Video Game Collecting

Has it really been six months since the Classic Gaming Expo 2010 breezed through Las Vegas?  Why yes it has and the excitement hasn’t yet worn off, at least not for me.  Details are scant for a CGEXPO 2K11 and I frequent the forums at digitpress.com for a hint of any information pertaining to this year’s event.  After all the expo has been cancelled in years past and it would break my heart to learn that it would be taking a deferrment again.

After last years’ event I thought I had it all figured out. I was certain I knew all the changes that would be needed to make 2K11 events better than 2K10.  But looking back the ideas I had were practical but if implemented it would diminish the excitement of what could be expected.

Previous to the expo I had gone into the Tropicana Hotel only twice.  Once in the late 1980′s as a kid and again in 1998.  The visit thirteen years ago resulted in a royal flush on one nickle which pissed me off and I hated the Trop ever since.  When I went to the Expo it was under new management and currently under renovations.  I don’t like casinos but the Trop had a new carpet smell… a smell I now associate with the expo.

I also ate across the street at the Excalibur.  Another dump I started to dislike when I worked for SEGA at the Luxor (which was right next door).  But the food on the morning of the expo was delicious!

So what does all this mean?   I honestly don’t know but I miss the expo and August seems like a lifetime away. 

I have two last treasures from the Classic Gaming Expo 2K10 to report…

The first is Herzog Zwei for SEGA Genesis of course which i’ll post in more detail another time. The other treasure is the experience I’m taking away from the event. There were things I liked, things I hated (turning up the volume on your electric guitar does not making it sound any better), and many things that I loved.

I loved being around people who shared the same common interests as I do. I love the fact that there was next to no emulation at the expo. I loved watching people rummage through ‘antiquities’ hoping to polish off their collection.

Clearly retro games mean more than a taste off nostalgia. And in those two days I didn’t see a single cutscene. Not one. Years from now at Classic Gaming Expo 2K25 PS3 and Xbox 360 games will probably be the a permanent fixture in the world of ‘classic’ gaming. And no matter how many games are remembered at that event, no one will get excited over one because of the cutscene.

Today was the Classic Gaming Expo 2010, held here in Las Vegas, NV at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino.

It was a hot, cloudy, muggy day which only seemed to get hotter as the day went on.  The Tropicana is in the middle of renovations and between the Classic Gaming Expo, the Buffalo Rider’s convention and a Roller Derby convention it was difficult to believe that any of the foot traffic in the hotel wasn’t convention related.

The Expo opened at 9:00, and there were vendors and a museum.  Below is a prototype PlayStation controller

These are PlayStation debug kits for developers to test their games ‘in the real world’.

This ‘semi-pornographic’ art comes from the Bezel artwork on the Scramble arcade game.

There were several arcade games at the Expo, but no PacMan, or original Donkey Kong… strange…

A Donkey Kong Junior.  Right on!

What’s the fun of going to a Classic Gaming Expo without bring home treasures?  Here we have a variety of buttons…

And the meat of the shopping… Roadblasters for NES, Willow for NES, Fatal Fury for Genesis, and Quartet and Rastan for SEGA Master System.

And ‘The official Nintendo Player’s Guide’ which I owned once upon a time.

All in all it was a fun event, though I was disappointed to read the remarks in the paperwork that you receive when you purchase your pass.  I won’t go into the details but if you attended you know what I mean…