Good to see not everyone is already at site.
See everyone there!
Good to see not everyone is already at site.
See everyone there!
Last edited by neist; 10-24-2009 at 06:11 AM.
Well, I'm eating lunch here in Tulsa. Spent the morning here at the show, wild-eyed from energy drinks on the drive. It's a fun show so far, but I popped out during TV Death Squad's "performance". Maybe I should have stuck around for a bit, just to see if anyone protested during his concert. Oh well. Within a half hour I was almost out of money, so it's a standard show so far.
Yeah, I think I spent my share of spending money probably in the same amount of time. Some people's booths had some really decent stuff. My expectations were actually much lower as to what would be there.
And I found a cheap Namco PS1 arcade stick. Though are nearly impossible to find, let alone for a decent price.
Made it home at 9:00 pm tonight and have already unloaded and put a lot of the stuff away. Just one last time I have to say THANKS to all the OVGE crew for a great show. I had a fantastic time and you guys made it all the better! I will definitely be in for the next show and hopefully all of the shows after that. The venue was great, the other dealers were great and the buyers were enthusiastic and willing to spend a few dollars, which helped make up for their lack of overwhelming numbers.
One other note on the "musical" selections. Being as I was right in front of the setup, I took the time to ask the patrons what they thought of it and it was pretty unanimous that they thought the music was okay for the first 10 minutes or so and then it was just too much and waaaay too loud! I have to attest that when they began to play, our end of the venue cleared out as all the buyers moved to the other end of the room hurting the sales for sure. Either way, I had a great time and also wanted to leave a few other comments:
Yes you did! And I got a few of them for my collection. Great to meet and talk to you as well - and I just realized as I was unpacking: I forgot to get a copy of your new book....
I believe your bin was the first of many to take my $$$ before I even sold $1 worth of stuff! A well spent $14 and now I have another face to the name from DP.
Saturday morning was busy for you - you weren't kidding! A great pleasure meeting you and thanks for having such a great selection at great prices!
I saw that you made your own badge, but each time you walked by my table you I was either busy or you were talking to someone so I never got to formally meet you. I really wanted to pick your brain on where you can find all those great deals around here.
I think we killed some time chatting about the Vectrex, the OEGE, and you kicking my but at Space War. It was still cool to say hey and meet another new gaming bud.
I got back home without having to ride on your tail to let you get all the speeding tickets! Thanks for the great Saturn deals and the hang time on Friday.
Great pleasure to meet you, your wife, and your son today! I'm glad there was someone nearby with a good sense of humor to help pass some of the "downtime" during the "music??" See ya'll soon.
Sorry for the long post, but I think it was probably better than 10 separate posts.
______________________________________
I got home around 10:15pm. The year before last, I woke up early and left around 3am, and the late drive home was frightening. By the time I was in the Dallas city limits, I was struggling just to keep my concentration on the road because I was so tired. Last night I had a bout of insomnia and only slept maybe 3 hours. I was scared that I'd have another bad drive and I might get into a wreck. Luckily, an overabundance of energy drinks and Mountain Dew kept me relatively alert, but jittery all day.
I blew quite a bit of money today. I kept going out to my car and dropping off my loot when it would overload my pockets, and it seemed at the time like I had a proverbial ton of stuff on my floorboard. Sadly, when I got home and brought it all in, it seemed like I had a single grocery bag full of stuff rather than the trolley I imagined I'd need to haul in everything.
This was a good time of year for a show in Tulsa. It was pretty dang cold in the morning, but nice and comfortable in the afternoon, and the trees all over town were turning fall colors. And the Spirit Bank Event Center is a great venue. Great room we were in, too. My only problem wasn't with the show itself, but because of all the nightmarish road work (and literally road removal in some places) going on all over town, I ended up getting to the Weber's Superior Root Beer restaurant at 5:04pm, four minutes after they closed. Damn, I wanted some of their root beer before I left! That's the second year I've had to leave Tulsa without any of their root beer.
Steve makes it sound like he was tweaked, but I really didn't pick up on that. Maybe I should've wolfed down some energy drinks too.
It was great fun hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones too - my apologies if I seemed to be a bit scarce, but my table was really busy (which, believe me, was a good thing). I appreciate everyone who dropped by and even bought so much as a $1 DVD or game or what have you. I had mispriced a few things here and there due to being completely worn out, but if the little price booklet said it, then I honored it rather than trying to change the rules on the spot under someone's feet. I screwed up and had a Criterion Collection DVD priced at a buck, and while I kinda slapped myself mentally for that one, it was worth it for the look on the face of the guy who bought it from me. I'll have a word with the management about these inefficient pricing practices ASAP!
The live music was... well... if he'd broken his set up into songs rather than doing epic-length ear-shattering stuff that would've left Kraftwerk agog at the sheer length of the music, that might've helped. It was a bit on the loud side. I had two TVs, each about 4 feet in front of me if even that far, playing the loop DVD of CGE and PDF DVD clips at a pretty good volume; I kept one peeking around to make sure my TVs were still on and running the loop because I couldn't hear them from that close.
But other than that, it was a great show - I hope I made up for having to miss last year's! Hope everyone enjoys their loot, and I hope to see everyone there again next year.
OVGE was awesome this year!
I had never been to the Spirit Bank Event Center before. I have to say that I really liked it. It was an excellent replacement for the Marriott. I got up bright and early so I could be there at 9:00. Last year I heard there were quite a few DP members there, so this year I whipped up a nametag the the night before and got to meet a few of you that I hadn't met last year, so that was cool!
I made off with a bunch of loot! I picked up a boxed C64C and a donor 1541 drive!!! I also picked up some C64 classics (Skate Rock and Gemstone Warrior). Then I snagged Castlevania 64: Legacy of Darkness. It was just a loose cart but the price was pretty good. Then I got a few PS1 and Dreamcast games. But the score of the show for me was FINALLY getting a copy of Street Fighter Collection for the Saturn. That game is getting tough to find!
Anyway, I would like to thank everyone who made this show a possibility. The people who organized it and the vendors who stocked it with goods! I'm already counting down for OVGE 2K10!!!
If a god is willing to prevent evil, but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he must be malevolent. If he is both willing and able, then why is there evil? If he is neither able or willing then why call him a god?
OVGE 2009 was a blast. Kudos to Jesse Hardesty for putting on a fun show. It was great catching up with Flack, dstone, Earl, PaceCar, SteveW, and the rest, and the attendees were enthusiastic and ready to spend money.
You can see photos and read more here:
http://brettweisswords.blogspot.com/
Last edited by 8bitgamer; 10-25-2009 at 09:29 AM.
(I hardly ever post here, so for you guys who aren't sure who I am, I'm the guy who was selling "retro gamer" t-shirts.)
We (me, my wife, and my 10 year old son) had a lot of fun at OVGE 2009. Although turnout was kind of low, we still managed to sell some stuff, and it was fun talking with the other vendors/exhibitors. Even though I picked up some good stuff (I even managed to find something for my Star Trek game collection), somehow I managed to leave with more money than I came with, so I'll count that a win.
I agree with everyone else about the music. Me and Holt were *right up against* the set, so it was probably harder for us. The music definitely drove people down to the other end of the room, and made holding conversations impossible. It wasn't the music itself that was a problem, it was the volume. If there will be music again next year, I hope that the sets can be broken up to be much, much shorter and that the volume will be much lower.
I set up the night before and there was an empty table next to me. Jesse said to fill it if I could, so the next morning I brought my Star Trek videogame collection, which took up a full table. I'm glad I did, because a lot of people got a kick out of seeing it and commented on how diverse the collection is. It made me want to get back to finding more stuff to add to it. And I just love telling people "not for sale" when they say "how much for this one?"
I set up an Amiga CD32 and had Chaos Engine running on it, which seemed to draw a lot of people in to sit and play for a while. One guy actually read the instructions screen and played for a solid 15 minutes.
I also had my Commodore 64 with 1541U expansion cart, which has a custom paint job, that brought some comments as well. For most of the show I had Archon running on it with two controllers hooked up, and to my satisfaction, several times two people were playing against each other. Later I switched to Ghosts 'N Goblins which was a hit.
My last exhibit was my custom pained SX-64. A few people commented that they never knew Commodore sold red ones. :-) The SX-64 always gets a lot of comments, with its tiny built-in color monitor...
I will definitely be coming back in 2010. Spirit Bank Event Center is a great venue. Hopefully we can work on getting more people next time, but honestly, I don't go for the public, I go to meet and hang out with other people who love classic gaming, and by that measure, OVGE 2009 was a smashing success.
Brandon
Commodore 64 Nostalgia Page.
I've posted some pics. Sorry, no captions.
OVGE 2009
Brandon
Commodore 64 Nostalgia Page.
That may have been me. I know I sat there for a while. I think I got into the third or forth level. I was honestly quited amazed to find Chaos Engine there. I'm a pretty big fan of the "top-down-shoot-things-that-move" sort of games. I have both SNES and Genesis ports, but never played the CD32 port. They remind me a lot of Dungeon Explorer, and I love me some Dungeon Explorer.
At any rate, getting to play that CD32 Chaos Engine was one of the highlights of my trip.
Hah, there's me. Far left, standing up with the unshaven face.
http://picasaweb.google.com/brandon....80271088093458
Last edited by neist; 10-25-2009 at 07:03 PM.
Who was the person who put out the Vectrex? I'd like to know where he got those great homebrews.
Here's my photos...
Pure Energy's table, with the awe inspiring neon Pac-Man lights and the reproduction Colecovision controllers, along with a sah-weet assortment of homebrews to play.
Our own Pantechnicon's Godzilla themed table and tournaments, picture 2.
Another shot of his table from the front.
Icbrkr's table with an Atari ST running Bubble Bobble and an Amiga 600 running Creatures. Cut off on the left side is a Commodore 116 running Mr. Do.
A shot of various board games based on arcade titles, and on the right is our own Phosphor Dot Fossils sitting down and Ubik standing next to him.
Brett Weiss's table, and I guess TV Death Squad was playing in the background (the picture can't capture the incredibly high volume of his music, although it was still not as loud as the music at the Houston Arcade show I went to a couple years ago).
98PaceCar's table. How often do you see Laseractive games? Or Gizmondo games? Or even boxed NGPC games?
Some arcade cabinets, with a cocktail cabinet style Joust obscured at the far right.
The other arcade cabinets, unfortunately Star Wars Arcade must have died on the trip. And the kid was blocking my view of the Frogger cabinet.
@PureEnergy: Who made those controller sets? Got better pics?
Russ Perry Jr, 2175 S Tonne Dr #114, Arlington Hts IL 60005
Got any obscure game stuff?
Brandon
Commodore 64 Nostalgia Page.
Here's a shot of the goodies I bought at the show. It occurs to me that I bought the most from Earl at the Phosphor Dot Fossils table, and most of it wasn't video games, it was a DVD set and CDs. As far as games go, I didn't get much to my own amazement. A lot of the reason was dwindling cash (always a good excuse) and the simple fact that I already have a whole lot of what people are selling. My collection is getting nice and full now, and I need less to fill in the blanks. I loved the fact that 98PaceCar brought Gizmondo games, essentially just for me since I'm the only other person he knows who bought one.
Brandon
Commodore 64 Nostalgia Page.
Were you the seller? I want to know where you managed to find a whole bunch of shrinkwrapped 1988 Atari compatible joysticks from England at? Talk about a cool find, locating an entire case of these things in this day and age!
I used to have one of these sticks back in the day, but it had a different label on it. Were all these designs from one company, or did Mindscape license the design from someone else?
Total Control! Good thing you didn't show that to me, I would've confiscated it immediately to... um... playtest it. To make sure it works. Yeah, that's it.
I was surprised at how much of my non-game stuff sold - the DVD box and the soundtrack boxes weren't exactly picked dry, but they were all quite a bit lighter when they were rolled out to the car. Just knowing that somewhere on the highways of Oklahoma and Texas, someone was blasting a potent cocktail of old-school MST3K music, Space Battleship Yamato soundtracks and Marble Madness background music makes me happy.
I've got a write-up and some photos posted here if anyone's interested.