Tag: Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition (OVGE)

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Funny Stuff

…and Freud said, “Can I buy ze Colecovision from you?”

So I had a dream this morning. I dreamed that it was Saturday morning, I was getting ready for OVGE, and I had proceeded to sleep the hell in. I dreamed that I was slamming my stuff together to go pick up Kent (why hadn’t he called!?) and then a simple flip of a light switch caused a flash and a tendril of very worrying smoke. I dreamed that closer investigation of the switch revealed that there were little bugs burrowing into the wood of my house – all of the wood. I called an exterminator, who hastily told me that this was some new breed of mega-termites, and they literally appeared overnight all over the country, maybe some bioengineered terrorist plot.
A section of my kitchen wall neatly fell away into the back yard. I swear, if it’s not one goddamn thing with this house, it’s another.
Then I woke up. Now keep two of the basic parts of that dream’s premise in mind: Saturday. OVGE. Overslept. 8:15am.
I sat bolt upright and broke out in a sweat. It’ll be at least 10:30 before I can get there. My God, I’m going to be setting up in the middle of the damned show! Why hadn’t Kent called!?
Then I realized: it’s only Wednesday. I’m on vacation. Days to go before the show. Relax. I laid back down at about the time Olivia pounced on me. Har de har har, I thought, this’ll make a cute blog entry.
Then I realized something else: I’m supposed to feed horses this morning. If it’s not one thing…….
Gotta go. Wait a minute, do they even have termites in the middle east?!? Arrrrrrggghhh.… Read more

Categories
Gaming

Et tu, Studio II?

I’m coming down the home stretch on this year’s Phosphor Dot Fossils video for OVGE, which will be close to 3 hours long (and will be available on DVD at the table this year), and this morning I hooked up my Fairchild Channel F and RCA Studio II consoles, both of which I acquired last year, to grab some of the last footage before I start editing. (I’m also going to grab some Vectrex stuff today, though that requires hooking up another camera for obvious reasons.)
The thing about the Channel F, when you hook it up, is that you quickly realize why, despite it being the first cartridge based video game system, it quickly fell to the Atari VCS. It has some unique controllers, but that’s about all it has going for it; the sound still comes from a speaker in the console itself (whose volume is permanently set at “too loud for something that just sits there and beeps”), and the games…well…they’re interesting academically. Which means that once I get the one-minute-or-so of footage that I need, that machine gets unplugged and put away again.
Beep boop, the Studio II is dead!The Studio II, sadly, is an even worse story. It’s got a completely byzantine hookup – the machine gets its power from the RF adapter, which is where the AC adapter plugs in as well – and after all that, I find…that my Studio II doesn’t work.
Now, this is my own damned fault. I reeled in a massive haul of old games and consoles on eBay last year, and just due to time, I had never plugged this puppy in before. I’ve got a ton of games for it, but no working console to play them on. (By all accounts, I’m not missing much – the thing may be powered by the same processor that drove the Pioneer and Voyager probes, but you’d think this one had been a lot closer to Jupiter’s hard radiation than the spacecraft’s chips had.) Like the song says, all I get is video ga-ga. … Read more

Categories
ToyBox

Rerezzed.

I’ve been taking new photos of some of my video game memorabilia and toys for a new version of the Phosphor Dot Fossils history timeline video that’ll be showing at OVGE on the 19th, and I feel justifiably and insufferably proud of this particular photo:
Tron action figures
That’s a full set of vintage 1982 Tron action figures, lit from behind/inside by a fluorescent light, with the background isolated. (If I hadn’t knocked out the background, you would’ve seen…well…my other hand holding the fluorescent tube.)
Pretty cool eh? The facial features get a bit lost, but the “cool” factor with these was always the translucency, not any great attention to facial likenesses.… Read more

Categories
Gadgetology

You did it! Damn you all to hell, you finally did it!

Is that Atari Video Music playing Freedom Rock, man? Yeah, man! Well TURN IT UP, MAN!Someone had to do it, so it might as well be me. In a mad bit of improvisation that I did while I was doing some other necessary rewiring of my A/V/game setup, I hooked things up so my Atari Video Music would respond to the audio coming from…well…whatever game console I happen to be playing. That’s right: if I’m playing Ram It! on my trusty Atari 2600, the Atari Video Music will respond to the game’s sounds. Or to anything I’m playing on the Odyssey2. Or the Intellivision. Or the Apple II. Or the Playstation 2. The Video Music is taking its audio output from a sound mixer which I have also split the output of my CD changer to, so you can get some Flock Of Seagulls going while you’re playing, and hear everything in surround sound.
Why anyone would do this, I have no idea.
My next project: to buy a little microphone to hide somewhere in the room so the Video Music will respond to, well, any sound that anyone makes anywhere. If you’re wondering how once could see its output while someone’s playing a game, that’s easy – Video Music has its own screen (i.e. the, erm, not-exactly-cosmetically-pleasing LCD flatscreen I bought just before this year’s OVGE). So you can, in fact, sit in my game room and get pixels chucked at you from all directions.… Read more

Categories
Gaming

OVGE after-action report.

I’m about to crash, still recovering from the trip myself – the journey home was a bit of an adventure, unfortunately. 😕
It was great to meet everyone who dropped by the PDF tables, Home of the Racin’ Light Cycles, and great to see so many families and so many kids there – quite a diverse crowd, and many of them stayed for almost the entire duration of the event. I guesstimated 200, maybe 300 people. But not bad for a first showing in an area that’s never seen something like this. The guests were enthusiastic about all of it, from the LAN stuff to the Neo Geo stuff to the favorite attraction at my tables, the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey.
Got a look at the Backfire label and manual. The label on the cart is mighty nice, but the manual is a beautiful thing. Wait until you guys get a load of this!
Jess and his entire family put on a great show. And his mom owns you when it comes to 2600 Frogger. So when’s the next one again, Jess? Next week? :mrgreen:
A big, colossal thank you to my friend Kent Sutton, who manned my table with me. I was so exhausted – i.e. no sleep for 30+ hours – that I actually went to sleep in my chair behind my table for an hour and a half. It’s not that OKGE wasn’t exciting – I was loving having people, and again especially kids and families, come by and play what I had on display, but that I was just exhausted beyond my ability to keep on my feet. Thanks to Kent, I could pull a hairbrained stunt like that without fear. This was my first time as an exhibitor, and I hope it didn’t show too badly.
More pictures and a full write-up soon!… Read more