Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2026 has come and gone again. Naturally, I went again this year since it’s in my neck of the woods.
This year I went in with similar expectations like I did last year, where prices for everything were gonna be unnecessarily inflated. While that was partially true, I did somehow get a bunch of games at a decent discount. Definitely wasn’t gonna be paying the $200+ each for each Silent Hill game on the PS2, even the oft-maligned Silent Hill Origins. Even Silent Hill HD Collection, the 360/PS3 remaster of Silent Hill 2 and 3 which has a litany of bugs and technical problems that went unfixed, was going for $60, the same price it was when it was new! Absolutely ridiculous prices.
That’s not even getting into the absolute abundance of generative AI art around the show. Booths had it, some people got duped into buying stickers of AI art despite being told otherwise, even some prominent AI art used by the Oregon International Auto Show made the rounds on Bluesky. It’s unfortunate that there wasn’t enough vetting over this kind of stuff, because it really needs to be clamped down before we’re just flooded everywhere with the same kind of shitty AI slop that already plagues local businesses.
Despite all that, there were a few cool things I saw. Saturday was with me and my partner browsing the vendor booths. I got to see cool art, people selling all kinds of old stuff, the works. I don’t often buy stuff on Saturday, but I did get a few titles.
$10 each:
- Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions for Xbox One
- Anubis II for Wii
- Jeopardy! for PlayStation 2
I gotta say, folks, my first purchases had gotten me a bit hornswoggled, as it were. All three of these games go for less than $10 each on average. I paid $10 for each for them. I get it, it’s a convention, you might be paying more for a game than the average price on Pricecharting.com. Did sting a little. Now onto the games.
There was a brief period where Activision tried to bring back the Sierra label as an alternate publishing label. Geometry Wars 3 and an episodic King’s Quest reboot were all that really came out of this label that I remember. This was made by Lucid Games, consisting of a bunch of ex-Bizarre Creations developers, who had made the original Geometry Wars games. I’ve picked this and the Wii spinoff Geometry Wars Galaxies over the years despite not being a major fan of the series, but I always liked its aesthetic. Bet it’s a fun little twin stick shooter.
Anubis II is one of many shovelware games that came out of the game churning factory that was Data Design Interactive. A long time game development studio that somehow found a “winning formula” in flooding the PS2 and Wii markets with barely playable trash, this is one of the most well-known among bad game circles, next to maybe Ninjabread Man or Rock’n’Roll Adventures. I know this is gonna be bad because I’ve seen it played countless times since it became an internet punching bag, but sometimes you gotta experience the badness for yourself.
Jeopardy! for the PS2 is the obligatory “game show game” purchase. The only Jeopardy! video game the PS2 would get, it’s a variation on Jeopardy! 2003 for the PC, made by Artech Studios. Their game show games stuck more to being vaguely flashy artsy game show games rather than accurate to the show stylistically, which can be a dealbreaker for some (I think it makes it stand out, personally.).
Also, I’m pretty sure this is the first Jeopardy! video game after Alex Trebek had shaved off the mustache, so there’s a milestone right there.
$4: Quantum of Solace: The Game for Xbox 360
I love this stupid game.
Activision’s first game under their short-lived tenure as the James Bond video game rights holders, it’s more an adaptation of the previous film Casino Royale than the recently released film. According to minimme in his video about the game, this was because EON Productions – the company who handled most of James Bond’s licensing – were incredibly secretive and didn’t show Treyarch enough info on the film during production to make into a game, so they relied on covering the previous film as a base instead.
I got this on PlayStation 3 in 2008. It’s probably the closest I ever got to a Platinum Trophy on PlayStation platforms. A shame the multiplayer’s dead, otherwise I’d try to shoot for getting it. I imagine I was pretty damn close.
I’m trying to replace most of the multiplatform games I own on PS3 with their Xbox 360 counterparts whenever I get the chance. For a good chunk of that generation, getting a PS3 version of these games often ran and looked worse than the 360 version. I have a few games that I’m willing to make the switch for, this being one of them.
Also I had noticed a streamer I watch occasionally, Johnny Baghead, was playing the Xbox 360 version of the game on a community Discord I’m on, and I jumped on the voice call immediately because I find this game fascinating enough to watch someone else play it.
One day I’ll check out the PS2 version, where Eurocom actually covered more of the film’s plot, or how Beenox squeezed Treyarch’s game onto the Wii, a rare case where the PS2 and Wii versions aren’t identical to each other!
$14: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Collector’s Edition for Xbox
The third installment, which brought a darker, slightly dingy world to Splinter Cell while adding the knife to Sam Fisher’s arsenal. Plus the game that introduced me to Amon Tobin’s music. I had heard his work before, including in the Half-Life mod Desert Crisis, which I talked about last year, but I didn’t know him or his work until I played Chaos Theory.
It was a special steelbook edition. It came with music from the game by the amazing Amon Tobin, a documentary produced by G4 of all places, and some Mega64 skits. Yeah, I already own this on PC, but I couldn’t resist double dipping on this.
I’ve been meaning to replay the older games, and I imagine playing them on console is the way to go these days. I wonder if a modern Xbox would pick up my special Chaos Theory disc and I could play that through backwards compatibility on my Xbox One S….
$2: Brett Hull Hockey 95 for Sega Genesis
The only pre 32-bit game I bought this convention. From the mostly forgotten Accolade Sport brand, this was a hockey game featuring St. Louis Blues star hockey player Brett Hull, along with digitized speech and likeness of sports announcer Al Michaels.
I only remember this from a really, really old YouTube review by UrinatingTree, one of the many Angry Video Game Nerd knockoffs that sprung up when James Rolfe got popular. He loved using The Movies as skits for his reviews, and it’s rather fitting with the whole “sleep aid advertisement” the bit’s going for. Bonus: It doesn’t resort to slurs or topical humor!
Somehow UrinatingTree is still around twenty god damn years later, and from what I’ve seen now, he just rants about sports while making sometimes rather questionable jokes. Probably a better outcome than most of the AVGN knockoffs that sprung about.
Funny story: The booth selling this was selling two whole boxes of Genesis-era sports games for $2 each. I had noticed this game was part of the pile, so I grabbed it and waited as I got someone’s attention so I could buy it. Meanwhile, Chris Kohler of Digital Eclipse was nearby the booth, saw the sports games, stepped away from the booth, then brought someone over who had literally bought both boxes for $80. I ended up buying my copy after he made the transaction.
$14:
- Self-Defense Training Camp for Xbox 360 Kinect
- Duck Dynasty for Xbox 360
The last game purchases for day one. Self-Defense Training Camp is one of many Kinect games Ubisoft published, presumably to capture the more “casual” audience the Kinect was going for. I only know this game because of a Giant Bomb quick look and the accompanying remix made by The Hamster Alliance, “Dick Kicker”:
So now I can say I now own Dick Kicker: The Game.
Duck Dynasty is a schlocky licensed title covering that dumb reality show about a bunch of rich duck callers and the so-called life they run. Developed by Fun Labs, one of two developers Activision often used, I imagine this was published by the Activision Value line based out of Minnesota, something I covered a bit when I wrote about Soldier of Fortune: Payback last year. I’d heard really bad things about this one and I am excited to play this trash. Though, maybe I should’ve gotten the 3DS version, which apparently plays like a bootleg Animal Crossing??
$40: Grant Kirkhope’s autograph
Decided to grab another autograph this year. I nearly went to Ryan Drummond, the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, but the line went on too long and I opted to go see Grant Kirkhope instead. There were a few others that would’ve been interesting to see: Mike Pollock (Dr. Eggman in Sonic), Guy Cihi (James Sunderland in the original Silent Hill 2), but anyone involving game music I will always appreciate.
I asked him a bit about him being part of a band that opened for Van Halen in the 90s and what that was like, and had him sign this picture of the opening from GoldenEye 007. He also had records, but currently no vinyl album of Goldeneye remixes yet. I get why – the Monty Norman estate’s gonna be asking beaucoup bucks to license the “James Bond Theme” even for a remix album – but you know I’d buy that up immediately, I’m just saying.
Unfortunately I had no easy way to store this beyond folding it into my purse, and despite my best efforts, I did unfortunately make a crease into the poster. Oh well, still worth it.
Day two was more of a networking day, at least at first. Hung out with old friend and Golfshrine maintainer weasel, met Twitch streamer and host of the Bad Game Hall of Fame Cassidy, talked with Derek Stopskeletons from Stop Skeletons from Fighting, and even bumped into a few local furry friends. Though I still got deals. Probably more than I bargained for…
$25:
- The Weakest Link for PlayStation
- Crash Bandicoot: Warped for PlayStation
Wowie, some PlayStation 1 games! Been a while since I grabbed a few.
Weakest Link was the obligatory game show game. Interestingly, this is licensed by the BBC and uses the UK version of the Weakest Link logo, but does seem to look identical to the U.S. version in terms of gameplay. Made by Travelers Tales, a rare case of them not doing a platformer or a LEGO video game!
I was never a big fan of this show. The concept of voting off who to remove would often just lead to voting out people who had a rough round despite otherwise being okay, and just leads to alliances like it’s a reality show. It also seemed to be bolstered on the exotic nature of British host Anne Robinson, and thus it felt like the show was just riding on the coattails of the UK version rather than having its own identity. They’d resolve this once the show went from NBC primetime to first-run syndication, opting for George Gray – yes, that George Gray, the one that says “Hi Mamma Mai!” at the top of every episode of The Price is Right nowadays – as host, which gave the show its own feel.
As for Crash 3… I usually have a rule of not spending more than $15-20 on an older video game. I get it if it’s a game that didn’t have a large production run, but anything that got Greatest Hits (or the equivalent “budget label” re-release for bestselling games) status should always be affordable to get. I had waited for years, years, for the Crash Bandicoot trilogy on PlayStation to get to where you could grab the whole trilogy for a single twenty. Since that hasn’t happened and is unlikely to ever happen, even with the trilogy being readily available thanks to the N. Sane Trilogy remakes, I bit the bullet and finally grabbed the remaining game in the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy I didn’t have.
I genuinely want to play the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon trilogy in earnest, and now I can – Crash Bandicoot on physical disc, Spyro the Dragon digitally through PS3 backwards compatibility – and I want to play the originals before I dive into the modern remakes.
$8: Ghost Squad for Wii
A port of the arcade light gun title of the same name, I am always down for lightgun shenanigans, even with a Wii remote. I heard really good things about this one. This was likely easier to get than the copy of Gunblade NY/LA Machineguns I saw.
At one point I was genuinely worried I accidentally bought this already, but it seems in the many years I’ve been collecting Wii games this one always seemed to pass me by. If somehow I do find another copy in my collection, well, at least this was only $8.
$16:
- Prototype for Xbox 360
- History Channel: Battle for the Pacific for Xbox 360
- ESPN International Track & Field for PlayStation 2
As the con was wrapping up in its final hour, I made one last look-through for deals. And sure enough, I grabbed a few.
Prototype was one of those “superhero wrecks or save a city” action games that came out around the same time as inFamous, which got a myriad of comparisons back in the day. I played inFamous and thought it was neat, and I heard good things about this one too. Genuinely surprised I got this one for cheap.
Oh boy, another History Channel game, this time a World War II shooter by….. Cauldron. God damn it I thought I was done with you guys.I’ve already talked about these guys before, so there isn’t much for me to add this time. I imagine this is gonna be similar to Soldier of Fortune: Payback gameplay wise mixed in with old time war footage, similar to Call of Duty 2: Big Red One had got footage from the Military Channel. I have very low expectations on this one.
Okay, so ESPN International Track & Field. Konami brings their popular Olympics-styled franchise back for the PS2 era, gets the ESPN branding and license, and makes an otherwise uneventful olympic themed minigame collection. Right? Until you get to “Rhythmic Gymnastics” and realized you’re just playing Dance Dance Revolution, complete with the arrows. You could even play these tracks with a DDR dance pad! My partner discovered this years ago while streaming it, and it always seemed like an interesting nugget of info. I wonder how many other games have hidden DDR modes…
$20.64:
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra for Xbox 360
- Call of Duty: Ghosts for Xbox One
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare for Xbox One
- Call of Duty WWII Gold Edition for Xbox One.
The last purchases before I tapped out.
I saw a video of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra on Bluesky from Standard Issue Computing, which often shares random footage of older video games they’re playing. It looked so jank that I had to grab it. I very nearly didn’t and opted for just the Call of Duty games below. But hey, $20 is a nice round number.
So, Call of Duty. Some of these I own on PC, and playing Call of Duty on PC nowadays is a nightmare. For older games, there’s the risk and danger of bumping into hackers who could execute code and damage computers while playing Black Ops III, the absolute dearth of PC players before Modern Warfare (2019) introduced cross-platform play to the series, and newer titles requiring your PC to be using stuff like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. Otherwise you’re offloaded to the “cheaters lobby” where one can only play Nuketown 24/7 in Black Ops 7. That last part made me especially angry, as I followed every fucking step in their support to the letter, only to still be rejected and shoved in with the cheaters. It just made me go “fuck this” and start rebuying these games on a console, where at worst I’ll deal with some aimbot hacker in every 4th game or something.
I’m starting to think any big-budget game that gets promoted on TV should just be played on a console with a controller. Maybe that one Microsoft employee who did damage control for initially canceling Alan Wake on PC saying “games […] are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen” was onto something…
I already own Ghosts and Advanced Warfare on 360, and might get around to playing these for an A-B comparison between them. (I imagine the difference in graphics quality between Ghosts and Advanced Warfare is pretty large.) WWII I had a soft spot for, primarily because Sledgehammer brought back the objective-based War mode, which is totally my jam. I used to play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory a lot back in the day, and any objective-driven multiplayer mode that isn’t just capturing points or flags is good in my book. Other than that, it was a return to its boots-on-the-ground roots and seemed perfectly fine when I played it on PC years ago.
BONUS FREEBIES: PlayDate drink koozie, CD album by Red Martian, Petal Crash pin
Had to grab a few goodies at a few booths while I was there.
PlayDate, that cool little handheld with some neato games, was naturally promoting that as well as supporting Panic’s other published games like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game. No Big Walk stuff yet, maybe next year.
I have no idea who Red Martian is. This was put on a table with “free! take one” next to it. I cannot turn down a free album.
I went to the Petal Crash 2 booth a few times, not just to check out the game but also the homebrew ports to the Game Boy Color and Neo Geo, of which a I know the few folks who are working on both. I showed this game to game my partner on day one because I think this game looks neat and cool, with a nice 32-bit, mid-’90s 2D graphics style to it.
I’m not particularly good at it since I’m used to more traditional “put things together into blocks to make a big combo” game like Puyo Puyo or Panel De Pon/Puzzle League, of which this game is definitely not that. (the premise is in the name: Petal Crash) Still had fun either way. I was given a pin by one of the designers at the end, and T. Ashley Jenkins, the one of the other designers, complimented my “Froggy from Sonic Adventure doing that one Sonic Adventure pose” shirt I bought from The Yetee years ago.
After the expo closed, I had some food at Burgerville with weasel, we went our separate ways, and then took a bit of time to reflect on the convention before heading home.
I said to a few folks that I wanted this to be more of a socializing and networking year than a bargains one. Not just because the state of well, everything in the retro gaming space, but also because I wanted to improve my skills at just having conversations and being at ease socially. For someone like me who’s awkward, nerdy, and queer as hell, it’s tough to do sometimes. Though, as time goes on, I’ve gotten somewhat better at it. Despite those struggles, I still got to meet some cool peeps, and ended up spending more than I wanted to. I had fun in the end.
Will I be back to PRGE in 2027? Probably. Though, I might actually commit to my promise and buy less stuff next year, because I’m getting to that stage where I’m done collecting and I’m ready to start actually playing this stuff. Also, maybe so I can make these posts just a pinch shorter in the future…
I have been buying stuff this past year, a “Some Stuff I Bought” for everything I’ve gotten in 2026, outside Portland Retro Gaming Expo, will appear sometime in December/January. Though be forewarned: There will likely be less games covered in that one. Hope you like me nerding out about old board games and albums on cassette tape.
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