My CGE Experience

[Tempest]

Ok, I've finally gotten around to writing my report.

 

Friday

******

After waiting 3 hours for my room to be ready (and blowing $15 on the slot machines) I was ready to find all the people I chat with on the message boards. Only problem is I had no idea what any of them looked like. After changing into my DP shirt I went to where the sellers were setting up. I walked right into the expo and started talking to Joe Santulli and John Hardie before I realized that I wasn't supposed to be in there. I got my badge a day early and saw the guard get a stern lecture. After this little incident the guard never stopped giving me the evil eye. I went down to the lobby and was approched by a fellow gamers and suddenly found myself in a small group of classic gamers. After scouring the bars and casino for more people we headed up to the party being thrown by the SC3 guys. After awhile I headed down to where the DP guys were having a party for the celebrities (no I wasn't invited ), I chatted with a few people I hadn't seen since Philly and took advantage of the open bar (thanks Joe).

 

Feeling invigorated I headed back up to the party with Videogame Bible (did I forget to mention he was there?). While we were waiting for the elevator VB starts telling me how the Vectrex isn't a real system since it's all self contained and I was arguing just the opposite. Just at that moment of all people Jay Smith happens to walk by (his company invented the Vectrex) and overhears our conversation. VB looked a bit sheepish and I got to ask him a few questions about the Vectrex and he happened to mention that there was a prototype of the color vectrex in the museum. He was a really great guy. So when I got to the party I traded Joe Grand for a SCSIcide cart (#24). Then I passed on some questionable looking sushi (a wise move), and saw the new Arcadia Multi-cart made by Ward Shrake. The multi-cart was cool, but it couldn't help the poor quality of most of the Arcadia games. Oh well, one step at a time I suppose. After talking to a few more people I saw a Shooting Arcade proto (I was really jealous) and the real Atarisoft Colecovision prototypes (they're on long strips, not like the Atari prototypes at all). All of this was too much for me and I stumbled back to my room for some much needed sleep.

 

Saturday

********

First thing that I noticed was there was a line up to get into the convention. After finally getting through the doors I was amazed at how much stuff there was. The walls were lined with arcade machines, the booths were in the large and well done (not just tables like Philly), and there were some consoles set up for a Twin Galaxies sanctioned competition in the back. I actually got to meet Walter Day and yes, he was wearing the black and white referee's shirt.

 

After that I headed over to the B&C booth, and man was this thing loaded! They had a ton of stuff I needed, I knew I was going to drop a zero off of my bank account just at this booth. I picked up most of their $5 and $10 Lynx games to help almost finish my collection (many were rare titles), and proceeded to pick through the shelves full of Atari 8-bit stuff. I walked away with a ton of boxed hard to find computer utilites such as Assembler Editor, Macro Assembler, and Microsoft Basic II (Kudos to you if you actually know what I'm talking about). I also found a few games I needed and some misc. cool stuff (Atari 400 48K upgrade module, Jaguar Teamtap).

 

The coolest thing of all was when Bruce (he runs B&C) opened up a box of Jaguar Modems, that's right, Jaguar Modems! Apperently he got these when he cleaned out Atari's warehouse back in 96. They had some problems with a shorted wire, but he's going to fix them and send it to me. There were 10 or 12 in the box, but I only got one (anyone else pick one up?). I only know of a handful of people who actually own one so I'm really geeked. I saw a prototype case for the modems (a generic looking black box), but these were all loose boards. Now I need to find someone else who has a modem and wants to play Ultra Vortek (good luck!).

 

I went to go hear some of the Atari Programmers give a talk on working at Atari. I met Rob Fulop, Steve Woita, and Bob Polaro and learned some Atari history. They were all really great guys, and I even got Steve Woita to sign my Quadrun cart (on the back).

 

Next I went over to the Songbird booth. I saw them demo some unreleased Jaguar games such as Total Carnage, Brett Hull Hockey, and some fighting game. It's a shame these were never released because they rock! I also played some Tele-Games and Songbird releases and ended up buying a few (Worms, Zero 5, and Hyper Force). I also got to play a prototype of the new Protector SE game that's going to include the Jag Free CD code. It played alot like Defender, but with some new stuff thrown in. Not bad...

 

I then went to the confrence room to hear a speech on Dragon's Lair give by the creators. I got to hear some great history behind Dragon's Lair and saw some concept drawings for the new Dragon's Lair movie (it sounds cool). There was suppose to be a demo of Dragon's Lair 3D but they couldn't get the overhead to work so I left (did they ever get it working?)

 

Now I went over to visit Marc's booth and get my copy of Combat II (number 206 of 250), and I was loaned a very rare prototype of Space Shuttle for the 2600 for dumping purposes (more about that later). Then I went over to 2600.com's booth and waited in line for Secret Agent. I'm not so geeked about this one since I may be getting the real thing, oh well.

 

It was about now that John Hardie introduced me to John Seghers (RS Soccer, Gremlins, Xari Arena), who was interested in seeing my Xari prototype. We ended up talking for two hours and waiting in line together for Elevator Action. He told me all about Atari during the 5200 years (some really cool stories) and about the programming tricks he used in his games. He also told me about the time he saw Todd Frye testing out SQ: Airwolrd (this got my attention). Apperently the room structure was based off some Chinese thing called "I-Cheng". The game screen he saw was a first person flying perspective of your guy flying over a landscape, he thinks it was suppose to be Torr on the flying horse. After picking his brain for another hour I went over to the laser disc games.

 

The laser disc games were very cool, I saw some I had never seen before. Many of them paled in comparision to Dragon's Lair, but Super Don Quiote and Cliff Hanger were very cool. I really liked Cliff Hanger, I just wish I could beat the damn thing (I never did see the ending). I can see why they failed though, they were much more fun to watch than play. Now it was time for the auction. I bid on a few items but I lost out in the end (I really wanted the APF Imagination Machine). The absolute coolest item up for auction was a Cubicolor from Rob Fulop's personal collection, I just wish I could have afforded the $500 price tag. About this time the Expo closed for the day and I went up to my room and died. I've never been so exausted in all my life...

 

 

Sunday

******

There wasn't as big a line outside the doors Sunday morning, I think most of the people were sleeping in. When I got into the expo I started picking over the B&C booth again (they had lots of stuff just piled on shelves). Joe Santulli approached me and asked if I wanted to play CGE Jeopardy, since I didn't have anything better to do I said sure. I proceeded to blow everyone away (sorry Dan and Lee) thus proving I'm full of useless gaming trivia. I ended up winning a Ms. Space Fury cart which I had forgotten to pick up the day before (how's that for luck?). I then spent the rest of the day browsing booths and hunting down programmers for their autographs. I also went to go hear the Activision guys (Alan Miller, David Crane, and Garry Kitchen). They had some very interesting insight on Atari during the early years and how they set up Activision.

 

Towards the end of the expo I met up with John Seghers again and ended up getting my ass beat by him at Tempest. This is a memory I'll always cherish.

 

After that there was the raffle for all kinds of free stuff (which I didn't win) but the arcade machine (I think it was Battlezone) was won by a guy I happen to work with (he's in my building somewhere). I'll have to bug him about that.

 

Now I met up with Al and we went up to my room and dumped my 2600 prototypes with Al's cool moded 7800. I still haven't gone through them yet to see which are different, I'll have to do that tonight.

 

After the expo I went up to the SC3 guy's room again and saw how pathetic the Aquarius really is (it makes the Odyssey look good). Then we went out and explored Freemont street so I could say I didn't spend all my time in the hotel. At the end of Freemont street we saw the Stratosphere hotel in the distance (it's hard to miss). Somehow I got talked into walking to it on the strip (a mere three and a half miles away). After exploring the strip (another mile and a half) I took a bus back to the hotel a very sore individual.

 

Thus ended my CGE 2001 experience. I'm sure I left something out, but you get the idea. All and all it was very fun and well worth going. I'm definetly going next year, I hope to see everyone there. Thanks for reading this incredibly long post (I may have set a new record).

 

Tempest

 

[ 08-14-2001: Message edited by: Tempest ]

[Tempest]

Aww geez, I forgot all about that. You should have come down to my room and reminded me. Sorry about that, but I will post the roms on my site after I look them over. That's almost as good as seeing the real thing.

 

Tempest

[Raccoon Lad]

You lucky *******, if I knew Don Bluth -Master animator, (and my personal hero) was going to be there, I would have ditched work.