Classic Gaming Expo 2002 - Special Thanks

There are a few people I'd really like to thank for helping us, either getting things put together for CGE, helping setup and tear down the booth, helping during the show when things were busy for us, helping setup for the party we had on Friday night, and so forth.

Joe Grand - First I'd like to thank Joe Grand, as he spent a considerable amount of time in our booth over the weekend, where he was especially helpful during the day on Saturday when we were swamped at times. Joe assisted me in obtaining food and drink for the party we had in our suite Friday night. I never would have been able to drag two heavy shopping carts full of beer, soda and water through the Walmart Super Center without his help.

Joe built all the Thrust Plus boards that were used in the Thrust Plus: DC Edition carts sold at the show. At times it didn't look like we'd get them done in time (for reasons out of Joe's control), but in the end everything came together. Joe also agreed to build some SCSIcides for me, which I'm glad to say sold out during the show. Joe was also giving away free Pixels Past koozies with any purchase at our booth. Joe also took the large majority of pictures accompanying our CGE2K2 report. And on Saturday Joe went downstairs to get us some subs when there was virtually no chance of us escaping from our booth.

Ronen Habot - Ronen was at our booth selling copies of his new Atari 5200 game Castle Blast. However, he also spent a fair amount of time helping us when it was busy, as well as with setup and tear down of the booth before and after the show began.

Matt Reichert (aka Tempest 2084) - Although Matt was busy securing prototypes and programmers' signatures, he frequently stopped by our booth asking if there was anything he could do to help. He also assisted with loading and unloading of the van, which was much appreciated. On Thursday evening, he and I spent some time assembling the first batch of Thrust Plus carts. And he fetched us some food from McDonalds early on Saturday.

Billy Eno - Billy helped me move a large number of heavy boxes destined from my second floor apartment down into my basement level garage. And during the party in our room on Friday, he worked diligently to assemble the last batch of Thrust Plus carts, as well as applying the labels to the entire run of them.

Chris Wilkson - Chris came through for us at the last second with an order of 16K Atari 2600 PCBs that we used to build Thrust Plus carts. And in our suite on Friday evening, he worked with Joe Grand to diagnose and fix a few asssembled that didn't pass the initial quality control check.

William Smith (aka Smitty) - Smitty spent time in our booth helping out when things got out of hand. He also roamed around the show floor and informed me of games or good deals I needed to take advantage of.

Jesse Hardesty (aka Crossbow) - Knowing that we were going to have at least two Atari 5200 systems at the show to demo various games we were selling, I realized early on that we'd need some working 5200 controllers. Given that I don't have experience in this area, I posted a message on our forums asking if anyone could help us. Jesse was one of the first to respond, so I sent him eight controllers in various states of disrepair, and he sent me back eight working controllers we could bring to CGE.

Marc Oberhäuser - Without Marc's help, we never would have had boxes for the version of Thrust Plus we were selling at the show. Working closely with Jah Fish, Marc had his printer do a run of boxes for us on very short notice, and had them shipped to the show with his boxes for RealSports Basketball and Snow White. Marc also helped glueing and building the boxes on Friday night in our suite.

Jah Fish - Jah was instrumental in getting everything together for the release of Thrust Plus: DC Edition that we were selling at CGE. Jah created the box, manual and cartridge artwork, worked with Marc Oberhauser in getting the boxes printed, had the labels printed, cut and mailed to me, and created the entire manual which I then printed. He also coordinated the purchase and shipping of the foot pedals that were packaged together with the game. Jah also sent us some posters and an Atari Service Center banner to hang from our booth.

Dennis Debro - Dennis taped nearly all of the sessions at the show using a digital camcorder. We will be taking the video and importing it into the computer and will either make the video available online or make copies of the tapes available (or both!)

Thanks go out to the various other people who helped us load and unload the cargo van. In addition to many of the above people, Don Rogers and Larry Anderson lent with this backbreaking labor (especially in the Las Vegas heat!) And of course, thanks to the CGE organizers (Sean Kelly, John Hardie, and Joe Santulli) for putting on such a great show.

My apologies if I've missed anyone here. The show was quite a blur and I've probably forgotten to mention a few names. If you're among them, please let me know and I'll update this page.