I watched a child play what was apparently his first FPS game yesterday. It was Duke Nukem 3D, and he was playing it on one of those now-gaudy looking iMac G3s that were all the rage in the late 90’s. He even was even using a one-button mouse and, to make things even crazier, I got to watch this go down while playing Chex Quest on an old iMac right next to him. CHEX QUEST. Hopefully I’ll be able to do justice to how surreal Classic Gaming Fest was but I have a feeling that my words are going to fail me. Luckily we have plenty of pictures from this thing so there’s that. This past weekend was so insane.
CGF brought out an extremely diverse group of retro gaming enthusiasts to the Palmer Convention Center in Austin on August 16th and 17th and I cannot overstate how lucky I feel to have been able to attend this thing. No joke, the two days the con went on were not enough to participate in everything the con had to offer; So much was going on that I would’ve gladly attended a three or four day version of this thing. The amount of retro gaming goodness readily available for sampling was completely overwhelming and I had to fight back anxiety attacks as I debated over what I wanted to play at any given time. Between the tables full of older Mac computers at the aforementioned Vintage Computer Gaming Club booth (many of which were running Duke Nukem 3D multiplayer over LAN all weekend), the legions of newer homebrew titles for older Atari consoles at AtariAge’s booth, the dozens of arcade games set to free play and various indie game devs showing off their wares PLUS tons of random things at other booths (dat Power Glove demo! Blind Tetris!) I couldn’t have played everything the convention had to offer even if I had tried just a little bit harder. I was a little worried when we first got to the convention and saw how small it was (the entire convention took up about as much room as the dealer’s room would take at most other cons) but CGF emphasized quality over quantity to an extreme degree and the only way anyone could be bored at this thing is if they were trying really hard to be a misanthrope.
Most of CGF’s floor space was dedicated to artists and vendors selling all sorts of videogame-related paraphernalia, including a lot of really rare retro stuff that would be pretty hard to find anywhere else. Particularly impressive was the amount of import games available for purchase at the convention; there were easily way more of them there than there than I’ve seen at any anime convention I’ve ever been to and not only were they priced reasonably at every booth that had them but a lot of them were in stellar condition. We’re talking intact Spine Cards on PS1 and Saturn games. INTACT SPINE CARDS. The most popular booth by far though was the clearance games section, which had tons of disc-only PS1, PS2, and OG Xbox games for a dollar alongside massive amounts of Wiimote peripherals, Atari 2600 games everyone who owns one of those things already has, and a completely nutso collection of empty boxes and jewel cases that led to a lot of hilarious situations like the time I thought I found a mint condition copy of Resident Evil 2 on N64 but didn’t realize all the games in the bin didn’t have games in them because I was half-asleep or the various times I walked by the booth and saw kids get excited about finding a copy of Skylanders or something similar to that and got sad upon realizing there was no disc in the case (this was happening almost every time I walked by the booth).
Panels and musical performances were also a huge part of the convention and, due to CGF’s small footprint, all took place near the front of the con on a stage so anyone in attendance could easily see and hear what was going on at any given time, eliminating that thing that happens at every convention where you’re worried about missing the panel you want to see because you can’t figure out what panel room it’s in. It also ensured that everything that happened on the stage had a huge crowd that likely would not have witnessed the stage activity if it was quartered off into another room and it led to some seriously awesome stuff. Monstervision‘s set on Saturday afternoon (right after the cosplay competition, whoever scheduled that deserves a medal) hypnotized tons of people who wouldn’t normally go see a doom rock chiptunes act with abrasive, powerful guitars, and watching the vendors and artist alley areas completely clear out when the headlining acts each evening started playing was crazy. It was also great seeing Houston’s own Ten Pixels Tall play to a great reception early Saturday afternoon as people were still filing into the con and Darrel Spice Jr. of Spiceware’s presentation on Atari 2600 homebrew shortly afterward attracted a huge crowd of homebrew enthusiasts and people who had no idea new Atari games were still being made. A lot of that crowd wound up at AtariAge’s booth a few steps away from the stage to try out the the latest homebrew Atari titles including Zippy the Porcupine, a Sonic the Hedgehog demake for the 2600 that I wound up spending a lot of time with over the course of the weekend.
This is Ernie Cline’s Ecto-1 Delorean. He wrote the movie Fanboys and did an extremely well received meet-and-greet Sunday afternoon.
I had a stellar time at CGF, as I’m assuming many other people did. Allowing children under 12 into the con for free was a great move by the organizers; there were so many families there who looked like they were having the time of their lives and I’m sure that many of those kids went back home with a new found appreciation for the games their parents played when they were their age. Nearly every game in the arcade was seemingly being played by someone under the age of 13 at any given time, with Dragon’s Lair, Mortal Kombat, and Konami’s X-Men beat-em-up attracting some of the longer lines. It was also great seeing so many Houston locals at CGF too; in addition to the aforementioned Ten Pixels Tall set local dev Eric Kinkead had a booth promoting his mobile RPG Questlord, employees from the Game Over locations in town were serving as con staff, and there were a ton of people like us who made the drive up to check everything out.
I wish Classic Gaming Fest was happening again this weekend. I wish it happened every weekend. I wish I could live there forever.
Photo credits:
1- Classic Gaming Fest
2, 3, & 6 – Ria Catherine
4 & 5 – Rex Nabours III
