CGE 2010
Entry posted by SpiceWare
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CGE is something I'd heard of in the past, but I'd never considered going (mostly due to finances). It then didn't occur in 2008 or 2009 and I'd forgotten about it.
At the start of the year I'd downloaded an iPhone App, 2600 Magic, Volume One of David Crane's Technical Wizardry Series. It's an overview of programming for the Atari 2600 with lots of interesting info and interactive segments. I noticed a few minor issues and sent off an email to AppStar Games and was surprised to hear back from David Crane himself! He invited me to beta test the 2nd volume, Dragster Magic and most of my input on that made it to the final version. In one of the emails he said "If you go to the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas this summer, look me up." I debated going, but didn't think I would as I've been hard at work paying down debt that had built up due to college, furnishing a house and getting hit with a 20% pay cut during the bad economy in the early part of this decade. On the good news I'm on schedule to have everything but the house paid off by the end of next year!
I changed my mind to attend after seeing that Medieval Mayhem was going to be used in the Retro Rumble. One of the key things I've done that's helped tremendously in getting my debt level to decrease was to switch from using Visa/Master Card to American Express due to having to pay it off at the end of every month. As a side benefit, I now earn points for things I'm going to buy anyway like groceries, DirecTV, the toll road tag, etc. I had enough points to pay for the airfare, so a big chunk of the expense of going was covered.
After getting my vacation confirmed I booked the flight, got my reservation with the Tropicana, picked up a larger memory card for my camera so I could video the MM tournaments, and picked up the Animated Star Trek & ripped it for my PSP so I'd have in-flight entertainment.
I opted to fly out Wednesday night after work so I'd have some time to see the sites before the show. After boarding, we ended up sitting on the tarmac for an hour as the baggage handlers noticed a loose panel. Because of this, Continental unlocked the in-flight DirecTV screens for everybody for the duration of the trip. I ended up watching the Clash of the Titans remake. As luck would have it, the movie cut out(though other channels still worked) during the climactic battle with the Kraken at the end. Guess I should have stuck with Star Trek 
I got to the Tropicana around 10 (midnight Houston time) and it was still 101 F out :!: Houston may be known for our hot summers, but it pales in comparison to Vegas.
On Thursday I walked maybe halfway down the strip and back and took a bunch of photos.
On Friday I helped set up the AtariAge booth. I'd met Al before (back in 2003 at AGE and the past couple of Houston Arcade Expos), but hadn't met anybody else from Atari Age so it was great to meet a few other members when things weren't as busy as they were during the show. I was shocked to see that Chickybaby had made it. We hung out a bit and I seemed to have made a good impression on Bean, who had this awesome monkey-on-your-back backpack. I also hit it off with a member of Digital Press (hey Kevin!) who'd arrived early from California and was helping to set up the arcade machines.
Saturday I was up at 8 so I'd have plenty of time to get breakfast before the show opened 9. I picked up my badge then stood in line with the rest. Once the doors opened the AtariAge booth was quickly filled. Over the day I picked up a few things, a couple books from Good Deal Games(Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames and From Neptune to Earth a SciFi novel based on the arcade game Gyruss), a Starplex Controller, and of course Halo 2600.
I checked the posted schedule and went to see the Atari programmer panel. I ran into David Crane outside of the room so I stopped to say hi and we spoke for a couple minutes before going into the room for the panel. I also sat in on the video conference with Ralph Baer, The Father of Video Games. He was very interesting to listen to and I can only hope I'll have it as together as he does when I'm 88!
Per Al, Ed Fries spent some time reseting Medieval Mayhem trying to figure out how I did the dragon. He eventually tracked me down and we spoke at length on it. When I returned home, as I was traveling without my MacBook Pro, I sent him links to this blog so he could access my source code as well as the link to my sprite converter.
I also got to meet Joe Grand again, the first time being AGE where I'd initially met Al. I got to check out the Def Con badge he designed, and he was kind enough to autograph the 2 copies of Prototype This I'd brought along.
Later in the day Keithen Hayenga was showing Steve Woita the Tempest display at the AtariAge booth. I overheard him talking about the quality of the manuals that Al has produced, but one wasn't on display. I had sorted out the manuals during the setup, so I went back and grabbed a copy and also picked up a copy of Medieval Mayhem and was able to show it to them as well. They both seemed quite impressed and said they'd have show it to somebody else(don't recall) from back-in-the-day.
The day wrapped up with the big charity auction. I didn't originally plan to attend, but Kevin (who'd attended a number of CGEs before) said it was a must-go, so I did. I didn't bid on anything, but it was quite interesting and entertaining. The finally thing to go was a Corona for over $300!
Afterwords I headed over to the AtariAge after-party and had an awesome dinner prepared by ShyOne. I had a great time hanging out with everybody. I didn't take any photos of this, but ntavio posted some great ones.
The expo didn't reopen until 10 on Sunday, so I slept in until 9. Even though I never had an Intellivision I decided to sit in on their panel as they'd written some great games for the Atari. It was as interesting as the other panels, but boy were these guys full of themselves and it detracted from the experience. Sunday afternoon was the Medieval Mayhem tournament, and while Al may have been joking, I did end up running the Medieval Mayhem tournament. Being that it was part of the Retro Rumble between AtariAge and Digital Press, I set it up so we had 4 initial games where 2 games were all AtariAge users and 2 games were all Digital Press users. This resulted in the final game being comprised of the best 2 AtariAge and best 2 Digital Press players(otherwise we could have had 3 gang up on 1, or even worse the final game being comprised entirely of 1 group). Before the match I was approached by a few people who wanted to interview me because of my homebrews and I said sure, come look me up around 2 when the MM tournament was over as I had to leave at 3 to catch my flight. Each match took longer than I expected, we even had a game go to 4-4-4-4 :!: The final match ended up starting at around 2:45 so we set the "wins" to 3 for that game. I ended up high tailing it out after it was over, so didn't get to do the interviews. Sadly, in my rush, I left the match bracket info behind and don't remember who all competed. The winner got dinner for 2 at the Italian restaurant in the Tropicana and 2 of the runners up got tickets to comedy shows.
The flight back to Houston was delayed, but this time it was because the plane didn't arrive in Vegas on time. As such, they didn't unlock the DirecTV so I watched a few episodes of the Animated Star Trek. They were quite good - it'd been so long since I'd seen them (in the mid 70s) that I'd forgotten most of the stories, so it was almost like I was watching brand new episodes.
I also checked out the welcome packet for CGE on the flight back. Included was a welcome letter that started out OK, explaining the skipped years of 2008 and 2009, but at the end it sounded like they didn't think they'd be able to do another CGE due to the lack of sponsors and such. I was disappointed as I'd had a blast and had decided this would be an annual venture for me. When I tested the CGE link at the top of this blog entry, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they'd had their "best attendance since 2003" and plan to work out the details for CGE 2011 in the near future.
I've decided on a few changes for the next time. I'll fly out Thursday after work instead of Wednesday, and fly back on Tuesday earlier in the day instead of having to leave early on Sunday. I also have some ideas for the next Medieval Mayhem tournament, were we'd start with 64 slots instead of 16 and for the first couple of levels have the games play to 3 wins with only the final match going to 5. I also like what they did for AC 2010 in France and would like to arrange a trophy like that as well.
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