Jibbajaba
08-22-2005, 04:44 PM
I wanted to post all of my experiences at and thoughts about CGE. I was going to do it in my blog, but I figured I could do it here, and then other CGE atendees could reply with their own. I am recycling the pics that I already potsted, because this puts them into the proper context.
Warning, this post will be VERY VERY LONG.
So I left my house (which is about 80 miles away from the CGE hotel) at about 6:15 on Friday morning. After gassing up the car, I got to the hotel at 8 o'clock sharp. I went straight to the exhibit hall, which was basically empty. The tables were set up with table cloths on them, but there were no skirts on the tables, and the curtains separating the tables weren't up yet. The only exhibitor there was Billy Galaxy, who was just starting to set up. The only other DPer in the room was "EVG2000" (Charles). Another Exhibitor, "Master Technologies" ( :roll: ) started to set up soon after. He kept hitting Charles and I up for help, but we were there to help DP. We ended up helping him a little bit though.
So anyway, when I got there, Joe and company were no where to be seen. I found out from Charles that they all went to Kinkos and that we just needed to wait for them to return. They came back around 8:45, and then we started setting things up. That morning I met Dave2236 (Dave), GrandAmChandler (Chris), Darth Vader (Danny), and Drexel923 (Nick). I had met Dave and Danny briefly at last year's CGE but didn't really talk to them. So we spent the morning setting up various things in the exhibit hall and unpacking museum boxes (which is tons of fun. Like Christmas morning except that you can't keep the stuff). At some point during the morning, Charles and I walked out to his truck where his trade stuff was. He let me look through the TG16 games that he brought. From him I bought Legendary Axe II (which Nick ended up buying from me), Alien Crush, and a not for resale copy of Victory Run. When I got home yesterday, I opened up the Victory Run case and found Vigilante in there instead. I was happy though because I've been wanting that game. Now I just need a loose copy of Vicory Run.
Around 12:30, Nick, Charles, Dave, Danny, Chris and I went across the street and had Sizzler for lunch. They have this lunch buffet where its a salad bar, but on the side they have this litte deal where you can make your own nachos and tacos, and then they have onion rings and fried chicken wings. Man, I went straight for those onion rings and chicken wings. It was cool sitting around the table with a bunch of fellow DPers talking about DP stuff.
So after lunch, we come back the the exhibit hall and start setting up the DP booth and whatnot. I started setting up the game stations, and did it by myself for awhile, but soon we were all working on it, which was good because it was a big job. The systems weren't sorted out or anything, so we just had a few boxes full of systems, controllers, games, and a rat's nest of rf adapters, rca cables, and AC adapters. We finally got all of the systems set up and it looked really cool. Later on, someone (I think it was Vectrexer) set up a vectrex machine with an arcade controller. Someone else brought over a Virtual Boy, and at some point a bunch of table top machines appeared on the last table. Whoever set those up was smart enough to lock them down.
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The game stations.
At some point during my game station setup career, "Neuropolitique" showed up. He had a super-nice digital camera and was walking around taking tons of pictures. He came over and we met, and he gave me my room key. He was the winner of one of the "Send me to CGE" contests, and was generous enough to let me stay in his room for free. Since I could now bring my stuff up to my room, I got Dave and Chris to go out to my car with me and help me bring my boxes upstairs. We got everything into my room, and right away Dave and Chris opened up my trade boxes and took out everything that they wanted. I made about $20 off of Chris, and traded for $30 worth of stuff from Dave. From Dave I got a Dragon Warrior II box and manual, a Tecmo Bowl Manual, a Final Fantasy manual, and two VCS carts; Fast Food and Miner 2049er.
During the course of the day, we were all checking out the exhibitor booths as they were setting up, buying things from them before the public got a chance to.
Around 5:00, someone showed up with 17 arcade cabs in a truck. He was selling them, so he had them on display (and on free play) on the main floor with a price tag stuck on the marquee. Everything was pretty overpriced IMHO, but he had some cool games. Gaunlet, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Joust, etc. Anything good was over $1000 though, and you could tell that these machines had seen heavy use. Anyway, I helped unload the cabs from the truck. Those things weigh a ton. What you would do is bring a hand truck over to the truck, get loaded up with a cab, and take it inside. But you had to bring the cab down the ramp on the back of the truck, which was slippery and had a lip on it that the wheels of the hand truck would get caught on. Then you had to push or pull the cab up an inclined sidewalk, past the pool, and then into a service entrance of the hotel. Then you went about 150 feet downhill through a hallway, being careful not to let the cab pick up speed on the hand truck. Then you came through the back door of the exhibit hall. Then you just had to roll it's ass to the other side of the room and drop it off in it's spot.
At about 6:00, Joe came over and told us that he, Sean, John, and Jim were going to the CGE Alumni dinner, and asked us all to stay in the exhibit hall for the evening and watch the place. There were a lot of exhibitors setting up their booths and people were coming it and out, so someone had to keep an eye on things. So they take off, leaving Charles, Nick, Dave, Chris, Danny and Me in the exhibit hall. At some point RetroYoungen showed up and we let him come into the hall and hang out. 98PaceCar also showed up to work on the arcade cabs that weren't functioning. We were all very impressed with his arcade repair prowess. That guy plowed through arcade cabs diagnosing problems and fixing stuff.
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98PaceCar showing Mouse Trap who the man is.
So we stayed in the exhibit hall and ordered pizza from Domino's. They have that 5-5-5 deal where you get medium pizzas for 5 bucks each. We ordered 6 which was plenty. We all sat in the 80's living room and ate dinner.
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Friday night dinner in the 80's living room
Afterwards, we walked around to the exhibitor booths and bought stuff. Nick grabbed a complete and minty Arkanoid for NES for $40 and a complete (minus the mouse cleaning tool) Mario Paint for SNES for $15. I grabbed a brand new copy (complete with the controller) Nights for Saturn and a very nice boxed NES game genie. I also snagged some Famicom games from Billy Galaxy. Just commons, but it's fun to have the Japanese versions of games that I like. We then walked around and played a bunch of the game stations and arcade games. Dave bought a "Tenchu" ninja-style headband from one of the exhibitors and was wearing it while we played. It definitely increased his intimidation factor in head-to-head games. The other guys played Super Smash Brothers on the N64 while I played with the Vectrex (I HAVE to get one of those). We then migrated over to the Arcade cabs.
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Testing out the arcade cabs on Friday night
Favorties were the Space Duel cocktail cab, Warlords cocktail cab, and Drag Race. Drag race had a non-functioning left tachometer, which made it all the more interesting to play. Danny proved that he was the best Drag Race player in the group. After we tired of arcade games, we all went back to the 80's living room. We sat around and shot the shit, Dave and Chris busted out their DSes, and I tried to get my laptop to work with the wireless (worthless) access in the exhibit hall. For the $10 per day that they charge you for that wireless access, you'd think it would work better. I had the NEX contest going on so I had to be able to get online though so I had no choice but to pony up the money. Around 10 or 10:30, Joe and his entourage came back to the exhibit hall. We all got a kick out of Jim's outfit. He had on a white suit, white leather shoes, and a pastel shirt. We all told him he looked like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. He looked cool though. He was happy to have recieved an award at the alumni dinner for all of the hard work that he puts into CGE every year. He isn't very well known to the common DPer due to the fact that he doesn't post much, but he works his ass off behind the scenes at DP. It was a very nice glass award and he was obviously proud to have recieved it. Joe was telling me that generally awards are given to the alumni at the alumni dinner, but that this year Joe wanted to express his appreciation for his own people and was therefore giving out a lot of awards to them.
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Jim's now-infamous white suit.
So while they were gone, we all went through Joe's stuff and pulled out the stuff that we wanted to buy from him. So obviously as soon as he gets there we all start bothering him to sell us the stuff. He kept refusing and telling us that he didn't want to make any deals that night and that we could do it the next morning. It was pretty damned funny. See, they were all drinking at the alumni dinner. Joe hadn't had a drop of alcohol in a month so it went straight to his head. So he didn't want to make any deals with us while he was tossed and sell us stuff too cheap. We all of course very much wanted him to sell us the stuff too cheap. I don't remember what everyone else had, but I set aside a Minestorm Vectrex overlay, and three import Saturn titles; a Capcom Generations disc, and Sega Ages volumes 1 and 2. He started telling us how sorry he was that we were all stuck locked in the Exhibit Hall while they were at the alumni dinner and thanking us for doing it. Now I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one was thrilled to spend my Friiday night in the exhibit hall! We got to check out the show and play games wiithout the public being there. We had free run of the place for 4 hours! No offense to whomever, but I would rather have been where I was then go to the alumni dinner.
By 11:00 we had turned off all of the arcade cabs, but they kept coming back on. Danny was getting pretty annoyed, because someone was plugging them ALL back in. If it was the guys doing the repairs then that would of course be fine, but we saw some of the exhibitors playing with some of them, and that bugged us because we had turned them all off for the night.
So around midnight we all started going downhill fast. We had all been up since the wee hours of the morning, and the other guys had beeen unloading trucks since before I even got there. One by one we trickled out of there to go upstairs and go to bed. I left at about midnight, thinking that we were all leaving. The next day I found out that Danny was stuck in there for another hour while some exhibitors did some last minute set-up. I couldn't sleep in my room very well, and if I had known that Danny way still in the exhibit hall, I would have gone back down there with him.
So slept like shit that night. Got in bed at about 12:30, and tossed and turned until 5:30, falling asleep for 15 or 20 minute stretches at a time. I finally gave up and got up. I took a shower and got dressed in some clean clothes and headed down to the exhibit hall. Joe had told us to be there at 7, and it was like 6:45 anyway. By this time, the place was basically set up, and it was just minor things that needed to be done, like us putting the stuff that we had for sale on the DP table, making sure all of the empty boxes were put away, etc. All of the exhibitors were doing the same thing, so by 8:00 or so things were basically set up.
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Saturday morning just prior to opening.
Joe only wanted four people working the DP booth (more than that and there wouldn't be room to move back there), so I started walking around with Nick while Dave, Chris, Danny, and I think Larry worked the booth. We walked around the various booths checking stuff out and taking pictures. We also ran into "Phosphor Dot Fossils" (Earl).
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Phosphor Dot Fossils (left) and Drexel923.
I was wanting to pick up a Commodore 1702 monitor at the show, and although there were plenty at the show, they were all being used to display games and were not for sale. Someone told me to go check out the Fresno Commodore Users Group booth as they might bring one. Nick and I went over there, and although they didn't have one, they had a stack of Commodore carts. I collect Commodore carts, but not disks or tapes. I picked up Frogger II: Threedeep for a dollar, along with some other carts. Nick bought me a Slik-Stik for a buck (thanks man!). But the best part was this; the guy told us that he had a whole box of game cases that he was giving away, and pulled out a big-ass box and put it on the chair for us to see. I look inside, and it's FULL of brand new Saturn/SegaCD jewel cases, missing the trays. Who gives a shit? The trays aren't what break! I just said "Can I just take the whole box?", and he said 'sure', so I took them. Nick wanted to split the box, which was fine with me since we found them together, but he later decided not to take any since he had to fly home. So now all of my cracked or chiped Saturn and SegaCD cases will be replaced with shiny new ones!
Nick and I wandered over to the swap meet room, where a couple of people had set up. There was maybe 15 people in there buying stuff, so I figured I should go ahead and set up shop and get rid of all the crap that I still had in my trade boxes. I put my sealed Sonic 3, N64 expanison pak, and a bunch of Animal Crossing cards on the DP table, and took the rest into the swap meet room. I paid my 5 dollars and spread everything out on a table. Mostly I had VCS commons, plus some other odds and ends. Everything of real value was either on the DP table or had already been taken by Chris and Dave. I made about 12 bucks in the swap meet.
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Charles setting his stuff up at the swap meet.
There was a kid next to me selling a bunch of stuff, including VCS systems bundled with games. He had a blue and a green Genesis game factory cart on his table, which caught my atttention. He was asking $40 for each. I took a look at what I had left on my table. I knew no one was going to buy any of it. The swap meet was pretty slow this year. So I called the game factory kid over and propsed a trade. I would trade him everything that I had left for one of the game factory carts. He thought about it for a minute, and agreed. I was really happy. I didn't have to haul my stuff around anymore, and I got a game factory cart out of it. I took all of the stuff off the table and dumped it into a box, grabbed the blue game factory cart and was done with it. I walked over to Nick, who was helping out Qixmaster with his stuff, and told him what I did. I he just gave me a blank look and told me to go out in the hall with him. When we got outside, he just started smiling and said "dude, that was a fuckin' awesome deal!" and we laughed about it. If you had seen what I had left on the table, you'd agree.
So I spent most of the morning hanging out with Nick. Glenn was watching the swap meet room, and had had enough so he wanted one of us to take over. After taking all of my purchases up to my room, I went to the swap meet room to take over watching it. I spent most of the afternoon in there taking people's table fees and whatnot. Raccoon Lad came in there with some stuff, including his copy of QuadRun. I went over to introduce myself, but he had no idea who I was. I don't mean to sound egotistical, but I was kind of shocked. He posts on DP all the time! How does the name "Jibbajaba" not ring a bell at least? He didn't seem interested in socializing anyway, so I left him alone. He was the ony DPer I met that didn't seem happy to meet other DPers. Just shy I guess.
By 5 o'clock I was back in the exhibit hall, where DP people were trying to close down the show for the day. The auction was starting at 6, and we wanted people to get the hell out of the exhibit hall so we could leave. Danny and Chris were especially good at kicking people out. John came in and told us not to worry about it since there were exhibitors in the place to watch it. I grabbed my laptop and headed over to the auction room. I got a seat in the third row sitting right behind "MarioAllStar2600" (Marty) and Nick. I was hoping to use my laptop to post on DP while the auction was going on, and to look up the value of stuff in the DP guide. Unfortunately (but predictably), the wireless internet access wasn't working in the room. Marty had his laptop with him with a verixon wireless card (cellular connection I guess) and was trying to create a DP post which had all of the auction results, but his battery died. Oh well, we tried.
The auction lasted for two hours. They had a case of Corona beer on ice, and Carrie (from Messiah), who was also showing off all of the items as they were being auctioned, haded everyone who won an item a beer (until they ran out). John, who was the autioneer, was drinking Corona while selling stuff, and plowed through two beers pretty fast. He sent someone to find him more, and they came back with a canned Tecate (another Mexican beer). John, who will NOT drink beer from a can, brushed the Tecate aside, and thankfullly someone brought him up a Corona that they had 'won' along with their item. I must say that John is an EXTREMELY entertaining auctioneer, and he kept is all laughing during the whole auction. I'm not going to list out the stuff that sold at the auction since there is already a thread for that, but needless to say I got to see some great stuff. We were all wondering when Marty was going to chime in with some bids, and he finally did when he won River Patrol. Of course the last item of the night was the charity beer. Last year, they auctioned off one beer, the proceeds from which would go to Special Olympics. It ended up selling for about $120, most of which was put up by Portnoyd. Well this year, they had two Coronas, plus the shunned can of Tecate. After a couple of very generous donations by auction atendees sweetening the deal with additional items, the bidding ended at about $400.
The auction ended at about 8pm, and as John pointed out numerous times, it was time to get drunk. I headed up to my room to get rid of my stuff, then headed to the Deli to grab some food, since I hadn't eaten since about noon. (Domino's pizza again) I went up to the fifth floor to find Danny, Dave, Chris, and Nick sinnce I didn't know where the party was. I ran into them in the hall and headed to the party with them. I was REALLY hungry and was eating the noodle salad that I bought with great ferocity in the elevator, so much so that Danny asked me "Are you hungry or something?". LOL
So we got to the party by 8:30. It was in a suite instead of a normal room. The suites have an actual living room and a balcony, so they are good for a party. "Ulala" (Jaime) was at the door taking people's money. When you walked into the living room, to the righht was a service counter for the kitchen, which had "CGE" spelled out in filled shot glasses. The idea was that you took a shot, and then got to keep the glass. They are cool custom CGE/DP shot glasses. I took my shot, then grabbed a beer. "DrWily008" (Ken) who was one of the "Send me to CGE" contest winners, went out on the balcony to smoke, so I went out with him. "The Plucky Little Ninja" came out as well (sorry man, I don't remember your first name). I had met him earlier in the day and thought he was a really cool guy. We stood out on the balcony smoking for awhile, other people coming and going as well to do the same thing. Don Rogers came out to the balcony. He doesn't smoke but I guess didn't want to be in the crowded suite. So he stood out on the balcony and talked to Ken and I for like two hours. We were talking about gaming likes and dislikes, he told us stories about himself and John Hardie hunting for games back in the 80's, and some of his great finds. It was just a really awesome conversation and I was having a great time. Unfortunately, hotel security made us get off the balcony and go back inside. So that ended that. I went back inside and pretty much everyone was drunk. I had been outside so long that I lost track of time and hadn't been drinking.
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Some DPers sitting around and chatting at the party.
At some point during my time out on the balcony, Jarett from PackRatVG came out on the balcony. I jokingly said "Hey Jarett, you got any free stuff for me?" I was TOTALLY kidding! So he pulls out a shopping bag with "door prizes" in it and takes some stuff out and shows it to me. I asked "I can HAVE something out of here?" and he said yup. I was surprised. He had some of those Odyssey2 mouse pads that he sells, but he also had 2 homebrew VCS carts in there! He has 2 copies of "Borgwars Asteroids", which are graphical hacks of Asteroids. He had one clear-cased one, and one normal black one. I prefer the black ones even though he charges more for the clear ones. So I took the black one and Plucky got the clear one. They came with manuals, too! Jarett also mentioned that they would be having various hourly sales at their booth on Sunday, including a BOGO sale on VCS stuff. I asked if that would include the homebrew stuff and he said yes. I had had my eeye on a homebrew test cart that he had for sale, so I decided that I would hit him up during the BOGO sale and get it along with another of his products.
I walked around talking to various people, stood out on the other balcony and talked to Joe for awhile, etc. Around 1AM, Danny, Joe, and I decided to leave since we were so tired. We had been up since 5 or 6 in the morning and had been working all day. I went back to my room and hit the hay.
Sunday morning I woke up at about 8:30, took a shower, and headed downstairs. There was really no work to do since everything was ready to go, so we pretty much just hung out. At 10, the show opened. I walked around for a little while, and at around 10:40 I figured I should go get the swap meet started. I walked in and there were already two people selling stuff. The swap meet wasn't supposed to start until 11, but the doors were open so people just went in. Not a big deal. So I started collecting money and whatnot. I brought my laptop with me so I started uploading some pics to the forum for other people to see.
By this time I was starting too get really depressed and homesick. Maybe that sounds pussy, but whatever. I was just starting to miss my house and miss Ms. Jibba, and I wanted to go home. At about noon or a little after, I asked Nick to watch the swap meet for me so I could start taking some of my stuff down to the car. I was thinking about going home pretty soon, but then I remembered the NEX contest. It ended at 3PM and I wanted to be there when it did so that I could post the winner. I took most of my stuff down to the car anyway. I left my laptop and a couple of things that I couldn't carry during the first trip but took everything else. Then I remebered that I had promised Charles at I would install some emulators on his PSP for him. So I went downstairs and got him and we went up to my room so I could set up his PSP for him. When he was up there, I mentioned the BOGO sale that PackratVG had, and he wanted to head back down to try and get in on it before the hour was up (it was like 1:50 so he had to hurry). It took my about 30 minutes to get the emulators going on his PSP because I kept making mistakes. I took his PSP down to him and then started walking around with my camera. I wanted to get a picture of myself with all of the people that I met. I ended up getting quite a few, but a lot of them loo pretty goofy so I'm not really planning on posting them. They are mainly for me to remember what everyone looks like.
I headed back upstairs to check my GMail account to see if there were any new entries that would bump off DDCecil as the winning entry (he had submitted his entry on Friday night if I remember correctly). All of a sudden, GMail's servers were down so I couldn't even check! What the heck did I wait around for then? I packed up the rest of my stuff and took it down to the car. On the way back in I ran into Ken, Joe, and Sean outside, so I stayed and had a cigarette with Ken. I then went inside to say goodbye to everyone that I could find, and take a few more pics with people. I couldn't find Neuropolitique, which sucked becuase I wanted to say thanks for letting me stay with him. Since I couldn't find him, I lleft him a present on his bed. Ken had given me a "Warioware Twisted" display box (one of those huge ones) on Saturday. Neuro is really into GB, so I figured he would appreciate it more than me. I also couldn't find Nick, which really made me sad because I really wanted to say goodbye to him. We hung out a lot at the expo together and really got along great so I hated to leave without shaking his hand. The last person that I ran into was Joe, who was out in the lobby. I thanked him for letting me come volunteer for the show and whatnot, and then I walked out to my car and left. It was a wierd feeling, because I really wanted to go home, but at the same time I really didn't want to leave because I had met so many great people. In the end my desire to go home to Ms. Jibba outweighed my desire to stay with everyone so I took off.
So that sums up my CGE experience. Sorry to bore you all with the minute details of my weekend, but I did it not just to share my experience, but also to document it so that I don't ever forget the details of what I did. I had such an amazing time that I can't even put it into words, and I don't want to forget about it. I am going to post it in my blog as well in case this forum gets deleted on account of there not being a CGE 2k7.
So what did I think of CGE this year? It exceeded all of my expectations. I really regretted not talking to anyone at last year's show. CGE is all about the people, and if you aren't going to socialiize with fellow DPers, then you aren't getting the full experience. The museum was even better than last year. The room that they had it in this year was much bigger and had an interesting shape. Larry did an awesome job of setting it up, with a lot of assistance from some dedicated people.
The auction was extremely entertaining. If I had more money then I would have bid on stuff, but I am more than happy with everything that I brought home.
The other exhibitors at the show were great as well. In particular:
D-Lite: I finally got to meet Dean "D-Lite" Dragoli at the show this year. He has contributed a lot to the knowledge base and is a total NEC mastermind. The amount of NEC and Neo-Geo stuff he had for sale blew my mind. Dude, you should get a regular booth in the middle of the show room next time. Your booth was ALWAYS busy.
Messiah: They were right on the other side of the 80's living room. The NEX was even cooler than I had imagined. It was also great too meet Perry Freeze, who was the person with whom I coordinated the NEX contest.
PackratVG: It's funny, but I imagined Jarrett being some older guy, not a young man. I admire his drive with older games, and I am impressed by the business he has at his age. It's nice to see a young guy taking interest in Atari and O2 systems. He had some of the best deals at the show, and he was running a VCS on a projection screen and demo-ing upcoming releases. Sorry I was such a cheap-ass in waiting for your VCS sale, Jarrett, but I didn't have much money and I wanted to make it stretch. I'll be ordering some stuff some from you in the near future.
I just want to say one final thanks to everyone that I met an talked to. It truly was great meeting you all, and I look forward to seeing you all again at the next gathering.
Please post your own experiences and opinions about the show!
Chris
PS I will edit this post later with more pics when I pull them off of my digital camera at home. Also, I relaize that this post is extremely long. I have done my best to correct spelling and gramatical errors, but I'm sure some still remain.
Warning, this post will be VERY VERY LONG.
So I left my house (which is about 80 miles away from the CGE hotel) at about 6:15 on Friday morning. After gassing up the car, I got to the hotel at 8 o'clock sharp. I went straight to the exhibit hall, which was basically empty. The tables were set up with table cloths on them, but there were no skirts on the tables, and the curtains separating the tables weren't up yet. The only exhibitor there was Billy Galaxy, who was just starting to set up. The only other DPer in the room was "EVG2000" (Charles). Another Exhibitor, "Master Technologies" ( :roll: ) started to set up soon after. He kept hitting Charles and I up for help, but we were there to help DP. We ended up helping him a little bit though.
So anyway, when I got there, Joe and company were no where to be seen. I found out from Charles that they all went to Kinkos and that we just needed to wait for them to return. They came back around 8:45, and then we started setting things up. That morning I met Dave2236 (Dave), GrandAmChandler (Chris), Darth Vader (Danny), and Drexel923 (Nick). I had met Dave and Danny briefly at last year's CGE but didn't really talk to them. So we spent the morning setting up various things in the exhibit hall and unpacking museum boxes (which is tons of fun. Like Christmas morning except that you can't keep the stuff). At some point during the morning, Charles and I walked out to his truck where his trade stuff was. He let me look through the TG16 games that he brought. From him I bought Legendary Axe II (which Nick ended up buying from me), Alien Crush, and a not for resale copy of Victory Run. When I got home yesterday, I opened up the Victory Run case and found Vigilante in there instead. I was happy though because I've been wanting that game. Now I just need a loose copy of Vicory Run.
Around 12:30, Nick, Charles, Dave, Danny, Chris and I went across the street and had Sizzler for lunch. They have this lunch buffet where its a salad bar, but on the side they have this litte deal where you can make your own nachos and tacos, and then they have onion rings and fried chicken wings. Man, I went straight for those onion rings and chicken wings. It was cool sitting around the table with a bunch of fellow DPers talking about DP stuff.
So after lunch, we come back the the exhibit hall and start setting up the DP booth and whatnot. I started setting up the game stations, and did it by myself for awhile, but soon we were all working on it, which was good because it was a big job. The systems weren't sorted out or anything, so we just had a few boxes full of systems, controllers, games, and a rat's nest of rf adapters, rca cables, and AC adapters. We finally got all of the systems set up and it looked really cool. Later on, someone (I think it was Vectrexer) set up a vectrex machine with an arcade controller. Someone else brought over a Virtual Boy, and at some point a bunch of table top machines appeared on the last table. Whoever set those up was smart enough to lock them down.
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The game stations.
At some point during my game station setup career, "Neuropolitique" showed up. He had a super-nice digital camera and was walking around taking tons of pictures. He came over and we met, and he gave me my room key. He was the winner of one of the "Send me to CGE" contests, and was generous enough to let me stay in his room for free. Since I could now bring my stuff up to my room, I got Dave and Chris to go out to my car with me and help me bring my boxes upstairs. We got everything into my room, and right away Dave and Chris opened up my trade boxes and took out everything that they wanted. I made about $20 off of Chris, and traded for $30 worth of stuff from Dave. From Dave I got a Dragon Warrior II box and manual, a Tecmo Bowl Manual, a Final Fantasy manual, and two VCS carts; Fast Food and Miner 2049er.
During the course of the day, we were all checking out the exhibitor booths as they were setting up, buying things from them before the public got a chance to.
Around 5:00, someone showed up with 17 arcade cabs in a truck. He was selling them, so he had them on display (and on free play) on the main floor with a price tag stuck on the marquee. Everything was pretty overpriced IMHO, but he had some cool games. Gaunlet, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Joust, etc. Anything good was over $1000 though, and you could tell that these machines had seen heavy use. Anyway, I helped unload the cabs from the truck. Those things weigh a ton. What you would do is bring a hand truck over to the truck, get loaded up with a cab, and take it inside. But you had to bring the cab down the ramp on the back of the truck, which was slippery and had a lip on it that the wheels of the hand truck would get caught on. Then you had to push or pull the cab up an inclined sidewalk, past the pool, and then into a service entrance of the hotel. Then you went about 150 feet downhill through a hallway, being careful not to let the cab pick up speed on the hand truck. Then you came through the back door of the exhibit hall. Then you just had to roll it's ass to the other side of the room and drop it off in it's spot.
At about 6:00, Joe came over and told us that he, Sean, John, and Jim were going to the CGE Alumni dinner, and asked us all to stay in the exhibit hall for the evening and watch the place. There were a lot of exhibitors setting up their booths and people were coming it and out, so someone had to keep an eye on things. So they take off, leaving Charles, Nick, Dave, Chris, Danny and Me in the exhibit hall. At some point RetroYoungen showed up and we let him come into the hall and hang out. 98PaceCar also showed up to work on the arcade cabs that weren't functioning. We were all very impressed with his arcade repair prowess. That guy plowed through arcade cabs diagnosing problems and fixing stuff.
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98PaceCar showing Mouse Trap who the man is.
So we stayed in the exhibit hall and ordered pizza from Domino's. They have that 5-5-5 deal where you get medium pizzas for 5 bucks each. We ordered 6 which was plenty. We all sat in the 80's living room and ate dinner.
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Friday night dinner in the 80's living room
Afterwards, we walked around to the exhibitor booths and bought stuff. Nick grabbed a complete and minty Arkanoid for NES for $40 and a complete (minus the mouse cleaning tool) Mario Paint for SNES for $15. I grabbed a brand new copy (complete with the controller) Nights for Saturn and a very nice boxed NES game genie. I also snagged some Famicom games from Billy Galaxy. Just commons, but it's fun to have the Japanese versions of games that I like. We then walked around and played a bunch of the game stations and arcade games. Dave bought a "Tenchu" ninja-style headband from one of the exhibitors and was wearing it while we played. It definitely increased his intimidation factor in head-to-head games. The other guys played Super Smash Brothers on the N64 while I played with the Vectrex (I HAVE to get one of those). We then migrated over to the Arcade cabs.
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Testing out the arcade cabs on Friday night
Favorties were the Space Duel cocktail cab, Warlords cocktail cab, and Drag Race. Drag race had a non-functioning left tachometer, which made it all the more interesting to play. Danny proved that he was the best Drag Race player in the group. After we tired of arcade games, we all went back to the 80's living room. We sat around and shot the shit, Dave and Chris busted out their DSes, and I tried to get my laptop to work with the wireless (worthless) access in the exhibit hall. For the $10 per day that they charge you for that wireless access, you'd think it would work better. I had the NEX contest going on so I had to be able to get online though so I had no choice but to pony up the money. Around 10 or 10:30, Joe and his entourage came back to the exhibit hall. We all got a kick out of Jim's outfit. He had on a white suit, white leather shoes, and a pastel shirt. We all told him he looked like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. He looked cool though. He was happy to have recieved an award at the alumni dinner for all of the hard work that he puts into CGE every year. He isn't very well known to the common DPer due to the fact that he doesn't post much, but he works his ass off behind the scenes at DP. It was a very nice glass award and he was obviously proud to have recieved it. Joe was telling me that generally awards are given to the alumni at the alumni dinner, but that this year Joe wanted to express his appreciation for his own people and was therefore giving out a lot of awards to them.
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Jim's now-infamous white suit.
So while they were gone, we all went through Joe's stuff and pulled out the stuff that we wanted to buy from him. So obviously as soon as he gets there we all start bothering him to sell us the stuff. He kept refusing and telling us that he didn't want to make any deals that night and that we could do it the next morning. It was pretty damned funny. See, they were all drinking at the alumni dinner. Joe hadn't had a drop of alcohol in a month so it went straight to his head. So he didn't want to make any deals with us while he was tossed and sell us stuff too cheap. We all of course very much wanted him to sell us the stuff too cheap. I don't remember what everyone else had, but I set aside a Minestorm Vectrex overlay, and three import Saturn titles; a Capcom Generations disc, and Sega Ages volumes 1 and 2. He started telling us how sorry he was that we were all stuck locked in the Exhibit Hall while they were at the alumni dinner and thanking us for doing it. Now I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one was thrilled to spend my Friiday night in the exhibit hall! We got to check out the show and play games wiithout the public being there. We had free run of the place for 4 hours! No offense to whomever, but I would rather have been where I was then go to the alumni dinner.
By 11:00 we had turned off all of the arcade cabs, but they kept coming back on. Danny was getting pretty annoyed, because someone was plugging them ALL back in. If it was the guys doing the repairs then that would of course be fine, but we saw some of the exhibitors playing with some of them, and that bugged us because we had turned them all off for the night.
So around midnight we all started going downhill fast. We had all been up since the wee hours of the morning, and the other guys had beeen unloading trucks since before I even got there. One by one we trickled out of there to go upstairs and go to bed. I left at about midnight, thinking that we were all leaving. The next day I found out that Danny was stuck in there for another hour while some exhibitors did some last minute set-up. I couldn't sleep in my room very well, and if I had known that Danny way still in the exhibit hall, I would have gone back down there with him.
So slept like shit that night. Got in bed at about 12:30, and tossed and turned until 5:30, falling asleep for 15 or 20 minute stretches at a time. I finally gave up and got up. I took a shower and got dressed in some clean clothes and headed down to the exhibit hall. Joe had told us to be there at 7, and it was like 6:45 anyway. By this time, the place was basically set up, and it was just minor things that needed to be done, like us putting the stuff that we had for sale on the DP table, making sure all of the empty boxes were put away, etc. All of the exhibitors were doing the same thing, so by 8:00 or so things were basically set up.
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Saturday morning just prior to opening.
Joe only wanted four people working the DP booth (more than that and there wouldn't be room to move back there), so I started walking around with Nick while Dave, Chris, Danny, and I think Larry worked the booth. We walked around the various booths checking stuff out and taking pictures. We also ran into "Phosphor Dot Fossils" (Earl).
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Phosphor Dot Fossils (left) and Drexel923.
I was wanting to pick up a Commodore 1702 monitor at the show, and although there were plenty at the show, they were all being used to display games and were not for sale. Someone told me to go check out the Fresno Commodore Users Group booth as they might bring one. Nick and I went over there, and although they didn't have one, they had a stack of Commodore carts. I collect Commodore carts, but not disks or tapes. I picked up Frogger II: Threedeep for a dollar, along with some other carts. Nick bought me a Slik-Stik for a buck (thanks man!). But the best part was this; the guy told us that he had a whole box of game cases that he was giving away, and pulled out a big-ass box and put it on the chair for us to see. I look inside, and it's FULL of brand new Saturn/SegaCD jewel cases, missing the trays. Who gives a shit? The trays aren't what break! I just said "Can I just take the whole box?", and he said 'sure', so I took them. Nick wanted to split the box, which was fine with me since we found them together, but he later decided not to take any since he had to fly home. So now all of my cracked or chiped Saturn and SegaCD cases will be replaced with shiny new ones!
Nick and I wandered over to the swap meet room, where a couple of people had set up. There was maybe 15 people in there buying stuff, so I figured I should go ahead and set up shop and get rid of all the crap that I still had in my trade boxes. I put my sealed Sonic 3, N64 expanison pak, and a bunch of Animal Crossing cards on the DP table, and took the rest into the swap meet room. I paid my 5 dollars and spread everything out on a table. Mostly I had VCS commons, plus some other odds and ends. Everything of real value was either on the DP table or had already been taken by Chris and Dave. I made about 12 bucks in the swap meet.
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Charles setting his stuff up at the swap meet.
There was a kid next to me selling a bunch of stuff, including VCS systems bundled with games. He had a blue and a green Genesis game factory cart on his table, which caught my atttention. He was asking $40 for each. I took a look at what I had left on my table. I knew no one was going to buy any of it. The swap meet was pretty slow this year. So I called the game factory kid over and propsed a trade. I would trade him everything that I had left for one of the game factory carts. He thought about it for a minute, and agreed. I was really happy. I didn't have to haul my stuff around anymore, and I got a game factory cart out of it. I took all of the stuff off the table and dumped it into a box, grabbed the blue game factory cart and was done with it. I walked over to Nick, who was helping out Qixmaster with his stuff, and told him what I did. I he just gave me a blank look and told me to go out in the hall with him. When we got outside, he just started smiling and said "dude, that was a fuckin' awesome deal!" and we laughed about it. If you had seen what I had left on the table, you'd agree.
So I spent most of the morning hanging out with Nick. Glenn was watching the swap meet room, and had had enough so he wanted one of us to take over. After taking all of my purchases up to my room, I went to the swap meet room to take over watching it. I spent most of the afternoon in there taking people's table fees and whatnot. Raccoon Lad came in there with some stuff, including his copy of QuadRun. I went over to introduce myself, but he had no idea who I was. I don't mean to sound egotistical, but I was kind of shocked. He posts on DP all the time! How does the name "Jibbajaba" not ring a bell at least? He didn't seem interested in socializing anyway, so I left him alone. He was the ony DPer I met that didn't seem happy to meet other DPers. Just shy I guess.
By 5 o'clock I was back in the exhibit hall, where DP people were trying to close down the show for the day. The auction was starting at 6, and we wanted people to get the hell out of the exhibit hall so we could leave. Danny and Chris were especially good at kicking people out. John came in and told us not to worry about it since there were exhibitors in the place to watch it. I grabbed my laptop and headed over to the auction room. I got a seat in the third row sitting right behind "MarioAllStar2600" (Marty) and Nick. I was hoping to use my laptop to post on DP while the auction was going on, and to look up the value of stuff in the DP guide. Unfortunately (but predictably), the wireless internet access wasn't working in the room. Marty had his laptop with him with a verixon wireless card (cellular connection I guess) and was trying to create a DP post which had all of the auction results, but his battery died. Oh well, we tried.
The auction lasted for two hours. They had a case of Corona beer on ice, and Carrie (from Messiah), who was also showing off all of the items as they were being auctioned, haded everyone who won an item a beer (until they ran out). John, who was the autioneer, was drinking Corona while selling stuff, and plowed through two beers pretty fast. He sent someone to find him more, and they came back with a canned Tecate (another Mexican beer). John, who will NOT drink beer from a can, brushed the Tecate aside, and thankfullly someone brought him up a Corona that they had 'won' along with their item. I must say that John is an EXTREMELY entertaining auctioneer, and he kept is all laughing during the whole auction. I'm not going to list out the stuff that sold at the auction since there is already a thread for that, but needless to say I got to see some great stuff. We were all wondering when Marty was going to chime in with some bids, and he finally did when he won River Patrol. Of course the last item of the night was the charity beer. Last year, they auctioned off one beer, the proceeds from which would go to Special Olympics. It ended up selling for about $120, most of which was put up by Portnoyd. Well this year, they had two Coronas, plus the shunned can of Tecate. After a couple of very generous donations by auction atendees sweetening the deal with additional items, the bidding ended at about $400.
The auction ended at about 8pm, and as John pointed out numerous times, it was time to get drunk. I headed up to my room to get rid of my stuff, then headed to the Deli to grab some food, since I hadn't eaten since about noon. (Domino's pizza again) I went up to the fifth floor to find Danny, Dave, Chris, and Nick sinnce I didn't know where the party was. I ran into them in the hall and headed to the party with them. I was REALLY hungry and was eating the noodle salad that I bought with great ferocity in the elevator, so much so that Danny asked me "Are you hungry or something?". LOL
So we got to the party by 8:30. It was in a suite instead of a normal room. The suites have an actual living room and a balcony, so they are good for a party. "Ulala" (Jaime) was at the door taking people's money. When you walked into the living room, to the righht was a service counter for the kitchen, which had "CGE" spelled out in filled shot glasses. The idea was that you took a shot, and then got to keep the glass. They are cool custom CGE/DP shot glasses. I took my shot, then grabbed a beer. "DrWily008" (Ken) who was one of the "Send me to CGE" contest winners, went out on the balcony to smoke, so I went out with him. "The Plucky Little Ninja" came out as well (sorry man, I don't remember your first name). I had met him earlier in the day and thought he was a really cool guy. We stood out on the balcony smoking for awhile, other people coming and going as well to do the same thing. Don Rogers came out to the balcony. He doesn't smoke but I guess didn't want to be in the crowded suite. So he stood out on the balcony and talked to Ken and I for like two hours. We were talking about gaming likes and dislikes, he told us stories about himself and John Hardie hunting for games back in the 80's, and some of his great finds. It was just a really awesome conversation and I was having a great time. Unfortunately, hotel security made us get off the balcony and go back inside. So that ended that. I went back inside and pretty much everyone was drunk. I had been outside so long that I lost track of time and hadn't been drinking.
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Some DPers sitting around and chatting at the party.
At some point during my time out on the balcony, Jarett from PackRatVG came out on the balcony. I jokingly said "Hey Jarett, you got any free stuff for me?" I was TOTALLY kidding! So he pulls out a shopping bag with "door prizes" in it and takes some stuff out and shows it to me. I asked "I can HAVE something out of here?" and he said yup. I was surprised. He had some of those Odyssey2 mouse pads that he sells, but he also had 2 homebrew VCS carts in there! He has 2 copies of "Borgwars Asteroids", which are graphical hacks of Asteroids. He had one clear-cased one, and one normal black one. I prefer the black ones even though he charges more for the clear ones. So I took the black one and Plucky got the clear one. They came with manuals, too! Jarett also mentioned that they would be having various hourly sales at their booth on Sunday, including a BOGO sale on VCS stuff. I asked if that would include the homebrew stuff and he said yes. I had had my eeye on a homebrew test cart that he had for sale, so I decided that I would hit him up during the BOGO sale and get it along with another of his products.
I walked around talking to various people, stood out on the other balcony and talked to Joe for awhile, etc. Around 1AM, Danny, Joe, and I decided to leave since we were so tired. We had been up since 5 or 6 in the morning and had been working all day. I went back to my room and hit the hay.
Sunday morning I woke up at about 8:30, took a shower, and headed downstairs. There was really no work to do since everything was ready to go, so we pretty much just hung out. At 10, the show opened. I walked around for a little while, and at around 10:40 I figured I should go get the swap meet started. I walked in and there were already two people selling stuff. The swap meet wasn't supposed to start until 11, but the doors were open so people just went in. Not a big deal. So I started collecting money and whatnot. I brought my laptop with me so I started uploading some pics to the forum for other people to see.
By this time I was starting too get really depressed and homesick. Maybe that sounds pussy, but whatever. I was just starting to miss my house and miss Ms. Jibba, and I wanted to go home. At about noon or a little after, I asked Nick to watch the swap meet for me so I could start taking some of my stuff down to the car. I was thinking about going home pretty soon, but then I remembered the NEX contest. It ended at 3PM and I wanted to be there when it did so that I could post the winner. I took most of my stuff down to the car anyway. I left my laptop and a couple of things that I couldn't carry during the first trip but took everything else. Then I remebered that I had promised Charles at I would install some emulators on his PSP for him. So I went downstairs and got him and we went up to my room so I could set up his PSP for him. When he was up there, I mentioned the BOGO sale that PackratVG had, and he wanted to head back down to try and get in on it before the hour was up (it was like 1:50 so he had to hurry). It took my about 30 minutes to get the emulators going on his PSP because I kept making mistakes. I took his PSP down to him and then started walking around with my camera. I wanted to get a picture of myself with all of the people that I met. I ended up getting quite a few, but a lot of them loo pretty goofy so I'm not really planning on posting them. They are mainly for me to remember what everyone looks like.
I headed back upstairs to check my GMail account to see if there were any new entries that would bump off DDCecil as the winning entry (he had submitted his entry on Friday night if I remember correctly). All of a sudden, GMail's servers were down so I couldn't even check! What the heck did I wait around for then? I packed up the rest of my stuff and took it down to the car. On the way back in I ran into Ken, Joe, and Sean outside, so I stayed and had a cigarette with Ken. I then went inside to say goodbye to everyone that I could find, and take a few more pics with people. I couldn't find Neuropolitique, which sucked becuase I wanted to say thanks for letting me stay with him. Since I couldn't find him, I lleft him a present on his bed. Ken had given me a "Warioware Twisted" display box (one of those huge ones) on Saturday. Neuro is really into GB, so I figured he would appreciate it more than me. I also couldn't find Nick, which really made me sad because I really wanted to say goodbye to him. We hung out a lot at the expo together and really got along great so I hated to leave without shaking his hand. The last person that I ran into was Joe, who was out in the lobby. I thanked him for letting me come volunteer for the show and whatnot, and then I walked out to my car and left. It was a wierd feeling, because I really wanted to go home, but at the same time I really didn't want to leave because I had met so many great people. In the end my desire to go home to Ms. Jibba outweighed my desire to stay with everyone so I took off.
So that sums up my CGE experience. Sorry to bore you all with the minute details of my weekend, but I did it not just to share my experience, but also to document it so that I don't ever forget the details of what I did. I had such an amazing time that I can't even put it into words, and I don't want to forget about it. I am going to post it in my blog as well in case this forum gets deleted on account of there not being a CGE 2k7.
So what did I think of CGE this year? It exceeded all of my expectations. I really regretted not talking to anyone at last year's show. CGE is all about the people, and if you aren't going to socialiize with fellow DPers, then you aren't getting the full experience. The museum was even better than last year. The room that they had it in this year was much bigger and had an interesting shape. Larry did an awesome job of setting it up, with a lot of assistance from some dedicated people.
The auction was extremely entertaining. If I had more money then I would have bid on stuff, but I am more than happy with everything that I brought home.
The other exhibitors at the show were great as well. In particular:
D-Lite: I finally got to meet Dean "D-Lite" Dragoli at the show this year. He has contributed a lot to the knowledge base and is a total NEC mastermind. The amount of NEC and Neo-Geo stuff he had for sale blew my mind. Dude, you should get a regular booth in the middle of the show room next time. Your booth was ALWAYS busy.
Messiah: They were right on the other side of the 80's living room. The NEX was even cooler than I had imagined. It was also great too meet Perry Freeze, who was the person with whom I coordinated the NEX contest.
PackratVG: It's funny, but I imagined Jarrett being some older guy, not a young man. I admire his drive with older games, and I am impressed by the business he has at his age. It's nice to see a young guy taking interest in Atari and O2 systems. He had some of the best deals at the show, and he was running a VCS on a projection screen and demo-ing upcoming releases. Sorry I was such a cheap-ass in waiting for your VCS sale, Jarrett, but I didn't have much money and I wanted to make it stretch. I'll be ordering some stuff some from you in the near future.
I just want to say one final thanks to everyone that I met an talked to. It truly was great meeting you all, and I look forward to seeing you all again at the next gathering.
Please post your own experiences and opinions about the show!
Chris
PS I will edit this post later with more pics when I pull them off of my digital camera at home. Also, I relaize that this post is extremely long. I have done my best to correct spelling and gramatical errors, but I'm sure some still remain.