Here's a unique one. Not a reason to go to CGE, but a very vivid "moment".

It's CGE 1999 and I'm standing at my booth, peddling DP Guide 5. I had the opportunity to meet several game designers who I was proud to share the book's contents with ("Hey, Mr. Crane! We think Dragster is one of your finest and most underappreciated games!"). Along walks one Mr. Joe DeCuir, who at the time I really didn't know by name.

He introduces himself as one of the "early Atari designers" and begins to flip through the book; I ask which "early Atari titles" he worked on and he states "Combat" and "Video Olympics". Cool, eh?

Not really.

He opens the book first to "Combat", where an early error in our information showed that Larry Kaplan designed the game. Here is where I discovered first-hand that this was not the case.

"Kaplan had NOTHING to do with the game", DeCuir says.

"No? Well... heh. Our book is ONLY as good as the information we've gathered, sir! Thank you, and we shall correct it".

He names the group that ACTUALLY designed the game (which includes himself) and as I'm scribbling the names down in my perpetual "list of things to fix in the guide", he thumbs over to the Video Olympics entry in the book. He notices at about the same time I do... there's one of them there "unsmiley faces" next to it.

Allow me to quote the "editor's comment" that Joe DeCuir, designer of Video Olympics READ aloud in front of me, the editor:

It was called “Pong” at one time, and these “olympics” include hundreds of variations on Pong, basically. I guess they couldn’t do a pong version of track & field events, and who can forgive them for leaving out the equestrian or bicycling? The heartless bastards! Hey, it’s just a few squares moving around, and a slightly smaller square moving between them, so don’t get on my case about these numbers. [Gr: 1, So: 1, Ga: 4, Ov: 2].

Well there really wasn't anything I could say that would undig the hole I had dug for myself here, so I simply said "that's MY opinion - not the world at large". Then I think I crawled under the table, which suddenly felt like part of a tiny prison just for me, right there at CGE 1999.

But you know what? Here's how cool DeCuir was.

"So... would you like me to sign something for you?"

My eyes darted around for something to sign and naturally I didn't have a SINGLE fucking COMBAT cartridge around... but there was the show program. It was Len Herman's, who was sharing the booth with me. Len, if you're reading this and I never told you, this is how Joe DeCuir's signature ended up in your show program.

I have LOTS of CGE stories, from a vendor, organizer, and even attendee point of view. But I'll let someone else add something here next!