Pictures and reviews from the 2006 Midwest Gaming Classic!

[Goodwill Hunter]

I had a great time yesterday...played tons of games, consoles, arcades, and pinballs alike. Traded for and bought lots of very cool stuff, and said hello to a lot of forum members. I'm going back this afternoon to do some last minute hunting, say some goodbyes, and retreive my contibutions to the museum. Took a bunch of pictures that I'll post in a day or two, but I thought I 'd start with this one:

Fearing his soul is about to be stolen by the camera, Ian scares the camera out of focus.

More later,
Rich

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

* drools over self-contained Videopac *

[s1lence]

Yeah Goodwill Hunter, I saw you there but you where pretty busy so I didn't want to bother you.

[FABombjoy]

This was a helluva lot of fun! I'm sure I'll be back next year.

Memorable non-gaming moments:

Dan told me that a security guard came up to him and wondered if I might be stealing trade secrets from the Star Wars arcade cabinet. I was running a decent-sized & somewhat odd-looking camera setup, which the security guard felt was "way more than what you'd need to just tape someone playing Star Wars".

My buddy, who's quite proud of this ability, "demolishes" the crapper in our hotel room & it overflows. Big watery mess, maintenance comes and fixes everything up, yadda yadda. Later that night, we overhear dave2236's girlfriend tell a story about how water started leaking through the ceiling of their bathroom. While she was in the shower. Room 372: meet room 472. *shudder*

That same buddy, in the middle of the AtariAge room party, loudly & repeatedly demands to know where he can buy a Digital Press T-shirt. Then proceeds to do an impromptu Blatz beer modeling photo shoot with the guy from 8bitclassics.

Watching Kamino stumble out onto the balcony of his room, open & empty the contents of a Red Dog onto the pavement below, cackle gleefully & stumble back inside.

[GrayFox]

Watching Kamino stumble out onto the balcony of his room, open & empty the contents of a Red Dog onto the pavement below, cackle gleefully & stumble back inside.

There were many ridiculous Kamino moments.

Many.

[s1lence]

Yes like the puking over the balcony edge. He threw Red Dog over the 2nd night, but he didn't even open the can.

[ianoid]

Midwest Gaming Classic was a great show. I'll be back next year. I'd like to spearhead a DP booth and sell guides- will 8th Edition be ready by them? Big maybe.

The show had a good amount of attendance volume. I was very impresed by how spendy folks got. I sold more than I do at CGE, even though the show was probably half the size. The venue is a bit like the plaza, but nicer in a way.

The standup selection was very good, although CGE has better video games overall, but probably not pinbal MGC had great pinball and pinball vendors. I didn't make it to the museum or lectures as I was too busy selling and buying.

Buying wise, the prices were all around very good, with loads of great deals to be had. My only complaint is that the trade area hasn't evolved terribly. I would like to see it in a room with more specific rules- selling is a big part of the trade rooms, and it was forbidden this year. I would like to see it promoted. My opinion is that it would be reasonable to charge $10 for an hour and a table and rotate by the hour, anything goes. Or just have a few slots like 11-12, 2-3, 7-8. Or have an offiical trade party after hours.

I only made it to the Atari Age party after the show as I had to leave and had a great time chatting with Al and Matt. One of my favorite things about the shows is having real conversations with people I don't get to see much. We even rocked some great AA product. I have to recommend Swoops, which is 3 1k games, 2 of which rock.

I would say if you can make it for the weekend, it would be worth a 7 or 8 hour drive, or more if you're a little crazy. If you can just make it for a day, 3 hours would probably pay off for you. Of course, you have to be into old video games to make it worth drive more than 2 hours. It's an easy trip from Chicago.

[Sniderman]

So was it a great show?

[Carey85]

Yeah, MGC was a great show. I'm very glad I made the drive up from Cincinnati to Wisconsin. Some very good Kamino moments. Apparently he and I drank too much on Friday night and had to take turns Saturday morning vomiting in the toilet. At one point, Kamino was ralphing off of the balcony, very funny stuff. Saturday night was a little calmer, and I don't think anyone really got too inebriated. I do know that we ended up having to leave booze at the show. Alcohol abuse, I know... I just got home an hour or so ago infact.

[Carey85]

Sorry about that double post, apparently there is a bug at the moment that did not acknowledge that I submitted my post, just an error message. Oh well...

[Goodwill Hunter]

As promised, here are a selection of pictures I took from Friday through Sunday at the 2006 Midwest Gaming Classic:



Friday night, and most of the arcade machines and vendor tables are in place.





Gave Dave2236 a hand bringing in a massive load of gaming goodness from his store.





Meanwhile, an exciting game of soda bottle baseball was underway in the museum area.





Christine and her fellow vendor had the best swag of the whole show…thanks again for the PSX/Victornox swiss army credit card!





Atarian75’s slyly placed stack of Game Informers catches another customer’s eye.





Dave and his lovely assistant Jen pose by what was left of their Genesis selection after I got through with it.





The selling and trading was fast and furious all day on Saturday

[Goodwill Hunter]

The Underdog Chamber in the Museum area featured a Mac LAN with Bungie’s precursor to Halo, Marathon. They also had many vintage systems set up to play.





Every Lynx game ever made, and then some, were available to play.





The Steel Battalion tutorial took so long that this player’s pet iguana abandoned him.





Kamino does his best to keep from throwing up on the PC in an NES that was built from start to finish at the show in the museum area. The finished product was pretty damn impressive, and later auctioned off at the show.





Guitar Hero was one of the museum’s most popular current-gen games available to play.





My contributions to the Museum…the 2600 Sears demo console and a complete APF M-1000 with Imagination Machine.





It was nice to see kids enjoying consoles that had died decades before they were born.

[Goodwill Hunter]

The hotel’s free wifi meant that DS matches could spring up anywhere.





The arcade was always packed.





Young and old alike enjoyed the amazing selection of free play pinball machines.





A self-contained, morph-on-the-fly, 18-hole mini-golf course…very cool!





Team Fremont covered the show live, and ran a videogame trivia contest.





Goatdan, co-founder of the MGC holds the mike as a member of Team Fremont reads the name of the winner of the Xbox 360 that was given away at the show.





And here’s my haul from the show…highlights are a sealed TG-16 Military Madness, a KidVid tape player from Ian, A bunch of hole-filling NES manuals from Trade-N-Games, and over 1/3 of my remaining needed Genesis titles from Dave 2236. I, like many others, had a great time, give many kudos to the organizers and participants, and look forward to next year’s MGC!

Rich

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Y'know, I don't even like pinball, but the sight of that many classic pins in one place is almost enough to make me rethink that stance. That's just beautiful, and seems to be a feature truly unique to the MGC!

[Balloon Fight]

I would seriously give an organ for that Mini-Golf machine. Excellent pictures rich!

[PackratVG]

The pinballs at MGC really were incredible. I had so much fun playing as much pinball as I could when I was able to sneak away from our booth. We had a great show and I was really impressed by how well the show went.

Best,
Jarett

[s1lence]

The pinballs at MGC really were incredible. I had so much fun playing as much pinball as I could when I was able to sneak away from our booth. We had a great show and I was really impressed by how well the show went.

Best,
Jarett

You had a great display too, Thanks to you I picked up a bunch of your homebrews.

[FABombjoy]

It was definitely worth the trip. There were a lot of great displays, and everyone was very friendly. My group & I shot a lot of video and did several interviews - I'll try and get a piece edited together within the next week or so.

Thanks again to Dan & the Goat Store, AtariAge, Packrat, and Messiah for taking time to talk with us, and a big thanks to everyone else that helped make this a great event!

[Matt-El]

Yeah, they swung by and took a couple of vids and pics of me booth, so I'll probably be in there.

No one wanted my Coleco Adam.. x_x

[s1lence]

Yeah, they swung by and took a couple of vids and pics of me booth, so I'll probably be in there.

No one wanted my Coleco Adam.. x_x

K , I was retarded. I knew that was you selling the Adam and coming to the party for a little while. People really need to get better at introducing each other.