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• Last Update: April 14, 2012, at 02:05 PM
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Classic Gaming Expo 2004

CGE 2K4 is the first Classic Gaming Expo I've attended -- I missed last year's by about a week (having passed through Vegas a few days too soon as I was making my way west to San Francisco). I wish it were otherwise, so I could have a good basis for comparison and a better sense of how this year's went. I thought the whole affair was a little dreary, but Kevin begs to differ, and he speaks with the voice of experience. Who am I to argue?

Part of the problem is that I wasn't able to make it out to San Jose for Saturday, which is when all the rad stuff apparently went down. Sunday seemed to play host to more of the lower-priority events, except for the Steve Wozniak speech at 11. Which I missed, much to my regret. I've always wanted to meet the good half of Apple Computer's founding fathers. I'd like to meet Jobs, too, but I'm afraid he'd activate his laser death eyes and incinerate me.

A bigger problem is that by Sunday most of the best booth goods had been picked over. All that was really left was stuff no one particularly wanted, or wildly overpriced NES pornography and other rarities.

Still, there were a few interesting bits. The museum was huge, the most impressive collection of game history I've ever seen, and had some really interesting prototypes. My favorite was easily the Atari Mirai, a console mock-up (maybe) from the late '80s (they think). In fact, no one is really clear on what the Mirai was supposed to be. It's pale grey and a bit rounded and has six gigantic pastel-hued buttons on the front spanning the pastel spectrum (baby blue through lilac). I do know "mirai" is Japanese for "future," but with that color scheme it's clearly a nugget of 1986 or so.

On a personally tragic note, the museum had lots of fanzines on display, but none of mine or http://bigolaf.1up.com | Matt's]]. Maybe it was so awesome that someone pilfered it. Yeah, that must be it.

I was also given a serious flashback by the presence of a Coleco ADAM, or at least most of one (the tape drive/CPU was missing). God, that thing was massive, and that fact that the games came as standard cassette tapes in standard cassette cases is frankly too awesome for me to describe in an articulate fashion. I'll just sit here and go "BUH BUH WHOA."

In the main convention area, a handful of classic arcade games were available for freeplay, but the selection really paled compared to the Kentai Hall arcade at E3. No Pengo! A crime against humanity. And about half the games on display were out of order. The console setup against the opposite wall was decent, with a wide array of consoles spanning from the 2600 to the Dreamcast. Which reminds me, I need to hunt down a Dreamcast again and start snapping up interesting Japanese releases while I can.

I played a few minutes of Mega Man 5, which confirmed what my experience with the MM Anniversary Collection indicated: it's not a hell of a lot of fun. Nothing worse than seeing a great franchise bled of its inspiration in the course of just a few years. As much as I want to see another Mega Man Legends game, part of me hopes they let it end where it is. As it stands, it's the only Mega Man sub-series that hasn't run out of steam...

Lots of people were selling old games, and the one thing they had in common was the ridiculous prices. Sorry, kids, a few years ago Toys 'R' Us was clearing out the top-loading NES systems for $40 -- no way am I paying $125, especially since they only hook up to the TV by RF. I am spoiled by component and S-video. And how come no one had Gangster Town? Dave won't let me have peace until I get myself a copy of that one. I admit to being awfully tempted to pick up the two CDi Zelda games... fifty bucks for the pair, which is almost worth it just for the awful car-crash sensibility of it all. Fortunately the good Jeremy sitting on my left shoulder clobbered the little devil Jeremy trying to lead me astray, and $50 was saved. Along with my immortal soul.

Some of the other vendors had more interesting offerings -- Messiah in particular interested me with their well-crafted wireless NES/SNES controllers and their redesigned dual-adapter power brick for Nintendo's older consoles. I also want me an X-Arcade, seeing as they're <I>dead sexy</I>. The Jakks' display was interesting, but as I'd already seen their most recent offerings a few days prior I didn't really need to hang out with them or anything. (The upcoming EA Sports controller is interesting -- it emulates an honest-to-crackie Sega Genesis for several 1995-vintage EA games. I would totally buy a Treasure set if they made one.)

Live music was provided by the band 8-Bit Weapon, which turned out to be a two-piece group with Devo-esque jump suits. I particularly enjoyed their Metroid medley -- everyone in the game cover scene does Metroid, but 8BW had the decency not to perform the Title/Brinstar/Norfair themes, instead focusing on the less popular Escape/Ending tunes. Bravo for that. Their CDs were sold out, though, so I'll have to content myself with listening to game cover bands who make their music more freely available, like The Minibosses or The Advantage. Overall, a lot of effort and planning clearly went into the show, and there was plenty of rad stuff to see. Events like this are totally not my thing -- I'm always happiest when I can avoid crowds of strangers -- but I am curious to see how well it goes next year. And I'll be sure to show up for CGE 2K5 before the energy, like Elvis, has left the building.