Where has the time gone? November already. Time to show your fellow RFGenners just how cool you think they are by filling their stockings with amazing video games! The deadline to sign up AND send your letter to Santa is Black Friday (11/25) so please don't hesitate!
Another video game filled year, another RFGeneration Secret Santa! Come and join the merriest retroiest fanboyiest Secret Santa on the internet! Rules and signup information can be found below.
The deadline to sign up is Friday November 19th so ACT NOW!
Here we are! It's already November and that means Secret Santa time is upon us again! Come and join the merriest retroiest fanboyiest Secret Santa on the internet! Rules and signup information can be found below.
The deadline to sign up is Saturday November 14th so ACT NOW!
I am one of the founding partners of RetroWorld Expo. I sold my interest in the event back to two very good friends last year and they brought in another very good friend to move forward with the show. This was the first year that I attended RWX as an attendee and not as an owner/showrunner.
My five year old son Callahan attended RWX last year. My wife brought him and he had a fantastic time playing in the console freeplay and arcade areas. I was able to break away from my expo duties to hang with the fam for a little while.
Good times had by all but because of my duties, I was not able to spend a ton of time just playing games last year. Now that I am free to attend without worrying about work, though...
2019:
The first day of RWX was the same day as my wife's baby shower (boy #3 on the way this month!) so I had to drop my younger son off with Grandpa before hitting the road. We got packed up and left around 10:30AM. The casual pace that we enjoyed the morning compared to the frantic pace of years past reminded me of when I used to work retail. Black Friday was a beast of a weekend to work but then years later it was a nice casual shopping trip. I felt very fortunate to be able to enjoy the time leading up to RWX instead of stressing about it.
Once we were in the car, I asked for music requests and Callahan picked Pneuma, his favorite song from the new Tool album, and then he wanted to hear Moth into Flame and the rest of the car ride was a mix of everything in between. Once we got there and grabbed out wristbands, the first thing we saw was a familiar car that belonged to a familiar face. Also, yes, Callahan wanted to wear the same shirt as last year.
We snapped a pic a little later in the day of the owner of that car, he is masked in the pic below but it's our great buddy Russ Lyman! Big fan of Russ' cosplay as the main bad guy from A Nightmare on Halloween Street: Freddy VoorMeyers
But there is only so much shopping and walking around that a young boy can put up with when there is a large freeplay arcade close by. The first game we played was one that I played a TON as a kid.
Nearby in the same aisle was a Super Nintendo with Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Callahan told me he played this game on the SNES classic with Grandpa in Florida.
Since he has such a good time on the small screen, I asked him if he wanted to play the BIG version. Once he figured out how to bite me, that's all he wanted to do. "I'm biting your head, I'm biting your head!"
We also sat down to play Sunset Riders but this didn't last too long. It was way too tough for my little guy, he handed me the controller and watched me play the first level.
One of the big surprises of the day was Pac Man Vs. They had a setup with a GBA and a link cable so one player controls pac man on the GBA and the other player controls the ghosts on the tv screen. This was a blast.
There were a ton of arcade games that I would like to have played but I let Callahan pick whatever he wanted and we spent most of our time with Super Mario Bros, Dr Mario (PC-10), and Pac Man.
And what video game expo would be complete without sitting down for an extended play session of a game that we can play at home whenever we want. This kid is really getting into Minecraft. Its actually great setting up a weekly "Minecraft Time" at home where we will sit down in creative mode and play together as long as he has completed his chore/behavior chart. We're looking forward to Minecraft Earth later this month.
I ran into our very own Izret and got a chance to chat with him and his son. No pictures because I wasn't thinking but it was great to see him and catch up a bit. I'm kind of bummed that I didn't run into Pam or Will. I was planning to go to Pam's panel but it was on Sunday and couldn't make it both days. Catch you at the next one, guys!
And that about wraps it up. After we gamed as much as we could, we walked across the street to Bear BBQ. I've eaten at this place a few times during RWX before and I feel like I go there more out of tradition than for love of their food. As always, the food was just OK. Also the Counterweight Headway IPA had just kicked so I had to settle for a session IPA
In closing I will leave you with a funny little video of Callahan singing a song from Super Mario World opera style when he realized how great the reverb was in the empty area of the parking garage we were in.
My life has become more crazy than i would have imagined that it could. Over the past year I have taken on far too many projects and I have been working on offloading them one at a time. by the middle of next month I will be in full cool down mode for the rest of the year and I thought it would be a good time to go through the list of games that I am looking forward to in order to do just that, cool down.
Step 12-Turn around to find your 3 year old son sitting on the couch behind you at 11:30 PM because why would he just go to bed like a normal person? Then ask him to give you a thumbs up if everything is ok and then realize that your 3 year old son is not entirely sure how to give a "thumbs up".
I only played 3 video games this year...well, not really, but I only played three games for a substantial amount of time. People who know me or who have heard me speak in the last two years can guess what one of them is. The other two are both on the Nintendo Switch (with a third on deck). Let's talk about why I keep going back to the same series and why I am finally at a point where I can spread my gaming wings a little bit.
I've been playing an insane amount of Destiny recently. I'm starting to settle into a routine of playing on certain days to get certain activities done, but I fire up Destiny almost every day for at least a little while. I recently purchased the Special Edition of Skyrim, probably my favorite game of ever and I am pretty excited for the release of Final Fantasy XV this week. These three long (unending?) games got me thinking about why some gamers play games that go on forever.
Another year, another RetroWorld Expo. As a show organizer, it is an insanely fun and exhausting experience. It's amazing to see how the expo has grown in just a few short years. Let's take a look at RetroWorld Expo 2016.
There have been many games that didn't click with me when I first tried them. For whatever reason, the game and I were on different wavelengths, speaking different languages, or in different moods. Oftentimes, I will revisit those games because I believe people change or evolve over even a short span of time, even a year or two. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised to find that the game clicks and sometimes I affirm the result of my precious experience with the game. However, I have never been absolutely convinced that a game wasn't for me to the point that I completely wrote it off, to then go back and give it just one more shot...and have everything completely fall into place to the point where I play that game every single day and love every minute of it...until Destiny.
RetroWorld Expo 2016 is only 6 weeks away! We thought now would be a good time to write up a little Strategy Guide to help you get the most out of your RWX Experience.
Video game collectors, as a kind of purist rule, don't like emulators...that is unless Nintendo wants to sell us one, then we're cool with it. The recently announced NES Classic Edition will be here before you know it and I suspect that most Nintendo fans out there will do their best to pick one up. Let's take a look at some of the details.
Too Many Games is a nice little Retro Video Game Expo held near Philadelphia every June. I just returned home yesterday from my 4th consecutive TMG and thought I would share my thoughts.
I bought a video game at Best Buy a few weeks ago and something interesting happened on the walk back to my car that got me thinking about a type of gamer that will never go away: the fanboy. We all know the term, some embrace it, some refute it, but there is no denying they are here to stay. Let me tell you what happened.
PAX East is the best all around gaming show in the NorthEast. It is a weekend that remains circled on my calendar all year long. From the drive home from PAX East until the next PAX East, I am excited for PAX East. Here is a little of what I did last weekend.
Like many of the people who visit this site, I am a lifelong gamer who loves and appreciates classic gaming as well as the current generation. When I started collecting games, I realized that some of the stories of my collecting might be interesting, educational, or just plain funny. The stories that I share here are meant to entertain as well as inform and they are all 100% true, which is why I include pictures.
