Magazine #12.2 8/01

Classic Gaming Expo 2K1
Part II

New Games, Demos and Prototypes

Always one of the high points of classic gaming conventions is the release of new games, either newly discovered prototypes or new developments by hard-core classic gaming enthusiasts. This year was no different: a whole bunch of new games for the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Vectrex and even the Odyssey 2 were released.

The start was made by the Blue Sky Rangers at the Intellivision booth. They released Sword Fight and Sea Battle for the Atari 2600. Sword Fight is a little blocky but surprisingly complex: two players each control a (laser) sword fighter with three offensive and three defensive moves as well as advance and retreat steps. I played it a few times and game play quickly evolved from primitive button mashing into more refined strategies: attack, blocking, counter-attack - lots of fun. I didn't have a chance to play Sea Battle but the graphics looked pretty good for a 2600. Both of the titles sold out during the show but they should be available at the Intellivision website soon.

			Lines formed at the Atari2600.com booth for 'Secret Agent'
Igor Barzilai selling the latest Ebivision creation: Allia Quest
Albert made out like a bandit with this box full of Videopac goodies!		'The Murph' keeping a watchful eye	Keith Robinson signing a get-well card for Ralph Baer
Lee next to the Combat II poster that he scored	The guys that brought us CGE: Joe, John and Sean - THANK YOU!!!	Joe Grand, creator of SCSIcide and Jeff Rothkopf, fellow collector.

Special Events

Twin Galaxies and Walter Day...

Probably a many fan's favorite were the creators of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. For the first time in over 18 years Don Bluth, Rick Dyer, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy were re-united! During the autograph session with the Dragon's Lair guys Don, John, Rick and Gary faced an almost endless line of enthusiasts with literally hundreds of items to sign. People brought posters, Laserdiscs, arcade marquees, flyers - you name it!

The calm before the storm...	Don Bluth signing away!	The line was very long	Don and Rick
Marquees, posters and more!	John	"Here, I'll trade you!"	John behind the awards.
The awards	The achievement awards were presented by Jeff Kinder and Dave Hallock (of the Dragon's Lair Project website) during Friday night's CGE V.I.P. dinner.	Closeup of the engraving...	John signing Warren O.'s disc!

Later a second session was held to satisfy the demand and again the line queued up immediately. Meeting Don Bluth, John Pomeroy, Rick Dyer and Gary Goldman was definitely one of the highlights of the show!

Seth Sternberg and micromusic.net were handing out free buttons and then performed an interesting mix of classic videogame-home-computer-techno-music, it's hard to describe but I thought it was pretty good. And hey, they were wrapped in color-ceran-wrap to keep them fresh and they had a mean-looking green alien and I love green aliens!

They look very fresh in the color-ceran-wrap - cool idea!

'Really Mr. Fulop, you'll love our music!'

Careful! This guy looks pissed and s/he/it has a raygun!

Note the Commodore C64 in the middle!

Saturday night was the traditional trading and swapping session and some folks had trade items that 'amateur' collectors like me can only dream about :) Great stuff, especially Ianoid had a load of rare and ultra-rare games but had difficulties locating his various search and trade lists.

Left: trading session, middle: rare Atari hardware, right: Rob Fulop signs a home-made portable Atari 2600 (LCD screen mounted to TI Speak&Spell case - nice!)

Friday and Saturday night Geoff Voight and the guys from SC3 had their party up in their suite, unfortunately I missed most of that while we were waiting for some friends who'd gotten lost. From what I heard it was great and I'm sorry I missed it. I did manage to catch the end of it though and we played some Elevator Action and I got to see the Astrocade multicart.

Astrocade multicart - now there is something I've been waiting for! Cool! These are available from Ward Shrake

Right: Geoff, ?? and ?? from the SC3, middle: ?? and ?? enjoying the Astrocade.

Auction

After the auction-debacle at the first classic game show in Las Vegas (WOA98) I was a bit skeptical about this one. Well, I was all wrong... Set for Saturday night it was going to be one of my personal favorites, maybe because I got some really nice stuff but also because they had great items for decent prices with very little clutter in-between.  Some of the bargains were the two Ebivision games from last year: Merlin's Walls and Pesco for $80 - wow! Or a nice Atari Videomusic for $150 which didn't find a buyer. The only duds were two items from NGS-USA: a NeoGeo game copier system with an opening price of $600 (I'm sure it's a great item but $600 - yikes!) and a Gameboy development system for the Nintendo N64 which I think was more a debugger/monitor system, also with an opening price of $600. It's no surprise but both items didn't receive a single bid.

The highlights were a nice Videopac collection from Marc that opened at $350 and that I managed to win at $390 (thanks to somebody who thought 'three-fifty' meant $3.50 and not $350 - hahaha), a Starpath Supercharger store demo cart which went for $550, Rob Fulops Cubicolor (#30 of 50 made) and a Venture II cartridge (in a beautiful limited edition treasure chest!) by Tim Snider for the Atari 2600 going for $210. I picked what I wanted from the Videopac lot and sold it on to Albert Yarusso of Atariage.com who got an excellent deal (most of the Videopac + games incl. #59!!!).

Sean and The Game Machine up for auction	The Game Machine close-up	The winner of the Game Machine: he looks thrilled, her smile looks a bit forced :)	Atari 5-year service award
Starpath store demo unit	The unit went for $550!	Frisky Tom VFD handheld...	...Ianoid can't resist :)
Here is a rare one!	Microvision up for auction	Gameboy 'development system' starting at $600...	Great games at a bargain price!
APF Imagination Machine!

Here are the auction results:

If anybody has any other items please let me know and I'll add them to the list - thanks! Or if you know what the Atari prototype hardware was I'd like to know that as well!

Keynotes

Keynotes...

	The schedule for the keynotes,	??, David Crane and Alan Miller during the Blue Sky Rangers keynote
From left: Gary Goldman, Don Bluth, John Pomeroy and Rick Dyer...	...the folks that brought you Dragon's Lair and Space Ace (and much more)!	Full house during the...	...Dragon's Lair guys keynote!
		The Arcade Game Designers keynote: ??, ??, ??	The Arcade Game Designers keynote

Don't mess with Space!

Continue with Part III

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