TooManyGames is a con that my wife and I look forward to every year. Even though my wife works in a retro video game store, there's still something great about going to a whole convention hall filled with games, systems, and nerd related trinkets and art. We've been going to TooManyGames for about 4 years now and it's been awesome to see it grow into the con it is today.



TooManyGames is in the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks Pennsylvania, basically right in my backyard. This year it was held on June 22-24th, although my wife and I only went for Friday and Saturday (which honestly is more than enough time to thoroughly browse TooManyGames).

This year started poorer than most years for a handful of reasons that I'll outline here. The con opens on Friday until 12pm, but the con floor doesn't open until 2pm (The video game room opens immediately). This is how it's always been, so my wife and I take our time getting to the convention center, hitting books stores and game stores along the way there. This year we had to wait in the regular line with everyone else (Ugh...am i right? Don't they know I write for THE RFGeneration.com?), so we got there a little early. We got in line, which seemed about the same length as last year's, a little after 12pm when they were going to start taking tickets. Because we arrived at this time, we were significantly near the back of the line, but in years past it seemed to move fast enough for friends in the line, so we weren't too bothered. However, the line didn't even start to move until 1:30pm. We're not sure what was up, but we stood around for a long time. Thankfully this year it wasn't too hot, in years past it's been in the 90's while people waited for tickets. This kinda stunk, but once the line started moving it moved at a good pace and we got our tickets before the main hall even opened at 2pm.

From here, we got a good glance at the video game room. TooManyGames has one of the more well-stocked video game rooms of any of the conventions we go to, but this year it seemed like there were less arcade machines in lieu of TV's with consoles hooked up and space for competitions, which made sense; they had some professional Overwatch players and that was probably a big draw, though we couldn't have cared less. At this point, a couple of the machines we tried to play were either not on at all, out of order, or had some sort of problem and couldn't be played. It was a shame, but it seemed like a problem they fixed throughout the day and into Saturday.


So the beginning of our con experience was starting on a low note, which isn't the best. But then we got in another line that started to form and finally we got onto the convention floor!


It was a beautiful stone floor that TMG put down this nice red carpet for us to stand on, it's really classy is what I'm sayin- oh wait you want to see that part of the floor? Yeah i guess that makes sense.

As I mentioned, the con has been growing for years now and the floor this year was as full as ever! There were tons of games to flip through, an Indie section, video game art and craft stuff, and more. It's just a great con to go to, as are most retro game cons I have to imagine.
There were a lot more art/craft type booths this time around, not a bad thing at all, just not what the wife and I look for. (Also probably why the wife didn't take many pictures of the art/craft tables, sorry). As always, the Gamechops people and DJ Cutman are DJing the whole con, so while walking around you got to hear some awesome music.

Now when it comes to collecting, my wife and I aren't looking for the normal stuff most people coming to this con are looking for. We don't want an NES collection, or Final Fantasies on Playstation consoles, of which this con seems to have plenty of. No, we only choose the most difficult and obscure of the items to be found: PS Vita games and Nintendo DS games. So when we complain about selection, keep this in mind.


My wife has gained a formidable DS collection over the years, so she was looking for those few titles here and there, while I apparently choose the Moby Dick of video game consoles to hunt for as only a few tables even had a single PSV game. While finding the stuff was hard, it did seem that the vendors at TMG this year were slightly more open to haggling then in years past. We also found a LOT of boxes of random stuff that vendors were looking to load off for cheap. Overall, this lead to us getting a lot for our budget. (Also a lot of weird stuff. A vendor had a $5 bin were I grabbed a COD HD Go Pro type camera... It was awesome!)

Overall, my wife had better luck then I did with finding some of the DS games she was missing. I only found a few Vita titles and some of them I got from a Gamestop trip before going to TMG. I did find some stuff to pick up and, while overall disappointed in the PSV game selection, I'm not too surprised by it's scarcity.

The next big thing we did which is ALWAYS a joy is go through the Indie Creator section. This is probably my wife and I's favorite part of the con, as we've met so many people in this area, own many games by them, and are still waiting for others (*cough*Robo Puzzle Smash *coughcough*). This year was no let down as there was a HUGE variety of Indie developers (Although not as many board game developers as in years past, though we go to PAX Unplugged and get our fill of that). I'm not that big a fan of retro styled RPG's, so we did skip a few tables. But I can guarantee we totally hit all the interesting weird Indie tables. (Now looking at the pictures, all the very 80's neon tables...huh)


Maybe I'll do a write-up on just the Indie developers we saw that day, but out of all of them Virtual Wave and C:/raft really caught my eye. Virtual Wave was a Doom-esq shooter with vibrant colors. It had a really cool vibe to it and felt like a cross between Heavy Bullets and Left 4 Dead.

C:/raft on the other hand was not vibrant. It was a black and white rougelike that generates levels based on files on your hard drive! More awesome was the fact that you could sign up and get free steam codes for the game at the event! The developer was a cool dude who seemed to be overflowing with game ideas (He actually had 2 games at the con, one "finished" and one not).

Overall, the Indie section is always a blast and it's great to see it growing each year with some really awesome games.

As always, the con has tons of musical guests, tournaments, a wrestling show (insert shameless "Let's go, Referee" chant here...full disclosure: that is me.), Voice Actors (Charles Martinet was there this year...that was cool I guess) and so much more, buuuut we kinda didn't get around to any of it. We did see a few panels hosted by some good friends, but overall we just did a lot of shopping in the main hall, which there was plenty to do and took up the majority of our 2-day con time. It's a shame because in years past we've seen some great concerts at TMG, but alas, the great white whale was calling, and my wife and I were really digging to find those hidden gems.


So there were some ups and downs to our TMG experience, but overall we'll still be going again next year and we hope to have just as much, if not more fun!

See ya next year!
~Neo

[img width=700 height=933]https://i.imgur.com/gt12SNT.jpg[/img]

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