5 – The Auctions!
For a lot of attendees, this is their number one reason to go. The Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo featured a lot of art this year.
They went with a Legend Of Zelda theme, and had pretty regular bidding on everything from Zelda/Archie Hybrid comics, to faux Link Live At Lon Lon Ranch albums.
Auctions don’t always just include art; they usually feature all kinds of collectibles. And there have been stories passed through the retro gaming community of incredible rare games obtained during silent auctions.
4 – The Celebrities
Guests could include YouTubers, game creators, journalists, voice actors, etc. but my favorite panelist this year, by far, was The Immortal John Hancock. He’s a YouTube sensation, who I’ve watched many times on the Metal Jesus Rocks YouTube channel, usually offering hidden gem pics for classic consoles, because he has a videogame collection of over 10,000 games, and nearly 50 almost complete console collections.
John has his own regularly active YouTube channel now, where he shows off his collection and offers tips for collectors new and old.
He was also selling a handmade 8 DVD set of hours of content, much of which he is still stagger releasing for free on his YouTube channel. What was interesting about John’s panel, is that it wasn’t just a Q&A, but he framed it as “tips and advice for collectors”, and really genuinely approached it as wanting to help folks out. It was great to hear him talk about everything from his charity work, to his involvement with the original Portland Retro Gaming Expo, to what his favorite consoles/games were (Herzog Zwei for Sega Genesis btw).
3 – The Weird Old Stuff
Kind of different than shopping for old games, there are often set-ups of old arcade machines, and bizarre gaming artefacts. This year there were a group of Atari enthusiasts, who had every version of every Atari console running for folks to check out.
Seen above is a space set-up by Vancouver’s Hackery, a not-for-profit computer repair group. It contained old computer consoles running classic, now unplayable games. That green screen is Oregon Trail on an old Macintosh computer, giving me flashbacks to Grade 2 computer class.