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Too Many Games 2008
Nick - writer - posted on Tuesday, 05/13/08 2:29:09 EDT
Well, last weekend was Too Many Games in Pennsylvania and we at Press Start were there again. So here’s my take on this years show.
As I said in last year’s review. I found out about TMG through the folks on neo-geo.com. I had heard that some people wanted to bring back the style of show Philly Classic was before they stopped doing it, but it was pretty much just the dealer’s room and nothing else.
I’m fine with that. Since many stores stopped selling classic video games, it’s becoming harder and harder to find places to buy games outside of eBay. At least if you have the game in your hands you can see the condition of it and make sure it’s worth your money.
Unlike the year before, the drive went without a hitch. The whole PS Crew got over to CI’s house at 6:30 and we jumped in the car and headed out to PA. Thankfully there wasn’t a ton of roadwork and detours. Last year we got really out of the way with where they told us to go and we got only three hours of the convention.
Thankfully we got their around noon and I headed inside. Jon who I met last year had gotten another table to show off some of his rare and unique games for everybody to play. I took along my SNES and my Starfox Super Weekend cart and I planned on doing a mini tournament.
The first problem was that I just walked right in. It felt weird. NOBODY stopped me from doing it. I went right in and saw nobody had badges besides the guests and people with booths. I went and found Jon then I went and paid the five bucks (OH NO!) and got my raffle ticket.
I spoke to my friend Carlson who runs Mad-Gear and he of course had a ton of classic import gaming goodness to go around. If I had the money I would have picked up some more games from him, I still have the Sailor Moon S with nothing to play it on from last year.
We got our game set up at the table and found out, even when we asked people to play and set up a time NOBODY wanted to play the game! Some people looked at it and said, “Oh…Star Fox.” Then they walked away. We even threw in a free T-Shirt as a prize, we got a few people to play it but not as many as I would have thought. The person who got the highest score didn’t even come to pick his shirt up. One of the people who played asked me if it was done and where he ranked. I went to get the shirt to give to him, but by the time I came back, he was gone. So that makes me look like a jerk. Hopefully next time it’ll go better.
I also spoke to Brett and Darrin from PBC-Productions and they had their table set up with all of their Captain S goodies including their new soundtrack album. It was great talking to them. I felt sorry because we tried to offer them a ride but 2600’s tiers were shot and he didn’t have enough time to get them all replaced before the convention. So we ended up all shoving into CI’s car on the way down there.
The big draw of the event this time was the national Guitar Hero 3 championship. They had a TON of people all lined up trying their best to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. While it was cool having it there, it really blocked up a lot of people’s booths so we had people that were watching them play and didn’t bother trying the stuff we had.
The other thing I saw was the guys from VGXPO had a booth set up. I noticed the head guy, Ed right away because we met him at the first VGXPO they did a few years ago. He took with him, his 1990 Nintendo World Championship cart and had it set to free play and the top three winners got free admission to the next VGXPO.
So I figured, why the hell not? How many times do you get to play a 12,000 dollar video game? So I played it again and really enjoyed it. It makes me want to get the reproduction cart even more. It’s so much fun to try your best with other people to get a better and better score. I played and with my first try I got 590,000. Not too bad, and that put me into first place.
As the show went on, one of the VGXPO guys came up to me and said “Hey Nick! You gonna come back and defend your score?! Triforce just knocked you out!” How could I pass up? I read about Triforce and his group called Empire Arcadia set up in New York City and how they like to organize charity events and tournaments in the City, so I thought I wouldn’t have a chance beating his score.
I played my second time and got 649,000 and took back first place. Not even an hour later, I passed by the VGXPO booth and I had one of Triforce’s friends tell me he beat my score again! Ed was telling me I should give it another shot because he’s never seen scores like this so I of course went and played it again. I ended up breaking a million points and stayed number one for the course of the day.
It was great playing against Triforce and everybody else. I noticed he had a technique to finish Mario Brothers faster so he could get to Tetris faster, because almost all of your points comes down to Tetris. If you get a good run, and good time you can score millions. It’s still funny to think, even with my score and Triforce’s combined, we still couldn’t beat Thor who won the 1990 NWC with 2.8 million points! (I had just watched a video of a guy playing the reproduction cart and he got over THREE MILLION!)
I got some pretty good gaming deals too. I had started out looking for a 3DO so I could finally play Sailor Moon S that I got from Carlson, but I saw something else that caught my eye. I went over to a small table and saw a Sega Saturn with a 3D controller and a couple of games on it. I asked the guy and he said, “You can take the whole thing for 45 bucks” SOLD!!! I gave him my money and I walked away with a First Generation Sega Saturn, a US Controller, 3D Controller, NiGHTS into Dreams, Sonic 3D Blast and Virtua Fighter. I opened the tray and I found inside, Panzer Dragoon II! And on top of that, he gave me his old ST Cart so I can play imports too! I rounded off the rest of my stuff with Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighters Megamix. I saw an American copy of Guardian Heroes, but I didn’t have the 100 dollars the dealer wanted for it. I’m still going to track a copy down because I REALLY want to play the whole thing in English.
So that was about it from Too Many Games. I hear that Chuck wants to host another one in the winter time, so I’ll be sure to save up some of my extra Christmas money and I’ll have to pick up a lot more stuff when I head down there next time.
Big thanks to everybody there that keeps the place running well. It’s great for us classic gamers to have a place we can all gather to so we can get some good deals on games and play some classics too!