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Despite the story from yesterday, some days it feels good to be old. I do a lot of promotions and events with Momocon (www.momocon.com), which is the largest free fanrun Anime/Gaming/Miscellanea convention in the USA (possibly the world). For the actual convention I just run boardgames and play backup medic, but I use to run a smashing retrogaming room. The last time we did it I brought out about a 1000 titles on 20 platforms. Well we ran out of space for my little side room (and my second in commands wife had a baby on that weekend) so we made do with what we could.
So the convention creator, a small staff, and myself, created a side event that we called a Gameday. Simply we rented several of the big rooms that we normally hold the convention in, setup some tvs and tables, and played boardgames and old videogames with whoever decided to come in (it helps when the convention is on a college campus Georgia Tech). Subsequent Gamedays have lost the retrogaming room due an illness I had and the fact that I dont have access to a van anymore, but we still host them (ie this Saturday [and yes we realize we are crazy to do it a week before Dragoncon]). And no we dont play games like Sorry and Monopoly. Its all about Dominion, Cosmic Encounter, and Pitchcar this weekend, atleast for me we will have around a hundred games there. But lets get back to the story.
So at one of these events I was running the retro room and these two kids walk up to me, no older than eight. They are obviously brother and sister and their eyes are wide. We had the fourswords setup going, a Genesis, two SNESs, an NES, a N64, a 7800, a Dreamcast, a Saturn, and Two PCs (one running doujin games the other dosgames). The sister, the older, came up to me and asked if they could play anything. I said that they could play whatever console they wanted, aslong as no one else was playing, and we could change the games out if they wanted. She and her brother look around, most of the room is filled. They tried playing a couple games, Bubble Symphony on the Saturn is the only one that I remember specifically, but then they saw the 7800. It had Defender loaded up and they tried to play it. After a few minutes they gave up and came back to me, what they said almost made me tearup. They asked if they could play a different game, so I pulled out the box of Atari games with me and before I could open it they said Like Galaxian or Millipede. I set them up with Millipede and they went back and played. It was just like when I was a child playing with my older brothers (actually they were playing on the same Atari I use to play on, probably the same cart now that I think about it).
A little while later their father comes in visibly upset. He walks up to them in a huff and saying how they were playing something bad for them, then he sees what they are playing. He comes over to me and asks if I had Joust as his other son walks up. The NES was currently vacant so I said tell you what, give me five minutes and all four of yall can play. I setup both the 7800 and the NES with Joust and sticks (ok so Advantages on the NES) and the entire family lit up. They started goading eachother on from one machine to the other and the entire room got in on it. It was just like being in an arcade again. Afterwards, when I was cleaning up, the father came up to me and thanked him for keeping the classics alive.
Somedays it feels good being old.
Some days you just feel old. I bought a flashcart for my DS mostly so I could only carry one device with me when traveling and finally put my Palm Pilot to rest - thank you DSorganize. But since I could, I threw on a PC Engine/TG16 emulator (Nitrogfx) and a SNES emulator (SNemulDS) and a couple games Ive been meaning to play Military Madness and Secret of Mana mainly. Well after Church one Sunday I was waiting for everyone to leave so I could lock up so I decided to play alittle Military Madness. One of the kids in our youth group came up to me (knowing me since I provide them with DDR every year for the lockin) and asked what I was playing. I showed him and explained to him what he was looking at. His response was thats lame, I thought you were playing something cool like Call of Duty and he left. And sure we all have stories like this but it made me realize how old I was.
Heck Im only in my late 20s but over the past two years I have had more than a few of these experiences. I met a kid at an anime convention in Alabama (Anime Alabama) last year who had never seen an original Gameboy in person, and asked me if Sailor Moon was a new show coming out. And anyone who has known me for awhile knows of my last experience in a Gamestop (where I was called a casual gamer for buying the NeoGeo collection on the Wii by people playing Guitar Hero), and some days I think it is time to rethink this hobby.
I never do, I still am trying to justify the $100 for Bubble Bobble 2 on the NES, but it gets to me sometimes. How can so many gamers not have respect for the titles that built up their hobby? I give retrogaming panels all over the USA for Retrogaming with Racketboy and Momocon on Tour (mostly in the Southeast), and often I asked why retrogame? I mean there are some obvious answers: Nostalgia and price being the most obvious. But the one I have started giving people is History. That knowing how something has evolved over the years helps me appreciate what it has become. The last time I gave a panel (June) the person who asked laughed at my answer. So I gave them an example. I said lets take first person shooters for example and asked who knew the first one ever made. The resounding response was Doom, the guy who asked said Wolf 3d. I said they were all way off. I broke down the first twenty five years of the genre as best as I could (from Maze War in 74 to Halflife in 98 ok so thats twenty four years) with certain hallmarks. Many of the people there had no idea that you could play an FPS without a mouse
Ok so sometimes being old is a good thing. The kid asking if Sailor Moon was an anime coming out still gets me though.
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And if you were thinking about Nitrogfx and you have a DSiXL, be forewarned the screen is not properly formatted and you can not read see the edges.
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This is fastbilly1's Blog.
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The sometimes unedited, often confusing, ramblings about random topics revolving around videogames. With a heavy focus on retrogaming and exotic projects.
From the mind of the promotion coordinator for Retrogaming with Racketboy and Momocon On Tour. |
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