My PhillyClassic5 report:
I was helping a friend with his booth, so I got there at 1pm on Friday -- the public wasn't allowed in until Saturday -- & I was there until 'game over' on Sunday at 5pm.
Of course, PhillyClassic5 was bigger & more successful than ever before... At times, especially on Saturday, it was a SEA OF HUMANS! You couldn't see anything! I had to 'hide' in our booth because the traffic & crowds were just too much to handle! This is all good news, of course -- not only for future PhillyClassics -- but for retrogaming in general.
Something I was struck by immediately was the corporate presences at PC this year... GameStop was there, & EB Games... And Nokia was there too with their N-Gage -- & every time I walked by the Nokia booth there was NO ONE there! NEVER in 3 days did I see any interest in the N-Gage.
Videotopia provided 75 arcade machines, & QuarterArcade brought 25. The condition of the machines was WAY better this year, compared to last year... Last year a lot of the monitors were messed-up somehow -- the images were washed-out & ghosting, etc. But not this year! And there were SO MANY weirdo/rare things there! It was the ultimate retro fantasy... & I was lucky enough to be there Friday before & during the set-up -- so no one else was around yet, & I played everything i wanted to play... it was heavenly.
AtariAge's section was even more impressive than last year. Those AtariAge dudes really have a great thing going... Howard Scott Warshaw was at the AA booth, & I had bought his DVD from his site a few months ago, & I remembered to bring it to the show on Sunday for him to sign. He brought copies of his DVD to the show, but they all SOLD OUT the first day (Saturday)!
Also, from the AA booth, I bought the new Stelladaptor! If anyone here doesn't know what the Stelladaptor is (hard to imagine, but...) check it out now! It rulez! It's a must-have 4 sure!
The Packrat booth & products are also very impressive & professional. Like AtariAge, they have lots o' new homebrews & hacks for the 2600.
From another vendor, I picked up QIX NEO, a PS1 game released in 2003. It's pretty cool -- I won't go into much detail here, but if anyone's interested, let me know.
I had Cindy Morgan sign my copy of TRON 2.0 -- & at her booth was a prop from the original 1982 TRON movie -- it was the fake bezel they made for the fake arcade game "Space Paranoids" that Jeff Bridges played early in the film. So TRON geeks must have loved seeing that. (I heard the movie's director lent the prop to Cindy for the show!)
I loved seeing & playing the Ralph Bear 'Brown Box' prototype replica. And the Atari Museum stuff was great too.
There were even some 'celebrities' spotted on the floor -- attendees! I saw this guy from the Howard Stern show wondering around, & as reported earlier, apparently one of the Philadelphia 76ers was also there (& he bought, among other things, 4 Atari paintings by artist Aimee Dingman)! So, this is more evidence of the growing interest in old games in the mainstream.
To recap, PC5 was great -- the best one ever -- & I can't wait for PC6.
-PongHit