The Museum (tons of photos)

Keynotes, Booths And More (more photos + audio)

Sights And Sounds (video)

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The Atari 2600 programmers go from wild and crazy (that would be Yars' Revenge / E.T. programmer Howard Scott Warshaw) to contemplative when discussing the history and future of the game industry. Quite a few of these gentlemen are still as active in the industry as they were in the 70s and 80s.

Jerry Lawton, in creating the Fairchild Channel F video game console, not only beat Atari to the programmable punch but gave the world interchangeable, ROM-cartridge-based video games. He also dangled before our eyes whole bags full of never-before-seen prototypes from that era, and offered his frank analysis of how Atari pulled ahead in the cartridge race.

Electronic Games Magazine executive editor Bill Kunkel - one of the very first video game journalists - giving what may well be the funniest CGE keynote ever. You can hear it below.
Bill Kunkel CGE 2005 Keynote: Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Steve Bristow, Steve Mayer and Al Alcorn - spinning tales of the original engineering and game design group at Atari.

The founders of Activision and Imagic were among the first home video game designers at Atari, but struck out on their own when they grew disgruntled with how they were treated and paid. They then trumped Atari with brilliant games like Pitfall!, Cosmic Ark, Atlantis, Moonsweeper, and many more. Their tales of going head-to-head with Atari were revealing and hilarious.

Keith Robinson and the other Blue Sky Rangers - the original Intellivision programmers - not only told their own tales of facing down Atari, but they held prize give-aways and previewed two - get this - new upcoming Intellivision cartridges.

Whether you wanted to play a vintage Vectrex tabletop game with an ultra-rare custom controller, or any number of equally vintage coin-ops, you could find them here.

And even some of the most common game machines and games at the sit-down "game stations" saw a lot of action over the weekend.

Something that emulation can never give you is the unique control scheme of some classic arcade games. Seen here, clockwise from above, are Exidy's Mouse Trap, the vintage 1970s Midway game Space Encounters, and the "tap" controls of an original, unconverted, un-watered-down Midway Tapper machine, complete with the actual drink holders on either side of the controls.

Midway's also previewed some retro racing action in Midway Arcade Treasures 3 at their booth.

Messiah Entertainment showed off their Generation NEX console, as well as their wireless controllers for the NES and Super NES.

Dream Arcades LLC showed off their impressive home arcade emulation cabinets. To say that I want one of these would be the understatement of the year.

all photos by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster/editor-in-chief