I got back from the MGC about an hour ago and man it was great stuff! I was expecting a lot from it and it was more than expected, how awesome is that?
The place was huge. It was like two main big rooms and each room had devided sections. The main room had a free play arcade and pinball section which was loaded with lots of good stuff (pinball was outstanding), the center had Team Freamont (who were outstanding at the show) along with a small shop/vender displaying arcade and pinball parts and what not, and the rest was various video game shops which were loaded with great games to sell. Lots and lots of games and a lot of good deals. The best part was that with just about every store, you could bargain with them and get your games for very reasonable prices. Real life shopping rulez online shopping any day.
The other room, the event hall, had a small Dreamcast convention right when you walked in (DreamCon), a small Mac and classic computer playable section, a display of a few consoles, and a small Jaguar convention (JagFest), which had a VERY NICE Lynx table might I add, all in the same room.
There were two other rooms located in the event room. One of them was a exhibit displaying lots of awesome consoles such as Turbo Duo (which I will discuss later), Neo Geo supergun, Vectrex, etc... and had tons of great games to display on the consoles. This room also contained a table which consisted of a cool guy putting together a PC inside a NES case all day which was auctioned off by Team Freamont later and a display of various classic computer systems with boxes and such and a very neat classic Atari display for stores and what not.
The other room inside the event hall was the speaker room, which featured various speakers throughout the days give a nice presentation, my favorite being Mark Goldberg (or was his name Marty?) discussing video game origins (did you know the first network game was actually played in 1961??), some video game misconeptions with Oddyssey and Atari, and Ralph Baer. Ralph Baer was originally going to come to the MGC, but couldn't make it due to his health conditions, poor man. Bless Ralph Baer.
Team Freamont had a excellent contest on Saturday which had two teams of two vs each other in video game trivia and video game competition, like Double Dare. As far as I know, a whole lot of people didn't sign up, so my group of four (me, two bros, and my cousin) all signed up and my oldest bro and cousin were entered in the contest! Unfortunately, they got beat pretty bad by the other team because they other team had some insane little kid that knew some crazy stuff about games, plus my bro and cus got a few really hard questions. Pretty much everyone assosciated with the contest got a free prize, so the contest players, audience helpers, and random audience members who didn't receive anything. Thanks a lot for the N64 controller keychain, jleud!
As far as Turbo-related stuff weren't, there wasn't a whole lot, but I'll discuss everything Turbo-related. First off, when you walked into the main hall, you immediately see Team Freamont and their Turbo Duo display which had Bonk in it, so that was a very nice treat. For Saturday, I brought in my Duo Tap and five controllers with some various games to hook up to Team Freamont's Duo for fun, but unfortunately my group and the Team were the main people who put the most love into the Duo set up
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About three or four stores had Turbo games for sale but the problem is that most vendors only have games like World Class Baseball and TV Sports Basketball, this also goes for another store I visit in the real world and a lot of online stores. The vendors here did feature some other Turbo games for sale, some I can think of were Gunboat, Victory Run, World Court Tennis, TV Sports Football, Ordyne, and Bonk's Adventure. A person I talk to online told me he had bought It Came From the Desert from one of the stores, so I had a fun time telling him that game rules
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The game display room in the event hall had a Turbo Duo set up and some games with. The main two games the guy displayed on it were Devil's Crush and Dracula X, I don't recall seeing any other games displayed even though I saw a small stack of other Turbo games by the system (we couldn't change the game ourselves). Both games got good attention, especially Devil's Crush, which made my day. Also next to the Turbo Duo was a Super Grafx with the case of Aldynes and Battle Ace displayed next to it and next to that was a PC-FX, with the cases of Battle Heat and that women wrestling game. I believe that was all the Turbo-related things I saw there.
As far as people from here that I met on the show, I got to meet jleud and TJ, both people are awesome! Once again, nice to meet both of you! The only two other members from these boards that were/thought about going to the show were turbo_sage and torgo, who I didn't get to meet with, though I thought I might've seen or talked to them and just didn't know who they were. turbo_sage was selling me on AIM that he might not be able to go, so that would explain for him. torgo, by any chance were you the guy who seemed to be incharge of that room in the event hall with all the systems including the Duo with Dracula X?
That sums it all up and I had one hell of a time going to it. I highly recommend anyone else in the Midwest consider going to it next year, it's lots and lots of fun! I took a ton of pictures and I plan on editing and uploading them to an article I'll make for my website soon. I'll remind everyone on this thread when I have done so.
