The Expo proper begins at nine on Saturday morning. I decide to beat the crowd by going down to the third floor a little bit early. It must have been a good idea - a couple thousand other people seem to have been thinking the same thing. The line is already huge.

Wearing both my Retrogaming Roundtable name badge and my CGE VIP badge from the night before, I finally get in the doors.

My first thought: it's huge. And it's loaded with games - coin-ops, cartridges, everything you can imagine. One whole corner to the right has been devoted to the live music acts, with a huge projection screen displaying retro graphics and a decent-sized amp stack pumping out the jams. To my immediate left are the CGE Services and Digital Press booths, and I immediately check one "must-get" item off my list by buying a copy of 2600 Looping from CGE Services. I drop it safely in my camera bag (I'm toting both my camcorder and digital still camera, as well as my handheld PC with several rarity lists loaded on it) and proceed to wander around randomly in a counter-clockwise direction. The coin-ops are an incredible blast from the past. A huge part of my retro-gaming memory leans on arcade games, and they're all here - Kickman, Turbo, Krull, Donkey Kong Junior, Donkey Kong 3, Dragon's Lair, Cliff Hanger, and a few dozen others. Some of the big names are there, but I never get a chance to get near them, let alone play them: Q*Bert, Tron, Ms. Pac-Man, Satan's Hollow...and still other machines are down for the count, really just there on display: Breakout has a wonky controller, Night Driver is off, Drag Racer's display is completely fried, and the beautiful Midway Space Encounters machine is also shut down. There's also a Tempest cabinet sitting darkened in one corner; they finally get around to fixing it a couple of hours before the end of the Expo on Sunday.

My favorite coin-op on the floor, however, is Crazy Climber - because not many other people are playing it, because I'm relatively good at it, and because it's a cocktail table - a format I've never seen for that particular game. The advantage here is that when my feet get too tired (I was stepped on by one of my horses just a week ago), I can sit down and play a game of Crazy Climber. Absolutely perfect. My butt winds up warming the chair at that game quite a lot over the weekend. One of my favorite memories from the Crazy Climber corner is explaining to Franz (Crystal Castles) Lanzinger the elaborate import-mod-and-specialty-controller combo that I've set up at home just to play this game the way it was meant to be played.

I wander onward, see Dan Kramer at his booth showing off a specially modified Atari 800 version of Missile Command with a special trakball he made just to play that game back in the day. (He also reveals that this combo will probably wind up on auction at some point, for those of you looking for a little something unique for your collection.) I then turn a corner and discover the wonder that is the Atari2600.com booth. I've heard Expo-goers past complain about Atari2600.com's prices, but I have to admit, I patronized them more than anyone else that weekend - to the tune of twice or three times a day. They were the place to get new Atari 5200 games over the weekend, including John Swiderski's new port of Klax and a limited edition boxed version of Combat II Advanced. I grab my copies of these two right away, because they're not sticking around long. And I drool over Atari2600.com's Ralph Baer-signed Odyssey² Pinball cartridge, a relic of CGE 2001 which is one of the gaps in my Odyssey collection I'm most eager to fill, but I just don't have $110 to blow on it. (Note to self: bring a couple grand next year if possible.) I also hit Packrat VG's booth for the 2600 homebrew Skeleton+ - I've played the ROM with z26, and it's a damn good game. I can't wait to play it with a real joystick on the real deal. It's a blast.

Then it's on to our pals at Good Deal Games, where there's another homebrew I've been looking forward to, Daniel Bienvenu's 14-In-1 Game Pack #1 for ColecoVision. Michael and Joanna Thomasson have a surprise though: the long-awaited Coleco homebrew Cosmo Fighter 3 is available in an extremely limited number as a loose cart. Chalk me up for one of each - and Mike throws me a wild discount for both of 'em since my voice is still gracing (well, if you can call it that) the Good Deal Games retrogaming-oriented internet radio station - and I'm really grateful. I wasn't expecting Cosmo Fighter 3 to be in circulation, so it's a real live bonus. He'd be completely out of that title by noon Sunday.

At the Midway booth, I give Midway Arcade Treasures for PS2 a spin, and it is excellent. The PS2 and Gamecube editions will be out in November, and the company hopes to have the Xbox edition - which has some added Xbox Live functionality - before Christmas. I asked the guy working the booth what sort of live function the Xbox version will have - can you imagine playing two-player rounds of old-school arcade goodness with your buds across the country? - but it will really just amount to a national high score table.

I play my first real live, non-emulated rounds of Kick and Jungle King in what has to be 20 years. Has it really been that long? I also gladly shell over ten bucks for three raffle tickets in the Pinball Hall Of Fame's arcade raffle - they'll be giving away small items aplenty, but one lucky winner gets the grand prize of a Zaxxon arcade game, a Polaris cabaret arcade game, an arcade Super Mario Bros., or a pinball machine whose name I forget. The odds are better than anything else I'm going to find in Vegas, so I'll buy that for ten dollars. The vendor selling the raffle tickets tells me that he's not seeing many takers, so I proceed to go around telling people about the arcade game drawing - thus making my chances for winning worse! I then hear a call for the keynote presentation on the early 80s video game-oriented game show Starcade, and decide to hit my first panel of the weekend.

I should point out that I really wasn't a panel-monger this time around - in some ways, the Expo almost needed an extra day just to let some of us get over that wonderful dazed time warp feeling, walking around, playing a lot of free arcade games, browsing the booths and generally meeting people. I'm a bit ashamed that I didn't make it to more of the keynote speeches, seeing as I'm trying to introduce myself to some of the alumni and build some bridges for the long-talked-about documentary project I hope to get off the ground. Or maybe some of my keynote hunger has already been sated by the barrage of old war stories at the alumni dinner. I really only made it to half of the weekend's keynotes.

The Starcade panel is interesting, with original host Mark Richards giving us the story not only of that show, but his own roundabout way of getting into the game show business. Also attending are two former contestants - obviously these guys are not only serious gamers, but they still fondly remember their Starcade appearances. Apparently there's been a recent reunion of former contestants, and grand prize winners' prized coin-ops are revealed to be much sought-after games - because they've never seen the wear and tear of arcade duty. And most interesting of all? The show's original producer is working on commercially releasing the series on DVD. But the bad news is that the same producer nixed the idea of Richards hosting a special live CGE Starcade event - he didn't want the show's former host exploiting it for "his own gain."

After the Starcade panel, I hit the floor again for a bit, this time sporting my handheld and on the hunt for 2600 Games That I'd Really Like To Have. Before long, I've scored Fathom, The Challenge Of Nexar and a boxed Shark Attack from various dealers, as well as a boxed and shrinkwrapped 7800 Donkey Kong (not a rare title by any definition, but nevertheless one that has eluded me for years). I also give in to the temptation to buy Tim Snider's video game trivia card game. It's really nicely put together, and designed to mesh well with games like Trivial Pursuit. Well done. Then it's off to my room to unload my second round of goodies and grab a prized possession that, as fate would have it, won't be going home with me.