Hello gentlemen. I am back with some random goodie buys, partially because of a recent event called the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, a small little convention for old and new school gamers alike. Most of the booths were selling old games from the 2600 to the PS1, but also some current and last-generation games, so it was more of a gaming flea market than a mini-version of PAX or anything like that.

Among seeing plastic statues of Master Chief and Naked Snake, I saw a bunch of arcade units including Capcom Bowling and Vs. Super Mario Bros. I also met Pat the NES Punk but missed out on the opportunity to see David Crane of Pitfall and early 2600 fame. Clearly I had my priorities straight. I also spotted a dude wearing a Whiskey Media shirt, didn't catch his name though. Perhaps that was for the best, he might've been a fan of Comic Vine. (I kid, I also saw him at the convention).

So on my regular-ass normal blog I write about the old games I bought. Since I'm an unoriginal bastard, the format is loosely based on Chris Kohler's sporadic "Weekend Thrifting" articles he posts on Wired's Game|Life blog. Hope you're just as interested on the silly games I bought as much as I am.

Picture on the left's the haul from Saturday the 24th, the other is from yesterday on the 25th.

So there's a lot of Quake games in that first picture. Quake (Saturn), Quake II (PS1) and Quake III Arena (Dreamcast). The PS1 Quake II has a few features unique to that version, as well as a prologue level not seen in the PC version. I honestly bought it because I was curious how that version handled.

Quake Saturn was made by Lobotomy Software, and actually uses the Slavedriver engine used to run PowerSlave on the consoles rather than reverse-engineer John Carmack's Quake engine to run on a system not built for 3D. Duke Nukem 3D on the Saturn was also a Lobotomy project and reused the Slavedriver engine as well, which is baffling because the Build engine is not a taxing piece of hardware.

Quake III for the Dreamcast was rare at the time for having cross-platform play with PC owners, as well as mouse/keyboard support. If you were still rocking a 486 in 1999 and couldn't play any modern game, the DC version was probably one worth checking out. Granted, you wouldn't get levels like Chronic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHN7EGj2Pf8) on the DC, but maybe that's for the best.

Soldier of Fortune on the Dreamcast was, like almost every game I bought, more for curiosity's sake. See, back in the day PCs were drastically more powerful than the average console, thus it was interesting to see developers tweak and modify PC games to run on older, weaker hardware. Soemtimes to even give incentive they'd add new stuff to that version. I bet Soldier of Fortune was a bare-bones port but hey, at least I can play it since my PC copy refuses to install on my Vista box.

The World is Not Enough for the PS1 was a random impulse buy because I'm always curious on the James Bond games not called "Goldeneye." While many people still think there hasn't been a good Bond game since Goldeneye, some of the EA games barring junk like Goldeneye: Rogue Agent were actually pretty good. This was made by the same guys that gave us the Syphon Filter-esque Tomorrow Never Dies a year prior, but this is a FPS. I have no clue if it's any good.

I bought considerably less on Sunday, but I bought Aladdin on the Genesis (Pre-Shiny Entertainment game, complete with Dave Perry and Tommy Tallarico!) and Toejam & Earl III (mostly for my mom, she loved that game). Lastly, that Nintendo Power is to replace a destroyed copy I've been mysteriously holding onto for years. I knew a friend who had a cousin who had Nintendo Power issues, and most of them got damaged or ransacked, but I was able to pilfer a few issues from them, including issue 28, which featured the new SNES hit Super Mario World. My copy was missing the front cover and the first 10 pages. Now that I have a complete issue, I should probably use the destroyed issue as a firestarter. You think retro game fans will go nuts for me destroying an old gaming magazine? :P

Also spotted at the convention was a copy of Snatcher for the Sega CD for too damn much ($250!) and Cardcaptor Sakura Tetris for the PlayStation ($50). Yeah, I don't know what to say about that last one.

I wanna say the Retro Gaming Expo was pretty sweet, and I hope they do it again next year, because I'll totally go again. Maybe the price of Duke Nukem 3D on the Saturn won't be $25, or how one booth was selling Mr. Gimmick and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels reproduction cartridges for $65-75. (Another booth was also selling SMB: Lost Levels for a more modest $35.)