Tag: convention

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

    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no idea if these are the originals or covers, as there’s no song credits in the manual, and the back cover uses “As originally made famous by.”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…

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  • Checking out the 2014 Portland Retro Gaming Expo, with bonus I Bought Stuff!

    Checking out the 2014 Portland Retro Gaming Expo, with bonus I Bought Stuff!

    So this past weekend, I went to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. It’s my fourth time to the con, and I remember when it was wedged into a small conference area in the DoubleTree Hilton near Lloyd Center to it’s current home at the Oregon Convention Center.

    prge1

    Last year I had recorded video footage from the event, but didn’t use any of it and didn’t write anything about it. This year, I promised myself I’d actually blog about it this time. Especially since the people that run the Expo actually linked to my entry from 2012, where I had gotten a bunch of stuff, talked to “Gamesmaster” Howard Phillips, and had David Crane sign a copy of Pitfall I found at the same expo. I have to thank the expo for even giving my podunk blog a few extra views every now and then. 🙂

    This is more of a “what I saw” post. I didn’t spend much at the con itself, but I did find a bunch of really, really interesting gaming stuff. Join me as we look at some of the things these vendors had to offer.

    See if you can spot all the references and crossovers at this booth.

    One of the things I saw early on was a booth by Level Up Studios, one of those “gaming/nerd culture” sort of places that covers the gamut of common stuff. There were shirts based on current trends, including several based on Guardians of the Galaxy. I guess people really liked Rocket Raccoon and Groot.

    Well, at least he’s going back to his roots…

    But one thing really caught my eye: This shirt. It’s Sonic eating onion rings. Somebody must of have played a lot of that Sonic 2 XL Romhack that was popular around the web a few years ago. It also reminded me of one of those old Sonic communities I was a part of when I was a teenager.

    Unfortunately I’m not big on wearing t-shirts that have designs on them. Even the many shirts I’ve gotten over the many years I went to PAX go mostly unused. So, sadly, I didn’t buy a shirt with fat Sonic on it.

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  • Checking out the 2012 Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

    Checking out the 2012 Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

    Last year, after PAX Prime 2011 ended, I found out there was a local retro games convention around Portland called the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Apparently it had been running for several years, and I was unaware of its existence, so I decided to head over to the event. Despite the small venue – it was at a DoubleTree convention hall not too far from the Lloyd Center mall – I had a blast buying a few games to fulfill my ever-increasing collection.

    Cut to 2012, and the Portland Retro Gaming Expo came back for its seventh year. This time, they kicked things into overdrive as they moved facilities to the much larger Oregon Convention Center just off downtown Portland. Though the ticket prices jumped due to the venue change – $20 for a day, $25 for both days – I still expected to have a lot of fun.

    The Computer Space cabinet is pretty cool only because it hits that perfect style of the 1960s: round yet angular.

    On Saturday, I grabbed a friend along for the ride. He hasn’t played much video games, but did remember messing around with the old Kaypro, Macintoshes and Commodore 64s that some of the vendors had, while occasionally talking about the classic Atari 2600 and NES eras. I’m honestly amazed he was willing to put up with me being an obnoxious nerd about some of the things.

    Naturally like any retro games convention, the place had many different vendors selling off all sorts of things: Old computers, Nintendo Power magazines — likely will increase in value since they’re shutting down — NES and SNES game reproductions, Tiger Electronics handhelds, various toys and figures, comic books and other assorted nerdy things. There was an absolute breadth of stuff there. My wallet took a hit during the whole event, which I talk about in another blog post.

    The Retrogames Roadshow in action. Pictured from left to right: John Hancock, Steve Lin, “Gamemaster” Howard Phillips, and Chris Kohler.

    After me and my friend roamed around the main hall and played a few arcade classics like Galaga, Robotron 2084 and that pinball/arcade hybrid Baby Pac-Man, I walked into the small auditoriums they had for the convention’s events. Chris Kohler (of Wired at the time of this article, now at Kotaku) was doing his Retrogaming Roadshow event. It’s a fairly simple thing: people bring up interesting gaming things and basically seeing if they’re worth anything.

    Later during the panel, there was a surprise guest: Howard Phillips, formerly of Nintendo during the NES glory days, now advertising himself under the “Gamemaster Howard” brand. He’s lately been posting stuff on Facebook and other social media sites, showing off most of the old stuff he had from his Nintendo days, such as a promo booklet for the Nintendo AVS — the original name for the NES — back from the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show. Honestly I was not expecting these people to make the trek to Portland, but hey, anything to talk to Chris — and have him recognize me! — and ask him how much my Japanese copy of Hot Shots Golf 2 is. (Turns out it’s worth nothing. Oh well, I only spent $5 on it.)

    I still bought a couple of things on Saturday, and bumped into Howard Phillips at the show. I asked him about why we never got the original Super Mario Bros. 2, since it was one of those apocryphal stories that he was the impetus for why the original Super Mario Bros. 2 never made it to the US until years later, and why Nintendo reskinned Doki Doki Panic into the US Super Mario Bros 2. Turns out it wasn’t nearly as clear cut as that. He gave these reasons: “It was too similar to the original, and I hated the poison mushrooms and the wind sections!” It was still neat to talk and hear stories from him about those days, as those aren’t as documented nearly as well.

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