On April 28 2012 the Cowlitz Gamers for Kids Video Game Show was held in Kelso Washington. I wanted to report back on the show to you as I believe I was the only RFGener there. A real reporter would have gotten this story out much sooner but as I have a predilection for not writing, this story is old news.

There is a bunch to read but there are pictures at the end!





This show marked the third annual for Cowlitz Gamers, it is held as a charity fund raiser for the Childrens Justice and Advocacy Center. Their mission is "to provide children who have experienced sexual or physical abuse a coordinated community approach to investigation, prosecution and treatment that promotes their safety, healing, and well-being." I believe they operate in Cowlitz county or at least somewhere in the Longview/Vancouver area.

The Portland Retro Gaming Expo (PRGE), held each year in late summer, led me to discover this show. Many of the people involved in putting on PRGE are involved one way or another with the Cowlitz Gamers show. While PRGE is fairly large, a few thousand people over two days last year, the Cowlitz show is on a smaller scale. I would guess somewhere between 250-350 people attended.

Lots of retro gaming fun to be had. This show, I think mostly run by John Hancock, was well put together and had plenty of entertaining things to do. The most obvious thing was the sellers. About a 15 or so booths were set up selling old games. Pretty good selection of stuff too. I saw a hand held Tiger R Zone (not the head strap one), a Game Cube Development kit ($600), a good selection of Neo Geo MVS carts, lots of PONG consoles, Vectrex stuff, and hundreds of games for consoles like the NES, SNES, Genisis, Dreamcast, PS1-3, Xbox & 360, boxed and loose. The vendors were a mix of businesses with stores in the Oregon and Washington area to people with large collections getting a chance to sell some of it. The Commodore Computer Club (http://www.commodorecomputerclub.com/) was there and not only did they have games to sell but had a C64 and a Vic-20 set up to play. There was a guy with and nice big selection of imports on display. Nearly all of the sellers had taken the time to nicely display and price what they were selling.

The show was held in a large unused store which was part of a mall. The center of the room was set up with tables, chairs, TV's and consoles of all sorts. Each console had several games next to it. My wife and I spent some time going through a bunch of Atari 800 games but you could have played SNES, Genesis, a Game Boy store display or about 20 other machines.

At the entrance to the show were about 10-12 arcade machines set to free play. I should have made a better note of what they all were but I played Robotron, Defender, and Asteroids Deluxe.

There was a DJ playing music the whole time, nearly the whole time anyways, there was live music too. Mechlo was the one of two bands we heard (we were at lunch when the other act preformed). Mechlo was one guy who played bit tune stuff using a Game Boy and other machines.

Since this show was for charity they had a silent auction of donated items. SNES Starfox Super Weekend Challenge Cart was the big item to bid on. I put down $100 to get the bidding started but was quickly outbid. I think it went for around $450-500. There were things that went for quite a bit less too, someone won a Skyrim(?) store display, I think that was just a couple of bucks. There was a PSOne with FFVII GH that went for something really cheap, $9 sticks in my head. Other people had the right idea and simply bid things up because they believed in giving the money to charity. Someone won a racing wheel and peddles in the box, nice, but I don't think it would normally go for the $1000 they put down. Good for them though. I won something too, we'll get to that in the pictures below.

The people there were great. All the vendors were fun to talk to and I had good conversations with many of them. Everyone seemed in a good mood, they all seemed to enjoy being there, not just trying to earn a buck. The attendees were mostly older women and cheerleaders.....no wait....thats not right.....oh yeah, most of the people there were guys between 12 and 45. I think my wife sort of stood out as most of the very few other girls there seemed to either be moms with boys or married to one of the vendors.

One of the people I met was the guy who does the Metal Jesus Rocks (MJR) videos on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/MetalJesusRocks). This was kinda weird for me, ever since the US changed over to digital broadcasting I have been without regular television. We've never upgraded our CRT TV, we don't have cable or satellite and no converter box. Somehow we survive on a large DVD collection, the internet and of course video games. Now I know there are shows to watch through the internet and I do, sometimes, but the only one I watch regularly somehow ended up being Metal Jesus Rocks. Coincidentally the guy who makes the videos lives in Washington and has even done a few shows with the guy who was running the Cowlitz show. So the MJR guy shows up, he's sort of easy to spot in a crowd, I'm about 6'2" and he's maybe 3-4 inches taller then me. Anyways, he is a very nice guy, we talked for a bit and he showed me some of the things he found at the show. I told him he had the only show I watched regularly, I expected him to be surprised, he was.

Pictures turned out difficult for me. I intended to be able to show pictures of what it was like there but that didn't turn out so well. I only ended up with two pictures at the show, the lighting was not at all nice to my camera and everything was dark, grainy and blurry. So most of the pics are just going to be another "look-at-what-I-got" thing. Hopefully they are interesting things.


This is an example of a good picture I was able to get, bleh. (There were more people at the show I just waited for a time when I wasn't going to take a picture of anyone)
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7216/6980962560_bd929a8150_c.jpg[/img]


This is the silent auction display, there were about 20 items
[img width=600 height=800]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7243/7127049361_1f78b54a3a_c.jpg[/img]

Onto things I bought:

Most of this stuff was $1 I think, the PSP videos were $3, I don't remember what X-wing cost $2?
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/6980963024_0276543bcf_c.jpg[/img]


Bible Adventures was $5, I think the rest was $1 each
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8020/6980963088_8e9ff06be9_c.jpg[/img]


This is one of the very few PONG's I've wanted. It's just so weird looking. the second player controller is detachable from the rest and has 3ish foot long cord. It almost seems like the 2nd player has a advantage because they don't have this big huge controller to deal with. I had to clean this up a bit but it is in really good condition, there is a place for batteries but I don't think it's ever been used because it has one of those silicon packets in it. I think it is missing the decorative tops to the knobs but good otherwise. $5
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7227/6980962330_146f97cbc5_c.jpg[/img]


Typing of the Dead! The Wife and I have wanted this for a while. If you don't know what it is you should look it up, we haven't actually played it yet but are excited to. The game came with the Dreamcast keyboard for $25, because it can be played with two players we looked around for a second keyboard. We found this 3rd party one sealed in the box for $10.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8143/7127048897_6a35a5694f_c.jpg[/img]


This is what I won at the silent auction. It was one lot, with complete boxed copies of DW3 and Vice Project Doom. DW3 looks kinda beat up but it is in a way I appreciate. The map is taped up and the book is well worn, someone played this game a lot, makes me feel good to have a copy I know someone enjoyed. The silent auction part was pretty fun, I went back and forth with a couple of people on the price. I ended up getting it for what would be a good deal I guess but in-line with what they normally sell for on ebay. It was for charity though so the auction part was just a bonus.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7118/6980963556_01cc9be356_c.jpg[/img]


One of my goals is to have a near complete US Odyssey^2 collection by the end of the year. I want to have 3 or fewer left to go. I bought 4 at this show, I'm now up to 34 so there are 15 left to go. These 4 games were $1-2 each. The CIB Vectrex game was $30. I found out this game sold for $29.95 new in 1982, what do you think about that?
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7176/6980963500_26cd861bae_c.jpg[/img]


My only disappointment about the show was that I couldn't find one game I've been looking for to get on the cheap. I want to get a 2009 or later Tiger Woods golf game. None of the vendors had sports games for anything newer then Dreamcast. Do they know their audience or what ?

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