PORTLAND, Oregon—Everything old was new again at October's annual Portland Retro Gaming Expo, which overtook the city's major convention center for two full days of arcade play, retro tournaments, and presentations from some of gaming's biggest legends.
As opposed to more modern gaming expos such as PAX, it's a little harder to leave a retro expos with something to describe at length. That's not for lack of content. Retro gaming shows feel both enormous and small because they distill down to a seemingly endless number of micro-niches. Love the Atari Jaguar console? You and maybe 50 other people will find a few booths full of merch and rarities to make your heart swell. How about old light gun games? You'll find a range of gun-mounted arcade games that you can play without a single quarter, from later-gen gems like Area 51 to early delights like Cheyenne.
Maybe you want to purchase every issue of Nintendo Power magazine that you fell behind on as an early '90s fanboy, or compete against children of the '70s in Atari Combat, or see original Atari and Activision console game developers talk about squeezing every last pixel out of the 2600's hardware, or pick up a ton of colorful artwork based on classic characters. Events like the Portland Retro Gaming Expo will happily indulge you.
The above video report also includes footage of the final combatants in one of the weekend's two Tetris competitions. One of them revolved around the NES version of the game, but we at Ars didn't qualify for that one. Instead, we played in a Tetris Ultimate tournament, revolving around that game's 2014 PlayStation 4 version (and we placed eight out of 16 to boot.)
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Looking for old games, guitar controllers, or magazines? The Portland Retro Gaming Expo had you covered.Sam Machkovech
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So many old games.
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Panzer Dragoon Saga might have been the priciest game at any PGRX table.
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Can't wait for the Oculus Rift? Lucky you, VR is already here! So long as you like the color red and Nester's Funky Bowling, anyway.
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How else are you going to play all of these old games?
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Double-Dash FTW.
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No shortage of melted-bead pixel art...
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...though while we were partial to this Street Fighter II display...
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...and we liked this Mega Man boss panel collection...
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...the weekend's clear winner was this Symphony of the Night piece.
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Another angle, in case the glare was too much.
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Custom Thwomps.
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Don't blame me, I voted for Misty.
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Wonder how the gum held up.
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A new meaning to "coin-op."Sam Machkovech
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We would've killed for a Game Boy Light in the '90s, long before Nintendo finally sold back-lit portable systems anywhere other than Japan.
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For the nerdy alcoholic on the go.
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Drunk Hunt. Love it.
In addition to all those elements in play at the PGRX, we found flasks shaped like Nintendo cartridges, custom ROMs slapped into old, working cartridges so you can play "new" games on old systems, brand-new indie games, and much more. With an vast array of nostalgia that was seemingly impossible to completely capture, we gathered as many video clips and photos as possible (both above and below).
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Wait, what? Who is Zippy the Porcupine? And why's this for the Atari 2600?Sam Machkovech
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Turns out this is one of the dozens of games designed and released for classic consoles by Atari Age, an incredible custom-cartridge producer.Sam Machkovech
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Atari fans know how awful Pac-Man games were on the 2600, and Atari Age, among other things, has prided itself in releasing superior versions in recent years.
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Better Pac!
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Here, a crazy two-player version of Ms Pac-Man.
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A wholly different company, Rose City Games, does similar stuff but with NES, Super NES, and Sega Genesis cartridges. Here, have some 8-bit Flappy Bird.
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In some cases, the games that Rose City Games produces are ones that were translated by fans but never officially released outside of their home regions.
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A retro-styled game tie-in for Wreck-It Ralph, custom-built to run on your Sega Genesis!
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Another independent group made these repro carts for old Nintendo World Championship carts.
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