For the world of modern video games, 2020 ushered in an unprecedented era of paradoxes. People sitting at home meant more gamers were gaming than ever, but COVID delays are causing new releases to grind to a halt. Industry giants Sony and Microsoft saw record sales with the release of their flashy ninth-generation consoles, but a shortage of supply made them impossible for most consumers to find. New and returning gamers flocked to the market… at a time when the future felt anything but certain.
For retro gamers, it was a similar story. We carried our childhood Nintendo 64s and Segas with us to pass the time at home while the Mrs Pacmans and medieval madnessDust gathered along the walls of Portland’s beloved arcades. It was the personal element of classic games – competing against friends for high scores, beer in hand, against a cacophony of 8-bit beeps and cries of victory or defeat – that kept many of us playing into the 21st century. Would it ever come back?
To find your answer, look no further than the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. After a two-year hiatus, the event returns October 14-16 at the Oregon Convention Center, where thousands will flood the halls to cosplay, shop collections of old-school consoles and cartridges, attend panels and get your hands on classic games in a huge free arcade.
PRGE, which has become one of the largest events of its kind, comes from humble beginnings. It started in the 1990s with the Northwest Classic Games Enthusiasts, a small group of like-minded Seattle collectors who gathered once a year to sell, trade and display relics of retro games. Over time, they started adding to the show: a few arcade games to play here, a guest speaker there. Since moving to Portland in 2006, it has only continued to grow.
“The show just got bigger and bigger,” said PRGE Vice President Toby Wickwire. “It’s gone from this thing in a church basement to 20,000 people in the Convention Center in the last 15 years.”
This year’s expo will feature a slew of new suppliers and booths. Chief among them? The last box office success On soil—which, in case you haven’t heard, is still thriving in Bend – setting up a replica of the iconic convention floor shop, complete with shelves full of VHS tapes from the 80’s and 90’s (unfortunately not too many). rent) and lots of merchandise for sale. Store manager and star of Netflix The latest blockbuster Sandi Harding will also give a panel on keeping the traditional video rental experience alive in 2022.
“We haven’t done anything like that yet,” says Harding. “It’s exciting to know that there is still interest in us that will help keep the store going.”
In addition to stirring up video library nostalgia, the booth will also host the Blockbuster World Video Game Championship 3, a revival of Sega and Nintendo tournaments that took place in Blockbuster stores across the country during the 1990s. It’s free to enter, and first place scores a $1,000 exhibit hall shopping spree. To win, you have to come out on top in a first round of Saturn Bomberman and follow it up with a high score on Demise OG Plus. These easy-to-learn, family-friendly retro games were selected by event organizer Gerald Levinzon for a reason.
“We want this tournament to be as inclusive as possible,” Levinzon says. “I want families to want to play and feel like they even have a chance to win.”
However, not every PRGE tournament is inclusive for players of all skill levels. Just in the hall at the Classic Tetris World Championshipan old mainstay of the expo, there is no stronger competition on the planet.
“It’s the Super Bowl of Tetrissaid CTWC commentator Chris Tang.
In recent years, the world of competitive Tetris has undergone a series of major changes. Front and center is the premature death of Tetris champion Jonas Neubauer early 2021: from the start of the event in 2010 until 2017, Neubauer won seven of the eight championships, and in addition to his nearly unbeatable prowess behind an NES controller, he was revered as a pillar in the community.
“It was a shock,” said Vince Clemente, tournament organizer and producer of Ecstasy of order. “He set a precedent of a good, humble champion, willing to take pictures, talk to everyone, give his time… He was just a great ambassador for the game. It’s not the same without him.”
Beyond the loss of a beloved figurehead, the competitive scene has been shaken – if not outright revolutionized – by a new wave of Tetris players who fundamentally change the way the game is played and thereby dominate the leaderboards. Instead of simply holding down “left” or “right” on the D-Pad to move falling geometric shapes, these players have discovered new ways to fully operate the controller, including vibrating a finger above the buttons (known as “hypertapping”), or roll all five fingers over the bottom of the controller in their pointer above (called “rolls”). These new strategies have the blistering speeds and high scores of competitive Tetris to a once unfathomable realm.
The kicker? Most members of this new wave are young enough to be the children of the experienced players.
It started with Joseph Saelee, an early hypertapper and then high school student who won the world championships in 2018 and 2019. The field only got brighter — and younger — as COVID struck and the championship moved online, with 13-year-old Michael Artiaga finishing first in 2020 and defending his title the following year.
For some CTWC entrants, 2022 will be the first time they participate in person — at least on the scale of PRGE, where the championship is a spectacle of cheering fans, live commentators and a massive gameplay display at the heart of the convention.
“This year is going to be a crazy year,” Clemente says. “The pressure is on you to perform in a place that isn’t your living room or bedroom, or wherever you play. You don’t get the chair you normally sit in… you get the hard plastic conference chair.”
This new generation of players eventually discovers and dominates a game as iconic retro as Tetris may seem unlikely. It can be attributed to many factors: the advent of YouTube and Twitch, extra free time during the pandemic, viral Tetris memes. But none of this would have happened without the first few young players who came on the scene and encouraged others to follow suit.
“Joseph Saelee inspired a new generation of players,” Wang says, “and I think that stems from Jonas Neubauer who also inspired a lot of other players…. said was cool. It is that it used to be cool, because people were doing it, and they were serious about it, and they loved it.”
For Gerald Levinzon, it’s this timeless coolness of a game like Tetris that gets to the heart of what makes retro games in general so great.
“Video games are among the highest art forms,” Levinzon says. “If you have a quality game, even if it’s on the Game Boy in four different shades of green, but the gameplay is there…. Why wouldn’t that be attractive to children?”
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