TooManyGames 6 - May 4th, 2008 - Reading, PA

[ECGXChuck]

Greetings and salutations my fellow gamers and game collectors!

 

I'm extremely pleased to announce TooManyGames' first show in 2008! Sunday, May 4th TooManyGames will once again take place at the lovely Inn at Reading in Reading, Pennsylvania! Check out our brand new website at www.toomanygames.com

 

2008 will be the 5th anniversary of TooManyGames/ECGXpo and we're doing all sorts of new things to celebrate! Our first major announcement is that we have teamed up with Twin Galaxies to host the very first officially sanctioned Guitar Hero world record competition! The event, entitled Twin Galaxies Guitar Hero National Championship, will be the first time gamers from all over the nation will gather to prove who is the best Guitar Hero player in the world! High scores will be taken for all 3 major Guitar Hero releases! The original Guitar Hero will be played on the Playstation 2, Guitar Hero 2 will be played on the Xbox 360, and Guitar Hero 3 will be played on Nintendo's Wii!

 

Other events we're planning include two Halo 3 tournaments, a 2v2 team slayer and an 8 player free-for-all, a Super Smash Bros Brawl tournament, a video game themed scavenger hunt, Eggsplode for NES, Warlords for Atari 2600, Astrosmash for Intellivision, Tetris for NES, two Magic: The Gathering tournaments, more we haven't even thought of yet, and JSJ Tournament Games will be back with a plethora of their tournaments as well!

 

Of course no TMG would be complete without our amazing marketplace! Dozen of tables packed full of games for everyone to add to their collections! We've already had a dozen tables reserved before the website even went up! They're going to go extremely quick, so please reserve your tables soon! TMG is extremely affordable for any budget gamer or vendor! Tables start at $27 and go up to $33 and we also offer booths for vendors or groups who want a lot of space and high visibility!

 

We're expanding our free play area for this show! Our goal is to have 30 TVs and consoles set up for people to play throughout the show! Everyone who brings one table and one console with some games to play will get a free admission to the show! (please contact us prior to the show about which console(s) you will bring)

 

OverClocked Remix will once again be joining us at TooManyGames to provide the much needed musical component of any video game convention! OverClocked Remix is a group dedicated to mixing everyone's favorite video game soundtracks! They have thousands of songs available to download free on their website, www.ocremix.org

 

We also want to thank our first two sponsors for the May '08 TooManyGames! Mad-Gear (www.mad-gear.com 16-bit on the DP and Neo Geo forums) is donating a Neo Geo and games to be given away at TooManyGames! Carlson has done every one of our convention and has become an absolute staple at every game and anime con on the east coast! We thank Carlson and his company, Mad-Gear for their years of support!

 

We've also signed up Geek2Geek (www.gk2gk.com) as a sponsor! Geek2Geek is an online dating service which caters specifically to geeks by pinpointing what geeks are looking for in friends and romantic partners. Big thanks for Geek2Geek's sponsorship and aid in promoting the event!

 

Our 5th year of TooManyGames is shaping up to be the absolute best one yet! We have a LOT of stuff we're working on behind the scenes so we'll keep posting more announcements as we have more news for everyone!

[Duke 4ever]

Looks a lot cooler than VGXPO was this year.

[ECGXChuck]

I wanted to put our press release up here. If anyone knows any news outlets, blogs, or whatnot that would be interested in the show please either link them to our press release (http://www.toomanygames.com/pressrelease.pdf) or e-mail it to them. We need to get as much publicity as we can to help make this the biggest year ever!

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

 

Contact:

 

Chuck Whitby Paul Truitt

Attn: Business Affairs Attn: General Event Info

217 W Vine St PO Box 666

Fleetwood, PA 19522 Lahaska, PA 18931

610.618.0653 215.307.7900

chuck@toomanygames.com paul@toomanygames.com

www.toomanygames.com www.toomanygames.com

 

TooManyGames – The east coast gaming event celebrates its 5th anniversary; unites gamers of all generations from Atari to Xbox.

 

Reading, Pa –- October 24, 2008 –- Over the past 4 years thousands of gamers, casual and hardcore, classic and modern have gathered at TooManyGames to celebrate their favorite pastime, video games. There are very few hobbies that have the appeal to bring people young and old together to directly interact with one another, video games are the timeless medium that everyone can enjoy.

 

“Gaming is something that everyone enjoys” says convention founder Chuck Whitby, “we have the rare opportunity to bring together people from all ages to do something they love doing, play video games. TooManyGames is all about the community aspect of gaming. Gamers can come together, play some games, shop around, win some awesome prizes and just have a great time without breaking the bank.”

 

TooManyGames features tons of great entertainment including:

 

- Dozens of game systems and arcade games set up for free play all day long

- Twin Galaxies Guitar Hero World Record Competition

- The largest gaming marketplace of any convention

- Dozens of classic and modern game tournaments

- Contests including the first TooManyGames Scavenger Hunt

- Music DJ'ed by world famous OverClocked Remix

- Cosplay Competition

- TooManyGames Video Game Museum

- tons more!

 

When asked why do an independent gaming convention like this, convention organizer Paul Truitt replied “You can go to bigger corporate gaming shows like E for All and VGXpo and just not come home satisfied; you either get too much corporate end and not enough retail end or just the opposite. Our smaller indie show lets us make our own decisions, lets us directly contact small mom and pop vendors and developers and invite them to come out and set up an an affordable priced show and also lets the big name retailers and developers get some direct marketing face to face to their customers without a huge expense either.”

 

TooManyGames is currently offering both table space and booth space for any size company to attend the show, make money, promote products, and just meet their customers. Space is also affordable enough for anyone to come out with a couple TVs and game systems and just hang out and play games with other gamers.

 

Interested exhibitors and sponsors should contact Chuck Whitby at chuck@toomanygames.com Anyone with general convention questions should contact Paul Truitt at paul@toomanygames.com

 

TooManyGames will make its return to the Inn at Reading in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania on Sunday, May 4th 2008. Show hours are 11am to 8pm, 10am to 8pm for people who preregister for tickets online. Media is welcome during setup hours of 7am-10am.

 

For more information on TooManyGames you can visit the official website at:

www.toomanygames.com

# # #

pressrelease.pdf

Edited November 6, 2007 by ECGXChuck

[Albert]

If you write up a nice one-paragraph blurb about the show I'll post it on the Events page, which I need to spend some time updating in the next few days. Also, if you have a logo I can use, that would be great.

 

..Al

[ECGXChuck]

TooManyGames and video game world record keepers Twin Galaxies have teamed up to host the first Guitar Hero National Championships, to he held at the May 4th TooManyGames convention. This is the first Guitar Hero event where world record scores will be taken for Twin Galaxies' website and future publications of the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records.

 

The press release is available online in plain text, pdf, and OpenOffice odt format.

 

http://www.toomanygames.com/press/ghpressrelease.txt

http://www.toomanygames.com/press/ghpressrelease.pdf

http://www.toomanygames.com/press/ghpressrelease.odt

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

 

Contact:

 

Chuck Whitby Paul Truitt

Attn: Business Affairs Attn: General Event Info

217 W Vine St PO Box 666

Fleetwood, PA 19522 Lahaska, PA 18931

610.618.0653 215.307.7900

chuck@toomanygames.com paul@toomanygames.com

www.toomanygames.com www.toomanygames.com

 

TooManyGames & Twin Galaxies Join Forces To Host First Guitar Hero National Championships

 

Reading, Pa –- November 8th, 2008 –- Twin Galaxies, the world's oldest video game world record keepers and TooManyGames, the east coast's longest running gaming convention have partnered up to present the first Guitar Hero National Championships at the May 4th, 2008 TooManyGames convention.

 

Since its introduction over two years ago Guitar Hero has stormed its way into millions of living rooms across the nation. Its simplistic gameplay combined with the classic and modern rock music the game showcases have become a winning combination that is inviting to gamers of all ages.

 

Twin Galaxies, the only video game world record keepers to work with the Guinness Book recognizes Guitar Hero's importance in competitive high score gaming and has teamed up with TooManyGames to showcase the world's best Guitar Hero players.

 

President of Twin Galaxies, Walter Day had this to say, "The staff of Twin Galaxies eagerly looks forward to the 1st Guitar Hero National Championships and invites every "cyber-guitarist” in North America to participate. The results will be go into a future edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records."

 

For 5 years TooManyGames has been a convention where gamers of all generations have felt welcome to come and celebrate their passion of playing and collecting video games. TooManyGames is unlike any other gaming convention that it doesn't focus on just one aspect of games, classic or modern, development or retail, playing or collecting, it encompasses all facets of the gaming world into one festival of gaming.

 

“Video gaming has once again become something that everyone can participate in, it's no longer just something the kids do when they come home from school.” TooManyGames founder Chuck Whitby explains, “In the '80s you could go into arcades and see mom and dad, businessmen, teenagers, kids, grandparents, everyone was there enjoying themselves playing games. With today's games gaming is all about inclusion again, everyone of every age is a gamer. Guitar Hero has had a big hand in expanding the gaming market to new and lapsed gamers.”

 

Prizes will be awarded to players who show exemplary gameplay skill. At this time Twin Galaxies only tracks scores on the medium and hard difficulty settings. All scores played on these difficulties will be tracked and recorded for inclusion on the Twin Galaxies website and future publications of the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records. Should Twin Galaxies being accepting scores on the easy and expert difficulties those scores will also be tracked and recorded for inclusion in the world record book.

 

TooManyGames will once again return to The Inn at Reading in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania on Sunday, May 4th, 2008. Admission is only $5 for the show and $3.00 to participate in the Guitar Hero National Championships.

 

Applications for table and booth sales are still being accepted on the TooManyGames website. Companies interested in sponsoring the Guitar Hero National Championships should contact Chuck Whitby at the above information.

 

Visit the official TooManyGames website at www.toomanygames.com for more information on the convention and the Guitar Hero National Championships. For more information on Twin Galaxies and video game world records visit Twin Galaxies' website at www.twingalaxies.com

 

###

[ECGXChuck]

I just uploaded a video on YouTube showing the bare convention floor we'll be using for the upcoming show.

 

We've changed the location of the May 4th show. Previously we had planned to have the show at The Inn at Reading again, some things happened and we've moved the show to its new home, the Greater Reading Expo Center, only 5 minutes away from its old home!

 

Check out the new digs at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2_8lk5zQ2g The GREC has over 200,000 square feet of convention space, plenty of space to expand the show in years to come!

 

Still have tables and booths available for anyone interested in participating! Shoot me a PM here or an e-mail at chuck.whitby@toomanygames.com I'll have our new floorplan on the website by Monday, so be sure to visit www.toomanygames.com to check it out next week!

[ECGXChuck]

Hey everyone! Wanted to do a quick update.

 

Last call for everyone interested in getting tables at the show, we have less than 10 tables remaining! The floorplan is constantly updated and anyone can check it out at http://www.toomanygames.com/images/newfloorplan.jpg

 

Aimee Dingman, who many may remember from PhillyClassic 5, has signed up for one of our booths. She will once again be displaying her awesome retro gaming art! Most (if not all) of the art will be available to purchase at the show! Some of her art can be seen here on AA in their photo gallery from PhillyClassic 5 - http://www.atariage.com/features/shows/pc5/Page3.html. Really awesome stuff!

 

A number of our vendors are taking care of modern game tournaments for Halo, Super Smash Bros, Neo Geo games and the like, so we're focusing our energy on classic and neo-classic tournaments. We've come up with a really awesome idea we're calling the "Iron Egg Man Competition." Players will be given 3 minutes per game to play Eggomania for Atari 2600, Eggsplode for NES, and EggMania: Eggstreme Maddess for Gamecube for a combined score. Should be an awesome competition! One paddle game, one Power Pad game, and one normal controller game, it will make for the ultimate test of controller skill. 8*)

 

We haven't had anyone take us up on our free homebrewer tables! We hoped to debut some cool new classic games at the show, but we can't show what we don't have available! We can still make room for a couple tables for new game debuts, please contact me if you have a new game you want to show off!

 

TooManyGames also has a Facebook event listing and a new MySpace page! Join our event listing on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6412431788 and send us a MySpace friend request at http://www.myspace.com/toomanygamesshow

 

I hope to see a bunch of familiar faces from AtariAge in May and I hope to meet a whole lot of new AA'ers! I haven't seen a ton of you since PhillyClassic stopped and I would love to say hi again!

[atarian63]

Hey everyone! Wanted to do a quick update.

 

Last call for everyone interested in getting tables at the show, we have less than 10 tables remaining! The floorplan is constantly updated and anyone can check it out at http://www.toomanygames.com/images/newfloorplan.jpg

 

Aimee Dingman, who many may remember from PhillyClassic 5, has signed up for one of our booths. She will once again be displaying her awesome retro gaming art! Most (if not all) of the art will be available to purchase at the show! Some of her art can be seen here on AA in their photo gallery from PhillyClassic 5 - http://www.atariage.com/features/shows/pc5/Page3.html. Really awesome stuff!

 

A number of our vendors are taking care of modern game tournaments for Halo, Super Smash Bros, Neo Geo games and the like, so we're focusing our energy on classic and neo-classic tournaments. We've come up with a really awesome idea we're calling the "Iron Egg Man Competition." Players will be given 3 minutes per game to play Eggomania for Atari 2600, Eggsplode for NES, and EggMania: Eggstreme Maddess for Gamecube for a combined score. Should be an awesome competition! One paddle game, one Power Pad game, and one normal controller game, it will make for the ultimate test of controller skill. 8*)

 

We haven't had anyone take us up on our free homebrewer tables! We hoped to debut some cool new classic games at the show, but we can't show what we don't have available! We can still make room for a couple tables for new game debuts, please contact me if you have a new game you want to show off!

 

TooManyGames also has a Facebook event listing and a new MySpace page! Join our event listing on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6412431788 and send us a MySpace friend request at http://www.myspace.com/toomanygamesshow

 

I hope to see a bunch of familiar faces from AtariAge in May and I hope to meet a whole lot of new AA'ers! I haven't seen a ton of you since PhillyClassic stopped and I would love to say hi again!

What happened to phillyclassic? I attended what I think was the last one a few years ago. Lots of cool retro!

[ECGXChuck]

What happened to phillyclassic? I attended what I think was the last one a few years ago. Lots of cool retro!

 

PhillyClassic evolved into VGXpo, then control of the name reverted back to David Newman and Mark Wolfe (if I have my story right).

 

I miss PhillyClassic too, lots of good memories. Many people consider TooManyGames (formerly ECGXpo) to be the second coming of PhillyClassic, and we like that people think that. If we can create as much of a sense of community as PhillyClassic did then our job is done. We hope everyone will come check out TooManyGames, give us some ideas on how to improve and expand, and keep coming out as we grow. Ask our vendors and past attendees, we do our best to take everyone's suggestions and use them to improve the show every year. We don't force on you what we think would be a good show, we do TooManyGames the way we do because we're gamers and collectors too.

 

2008 will be a great expansion year for the show, hopefully leading to an amazing 2009 event! I urge everyone who can attend to please join us on May 4th, it'll be a great time!

[ECGXChuck]

If anyone lives in or around Berks Country you should stop by the Leesport Farmers Market on the 6th and 20th. TooManyGames is renting a stand at the market to do some local promotion for the convention. We're gonna have a few TVs setup, games will be played, games will be sold, video game music will be played, maybe even an impromptu tournament will happen! It should be an awesome little time for people who come out to show their support! 8*)

[ECGXChuck]

I just got word from Mike Thomasson of Good Deal Games that they plan to do an official release of two new 3DO games at TooManyGames! Onside Soccer and Powerslide will be getting their first official release at the May 4th show! These games will come with professionally printed cases and manual using the original artwork developed for the games in the late '90s!

 

Also if he can get everything together in time he'll be debuting the latest Arcade Ambiance CD! These CDs are really cool, each features authentic music and sound effects from arcade games mixed into an awesome sounding compilation, it sounds just like you're walking into a classic arcade!

[Vectorman0]

Is anyone from AA going? I would love to meet some fellow Atari enthusiasts.

[+Allan]

Is anyone from AA going? I would love to meet some fellow Atari enthusiasts.

I am.

 

Allan

[rolenta]

I will have a table there

[Vectorman0]

I am.

 

Allan

 

If you see me, please introduce yourself.

 

I will have a table there

 

I'll make sure to stop by and nag you about Phoenix 4.

[+Psionic]

I will have a table there

I'll be there as well.

[ECGXChuck]

I hope everyone has a great time at the show. Doing TooManyGames is a labor of love for us, hopefully as the show keeps gaining popularity and momentum we can have more and more events going on to keep more people coming to have fun.

 

If anyone has any ideas on how we can keep improving the show or wants to help us out with more entertainment at the show please get in contact with us. Paul, Chris, and I are collectors but we're hardly as hardcore as some other community members. 8*) An awesome history of gaming museum is something we've wanted to do since the first show (and Adam, buyatari definitely stepped up with some of his awesome gear at the first show he worked on with me) so if Curt, Adam, Al, anyone else is interested in helping us build a museum for next year's event, please drop me a line! 8*)

 

Like I said, I hope everyone has a great time at the show!

[eric_ruck]

I'm in, bringing two other friends in the car as well.

[+Allan]

I hope everyone has a great time at the show. Doing TooManyGames is a labor of love for us, hopefully as the show keeps gaining popularity and momentum we can have more and more events going on to keep more people coming to have fun.

 

If anyone has any ideas on how we can keep improving the show or wants to help us out with more entertainment at the show please get in contact with us. Paul, Chris, and I are collectors but we're hardly as hardcore as some other community members. 8*) An awesome history of gaming museum is something we've wanted to do since the first show (and Adam, buyatari definitely stepped up with some of his awesome gear at the first show he worked on with me) so if Curt, Adam, Al, anyone else is interested in helping us build a museum for next year's event, please drop me a line! 8*)

 

Like I said, I hope everyone has a great time at the show!

 

A big screen (projector) for some gaming would be great. I always wanted to see an Atari 8-bit Midi-Maze competition. Any kind of multi-player classic gaming would be fun. Warlords (any version) would be great on a big screen.

 

Setting up machines with small TVs is fine but it's great to have a whole crowd either watching or playing a game.

 

Have you guys ever done t-shirts like Dave did for Philly Classic? That would be cool although I'm sure it would be expensive to put all that money up front. Maybe next year you could take orders with a pre-paid set-up from your website and have people pick them up at the show. It would be less of a risk.

 

Allan

[+Allan]

I am.

 

Allan

 

 

I will.

 

Allan

[Chickybaby]

We'll have a table as well since we are liquidating.

 

Can't miss us on the floor plan - Chickybaby and Z28in82. Bean will be there as well of course!

I have to say that Chuck has been extra patient and nice trying to get us a good spot where we can put her playpen and baby stuff. So, I have to send a big thank you and that it means so much to me. He really didn't have to go 'the extra mile', but he did.

 

I hope as many of you can come to the show as possible and support our community. It will be great to meet all of you.

 

ps - I just confirmed everything today, so it's definite.

Edited April 28, 2008 by Chickybaby

[StanJr]

Aimee is putting the finishing touches on about 16 paintings even as we speak. We'll be there, if a bit tired, with great enthusiasm.

 

She has an incredible, and giant, Castlevania painting that will totally blow you away.

 

Can't wait!

[Chickybaby]

My recap of today:

Well, the show is sadly over now and wow it was awesome!

 

We ended up a lot more in debt *wince* which wasn't exactly the plan but we had to rent a hotel room for 2 days and he had to make about 6 trips back and forth to home to let Beast out since no hotels let animals stay and didn't have many big ticket items for sale. Next time we will be better prepared and now know what to expect since this was our first show as vendors ever.

 

We ended up staying at Comfort Inn and the room is awesome with plenty of space for Bean to crawl and play, room for all the tons of baby stuff and even room for us to relax as well. They also had a great breakfast buffet deal with all kinds of goodies.

I wish we could stay another night it's so nice here!

 

The show was crowded... ok seriously packed the entire time and we were between the coolest group of people I have met at an event like this in a very long time.

Next to us were the guys at overclocked remix and on the other side charity gamers. The ocremix.org guys take video game tracks and completely twist and turn them around to what I have to admit as some of the coolest stuff I have heard. Plus it's free to listen on line. At first I was worried with Bean and what I was afraid could be loud bad music (philly classic band contest anyone? ) but the both of us loved it and she was dancing along almost the whole time. Not a boring moment at all and they even took requests from Tetris and Castlevania remixes to F-Zero and so many I couldn't keep track, lol.

 

Charity gamers were taking donations for various tournaments and not a dime for profit. I really want to check these guys out more. Setting up everything and hosting stuff while not making any profit is really a labor of love. Today all the proceeds went to the MS Foundation. Definitely something to be proud of and a great organization to be a part of.

 

Across from us was another great guy who turned his whole basement into an arcade *mega drool* and as a bonus surprise has his own band 'Scott Leftwich and the Atarians'. He even gave us a CD to check out. How cool is that?

 

A couple booths down was the Pocono Arcade Company who makes all kinds of novelties like bumper stickers, pins, shirts etc. Get this - he gave Bean a Ms. PacMan onsie! I was won over immediately if not sooner.

She was the real winner today because she also got a new pico game as a very sweet gift!

 

Of course the talented Aimee (and Stan) were there and it was good to see them again as well as other AA members. I should apologise for not being my "cheerful self" and not feeling well. It was a rough night for all of us. I hope I can ketchup (catch up ) since there just wasn't time to do everything I wanted.

 

There had to be a tournament going on at all times almost as well as giving away tons of swag at every turn. From a visitors standpoint, I don't see how anyone could be bored and the prizes were the most kick ass I have ever seen like tshirts, energy drinks, and crazy but true - a Neo Geo! Plus you could win the always popular $dinero$ with a couple tournaments. I didn't buy anything but I was able to play a couple games of Galaga on the Arcade cab once things were wrapping up. There were I think 4 or 5 other cabs including Q*Berts Qubes. I would love to see an expanded arcade for the next one.

 

I have to say it really felt like a community event and there was more classic gaming stuff then you can imagine everywhere. They couldn't have captured the Philly Classic spirit any better and while we came out owing, we'll definitely be on-board for their fall show. I would love to see this turn into a 2 day event but keep the same vibe. I think the number of venders was perfect and would hate to see this gem get ruined by expanding to much.

 

I can't believe we missed thsi show in the past! Chuck really outdid himself today and I have to thank him (especially for minding the booth for a minute so I could take care of very necessary buisness, lol) and everyone there for not only putting up with me but being so generous to Bean. It really means more to me then I can put into words. Hopefully they will be posting pics because I didn't get a chance to really take any since I was behind the booth.

I could keep praising aspects of the show for quite a long time!

 

Thank you so much everyone for everything!

*Mega Huggz*

Chicky, Bean, and Z28

Edited May 5, 2008 by Chickybaby

[rolenta]

That baby was the cutest thing at the show. When I saw her in the playpen I asked PingvinBlueJeans why he didn't buy her with the money he made for selling his Stronghold cart.

[+Allan]

Here's some pics from the show.

 

Allan