinous puddle of slime. And you need to use the slime to find creative ways out of sticky situations. So it’s a bit like David Crane’s A Boy And His Blob on the NES, but a little bit faster-paced and with a much weirder and surreal setup.

Screenwave Media was there too with their own demos of some upcoming releases. I was unaware but they are actually publishing LOVE 3, and as someone who enjoyed the original LOVE I was surprised to learn I somehow never saw a sequel. well apparently Fred Wood had put out a sequel a few years ago and I had either forgotten or I hadn’t heard about it. It was called LOVE 2 Kuso. LOVE 3’s promotional materials were a little bit deceiving in that it uses rendered models in the advertising which made me think it would be transitioning to a 2.5D sort of style. But when I got to see the demo running, it isn’t. It’s still very much the aesthetic of the original, yet obviously expanded upon. And for those of you who have never played the original LOVE, do check it out. It’s a great platformer with some awesome music with a style that very much takes me back to games like Lazy Jones on the Commodore 64. You may have to google all of those things. But it will be worth it. But the early look at LOVE 3 was pretty nice.

The second game they showed off was Iron Meat which I think is the one that was probably the most popular of the three. It’s a Run n’ Gun in the vein of classics like Contra and they went for a Super NES era look to the graphics. The demo is controlled nicely and it does have a lot of stuff Contra fans will like. If games like Super Cyborg and Blazing Chrome weren’t enough Contra-likes for you, you might want to check it out when it releases.

And the third one they showed off was Dumpy & Bumpy which is a puzzle game involving pushing blocks. So I was immediately reminded of HAL Laboratory’s LOLO series as well as the classic SEGA arcade game PENGO. It’s got elements of both of those along with other objectives they throw-in. It didn’t make the biggest splash with me compared to the other games they showed off. But it wasn’t bad by any means. If you love puzzle games that don’t do the usual match three colors rules or tweaking Tetris, you may want to keep an eye on it.

There was one other developer there too and while their game demo wasn’t as polished as some of the other things there, their staff was very passionate about their game and after playing it I have to say they have something here. The Killer Gin is a small group of people who made a game using RPG Maker last year called Killer Gin. At the show, they had a spinoff called Killer Gin Battle Arcade which is presently in Early Access on Steam. Visually what I saw isn’t going to compete with some of the similar indie games out there. But it controlled well and does do something a little bit differently.

Killer Gin Battle Arcade appears to be another take on the Super Smash Bros. Ring out rules gameplay. You get a variety of characters from their JRPG, who battle to knock each other out of the game. The difference here is that there aren’t really meters where you have to damage someone to a ridiculous level before you knock them out. Nor does it have a life bar system. Instead, the game uses elements of classic arcade games. The first is from the original Mario Bros. Enemies will spawn onto the blocks and you’ll have to hit them from underneath to be able to weaken them so you can kick them off. The second is like JOUST. There are pits, lava pools, and other things you need to avoid. While this is all going on the four of you are still trying to knock each other out of the map. And what little I played of it was honestly pretty fun.

The game has a long way to go before it’s done. but they hope to add Parsec support so people can use that to play online together since the team is relatively small and not versed in extensive networking code. The rep at the show also mentioned the potential for different ring announcers and accompanying countdown animations in future builds. Obviously, they’re not going for a Smash killer here. But with some graphical improvements, a few new features this could be a surprisingly fun diversion you might want to look into.

The first panel I went to was by Screenwave Media. Head Ryan Schott and their media manager talked about their core business as a Multi-Channel Network which is partnered not only with Cinemassacre, but several high profile YouTube channels. Basically dealing with many of the flags, content claims on YouTube as well as getting out promotion and advertising for these channels. Entering the video game space with AVGN Adventures they’ve begun carrying over some of the things they would do as an MCN for higher profile YouTubers to publishing games for indie developers. And they brought up some of the different avenues some budding developers could use to expand their reach when trying to market their games.

After that panel, I caught Pat Contri’s panel where he showed off the latest Pat The NES PUNK episode followed by a Q & A session with the audience. Some of the discussions centered around topics that have been on his CUPodcast as of late, like the Intellivision Amiico and the controversies that have been coming out about it. The controversy surrounding WATA graded sealed games. And then some information about his new Nintendo 64 book he is in the midst of putting together after his Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System books. Both of which are excellent and cover the entire scope of their libraries. The Nintendo 64 book will also take a look at Japanese-only releases as well as the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive.

I also attended the Gaming Historian panel. Norman Caruso gave us a look at an upcoming project involving the original Donkey Kong. He found some new information, and without giving much away it’s going to be a pretty great episode. After a Q & A segment following the presentation, he closed with a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? game where one audience member managed to get through to the top with a little help.

There were also two independent wrestling shows this year via Blitzkrieg Pro Wrestling I really didn’t get to see much of them but they did one each of the days. Speaking of Pro Wrestling, WWE alumni Tatanka was there too, but he wasn’t in the wrestling show. He did have a guest booth though.

At the end of the first night, I went to City Steam Brewery with some friends and had some great beer and food. I tried out their seasonal pumpkin beer cleverly titled “Gourd Vibes Only”, and tried their new Hartford Yard Goats-themed IPA. I also had their Jungle Crush IPA with my two Kielbasa sausages with sauerkraut. If you ever find yourself in the State Capitol city do check it out. It’s got a terrific restaurant in it, a comedy club, and of course many great kinds of beer to choose from. After dinner, we walked back over to the Convention center and in the adjacent lobby, many of the guests were there. Before heading off I ran into Metal Jesus Rocks who was rather cordial.

I came back the following day for the second day of the convention. The second day is generally shorter but RetroWorldExpo always seems to divide panels up with the larger YouTube names between both days nicely. When I made it back to the Convention center I spent the first chunk of the day browsing around for any interesting merchandise I might have missed out on. I didn’t really see too much although I have to say one booth stood out to me after my pal Juu Hachi pointed it out and that was Canvas Quest. They had the game-themed posters and wall art you might expect a business with that name to have. However, where they really made themselves stand out was in the area of pins. There were hundreds of different pins based on various games ranging from completely esoteric to super popular. I found two that I just had to pick up in spite of the fact I’m not a big button or pin collector. The first of these was a pin of Evil Otto based on the Atari 2600 port of Berzerk. And the second is the Yar pin which of course is the giant space fly you play as in Yars’ Revenge.

I also got into three panels the second day. The first of these was Pixel Dan’s panel where he talked about the process of making his book. It took over 3 years to put together. Much of the work involved flying all over the United States finding different collectors in the Masters Of The Universe fan community. The book features photos of every Mattel produced or officially licensed as canon toy in the original Masters Of The Universe line, Princess Of Power line, He-Man line, Masters Of The Universe 200x line, and Masters Of The Universe Classics line. That’s nearly 800 toys and it features several photos for each both in completely unopened packaging as well as loose, but with all of their accessories intact as well as the accessories themselves.

He also mentioned getting the accessories photographed was the hardest part of the process as centering the shots for small pieces proved difficult. The photography was done in each of the collectors’ homes over the course of a few days at each, and there were many collectors to visit. Because some only collected MOC (Mint On Card) or CIB (Complete In Box) while others may have had loose figures with or without all of the accessories. And obviously, a sealed collector wasn’t going to want their collectibles opened in the process. He did show off one video clip where he and Val Staples had to photograph one person’s Eternia playset which is one of the rarest playsets in the toyline and is a behemoth with many fragile parts. Getting the playset on the filming table was quite the task and everyone bit their nails anticipating something banging or dropping which of course, thankfully didn’t happen.

At first, the project was going to be self-published, but Dark Horse offered to pitch it to Mattel on their behalf since Dark Horse had already had the official license to do other Masters Of The Universe hardcover collections. Mattel gave their blessing and so the project then became an official part of Masters Of The Universe! The book is very detailed in not only the descriptions of every toy, but each page has an easy-to-follow layout showing the toys in the package as well as loose. Each accessory has its own photo and they even managed to take photos of the action features most of the toys had. Like Mosquitor’s blood pumping window or the battle damage, you can see on Battle Armor He-Man and Skeletor when they are hit in the chest. They even color-coded the pages depending on which faction the character in question may have come from. In MOTU there are generally four, the Heroic Warriors, Evil Warriors, Evil Horde, and Snakemen. The sides of the pages also have grey tabbed sections so you can get a good estimate of which toyline you’re going to be thumbing through without even going to the table of contents. The amount of details is staggering and it’s a fantastic book for any collector.

After Pixel Dan’s panel, I saw the MetalJesusRocks panel. This was an off-script panel where Jason (as he told us is his real name) loosely revisited a topic he covered in a video not too long ago about modern-day collecting tips. Some of these included things like looking at platforms that people may not be paying much attention to. Often popular systems mean that more people are going to want the big games on them and so a lot of prices for those games will reflect that in the aftermarket. So maybe instead of looking at Gamecube games try looking at something else you might not have considered before. You might find you have as much fun, and they may be less expensive in the process. Other things might be to look at the Japanese or European versions of a game you might want. Sometimes there’s a great divide between prices between different regional versions, and if it’s a title where language isn’t going to be a barrier it could be a good bargain for you. Beyond the tips there were some nice discussions about some of the Limited Run releases, console digital storefronts eventually closing down, and games we may buy a multitude of reasons out of love or obsession.

The last panel I managed to catch was the Super Retro Throwback live podcast where hosts Steven Christina Jr. and Sammie Ann Fontaine discussed some pop culture with an audience. Topics included bad remakes of popular movies, first films seen in a theatre, earliest console game memories, the Occulus Rift, and the 12 hours or more time commitment to get through the extended cuts of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy of films. There was some audience participation and they also gave out some free stuff throughout the course of the panel. I ended up with a shirt and a copy of Dead Rising IV on the Xbox One.

I spent the last hour of the show just chatting with some friends and I caught up a bit with DougMansLand who had managed to live stream through much of the weekend there. He had a pretty good turnout at his booth. If you haven’t checked out his channel give it a spin. In a short time, he’s already built up quite a nice variety channel. But time flies when you’re having a good time and unfortunately, 5 o’clock came up pretty quickly. There were some things I missed out on this year. I didn’t get to see the auction this year, though I had heard there were some pretty interesting things this year including a fully restored late 90s gaming rig. I also didn’t get to see the Street Fighter V tournament or the wrestling shows. And I missed Russ Lyman and Mike Levy’s panels which I’m sure were really good. RetroWorldExpo squeezes so much in it’s impossible to get to everything But that’s part of what makes it so fun.

I already can’t wait to see what they do with the show next year which is supposed to be happening sometime in August. Again, I apologize I didn’t get any useable shots of the indie games on display as my phone’s battery barely had the juice in it to take the photos I managed to. But all of the ones I played and saw showed some promise. Many of them have demos on Steam and Itchio so definitely check them out if they sound like games you would enjoy. Next year I should be better prepared. This year I definitely needed the weekend though. Between some mild health scares, the stress in my personal life, and recently losing my mother to pulmonary fibrosis getting the time to decompress and see people I haven’t gotten to in a while was a needed respite.

Some things I would selfishly like to see next year would include; a Berzerk cabinet, a Frenzy cabinet, Mark Bussler (of CGR fame) as a guest, and if possible an Unreal Tournament 2004 tournament and a Splatoon 3 tournament (assuming Nintendo has released it by then.). I know I’m probably asking for the moon there. But even without those things I know I’ll be looking forward to the show. Here’s hoping I’ll be seeing all of my local and not-so-local friends there if possible.

Blogger Recognition Award

I unexpectedly found myself mentioned over the weekend by the great MoeGamer Pete Davison. I really do mean unexpected. For those who stumble upon this and may not know, Pete has a long history writing for gaming mags; often reviewing the esoteric games many people wouldn’t want to write about. Particularly, the stuff that might have a lot of over-the-top fan service, or even an eroge (erotic) themed game. Before internet websites posted long-form content, and independent enthusiasts made YouTube channels, you often thumbed through magazines to get your game information. So to be recognized by any veteran is humbling. It must be kind of like the songwriter of a fledgling rock band putting out a song, not thinking it will get far beyond the cult status and then surprisingly it turns out James Hetfield, or Billie Joe Armstrong or Robin Wilson heard it and adored it. Sure, it may not lead to becoming the next big name, but it’s cool someone with far more star power enjoyed their visit to your tiny corner of the universe.

So anyway, there are a few things you’re supposed to do when a fellow blogger gives you the rub (as they say in pro wrestling circles) and so I’ll have to do those here:

The first step is to thank the blogger who nominated you, which I really do thank MoeGamer. They do some terrific stuff on their own site, and there is a lot to binge on. So do head over there and have a look. Chances are, you’ll learn something new, agree with or disagree with an opinion, and perhaps it will lead to a friendly debate or discussion.

You’re supposed to give a summary about how the blog came to be. I kind of do that in a super bite-sized capsule form in the “About” here, but I’ll unpack it partially here I suppose.

I’ve been blogging for a very, very long time in one form or another. I started out actually in a small patchwork of would-be poets in a now long defunct group called A Window On My Mind. Which is where I made a few friends and it was mainly therapeutic for us. When that went away though I had moved around to a few different places. I probably did the best with my Vox page, but when that service went belly up it took a ton of stuff with it. And it was around this time I was also dabbling in talking about my other big passion; gaming. I never fostered a huge following, I haven’t here either but that was never the point. But I did take a crack at a few user sections of other bigger places before those went defunct as well.

Things on my poetry end went right off a cliff in 2012 though. I had of course written in a local, offline group from around 2004 to around 2010 until the person running it came grievously ill and had to disband it. But what really put a stake in that heart (and proverbially mine as well) was when a long time friend of 15 years unexpectedly cut me out of their lives completely. It was someone I felt very close to. And at the time about the only person I could really feel unjudged confiding in. We’d become friends over writing, reading, and critiquing each other’s work. We’d gotten each other through ups and downs with emotional support. To this day if I try to write poetry it’s like picking at that scab. The hurt just bleeds out and I can’t do it. I don’t begrudge the person. I only wish the best for them. I have no idea where they are or how they’re doing, and I don’t care to find out. I just hope and pray it’s well. I have no animosity. But I don’t desire to go through the five stages of grief over and over again though. Once is enough. And so if the urge to write poetry again comes back peaceably without reminding me of that ordeal at every attempt to put pen to paper, I may do that privately or on a separate blog altogether. Time heals all wounds as they say, so perhaps someday there will be an interest in trying again.

But I did still have my love of video games. I still had the ability to write other things, and so I decided to continue to write about video games. A local friend at the time started a small game blog called Retro Retreat, and I contributed a couple of articles here and there to the page before life got in everyone’s way, and that folded. But that was a great outlet in its short time. Eventually, I just decided I still wanted to write even if I was the only one doing it and so here we are. I still think there’s a place for long form written reviews. As much as I like a lot of the people doing YouTube videos there are situations where just reading something feels better. Hopefully people feel the same way and like what they see here.

From here, I’m supposed to give two pieces of advice to anyone who wants to start a blog. So these are two things I’ve learned over the years.

First: Write about whatever you want. Really. Write about whatever it is you want. If you’re passionate about something let the world know. After you’ve been doing it awhile you might find the topic or the angle you want to focus on, which is good for retention. You may build an audience who shares your love of say, spaghetti. But if you need to take a break from spaghetti to talk about lasagna instead, there’s nothing wrong with that. Sure some of the spaghetti fans might be disappointed, but you also don’t want to burn yourself out either. You can branch out once in a while.

Second: No matter what you decide to write about though, be sure to proofread. You may want to download something like Grammarly to help with that task. But even a good utility isn’t perfect. And you’ll want to be sure you’ve gotten the spelling, punctuation and everything else the best you possibly can. Why? Well for one, it looks more professional. Whether you’re writing for a hobby or writing to get a check, that professional look is key. A well written and well edited article will usually garner more attention than the 600 word cluster filled with spelling errors and bad spacing. You can have a mediocre writer and a fantastic writer write about the same thing using 2,000 words. If the mediocre writer does a great job with periods and commas while the fantastic writer only focuses on content, chances are the mediocre writer will still get a better reception. I am not a professional paid writer. But I want to make sure that when I do put something out there, it can hang with with the work of the pros. Or at least get as close as possible. I may be writing for my own love of doing so, but I’d like someone else to at least want to attempt to read the ramblings of this madman. And they won’t want to even try if it appears that I didn’t care to try. So proofread!

Finally, I’m supposed to choose 15 articles for those who see this to go check out. Clearly I need to sub to more because I don’t think I’ll hit all 15, so some will be videos. But still, I hope you’ll check them out anyhow.

Neese005 takes a look at Valorant

Benez256 waxes nostalgic about some of their favorites

The Shameful Narcissist updates us with their progress

Hungrygoriya found some great acquisitions this past August

The Well Red Mage reaffirms their mission statement

Extra Life takes a deep analytical look at The Last Of Us 2

Qudduws Campbell reviews Dead By Daylight

Yheela muses about the little things

VidChord reviews Escape From Tethys

NekoJonez talks about video game OSTs

Arthur has a fresh eyed look at Final Fantasy VII

ABXY Mage reviews Black Forest Games’ remake of Destroy All Humans

My pal Peter Skerritt unseals his final game before he’s done moving.

The ReNESance paints a beautiful Breath Of The Wild landscape.

The Best Spuds continue their Rogue Legacy run

Competitive Awareness

Recently, professional tournament player ThatSrb2DUDE made a video commentary about growing a community. In this case the competitive side of Splatoon 2. As someone who used to play in an Unreal Tournament clan back in the days of that franchise, I had a few thoughts about his points. As well as some things of my own that I couldn’t possibly reply on in a mere tweet on Twitter.

In the commentary, he brings up the fact that as Splatoon 2 is nearing the last run of updates, and will soon be in the final version of the game going forward. Because of that, some competitive players fear the competitive side of the game may go away. He goes on to tell people that rather than go around dooming the game, they should create awareness of the game. Make videos discussing aspects of what they love or don’t. Making debates about strategies, or any other number of topics about the game. And he very passionately talks about that content potentially getting people interested or even keeping people interested in the game.

The potential for a bigger competitive scene in Splatoon 2 is absolutely there. The game has sold over 8 million copies and people are still buying it. There’s a lot of people playing it, and there’s no shortage of competitors when I’ve ventured into the game’s Ranked modes. Even if I never seem to get beyond the B ranks. But I digress.

He is right though. If you love a game and want people to look into it, you’ll have to bring it up. And it’s no secret that I’ve really liked playing the Splatoon series. The original and current entry have both been quite phenomenal. Still, while I’ve talked about the game a lot, I don’t cover this game exclusively here. But his video did make me think about some larger points. Some things I remember from my Unreal Tournament days are applicable to this topic, and even some things from other genres. Maybe you’ll agree with some of this. Maybe disagree. But I’m going to lay it out there anyway.

I’ll also preface this by saying while I was in a pretty good clan, we were by no means the top players in the world. Much like Splatoon did, Unreal Tournament really grabbed me. It had fantastic weapons. It had a wonderful aesthetic, and it had something no other FPS at the time did: A focus on movement. To become good at Unreal Tournament you couldn’t just simply master knowing the maps, or what gun was best for what situation. You had a dodge system. Mastering dodges was the best way to avoid projectiles and even get around maps faster. You could diagonally short hop down halls. Roll out of the way of missiles, and more.

The sequels 2003, and 2004 were more fantastical and added newer modes. But they also made the movement even more important. Adding greater distances, dodge jumps, and crazy animations that made characters harder to hit. Somewhere along the line, I decided that I just wanted to be good at the game. So I practiced and practiced. But I found simply doing this wasn’t helping. So I decided to take baby steps. I decided to get proficient with one weapon and give myself a small number of frags every deathmatch.

I chose a weapon nobody seemed to use. The Bio Rifle. It shot little blobs of goo. If you held the secondary button though, it would charge a giant blob using all of its ammo. Often times this would kill people in one hit. Thing is, it was slow, and you had to have a great ability to lead opponents. It took time, but I would eventually consistently be in the upper half of the scoreboard.

By around 2005, I had played a lot on a server called The Super Witch server, where a lot of regulars noticed me. Again, I wasn’t great, but they were intrigued by how well I did with the Bio Rifle, before long, I was in the mXc Maximum Carnage clan. We played late night scrims with other clans. We were all really invested in the game, and by 2007 when the sequel came out things petered out. The new game changed some mechanics many in the community didn’t like. It changed the aesthetics to mimic Gears Of War more too. It was still an amazing game, but it didn’t have the staying power the old games had.

Be that as it may, I can see some parallels. Getting new people to embrace the game is going to be the first major goal. This is true of any game. Again, the potential for Splatoon 2 is definitely there in the sales numbers alone. One factor in this is what ThatSrb2DUDE talks about when he mentions content. Sadly, most console games don’t have mods. But that is one of the ways we kept the UT games going as fans. Sure, internet video would have been a Godsend back then, but mods did the same thing. If you were playing UT, and a friend came by you could load up custom levels. In fact, the second game came with the Unreal Engine utility if you bought a certain version. I actually got invested enough in the game to attempt making my own maps for Maximum Carnage. I went to Borders, (I miss that bookstore) bought a 900-page textbook on it, and tried to learn the basics. I figured out enough to make very blocky, poorly textured maps. But you know, other players who knew what they were doing liked my layouts. So a few of our members took them and polished them up. Lighting effects, some terrain, some modeling, and they ended up on map rotation.

Thing is if you love Splatoon 2 or any game you don’t have to be a master to contribute to the fandom around it. And growing that fandom can increase the number of people who want to play more seriously. Back in the day, there were a lot of Unreal Tournament fans making wallpapers, icons, maps, and mutators. You might not be able to mod Splatoon 2 but people have done the former. Over the last few years, a lot of talented people have done extensive animation. Even small bands have covered songs from the two games’ soundtracks.

Where am I going with all of this? The point is you don’t have to be a professional gamer to potentially bring in a player who may want to play at a professional level. Like Unreal Tournament, that kind of stuff can get people to at least look at the title. To see what all of the fuss is about. Another thing you can do is simply play the game with friends or relatives. Bring the Switch over to their house and let them try it out. Talk about the basics with them. If they find it fun, they might go pick it up for themselves. Sure, you can stream the game, but people will generally keep coming back to see you more than a game. If they like it, they may recommend it to people they know. Keep in mind that doesn’t guarantee they’ll love it as much as you do. But somebody else they know may.

Of course people already hopelessly devoted can talk endlessly about tricks, strategies, and metagame topics. But a lot of that is going to appeal to people who have already decided they want to put in the extra time to master the game. This again is where someone who doesn’t mind talking about the beginning paces can be key. Potential newcomers to any game can find even dipping their toe into competitive environments daunting. The perceived complexity can bring a bit of apprehension or frustration to someone coming into a new game green. Especially if that game has been out for a while. This is why veterans should be mindful of new players. That doesn’t mean going easy on them or letting a newcomer win. That sort of thing doesn’t make it fun for the long-time fan plus, it can even feel condescending to the person who just started the game.

But it does mean letting go of some of the pride. We’ve all run into that player in our favorite game that has to let everyone know they’re top dog. That person who has forgotten that at one point they too were once a beginner. That person who will deride anybody who may suggest something that may potentially help someone just getting into the game at their detriment.

But those newcomers looking to become a competitive player need to also remember that it isn’t going to come easy. Splatoon 2 may look family friendly, and cute. But it is just as cutthroat as any other team-focused shooter. You have to have some self-confidence going into those ranked modes. But you also have to have humility. You’re probably going to lose an awful lot of matchups before you fully grasp the nuances. “How did I get shot by 20 missiles already?” The other side filled up their specials at the same time. “I shot that guy point blank! How is he not dead?” Did you see what perks they have equipped? This is where you’re also going to have to analyze your own habits, find where you messed up, and try to come up with contingency plans or ways to avoid the same situation.

And you shouldn’t give up. When things get rough remember that while you’re trying to be the best, it is still a game. Unless you’re in the midst of a tournament because you got to the professional level, and have big money riding on a win, a loss means nothing. But each loss can give you valuable data that you can learn from. Going again, back to my days in UT, (specifically UT2k4) It took me months of playing on Deck 16, to come up with the best possible path through the map. Memorizing the four main choke points, and how to shoot down the redeemer with a glob of slime. Did that mean I was always going to be at the top of the scoreboard? No. In fact, everyone who spent a lot of time in the Unreal Tournament games had a very good idea of how to move in that map as it was one of the most popular maps. But I did learn what rooms to avoid, or how to use trick jumps to escape a certain situation. If I had thrown up my arms, and pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL I would have never gotten as far as I had. That isn’t to say I never got angry. But I didn’t leave mid-match. I finished a grueling round.

Rage Quitting is also something you should never do. It doesn’t look good on you, and it drives away anybody who might have tried to help. Splatoon 2, in particular, is also a game that can turn on a dime. If you watch some of the Championship matches you’ll see matches that seemed like decisive victories for one team, completely change in the last twenty seconds. Even if you’re not having the best day, you at your worst is still better helping to the other three players, than not having a fourth at all.

This is applicable to all kinds of games. One of the bigger names on YouTube, Maximillian_DOOD talked about this a long time ago. But it’s still applicable here. Just as it was applicable to me back in my Unreal Tournament days. I can tell you, I can be a sore loser. Nobody likes to lose. But it is so much better to finish the round, then go calm down, than to take the ball and go home mid-match.

But if you can roll with the punches in a game you really enjoy, over time you will improve. It’s like anything else. If you play regularly, eventually you’ll get better. A competitive environment isn’t easy, but it isn’t supposed to be. Don’t go in expecting to win or lose, go in doing everything you can to win but making small, reasonable goals that are more important. “I’m going to get five splats.” “I’m going to learn the side path in Walleye Warehouse better.” “I’m going to get better at finding, and destroying enemy beacons.” You might not get the win, but they’ll get you one step closer. Making the first time you do get that win to feel even more satisfying.

Anyway, I realize I’ve been rambling, not all of it may seem related, and I don’t know how much this helps. But if you love a certain competitive game like Splatoon 2, and want to grow a competitive community talk about the game with anyone who will listen. Be welcoming to newcomers, while helping them realize it takes a little bit of time, and practice to become better than average. If you have a skill apply some of that to the fandom. It’s part of the reason why fighting games made a resurgence, and even why arena FPS attempts have come out of the indie space. I have no doubt there will be another Splatoon, as both the original Wii U game and the Switch sequel have done so well for a relatively new I.P. But ThatSrb2DUDE raises a great point. If you like a game, don’t cast a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom on it. Celebrate it. Have fun with it. Share it with as many fellow players, and collectors as possible. Also, if you are competitively minded and Splatoon 2 intrigues you check out his channel.

Until next time…

STAAAAY FRESH!

Retro World Expo 2018 Recap

It seems like only yesterday I attended Retro World Expo 2017, and here I am talking about the fourth iteration of this convention. RWE 2017 was an absolute blast, and RWE 2018 was also an absolute blast. I made my way to the Hartford Convention Center Saturday morning to find that this year’s entry was different. Instead of going up the center’s escalator, and lining up, this year used the ticket booth section of the lower floor. This was an improvement, as it made figuring out where to go much more seamless. There was however one piece of confusion that a convention center employee had to solve, and that was the front door. Some guests inadvertently cut the line by going right to the booth before it was made clear they had to go to the rear entrance of the lobby to enter a line.

That said, everything moved smoothly, and even though I’d arrived behind a few hundred people, I was getting my bands in less than ten minutes. For whatever reason the QR code did not display on my pre-registration form when printed. But the ticket attendant was easily able to find my info, see I had prepaid, and give me my wristbands for the weekend, and after party. Once inside, I went upstairs to find not one, but two amazing custom vehicles.

The first was a really cool Jurassic Park themed vehicle. The paint job was right out of the films. Impeccable. The pattern was spot on, and had a nice gloss finish. There was also a plastic triceratops near by to finish off the movie vibe. Great stuff. Next to that vehicle was none other than Russ Lyman’s Super Mario Kart 2.0. Sadly, earlier this year he lost his original Super Mario Kart in an accident. Fortunately he was able to replace his vehicle, and over time modify it. The end result is an even better design than before, sporting a beautiful multicolored design, and a breathtaking Super Mario Bros. pit crew portrait by Tom Ryan Studio. Both vehicles were parked out in front of the convention floor so that attendees could take photos.

Some of the earliest guests I met were Daniel Pesina, Rich Divizio, and Anthony Marquez who were character actors in the original three Mortal Kombat games. All of them were super cool, and down to Earth folks. I talked with them about how big a part of my teenage years that the MK games, and Street Fighter were for me. As well as pretty much everybody else. I ended up buying a promotional poster style photo, and all three of them were kind enough to sign it for me. If you ever have the opportunity to see them at a show, you ought to take it.

As I wandered the floor, I veered into the arcade area where I saw something both wondrous, and disappointing. The KRULL arcade cabinet. Based upon the cult 1983 Sci-Fi Fantasy film; you’re sent through a number of action sequences loosely based on those found in the movie. It uses a twin-stick setup similar to the one in Robotron 2084, and it is a lot of fun to play. Sadly, the machine was out-of-order, so I couldn’t actually play it. I did however get a few photos of it, since actually laying your eyes on one these days is a rarity. Should you find one in working order at a barcade, amusement park, convention, or other situation, do play it. It’s pretty cool.

Around this time Russ Lyman bumped into me, and we began catching up. Around this time I spotted the Imaginary Monsters booth, so we walked over, and I introduced him to the developers. (Full disclosure, I know two of them personally.) The team is working on a new Metroidvania style game called Abyxsis: The Demon Reborn. They brought a demo version to the show, and what they showed was pretty good! It obviously has a way to go before completion, but I liked what I saw. In it, you appear to play as a winged monster who has to traverse dark labyrinths to find NPCs, power ups, and other items. Like Metroid, there’s a sense of exploration. But at the same time, your character has the ability to do some really fun aerial moves. This looks to be one of the themes of navigation. What they showed was also pretty tough. Enemies take a lot of damage, and can put you down quickly. Again this is all subject to change being a fairly early demo. But the tight controls, wonderful pixel art, and map design are promising.

Imaginary Monsters wasn’t the only indie studio to attend though! Adjacent to their booth was a studio called Jumpmen Gaming. They had two games they were showing off. The first was Project Myriad, a hexadecimal tower defense game with puzzle elements. I didn’t get much time with it so I certainly can’t review it here. That said, it might be something worth looking into if you’re a fan of the genre. I’m not fond of using the phrase “Fan of the genre” as it tends to be overused. But in this case I think it’s applicable. It clearly looks to do something different with the concept by going with a hex display, something usually geared toward a special niche of war games. The puzzle elements seem to add some flair as well. If any of that sounds like something you would like to try, it was recently released on Steam, and isn’t too expensive.

The other game they showed was Sentinel Zero. This game was in its very early stages. This upcoming release is a horizontal shoot ’em up game in the vein of R-Type. What sets it apart are its cartoon vector graphics. The presentation reminded me a lot of early Newgrounds games written in Flash. Think Alien Hominid. But the little that was shown was pretty fun. You earn power shots by filling a meter. You fill the meter by shooting everything. The hook seems to be quickly filling the meter, and unleashing charged shots as fast as possible. They also had two bosses to show, one of which was a giant spider. Again, it has a long way to go before being ready for prime time. But it looked like good start for a project by a two-person upstart.

Another interesting looking indie game demo was Depths Of Sanity by a studio called Bomb Shelter Studios. I didn’t get any real footage or screens of this one as I didn’t get the chance to try it myself. But it was intriguing. It appears to be an underwater action, and exploration game where you’ll pilot a submarine, and find all kinds of upgrades for it that allow you into previously inaccessible areas. Like a Metroidvania with elements of Blaster Master thrown in for good measure. Again, another early build. It does have a store page on Steam with a release date of Q4 2019.

Finally, Giant Evil Robot was back with the recently released full version of Mecha-Tokyo Rush. This is a combination of endless runner, and Mega Man clone. Things seemed a bit better than the build I saw last year. I didn’t have time to really play it though, so I can’t really say much in terms of its final state. The game does have a free to play model however, so you really don’t have anything to lose if you want to check it out.

After taking my initial walk around the floor, I went to the first of the panels I attended. The Connecticut YouTube panel. This panel featured Ryan Alexander (RAXTheGreat1), Mike Levy (Dongled), Sam Hatch (Culture Dog), John Delia (The Video Game Years), Paul Barnas (Retro Gaming Arts), and Russ Lyman (Russ Lyman). For those who don’t know, Retro World Expo has roots in Retroware TV, one of the earliest video hosts before YouTube became the de facto delivery model video content creators use today. Many don’t realize Retroware has its own roots in Connecticut. So it only makes sense to have a panel dedicated to some of the online content creators who are local to the area.

But while the panelists are natives of the State, the information delivered in the panel is applicable to anybody getting into video content on the internet. I would even go onto say a lot of it is applicable to any creative endeavor online or off. A lot of the questions posed to the panelists revealed some insightful answers. When asked about the motivation behind creating content everyone unanimously agreed one has to do it first, and foremost out of a love of it. Few, if many creators of any medium become overnight success stories. One shouldn’t make a video expecting to be the next James Rolfe. If it happens, fine, but going in with that expectation is a recipe for disaster. More than likely, you’re not going to garner a massive flood of views, and subscriptions when you start out. Even the creators who are big names today, often took months or years of work to become those big names.

Continuing from there, Mike Levy brought up the importance of making content you, as a creator want to make. Chasing trends isn’t going to work because it isn’t genuine. Others pointed out that potential fans may be able to sense that as well. When the subject of potential collaborations between creators came up, Mike, and Russ also pointed out the need to have a fleshed out idea to present. It isn’t enough to simply ask another creator to do a crossover project. Especially since they’re often pressed for time for their own projects, jobs, and lives. Instead one has to have a project idea ready to go, ideally with what role the person has in mind for them. The creator may still decline depending on the given situation. But they’ll be more likely to at least listen to what it is you have to propose.

Other panelists also drove home the importance of consistency. Trying to keep content coming out for the audience to experience. At the same time though, they did acknowledge there were times where a legitimate break is needed. Commitments, responsibilities, and other things may eat into time normally allotted toward creative endeavors. Sam, Paul, and John also talked about the guilt creators often feel for missing self-imposed deadlines, but acknowledged sometimes it’s unavoidable. Another topic was the importance of lighting, and audio in videos. Even a high quality camera can’t compensate for a lack of light, or bad audio. If the audience can’t see you, or your audio is too distorted or too light or too loud it can turn them off. Even if the content is good. Russ pointed out an episode he made on this very subject.

There was also a discussion about the recent controversy over former IGN writer Filip Miucin’s theft of YouTuber Boomstick Gaming’s Dead Cells review, which led into a wider discussion of online content theft. While some felt Miucin likely felt pressured by deadlines, everyone agreed that plagiarism was despicable behavior. Some of the panelists were rather shocked when they found their own content re-uploaded by other people without permission.

On the lighter side of things, there were some humorous moments where the panelists discussed changing trends in online video. At one time, many preferred long form content. But these days some viewers complain if it isn’t quick, and digestible in a few moments. One particularly funny point was when the crew talked about the trend of unboxing videos being popular. The joke that stood out centered around an unboxing video where the box would house smaller boxes within boxes like a set of nesting dolls. It was also in this panel that Ryan would point out some new YouTube creators were in the crowd.  Nerdy, and Squirdy are YouTube newcomers, and after checking them out I think Ryan may be onto something. These two have a nice variety of different gaming content you just may want to look into.

After the panel I walked back down to the main floor, where I got in some arcade gaming in. Every year Retro World Expo has a respectable number of arcade machines set up, as well as console set ups where attendees can play without quarters or tokens. Every machine is set to Free Play mode. Some of the machines I saw this year that I don’t remember seeing last year aside from KRULL, were a Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi machine, The Simpsons Arcade Game, and a Dig Dug cocktail table. Over the course of my time at the show, I played a fair amount of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, Final Fight, Shinobi, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Dig Dug. There was also a Ghouls n’ Ghosts machine, but it was always in use. One of the guys in my local trade group managed to find some time on it though, and even cleared it on only a few lives! Impressive.

I also wandered the floor this year looking for some Atari 2600, and Commodore 64 game deals. On the first day, I managed to track down a boxed copy of Gravitar, and a loose copy of Cruise Missile. The latter of which I had never seen before. Apparently it was released in 1987, and is a shmup involving above ground combat, and subterranean combat in the vein of MagMax. I also saw many of the guys from RF Generation were back, as well as Steven Christina Jr, and Karly Kingsley from Super Retro Throwback Reviews. I sat down with them for a short interview they should be airing in the coming weeks. SRTR was also raffling off a bunch of cool PS4 releases, as well as an NES Classic, and a Super NES Classic so I bought a couple of tickets to try my luck.

At around 4 o’clock or so I attended the Mortal Kombat panel with  Daniel Pesina, Rich Divizio, and Anthony Marquez. They were joined by Sal Divita. Sal was instrumental in bringing the NBA Jam series, and its spinoffs to arcades, and consoles. But he also had involvement as Nightwolf in Mortal Kombat 3. In addition to that, he still saw a lot of the development process on all of the early Mortal Kombat games. Daniel, Rich, and Anthony brought a lot of insight into the world of game development as they talked about the creation of Mortal Kombat. It was an idea that almost didn’t come to fruition, as Midway was hoping for a licensed project with Jean-Claude Van Damme. But when that fell through, Midway allowed Ed Boon, and John Tobias to move ahead with their ideas.

As it turns out, there was a great deal of painstaking work involved in the original games. Every video taped action the actors made, had to be cut down to 8 frames of animation due to memory constraints. Not only that, but many of the characters’ moves had to be shot multiple times when it was discovered that being even the slightest bit too close or far from the camera would make sprite sizes inconsistent. Midway also had a very low-budget for the early games so the crew had to use make shift lighting using office desk lamps, and some sessions were filmed using a camera owned by John Tobias’ father.

As for the controversy surrounding the game’s violence level, when it came to politicians, Midway’s stance was to ignore it. But the actors were contract players, not official Midway employees, so they were unabashed in defense of their work. All in all, a very informative panel not only for fans of Mortal Kombat, and fighting games, but for anybody interested in video game development, and history.

After that panel I wandered the floor some more, stopping to talk to friends, and acquaintances whom were either shopping, gaming, or vending. I also finally met The Gamescape Artist in person. My first contact with him was during a fellow blogger, hungrygoriya’s live streams (If you love old school JRPGs, check out her blog, or channel. It’s great!). He’s a friendly guy, and quite the painter! He has a wide range of paintings of iconic video game scenes to choose from, and he also does commissions. They’re high quality, highly detailed pieces, so if you’re looking for something to spruce up your game room consider giving him a shout out.

I also ran into the makers of an independent games’ magazine. Old School Gamer Magazine is just what it sounds like. It’s a new publication with articles covering retro games, as well as modern stuff inspired by retro games. The format is a little bit different from what I’d expected. It reminded me a bit of 1980’s computer magazines like Compute!, Ahoy!, and Commodore RUN, minus the program code you could type in, and save to a floppy for free software. The issue they gave me was the fifth one, and it came with a cool poster of the cover art. The representative informed me that they give away the digital version for free via email, but for a fairly low price you can have the physical magazines mailed to you every month. If you miss the days of getting Nintendo Power, GamePro, EGM, and Computer Gaming World at the newsstand, go check it out to see if it’s right for you.

I also met a group of Video bloggers who do VLOG articles, and live streams. The Geeky Panda covers convention cosplays, as well as games, and have an active Twitch page you can check out if so inclined. They play a bunch of stuff including Resident Evil VII, and Fallout IV. If you’re looking for a new variety streaming channel to follow, they may be your ticket.

After the show floor closed I walked over to the adjacent Hartford Marriott’s hotel bar. Normally I would have paid a visit to the City Steam Brewery, but the after party started an hour after the main show ended. I felt I wouldn’t make it back in time. Fortunately the hotel bar did have City Steam Naughty Nurse, so I pre-gamed with the delicious Amber Ale. After that, I went back to the convention center for the after party event which was a lot of fun.

There were a number of things to check out over the course of two hours. You could play arcade cabs that were set up in one of the rooms. Big Bucks Entertainment ran a special edition of Press Your Luck, where contestants who landed on a Whammy had to take a shot. Host Davira Kuy was also doing so in a rather impressive Quan Chi (Mortal Kombat 4) cosplay. The Imaginary Monsters developers were there, so I introduced them to my friends, and acquaintances, as everybody mingled. There was also a fun Drink, and Draw event going on. It was a nice way to end the first part of the convention.

I commuted back home after that, put away the first day’s pick ups, and got some rest. Day two was a Sunday, so after services, I headed back to Hartford to catch what I could. I did manage to get into Pat Contri’s panel which had some updates on projects he has in the pipeline. He, and his team are working feverishly on the follow-up to his excellent NES collecting guide. This one will be centered on the Super NES, and will be in a similar format. There will also be an alternate cover for the PAL readership. He is also looking into updating the original NES book with some improved screenshots. So future print runs may include these. But the biggest news is that he is working with some other creators on a documentary video about the video game industry’s shift away from physical media. The project will talk about both the pros of such decisions, and the cons of such decisions. The teaser he revealed does look quite promising.

At the end of the panel he brought back the NES Challenge, and I was able to be a contestant in the second bout! In a cut throat match of Donkey Kong Jr. Math, I barely managed to squeak out a victory! The first round pitted two fans against one another in Balloon Fight, while the third round pitted a couple against one another in an Abobo Vs. Abobo match in Double Dragon. The winners were granted a download key for a digital edition of his NES guide, while the losers were granted shoe string budget games for the Atari 2600, and Sega Genesis. A great panel overall.

I also got to see Norman Caruso’s Gaming Historian panel again this year. This time he did a live episode centered around a certain Nintendo made boxing franchise. I won’t say anything else about it, but like all of his episodes, you can expect to be amazed as there will be some revelations you won’t believe. This year he also changed game shows. Instead of video game history themed Jeopardy, he did video game history themed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This year’s contestant won last year’s Jeopardy game only to discover he won a T-shirt that didn’t fit, so this year he was attempting to win the appropriate size.

The last panel at the show I caught was a special panel centered around the history of Castlevania, and the Metroidvania formula used in modern independent games. Mike Levy was joined by Marc Duddleson (My Life In Gaming), Mike Desiderio (Rewind Mike), and Pam Dzwonek (Cannot Be Tamed.). Throughout the panel they went over many of the games in the series, and talked about the transition from action platformer to the Metroidvania style most think of today. But they also brought up the fact that there were times where the series hasn’t simply abandoned one style for the other. Marc, brought up the fact that the Nintendo 64’s entries in the series have many similarities to the NES trilogy with a focus on platforming, and combat. Pam, and Mike talked a bit about how even Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest had RPG elements that in some ways can be seen as a forebear to the labyrinthine designs seen in later games.

But they also discussed many newer games like Axiom Verge, Hollow Knight, and Mystik Belle. Here, Rewind Mike pointed out that some of these games veer more toward Metroid, while others veer more toward Symphony Of The Night in terms of design. He also mentioned Abyxsis after seeing it on the floor earlier in the day, and having liked what he had seen. Things closed out with some Castlevania trivia, with the winning attendee getting a Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest Game Pak signed by James Rolfe, and many of the online personalities who attended the show. From Mike Levy’s personal collection no less. And no, I did not win. My Castlevania knowledge is rudimentary. Although I do surprise people when I point out Konami did port the game to many 80’s era computer platforms. Also they’re expensive. If you thought the NES cartridge is steep, try getting the Commodore 64 floppy disk. Anyway, it was a great panel.

I spent most of my final moments of the show on the floor again. I found a few great deals over that time. The crown jewel was the copy of Bubble Bobble for the Commodore 64 a friend of mine had at his booth. Most people remember the NES release, but the C64 version was pretty much on par, and you don’t see it as often. Another vendor had a slew of boxed, and unboxed games, so I looked through the vast selection where I found a copy of Pengo for the Atari 2600. It’s not a release that you see very often at all. It had no tag on it so I asked for a price. When they replied “It has a ripped label so ten dollars.” I just said “Done.”, and picked it up.

I was demoed a party card game called Cheer Up. It plays similarly to Cards Against Humanity, but with its own twist. It goes through rounds in three steps while also simplifying it with a three-letter system. This opens things up by having three card answer types, but also color coding them to make things easier to follow. It wasn’t something I got into, but that’s probably me not being as drawn to board games as other people. I can see the appeal though for those whom have guests over often. Basically, the person asking a question gets every other player to submit answers from their hand, with the funniest one getting points. If you have people over for regular game nights, you might want to see if it’s for you. They have a free digital download version on their site which is nice, because then you can try it to see if you’ll enjoy it before buying a copy.

I also spotted a booth hosted by another YouTube up, and comer GothamLounge who does Long plays with commentary. If you’re stumped on a game, you may want to see if it’s something he’s played through. He seems like a nice fellow, so I wish him luck on his online endeavors. As I was catching up with friends, and acquaintances before the show closed I was tracked down by the Super Retro Throwback team to discover I had won the Super NES Classic Edition raffle! So I guess this was my “steal” of the show as I ultimately got one of these ridiculously cheap. A special thanks to them for interviewing me, and hosting the raffles. I also nabbed some sweet Splatoon themed stickers, and buttons from the always great Elijah Taylor, and JustM3hStudios booths. If you see them at a con near you check them out sometime.

All in all, I had another great year seeing some great panels, scoring some deals, and meeting up with friends like The Best Spuds. But there was so much going on it was impossible to get to everything. I didn’t get a chance to talk to a number of guests. I didn’t get to say “Hello” to The Gaming Historian, RGT85, Game Dave, or Bob Backlund. (Yes, the great wrestling legend Bob Backlund was at the show.). There were a ton of interesting people there this year, and I’ve undoubtedly missed some of them. I apologize in advance.

But even if you weren’t interested in any of the guests there were a lot of other things happening. The Arcade games, and console games were set up to go all day. There were pinball machines to play. There were tabletop miniature games to play. There were live musical acts to jam out to. There were several tournaments going on as well. The ever popular Fortnite had a singles, and doubles competition, there was a Mario Kart 64 competition, a Goldeneye tournament, even a Nintendo World Championships tournament.

There was also a cosplay contest going on this year, and the massive auction made a return. Unfortunately for me I missed it. I was told somebody won a complete Commodore 64 setup (including a vintage monitor) for well below value. Some years the auction can actually lead to deals for some con goers. And even if none of that appeals to you, there are always a lot of vendors to check out. You may not get insane deals, but you can almost bet at least someone will have something you never see when you go hunting locally.

Congrats to everyone at the convention for putting on another great show this year. I hope to be able to make it out again next year. And thanks to all readers who made it this far. As you can see, I had a lot of ground to cover, and I still didn’t get to everything. If you’re in New England next year when it rolls around, check it out. It’s well-organized, entertaining, and they squeeze a lot into it.

ConnectiCon 2018 Recap

Another summer has come, and with it another ConnectiCon. I generally look forward to attending every year. There’s almost always something to look forward to. A certain guest, or a certain panel. There are workshops, contests, and a lot of other things going on. Even if none of that appeals to you any given year, there are still plenty of people to meet, video games to play, and board games to play. You can also bet on a lot of vendors showing up, and chances are you’ll end up going home with something.

Unfortunately this year, my work schedule, and health issues kept me from being able to attend the entire duration of the show this year. The convention really runs three days, although if you count the ability to pick up your badge a day early you can technically say four. But in any case, I usually go for the whole weekend, and try to get into as many panels as possible. This year I could only attend Saturday, but I still tried to get in as much as I could into the day.

When you attend the show, there are three lines upon arrival. One for weekend guests to get a discounted parking pass, a second for those who pre-ordered their tickets, and a third for those who did not. This was the first year I would be in the third line, but aside from a long wait time (a lot of other people were apparently last-minute) it really wasn’t that bad. Things moved along pretty smoothly in general, and while I was waiting I chatted up a few of the others in line. This is one of the things about the show I like, and that is for the most part everyone gets along. There are exceptions of course, but most of the time people get along. So often people forget just how much hobbies can bring people together. You might not see eye to eye on any given topic, but you can both agree that F-Zero GX is pretty cool.

One of the cosplayers in line was a kind gentleman whose selection would impress one of my fellow bloggers. He did a terrific job on short notice making a Red Mage costume inspired by the class from the original Final Fantasy. This is also where I have to inform you of some bad news. Like an idiot I had left my memory card at home, so I was forced to take pictures with my sub par cell phone. So unfortunately most of these will be fairly small. Still, I wanted to make sure I had *something* to represent the weekend.

I also have to give a major thanks to the Best Spuds, and a congratulation to them for cracking a major milestone on YouTube. They hung out with me a lot of the day, and were kind enough to check on me as they know I’m not at one-hundred percent. If you haven’t gotten around to watching their stuff on YouTube you really ought to. They blend traditional Let’s Play conventions with sight gags, and comedy in their own way. Some of the bigger names on the platform have even challenged them to take on some difficult games. Some of them because they’re genuinely good, but challenging titles. Others because they’re broken, and notorious for being almost impossible. But in either case the results are entertaining. One small anecdote from that morning happened on my way down a hall. One of the ConnectiCon staff members saw my CGR 2085 shirt, and shouted “TRUXTON!”. So we spent a few moments talking about Mark Bussler’s show, and some of the other regional cons the staff member worked on. He got to see Machinae Supremacy play at MAGFest one year, which sounded like quite the experience. If you haven’t heard them, check out some of their stuff on YouTube sometime. They’re great.

Speaking of YouTube, I was able to get into one panel that morning.  Helmed by Random Encounters, the panel centered around ways to improve your content, and drive. Rob Walker, and Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic fame joined in shortly thereafter. Random Encounters is a channel that does their own musicals based upon video game characters, and storylines. It was a pretty good panel overall. Some of the things they brought up in the panel could be applied to other creative endeavors as well.  Things like making content first, and foremost because it’s something one is passionate about doing. If one tries entering the arena as a get rich quick scheme, it probably isn’t going to happen. The odds of posting one video, and having it become a phenomenon is similar to the odds of winning the lottery. All of the panelists also drove home the point of consistency on YouTube, constantly giving potential fans something new. But the team of Random Encounters also reminded the audience that if one project does well it doesn’t guarantee that every project will. There will be ups, and downs for every creator of every size.

Throughout the Q&A there were plenty of good discussions, and anecdotes. There was a point where the idea of diversification came up. With all of the rules YouTube changes frequently, there are no guarantees things will always be good or bad. Some YouTube names like Classic Game Room have moved their shows to other platforms like Amazon Prime in addition to or in lieu of YouTube with better success. But even names that have better success on YouTube have followed that show’s lead by offering other merchandise to help fund their projects. As well as services like Patreon that allow fans to directly contribute to the projects if they wish.

All of the panelists also were asked about how they were able to get some of their guests, and collaborators to do crossovers. Many of these came down to already having a project ready to go to present to them, and simply asking without expecting to get a “Yes.” for an answer. When they did, they were grateful for it, but acknowledged there were far many more times when that answer was a respectful “No.”.

There were even some moments with fan interactions, like the M.Bison cosplayer who projected a very good impression of the late Raul Julia’s classic performance of the character. He had a back, and forth with Doug Walker who had reviewed the Street Fighter Movie as The Nostalgia Critic years ago. Everyone on the panel really adored one cosplayer’s Butterfree Pokémon costume with working wings. One of the Random Encounters team liked my Atari trucker cap. So that was nice.

Nintendo Of America was also at ConnectiCon. Not for a panel, but to let people check out their Mario Tennis Aces, and Labo products. They also gave out a TON of cool swag. I got my nieces a few free posters, and Splatoon 2 plastic cups. I spent some time on Mario Tennis Aces, and while one or two matches aren’t enough to really give it a full on review, it was a pretty fun time. It has a large roster of Super Mario Bros. characters to choose from, and the mechanics seem to be about on point for a Mario sports game. There seemed to be an emphasis on not just hitting the ball, but on the timing, and using the traps within the environment to ones’ advantage. It certainly won’t interest everyone, but it did seem like an enjoyable enough game for the most part.

The one panel I wanted to get into was the Voice Actor Cards Against Humanity panel. Unfortunately when I went to double-check the time for it, it was crossed off, so it appeared to have been cancelled. There were a number of high-profile voice actors who came out to this year’s show including Steve Blum (Cowboy Bebop) who I was really excited to see. I didn’t get a chance to meet him, though I did catch a glimpse of him through the massive crowd of fans around his booth. Hopefully, he’ll return another year. Jon St. John was back this year, and I was told also had another fantastic panel this year on Friday.  Some of the other big names were Ron Rubin (X-Men), Cal Dodd (Wolverine), Katie Griffin (Sailor Moon), Susan Roman (Sailor Moon), Nolan North (Nathan Drake in Uncharted), Troy Baker (Joel in The Last Of Us) among others. It was a great year for those who wanted to meet actors who have done work in anime, and games.

Speaking of games, the gaming area was greatly expanded over last year’s show. This year they even had an F-Zero AX cabinet! For those who don’t know, back in 2003 when F-Zero GX came out on the Nintendo Gamecube, Sega also made an arcade version called F-Zero AX. They’re the same game on paper. You won’t see much of a difference in graphics quality, or sound. However, the arcade cabinet had many racers, and tracks that were playable fairly quickly, that were almost impossible to unlock on the Gamecube version for many people. Why? Because doing so required top honors in its courses, and missions on the highest difficulty settings. However, if you brought your Gamecube memory card, with an F-Zero GX file on it to the arcade cab, these would unlock when you came back home to play the home version. The thing is, this was at a time when arcades were dwindling in North America. So for many people, seeing one of these cabs was all but impossible. This was compounded when only a proverbial handful of these cabs made it to North America anyway.

So imagine the joy I felt upon seeing one in person! They also had a Mortal Kombat II machine, several Street Fighter games, a vast selection of rhythm games, and a classic Centipede machine. Unfortunately for me the Centipede machine wouldn’t save scores, so when I toppled the high score, I had to take a snapshot for proof. The dealer section was also much bigger this year. There weren’t a ton of video game vendors, though I managed to spot three of them. One was a massive vendor of Japanese imports. I found them a bit high, even for a convention but it was cool seeing never opened, Japanese region Super Famicoms, Sega Dreamcasts, Nintendo 64’s alongside a plethora of Japanese exclusives, and other cool stuff.

The second vendor only had a smattering of NES, and PS1 games amongst the large selection of soundtrack albums. I was tempted to pick up a few of these OSTs, but ultimately didn’t. I probably should have picked up the lone Rockman boxed set I saw there but it is what it is. The third vendor was Retro Games Plus who had a booth for the upcoming RetroWorldExpo. But they also had a selection of games on hand to sell. I found a game I hadn’t seen before, but looked interesting called Weaponlord for the Super NES. It hadn’t been marked, but it was in great shape so I asked about the price. So after looking it up, the rep told me it would be $15. So I picked it up.

After browsing the floor with friends, we headed out to get lunch. Again the show coincided with Hartford’s Riverfest. An event where the city brings many food trucks, and some live entertainment along the Connecticut River. It culminates at night with a fireworks celebration. (More on that later.) This year the Chompers truck from last year was back. So I tried their new taco variation of their food balls. They were really good. Not too spicy, they did in fact, taste like tacos inside of a breaded meatball. They also had a sour cream, and mild salsa dip for them. We spent some time checking out the area before heading back. We walked the floor getting a few photos in, before going to the dealer room one last run. While there I found a heavily discounted copy of The Art Of Atari Poster Collection book. It’s fantastic, compiling most of the Atari 2600 box art covered in Tim Lapetino’s book The Art Of Atari. But here, all of the paintings that graced these covers, are presented without any text on them. The original artwork on pages that can be removed, framed, and hung on the wall in poster form. At less than half of the MSRP I couldn’t say “No.”.

Shortly after that we went to Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ for dinner. If you’re in Hartford, and you’re in the mood for grilled meats, this is a great place. I had their Mac Attack with Brisket. It was awesome. Macaroni, and Cheese topped with Brisket, and they had a sweet, and tangy sauce seared in. It also wasn’t that much more expensive than going to a traditional diner, and the service was great. We headed back to the Convention Center, and that’s when a bit of commotion happened. The Riverfest fireworks where going off, when we saw crowd come running from the Convention Center, and police coming speeding in to investigate. We would later find out that there was an altercation between two attendees, and someone hearing the fireworks though a gun had discharged. So people panicked. According to the Hartford Courant though, Oddly enough while this was going on, further away, someone did in fact shoot a stolen gun at absolutely nothing, and was promptly arrested.

This is the only time in any of the years I’ve attended the show that anything like this has ever happened. But in spite of the hysteria, the police did do a good job of getting to the bottom of it quickly. Shortly after we got back inside the convention put out an alert that things were safe again. The entire thing was over with fairly quickly. Thankfully nobody was hurt in any of it. After that short fit of panic we went to the bar in the Marriott connected to the Convention Center, and winded down with a drink.

All in all, I had a great time. Save for a short-lived scare I didn’t really have much to complain about here. ConnectiCon is a great show to visit. Again, it’s one of the larger conventions that focuses on the community aspect of fandoms. That being said, I would have liked to have been able to attend the whole weekend this year. I could have made some more of the panels. I also really would have liked to have seen Steve Blum, and Jon St. John play that card game. But perhaps they’ll return next year. Even though I could only experience the one day this time around, I still had a mostly terrific experience. Here’s hoping next year’s show will be even better, I’ll be able to experience all three days, and I won’t forget crucial equipment.

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.

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.

Where’s The Fair Use?

In case you missed it online, earlier this week Doug Walker did a special Nostalgia Critic video. YouTube’s antipiracy systems have a long chronicled history of being abused. But it’s been really boiling over as of late. Below, is the link to the commentary episode. It really goes in depth about the sorts of things that are happening to reviewers, comedy writers, and other critics, and creatives on YouTube. It’s important because even if you only watch videos, or you do something outside of YouTube that may employ fair use, who knows if it will end at internet video? Nobody is defending people who upload an entire film. But if a critic can’t be allowed to prove their point with a 5 second clip, or a citizen can’t show the world something funny their kid did because the radio was on, that’s not a good thing.

Nostalgia Critic’s Fair Use Commentary

Classic Game Room lives on!

Mark Bussler’s CGR was ended not too long ago. But fear not! Classic Game Room has found new life in a third revision thanks to a lot of generous fans. With a successful Patreon under its belt, the show will live on. There have already been a couple of new reviews. You can check out the latest Q&A video, and episodes on YouTube.

For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a departure from most online shows. Mark goes over pros, and cons while giving a nice blend of humor, and knowledge in a calm demeanor. The show doesn’t go for a overtly cynical character. Nor does it go for a serious tone. It’s a show centered around showing off games, good or bad, and having fun doing it. There are also entertaining fan Q&A episodes, music recommendations, and of course beer.

Here’s hoping the resurrected CGR is successful, and back for years to come.

RetroWorld Expo Recap

This weekend was a nice closeout to my week away, as I attended the inaugural RetroWorldExpo. Over the years Retroware TV has slowly built up into one of the internet’s more recognizable gaming channels. Home to popular personalities like The Game Chasers, Pat The NES Punk, PushingUpRoses, LazyGameReviews, The Gaming Historian, Pixel Dan, among others.

A few of these big names were present, along with some smaller names in the vein of panels. There were around eight panels, I got into two of them. But other people I met around the convention had talked up the ones I wasn’t able to get into. Second Opinion Games was there early on, and while I didn’t get into their panel, I did meet them previously at ConnectiCon in July. They do a terrific podcast, and if you enjoy that format, definitely give them a listen. I also missed The Game Chasers panel, which I’ve been told was something I really should have seen. Which I’m certain was as entertaining as the show.  There was a panel for The Gaming Years, a panel for RF Generation, and a panel by Jeff Ryan. He is the writer behind Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. Again, I missed these, but I’ve been informed that I missed a lot.

But I did get into Norman Caruso’s live Gaming Historian panel. Which was a very informative, and insightful experience. He started the panel by asking the crowd if they knew what mascot Sega originally intended to succeed Sonic The Hedgehog with. Very few knew this. He then opened into a history lesson about Ristar, Sega’s 1995 platformer involving a star. A lot of facts were embedded in the presentation. For instance, I never knew the character was originally intended to replace Sonic, nor was I aware his original design was a rabbit. After the live episode, Norman opened a Gaming Historian themed Jeopardy! event with three contestants from the audience. Many of the categories being lampoons of the popular game show’s. The funniest being Potent Portables. Many of the answers on the board were taken from Gaming Historian episodes too. So audience members who had watched a lot of his material knew a number of the questions to reply with. The winner of the game won a free poster. But that wasn’t all. The panel ended with a quick question, and answer segment, where fans got some insight into just how much work he puts into researching an episode (The Power Glove Episode was almost two months of research alone) before writing a script, filming, and editing one. If you haven’t yet seen any of his material you really should. You might be surprised just how interesting the behind the scenes work on classic games, or the business of the industry behind our hobby can be. His show certainly makes it palatable for just about anyone, even if history isn’t typically your thing.

I also got into “Pixel” Dan Eardley’s  panel, which was really fun. Before starting out he played an entertaining video that showed off what his material is all about. He did a similar presentation to what he did at MAGfest, going over the history of video game themed apparel, including Pac-Man nightgowns (Yes, those were a thing.). Obviously video game toys as well. Which started out, few, and far between but eventually becoming a bit more common as toy, and media companies slowly realized that people wanted their favorite game characters as toys, and collectibles. This lead into a discussion on amiibo toys, and how he could explain to gamers who had never collected toys before how their woes are nothing new. Toy companies have short packed (shipped less of) certain characters for years. There have been aftermarket resellers for years. There have been defects, and oddities like two left arms, or missing pieces in toy lines for years. He also spent some time talking about how toy companies were less risk averse decades ago, taking wild chances leading us to some of our favorite properties like Masters Of The Universe, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, TMNT, as well as the lesser known lines like Centurions, Sectaurs, Visionaries, Inhumanoids, and even Food Fighters. Sadly, some of these wouldn’t be attempted today as toy manufacturers compete with not only each other, but other media as well. Near the end of the panel Pixel Dan also talked a bit about the blind bag toy opening videos he also has his wife appear in before having an impromptu blind bag toy opening. This was a lot of fun. After opening the toys, he let participants keep them! So thanks to PixelDan I now have a Terraria figurine. It was a really fun panel. If you collect toys, or you buy them for your children, or nieces, and nephews watch his show. He covers all ranges of action figures, from those intended for everyone to those intended for the collector. He was also really swell after the panel for taking a few minutes to meet him in person. So if he reads this, thanks again.

Beyond the panels, there were still a number of things to do. There were a lot more vendors than I imagined a first year convention would have. It was also at the Oakdale in Wallingford CT. Which on paper would seem like an odd choice. The Oakdale is a venue known more for being a place to visit for concerts or stand up comedy. Back in my teenage years, it’s where most nationally known major bands would play if they weren’t playing in Hartford. If you were, or are a fan of alternative rock or pop bands like The Gin Blossoms, Collective Soul, Pearl Jam, or Toad The Wet Sprocket, and live in CT, then chances are you’ve been to the Oakdale. But this is the first convention I’m aware of that has been held there. That said, they certainly made the venue work out really well. Vendor booths were laid out in a fashion that allowed for foot traffic, only once or twice did it take me awhile to get through a crowd of people shopping the booths. If you missed me on Twitter you’d have seen I found a few fair bargains. For the most part vendors were fair. Most items were at or slightly above what you’d expect to see in a store. I saw one or two items with insanely high prices, but that certainly wasn’t the norm. To be fair, you can’t expect much better at a convention, as things get inflated to cover the cost of having a presence. When you have that fact in mind, Most of the vendors were actually really fair.

As for the stuff I did pick up, I found two complete Masters Of The Universe toys over at Retro Games Plus’ booth. They had a fair number of figures there among the myriad of video games. I was surprised to see most of them were complete. It isn’t common to find loose ones with all of the accessories these days. So I took Hordak, and Stinkor home.  I also managed a trade with someone at another booth, so I finally have a Jigglypuff in the amiibo collection. Justm3h studios was there making gaming themed buttons, while a small outfit called Two Nerds made some gaming themed glassware.  So I picked up a button, and a really nice Samus Aran themed beer Stein. There was also a booth from a place called Down by the river that had some Commodore stuff. Which was great because it seems so underrepresented these days. I picked up a MIB copy of Energy Warrior for the Commodore 64. While they didn’t have anything I needed, I was surprised by how affordable the 1UP booth was. A lot of close out prices on good titles like American McGee’s Alice. An area store called Level 01 had a couple of new copies of vintage games. I couldn’t afford them, but seeing an unopened mint copy of Super Mario 64 is always impressive.

It was also nice to mingle with some of the other fans on the show floor. I bumped into a few Let’s Play video producers, my old friends over at Best Spuds, and a couple of newer folks who have a channel called Power Plaid. Both of whom put their own spin on doing play through videos. Best Spuds tend to make their episodes feel like a radio morning show. They’ll play, crack jokes, talk about any number of things while playing. Power Plaid actually has different kinds of content. They’ll do game videos centered around a play through. But they also work on animated shorts, and chip tunes. Both of these channels are in an upstart stage, but if you enjoy watching let’s play content, give them a look.

There was also a room devoted to arcade cabinets, and retro gaming. It was the place to be, especially if you grew up in the 1980’s like I did. Donkey Kong Jr., Ms. Pac-Man, Mario Bros., After Burner, Out Run, were all there in their glory.  There were also a lot of games that came out in my teenage years there. Notably a Street Fighter Championship arcade cabinet, a Mortal Kombat II, and Mortal Kombat III cabinet, A Virtua Fighter II machine, and they even had an obscure Time Killers knock off in Blood Storm. Although one could argue it’s a sequel in a sense since the same company made it.  Much in the same way War Gods, and Mortal Kombat were both made by Midway. But even seeing Blood Storm was cool because it was the last game made by Incredible Technologies under their Strata moniker. That, and it feels like everything in 90’s Image comics thrown into a blender. It very much feels like a product of its time.

But equally impressive to the arcade collection, was the number of retro systems on display. There were the usual suspects like the NES, Super NES, Genesis, Dreamcast, and Master System. But they also had a 3DO, Atari 5200, an Intellivision, a Colecovision, and an NEC PC Engine. So it was fun to be able to play Castlevania Rondo Of Blood, Mr. Do!, Tapper, Astrosmash, and Zaxxon again. It was also heartwarming to see how many children wanted their parents to show them these classic Atari era classics, and their interest in what came before. If you were more into the board game side of things, they also had a wing devoted to table top games which also included role-playing card games too. There were also tournaments to take part in, a cosplay contest, as well as a rare game auction attendees could take part in.

There was also a concert at the end of the show, Epic Game Music, On Being Human, and The World Is Square closed things out for a few hours. I wasn’t able to stay for the concert, but friends who did, really talked it up a lot. Overall, I would say the first RetroWorld Expo was a surefire hit. It had everything you would expect from some of the larger conventions in spite of being a first event, and it had a huge turn out. There were thousands of people who showed up, and it’s highly likely you’ll see another outing next year. If, and when that comes about I highly recommend checking it out. I certainly look forward to another one next year after experiencing this one this year.