Everything Action at RetroGameCon 2023

This past October, the Everything Action crew headed to Syracuse, NY for RetroGameCon X to take part in the celebration of the show’s 10th anniversary. Since 2013, RetroGameCon has grown from humble beginnings to a grand showcase of exciting events to keep every gamer busy. The show is now well known for its collection of gaming displays and popular talents. Aside from our regular activities of searching the expo hall for interesting finds and getting in some quality gaming time, we also got to host our 2nd ever panel at this show. Check out everything we saw, played, and partied at from our time at RetroGameCon below.

Showfloor finds

With two days of sightseeing to check out, checking out the whole area is going to take some time. RetroGameCon takes up the first level and a few panel rooms of the Oncenter. We dipped in and out of rows and aisles of the vendor area before we needed some gaming breaks to give our feet and wallets a rest. We never were on time for many panels, but we poked our heads in for a few panels to check out fun presentations.

Gaming Area

 

RetroGameCon was packed with ways to experience old-school gaming.  There was every console from the era of Pong machines to recent modern consoles. Plus tons of varieties of classic computers to experience. It’s always a thrill to see the old consoles and PCs set up and running in a large-scale showcase to fully appreciate how gaming has evolved over the years. There were so many different companies and versions produced that you can easily forget who exactly made what machine and what it supports. This area is a one-part game history museum and a one-part interactive playground that anyone can jump in and play.

One table was set up for a Star Fox high score challenge. Each day, players had the chance to play through the original SNES Star Fox 1 or 2 and win a replicate copy of the game. Our skills weren’t up to the test to attempt the challenge since it had been a long time since we booted up the polygonal space shooter but we watched a few ace pilots go for a good run.

Pinball Selection

We’re always excited to check out pinball when it’s available and RetroGameCon had several machines available.  We played the Guns N Roses machine, which lets you choose a GNR at the beginning of your game and then various bonuses based on each band member.  There was also The Wizard of Oz, which features an extremely colorful field and tons of toys to interact with, including a disappearing Wicked Witch and a crystal ball that plays videos.  There is also a video screen that shows clips from the movie based on various bonuses that you rack up.  There was also an Ultraman machine that was based on Ultraman fighting various Kaiju and featured clips from the classic 60s show on its screen.

Sucker Punch

Syracuse Sucker Punch, which hosts various fighting game tournaments around Syracuse, were at the con with not only their usual tournaments but a history of Mortal Kombat.  There were displays highlighting the history and interesting facts about each game and items like classic magazine ads and the issue of Nintendo Power that featured Mortal Kombat II.  Several versions of MK were available to check out on various consoles.

Vendor Tables

You never know what you can find being sold at the tables of a convention. Bins of cheap video games, fan art of obscure cartoon characters, or single issues of forgotten comics. RetroGameCon was no exception. The vendor area was filled with various sellers and creators with plenty of items to catch attendee’s eyes. There were lots of interesting items to stumble across, such as weird switch games, old VHS, and toys. Of course, there were tables of game sellers to check out. From hobbyists looking to clean out a few shelves or game collectors looking to offload their excess inventory, there was always someone offering games every few tables. There were also lots of art pieces from talented artists for fans of almost any game or franchise.

One of the coolest art vendors we saw (and have seen at other cons) is CanvasQuestArt. Known for their canvas artwork of famous video game posters, they have expanded into nerdy pins also. They make canvas backgrounds for various games and then sell pins that you can put on them to create your own scenes.  There are pins for literally anything you can think of and they perfectly capture the pixel art from the games they represent.

We also found a booth selling a ton of old Tiger Electronic handheld games, which always brings up our nostalgia, and another booth with a rack of VHS for classic and obscure action, horror, and sci-fi movies.

One of the unique booths was the sneakers from BullAirs, a custom clothing and shoe store from Thomas Bulman. On display were his latest sneakers based on Earthworm Jim and The Last of Us. The sneakers were cool and are made for fashionable gamers who want to show off their love of these games. The Last of Us pair in particular looks almost too detailed for people to casually wear in public, but it’s a nice talking piece for the diehard fans.

 

Special Guests

RetroGameCon was jam-packed with celebrity guests that fans could meet, get items signed by, and chat about their favorite performances (although there was still the strike weirdness going on a bit).  Nolan North, Doug Cockle, Coleen O’Shaugnessy, Jon St. John, Nadji Peters, Mike Pollock, and Tim Kitzrow were the major voice acting talent attending the con.  There were also online content creators like John Riggs and MetalJesusRocks, who were also on the hunt for games themselves as well as meeting and greeting fans. MetalJesus recently put up his trip video from RetroGameCon that you can check out and maybe even catch a glimpse of the Everything Action crew in.

Star Fox Anniversary

While RetroGameCon wasn’t the only one to celebrate a milestone anniversary this year. The original Star Fox turned 30 and there was a mini-museum with various artifacts from the series and many of the games in the series available to play.  If you had a sweet tooth, there was also an incredible Star Fox cake that was made for the convention to celebrate Fox McCloud and his crew.

Doom Anniversary

Doom also celebrated its 30th anniversary and there were several different versions of the iconic shooter to play. This included the SNES version with its red cartridge and the DOS version that most people are familiar with. Our only complaint would be to have more of a mini museum similar to Star Fox with more of the odd ephemera related to Doom in addition to the games available to play. We are still not sure if a blood-red cake with demons and gore would seem as appetizing as the Star Fox cake above.

Lame Genie

We’ve seen Lame Genie at several conventions and they always give a rocking performance. Lame Genie does heavy metal and rock covers of your favorite video game songs and the entire convention center was filled with sweet licks and power chords. The music is fast and loud, great to give people a boost to power through the day and game harder. Check out their YouTube channel for their songs and music videos: https://www.youtube.com/lamegenie

Our Panel – “Would You Play It?”

After enjoying a Saturday of exploring, we got to host the first panel of the day on Sunday morning. We tried out our “Would You Play It?” gameshow, where audience members can participate by telling us their favorite video games and movies and letting the power of AI come up with a generated video game pitch. We first did this kind of panel over the summer at TooManyGames and had a blast with the funny game concepts that were made. The audience gave us fun mash-up ideas and we guessed what kind of game premises the AI would spit out. We got Call of Duty mashed up with Scooby Doo, a Sweeney Todd/Cooking Mama hybrid,  the hijinks of Home Alone in a Dead Space setting, and many more.  We awarded random prizes to games with interesting premises or gameplay elements. However, maybe one out of every three games had good premise and gameplay at once.  You can see all the games that were created below and hopefully, we’ll be at more cons in the future to generate more surprisingly good and/or hilariously terrible mash-ups.

After Party

Saturday night was party time at RetroGameCon, as the official after-party was held at the con’s main hotel and featured a performance from Danimal Cannon.  We stayed and rocked out for a bit, ran into Jon St. John, and then took the party on the road, bringing a group that included John Riggs and MetalJesusRocks to Wolffs Biergarten, an authentic German Biergarten that is famous for peanuts you can throw on the floor and being a soccer destination.  Chris’ birthday was just before RetroGameCon and he attempted their Birthday Boot, which is 2 liters of German beer.  We also made a stop at the local bar arcade Three Lives, where we did their “Roll a Shot” special.  You roll a 20-sided die and you get a shot based on what you roll.

Last Thoughts

 

RetroGameCon X was an absolute blast. We like hanging out with interesting people and bonding with our common passion for nerdy stuff. We captured fun moments but we mostly relaxed and took in all the views with the crowd. We got some more game time on the PC stations that just can’t be emulated with modern hardware. We also drank our fair share of Dunkin Products from the free Dunkin Booth on the show floor. It’ll probably be what kept us charged for powering through the Sunday morning. Our panel went well and hope the people come back for more rounds of hilarious game ideas next time we host. We look forward to RetroGameCon gathering all these fun events and people under one roof so we can kick off fall with good times and great friends next season.