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Northwest Classic Gaming Expo — Parallax Forums

Northwest Classic Gaming Expo

mparkmpark Posts: 1,305
edited 2007-10-29 18:59 in Propeller 1
The Northwest Classic Gaming Enthusiasts will be having an expo Sept 29-30 in Portland OR.

I wonder if any Hydras will be present..? Could be a good opportunity for exposure.

www.nwcge.org/blog/events/nwcge2k7_portland/

Comments

  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2007-09-14 15:26
    I'm in PDX!

    Didn't know this was happening. Can't show HYDRA as a vendor, but I am seriously tempted to take it along for a day, while I look at all the other retro goodies.

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  • mparkmpark Posts: 1,305
    edited 2007-10-02 19:55
    A lot has happened since I first mentioned this show a couple of weeks ago. For one thing, Andre' decided to buy a booth at the show. For another, my wife and I got to be booth babes [noparse]:)[/noparse] It was all kind of last-minute, but Andre' made up some posters and had them shipped to me, along with a bunch of Hydra and Propeller pamphlets -- and an extra Hydra!·And his tilt-pad controller. Meanwhile I was scrounging up a couple of TVs and wiring up an SD card to load games and demos. I also started coding Battlez0wned. The second Hydra arrived just in time to get the network code working. My wife and I took Friday off, loaded up the car,·and headed down to Portland.

    Setup for the show nominally started at 5AM(!) on Saturday. We decided to get a little extra sleep and only started setting up at 6. This was our first experience doing anything like this so we didn't quite know what to expect, but fortunately Andre' had laid out exactly what to do and things went well.

    People would come by and we'd ask them if they'd ever thought about writing their own games. Then we'd show off a few games on the Hydra with the SD card. People were very impressed with Dodgy Kong; almost everyone commented on how good a port it was. They liked the tilt-pad too. And we got a few Battlez0wned death matches going as well.

    Now I should say something about the attendees. Demographically they were all over the map, but they were primarily game players and collectors. A lot of them looked like deer in the headlights when asked about writing their own games, as if the concept was completely foreign to them. They'd never given it any thought, perhaps because they didn't realize it was possible. A lot of folks, on seeing the Hydra, said they'd never seen anything like it.·It was a bit strange to me to meet these people who play games and·have·little interest in writing·them.

    Not to say that everyone was like that. There were some coders in the mix. Heck, there were people at the show who'd written new games for the Dreamcast and even the 2600! (On a personal note, one fellow actually remembered some Atari 8-bit stuff I'd done.)

    Anyway, I hope we were able to spark some interest. We had a fun two days in any case. A big thank-you to Andre' for the opportunity!

    I've attached a few photos.
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  • JT CookJT Cook Posts: 487
    edited 2007-10-03 15:07
    That is pretty cool, and I would have to agree that the DK port is pretty good. I have always wanted to go to something like that, but there are never any that pop up close to me. In one of the screenshots it looks like there is a nice little boot loader for the SD card, any info on that?
  • mparkmpark Posts: 1,305
    edited 2007-10-03 16:49
    The loader is just femtoBasic hacked beyond recognition. I really have to give props (heh)·to Mike Green. There is some very cool stuff in the fb·sources.
  • epmoyerepmoyer Posts: 314
    edited 2007-10-07 20:01
    Mpark,

    Wooohooo! That's just awesome! I REALLY enjoyed seeing the DK photo; thanks! It's a blast to see people playing something I got to help out with.

    Thanks for your hard work; I wish I'd been able to come up and see it in person.
  • AndreLAndreL Posts: 1,004
    edited 2007-10-29 18:59
    Hopefully, Mike will be our upper northwest HYDRA guy and can take it to shows like this in the future as well [noparse]:)[/noparse] Now, we need someone on the east coast since there are a few retro/classic gaming events each year there. It would be great to get a hydra booth at some of these as well. If you look at the pics of Mike's booth, this is a perfect example of how they are set up, its a lot of work no doubt, but with proper planning you can pull it off pretty easily. Just need to bring everything and have a setup/teardown plan.

    Andre'
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