Some stuff I bought: Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2024 edition.

Goodness, it’s that time again, huh?

The Portland Retro Gaming Expo has arrived once again, full of cool old video games and lots of vendors willing to sell their wares to folks like me. This time around me and my partner got to peruse stuff on Saturday, while I got to see some friends from out of town. Sunday was me riding solo, but pallin’ around with another friend I don’t see much.

Naturally I was laser focused on deals, and slowly realizing I’m getting old as now I’m seeing booths selling Xbox One, PS4 and even PS5 stuff. Mere years ago I was talking a lot about finding loads of PS2 and original Xbox stuff, but now that’s not the case anymore.

I had three small goals during this trip: Search any discount bin for cheap common games. This paid off in a few places as I got a few fairly notable games in my collection.

The second was to fill the gaps in my game show game library. During the seventh generation, there were a glut of game show games not seen since the days of the NES, and I wanted to add some of those to my collection. Even if some of them are not that great, as you’ll soon see.

Finally, I’ve been trying to find peripherals for my Xbox 360, as the seventh generation of game consoles are slowly reaching “retro” status, and I wanna grab some of these peripherals before they start being sold for a ridiculous premium. I got lucky on one of these, at least.

Note this only covers PRGE finds, I will probably have a “everything else I bought” for a future article. But enough preamble. Let’s get into the lineup, starting with Saturday’s finds:

$2 each:

• Get on Da Mic (PlayStation 2)
• American Idol (PlayStation 2)

An auspicious start. Get on Da Mic is basically Karaoke Revolution but for hip-hop. Made by Artificial Mind and Movement (A2M), the studio now known as the Dead by Daylight guys, I was curious about this because rap-based music games are kinda rare, the only other one that comes to mind is Def Jam Rapstar.

From what I gathered from the box is that these seem to hit all the fairly notable hip-hop songs from up to 2004: “California Love,” “Baby Got Back,” “Rapper’s Delight” and even “The Humpty Dance.” I have no idea if these are the originals or covers, as there’s no song credits in the manual, and the back cover uses “As originally made famous by.” Thus it’s entirely possible that an audio production company like Wavegroup Sound did the covers, akin to Karaoke Revolution and early Guitar Hero. Guess I’ll have to find out for myself. Once I find a working USB microphone, that is.

American Idol is a somewhat infamous game. Made by Hothouse Creations, this game is part game show sim, part rhythm game. There’s weird cartoony representations of judges Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell, presumably done because the last thing we needed was realistic PS2-quality Simon Cowell.

I’m more familiar with the Game Boy Advance version of this game, where people have posted videos of them constantly failing to hit the notes, and funny pitch shifting being used to simulate bad singing, like in this performance for “Waiting for Tonight.” The PS2 version likely has the same features, complete with the bad singing.

I bet it’ll have some funny moments to play through, but otherwise might be forgettable. At least it has support for a dance pad, I guess?

Also, I realized this technically fits the first two categories like a glove: It was in the bargain bin, and technically you could consider American Idol a game show if you squinted real hard. (I treat reality competitions and game shows as separate things, but YMMV.)

$6: Hollywood Squares (Wii)

Ah, here we go. The first of the game show games I found.

Published by Ubisoft and developed by Ludia, these game show games were often not great. For some games like The Price Is Right, they’re fine enough but may have little nitpicky things that diehard fans might dislike. In other cases, like Press Your Luck 2010 Edition and The $1,000,000 Pyramid, those seem to be made on a shoestring budget with little to no care or passion to the show in question, thus they end up being not fun even as a joke with friends. I fully expect this to be in the former category, where it’s a decent enough representation of the show, but has some particularly questionable design decisions.

This one, naturally, is based off the then-recent version of the show that aired from 1998-2003 in first-run syndication. Tom Bergeron reprising his role as host, alongside clips from the show with Martin Mull, Jeffrey Tambor, Kathy Griffin and… Brad Garrett. Everybody else is generic Ludia contestants without any punny names to go by. Which makes it baffling for them to go for the celebrity endorsement as well.

Well, at least it’s not The $1,000,000 Pyramid…

$10: Rock of the Dead (Xbox 360)

Now it’s time to get the weird stuff.

With the box quote “Why didn’t anyone think of this before?!” from IGN’s Craig Harris, this is basically House of the Dead but with Guitar Hero guitars instead of lightguns. Developed by Epicenter Studios, this game boasts the voice cast of your venerable nerd culture stars of the late 2000s: Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day. This also boasts a soundtrack of Rob Zombie tunes, which makes me hopeful, because if “Dragula” is on the setlist, that makes it worth the $10 I probably overpaid for it.

I’m fascinated by this game specifically, because by this time around 2009-10, people are trying to expand these plastic guitars to be used in stuff beyond just standard rhythm games. And this isn’t the only example, but it is probably the most well known. Unless you remember downloading Battle Beat on Xbox Live Indie Games.

I can commend Epicenter for the idea, but I can’t imagine this being good. If anything, I’d love to see one of the famous plastic instrument players give this a try because it’ll probably be hilariously bad. I’ll definitely give it a try, though my Guitar Hero guitars are approaching 15 years, and stuff like this never last forever.

$13 total:

• Battle of the Bands (Wii)
• Jeopardy! (Wii)

Jackpot! I hit both the discount section and the game show games requirement on this one.

Battle of the Bands is a competitive rhythm game using the Wii remote in time with music. The gimmick here is that the bands play different genres, so here you’ll get to hear a weird country version of Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” or a Marching Band version of Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain.” I remember reading reviews of this game from places like GameTrailers and the general consensus is that it’s pretty bad, so I don’t have high hopes despite the interesting premise.

For a long time I shied away from Jeopardy! video games. I’ve written about them before, yes, but I’m not a trivia god. Even when I watch old episodes of Jeopardy!, or clips from the official Jeopardy! YouTube channel, I’m lucky to get half of them right. But I had to get this because it has Mii Alex Trebek. Plus this gives me a chance to sharpen up on my trivia skills.

Priceless: Phil Moore’s autograph

Phil Moore of Nick Arcade fame was at PRGE this year, and he was pretty cool. I honestly thought that his super animated nature was a bit he did on the show, but no, he’s just like that. He was willing to chat with me, and even I brought up a commercial he did for a local cable station here, of which he was pretty jazzed to find out about.

Afterwards I got a signed poster and a selfie with him, which was pretty darn neat.

Honestly, I hope more of the Nickelodeon game show hosts of old start doing the convention circuit. I’d definitely be down with getting autographs of Marc Summers, Mike O’Malley, and whoever else would show up. Now that I think about it, this technically follows the second rule I had in that it’s game show related. Funny how that happens.

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After that, I ended up chilling with some friends from out of town, one of which was participating in a Dr. Mario tournament that was happening concurrently with the Classic Tetris World Championships that always happens at PRGE every year. I got to see a game from UFO 50 and now understand why that’s the popular game of the moment, and they showed a sneak preview of their first game: Porting Petal Crash to the Neo Geo! I haven’t played the original Petal Crash but their port seems to be pretty damn good so far. Check it out.

Cut to Sunday. I’m still a bit sore from yesterday. But in spite of that, I was persistent enough to keep going and grab a few more things.

$4 total:

• Xbox 360 HDD transfer cable
• You Don’t Know Jack Mock 2 (PlayStation)

One of the things I wanted to find was a transfer cable for an original Xbox 360, and preferably a bigger hard drive than the 60GB I’ve had since I got my console back in 2008. I succeeded in the former, thanks to a $1 bin that was chock full of peripherals like Xbox 360 Kinect sensors. They had hard drives too, but they were the 20GB drives that were in early models, which are outright useless to anyone nowadays. No luck on finding a hard drive, but I didn’t look as hard as I should’ve.

You Don’t Know Jack Mock 2 fits the game show game bill singlehandedly. I totally forgot there were ports of Jack to the PlayStation, so this was a nice cheap treat. I bet these will be no different than the early editions of the PC game, but with some amateur PS1 trickery. And it has multitap support!

$5 each:

• Who Wants to be a Millionaire? 2012 Edition (Xbox 360 Kinect)
• Minute to Win It (Xbox 360 Kinect)

More Kinect games! MORE!!!!

Millionaire 2012 – I am not typing out the full title, sorry – is another Ubisoft/Ludia joint. This one oddly requires the Kinect sensor, and features 360 avatars as playable characters. While there likely won’t be a 360 avatar version of Meredith Vieira, I am fascinated how they decided to shoehorn in Kinect features rather than make a straightforward adaptation of the show.

Minute to Win It is another game show game that requires Kinect. Like the previous game mentions, this uses the 360 avatars, and unlike Millionaire, does have an avatar version of host Guy Fieri. Surprisingly, this is not another Ubisoft/Ludia collab: It’s ZOO Publishing – a budget publisher during the sixth and seventh generations – and SDP Games, a company nowadays known for mobile games, but made their claim to fame with an Asterix game. Fitting, since the developer is based in France.

I remember having the Wii version of this game and finding it outright impossible to beat the first challenge so it didn’t last long in our household.

Something I didn’t realize until a friend pointed it out: This still has the seal on the spine of the case, so it’s entirely possible this has never been opened. Either that, or someone was crafty and used the sealed label for extra protection.

$5: Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Disc (Xbox 360)

Normally I wouldn’t pick up these pack-in discs because most of them wouldn’t have anything interesting in them. But I grabbed this one because of one specific game: Uno.

This is the original Xbox 360 version of Uno. The one that supported the Xbox Live Vision Camera. The one that came free with your fucking Xbox. (cw: slurs)

I highly recommend Kacey’s video on the game, as it turns out not only was it a pretty good version of the game, she also goes to great lengths to solve the mystery of a famous video: Did it come free with your Xbox 360? (I won’t spoil the outcome, it’s worth a watch.)

$7.65: The Price Is Right 2010 Edition (Wii)

Another booth, another game show game. For 2009, Ubisoft and Ludia released three games that year: Press Your Luck 2010 Edition, Family Feud 2010 Edition and an updated version of their The Price Is Right game, also labeled 2010 Edition.

This one features more pricing games than the previous edition, but is probably identical to the previous installment: Rich Fields being host, and serviceable but slightly off versions of your favorite elements of the show.

The booth I got this at was doing a 15% discount booth-wide, so I saved a buck and change. A shame they didn’t have the other “2010 Edition”s of Ubisoft/Ludia game shows, but that’s for another time.

$10 total:

• Soldier of Fortune: Payback (Xbox 360)
• Prison Break: The Conspiracy (Xbox 360)
• Trivial Pursuit Unhinged (PS2)

So my friend weasel, owner of Golfshrine, the most comprehensive golf video game shrine on the planet, spotted a booth where they were offering 6 games for $20, for any games that were labeled $5 each. Realizing neither of us could pick six games we wanted out of the stack, we worked together and picked three games each. He grabbed World Poker Tour (PS2), Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Xbox 360) and Heroes of Might and Magic (PS2). The three above are the ones I chose.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback was a Cauldron game released by Activision mere weeks after Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare hit shelves. Presumably they thought the Soldier of Fortune brand still had legs, but this game is apparently a hot mess, which is in line with similar FPS games Cauldron developed, like Secret Service, Jurassic The Hunted, and some of the History Channel games. I always wanted to grab this, but the only way to get it digitally was on GOG, and since it’s Activision-published it never got cheaper than $7. When I think about it, playing this on 360 might be a safer bet, since a fair share of seventh gen games may not work too well on modern machines. The peril of PC ports from the 2000s…

Prison Break is a TV show I’ve heard of. I don’t know if it’s any good. (Leave a comment if you’ve ever watched it.) I bet this video game adaptation by Deep Silver and Zootfly will probably be clunky but serviceable. Here’s hoping I don’t need to watch the show to understand the game’s plot.

This is what I kinda miss about the modern gaming landscape: Licensed games based on TV shows. Yes, Outright Games and GameMill have successfully taken the mantle with PS5, Xbox Series and Switch games based on hot properties, but there’s a charm to the seventh gen adaptations you just don’t see anymore.

Technically the last one counts as a game show game, since it’s trivia based. Developed by Artech Studios – makers of the Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! games by Hasbro Interactive and Atari – this game boasts various minigames and celebrity hosts like Terry Bradshaw, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Nye and… John Ratzenberger? I guess that makes sense, since Cliff Clavin was a trivia buff…

It’s really fascinating to see them make Trivial Pursuit games that feel more like an interactive game show. This, along with Trivial Pursuit Live! on current generation consoles has me intrigued how they handle this. And to see if this truly is unhinged as the title states.

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I had to tap out of the con early on Sunday, grabbing a bite at a Burgerville with my friend weasel before heading home. The whole day was full of pain, agony, and sadness – the latter especially, since I found out my long-standing hard drive full of music, random games and my VHS recordings, got the whirr-click-click of a dying drive. As of this writing, it is currently being repaired, and I’m hoping the recovery is reliable and painless.

The Portland Retro Gaming Expo is a cool convention. I’ve been going to it for years. I’ve been finding nice deals, meeting up with friends and cool folks, and seeing stuff like the modified Game Boy Camera hooked up to a photo printer than the Video Game History Foundation had set up. Like every year, I’ll likely be there again in 2025, with more junk games to find in tow. I’ll probably get around to writing a thing or two about these pickups in the future. Once I get around to the other games I’ve bought in past years and haven’t played or finished.

Though, this did make me realize something: All the games I chose are from US or European developers/publishers. Not a lot of Japanese stuff in here. No Nintendo, Konami, Capcom, not even a deep cut from a NIS or Atlus. While this probably isn’t really a problem per se, it has me really rethinking my preferences in games. Did me getting burnt out on Nintendo during the Gamecube era really sour my relationship with them that badly? Am I being unintentionally xenophobic? Or am I just really overthinking this? Either way, I’m gonna have to look more deeply into my game buying decisions in the future, because I’m genuinely missing out on some good stuff!

For now, though, I’m going to rest. I went to Green Day concert with my partner a few days before, and doing this mere days later was definitely too much for me to handle. My ankle now hates me in many different ways.

Special thanks to all those I got to see and talk with. Since the shutdown of cohost, a fair share of folks are getting back into the blog/website scene, and that has me realizing how many Cool People I follow. Thus I put a Links page called “Cool People who do Cool Things.” It’s full of links of works from friends and colleagues I like. It’s a WIP and I might’ve missed a few folks, but please check em out once you’re done reading this.

I feel that’s the most important thing about the early world wide web: the sense of smaller, yet connected communities. I used to remember the days when webrings were big, and I hope this leads to a movement of people going back to web 1.0 style websites without too much corporate influence.