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.





The best thing about going to any con or expo is getting to meet new people and see old friends.  On Friday evening, I left work and drove down to my buddy Kris' store in Norwalk.  Changed my clothes really quick and we were on the road.  We had about a 3 hour drive to the Philadelphia area and we had lots of time to talk about life, love, and video games.  It wasn't until the drive home that we moved on to discussions regarding what we thought would happen on the Game of Thrones finale and the fantasy novels that we like.  I only mention the drive home now because I know I will forget to mention it at the end of this article. 

We got to the Expo Center not long after the Expo closed on Friday evening.  In the same parking lot as the Expo is a large establishment called Arnold's.  Arnold's is pretty cool.  They have indoor Go-Karts, a pretty big arcade, bowling, karaoke, a bar, etc.  Kris brought his son along, so we played a few games in the arcade (All new-school stuff, no classics here).  I then bought Kris a beer, which his son promptly knocked over while playing some sort of Beyblades-style game, and then we made our way to the hotel which was super close to the expo center.  We saw a ton of familiar faces in one of the many unofficial Friday Night TMG afterparties, but we were beat so we called it a night.

After a nice little breakfast, we made our way to the Expo Center.  Kris and I had talked a lot about making our booth more exciting than it was last year.  Last year, we printed out flyers and sat at the table mentioning our cool expo, the RetroWorld Expo, to anyone who would stop and say hello.  That wasn't much fun for us or for the people walking by, so this time, we brought candy and video games.


We gave away free candy to anyone who took out their phone and liked us on Facebook and we brought a Super NES for a few retro gaming challenges.  Lance is a great Mortal Kombat II player, Kris is awesome at Dr. Mario, and I'm no slouch at NHL 94.  People were free to play any game they wanted at our booth or they could challenge one of us.  If they could beat us, they would win a free 2-day badge to RetroWorld Expo 2016.  If they lost, they could choose a consolation game from a box filled with the likes of Madden 12 and Call of Duty 2.  We had lots of fun playing games all day, providing con goers with a much needed mid-day sugar rush, and giving about a half dozen skilled gamers free passes to the best retro gaming xxpo in the WORLD!

Since I was only at Too Many Games for one day on business, I didn't take the time to peruse the vendors for myself, but Too Many Games is aptly names.  There are a LOT of video game vendors at this show.  I ran into a bunch of vendors from last years RWX, and the ones who don't have scheduling conflicts plan to be back again this year.  One of the returning vendors spotted at TMG was our very good friend of the Collectorcast: Chris from OTC Video Games.  Chris and OTC also had my favorite guerrilla-style sign of the expo (see it below).  Another person I saw, was my good buddy Dave who sells at the Elephant's Trunk Flea Market, which is 15 minutes from my house, on most Sundays.  Dave gave Kris a good deal on some bulk commons for his stores.  I wish I could have stayed and had some beers with these cool dudes, but we had to get home at a reasonable time on Saturday night so no beers this time.  (LOTS of beers in October, though).


I also wasn't able to get over to the arcade of the pinball area but lucky for us, Kris' son was able to play some games.  They had a nice little pinball area including Terminator 2 and Black Knight 2000 (Both of these titles will also be at RWX

For spending an entire day at this show, I feel like I should have more to say about it, but again, I was working the booth, not enjoying the show.  I was very glad to be able to see RFGen's NeoMagicWarrior again, since he is a TMG staple.  Too bad I missed russlyman who was only there on Friday night.  No one else from the RFGen clan made their presence known to me, but we have assassins everywhere lurking in the shadows so I'm sure they were there.  All in all, I thought the show was great.  We talked to a lot of cool people, and lots of folks said they were interested in coming up to our show.  We even met a guy who said our first show last year was the first expo he had ever been to and he started seeking out other expos after that.  That was really cool to hear.  Hopefully, we can keep the good vibes going this October.  See you then.

Permalink | Comments [10] | Digg This Article | Tweet