Adventures at the 2016 Portland Retro Gaming Expo

Retro gaming is getting bigger. Portland Retro Expo is the largest retro gaming expo in the U.S. This year there were a ton of panels, great vendors and more than enough games from everyone’s childhood to make any aging gamer happy. The Gamers Lounge had the chance to attend and here is what we saw

This was the 11th year the convention has taken place and for the first time it was open on Friday, well the retrocade was open on Friday. 7,000 people attended last year’s conventions. Here are some of the highlights, there was the Classic Tetris World Championship, panels from the Angry Video Gamer Nerd, Art of Atari, Retronauts, and Gaming in the 90s. Pat “The Nes Punk” was there with a panel and his new book. There was also game collecting with Metal Jesus, Game Rom Hacking with John Riggs, a look at Prototypes and a panel from the Gaming Historian. I went to several of these panels and had a great.

I also enjoyed wandering the Video Game Museum and marveling at the Atari Box art. The N64 DD and Nintendo Playstation were on display. In the arcade and console freeplay I sampled some Killer Queen, Spiderman The Arcade game and some Goldeneye 64. I spent most of my time wandering around and looking what the vendors had to offer.

Here are some of the highlights. I saw lots of Turbo Graphx system for sales. All were market price. I saw 1 Neo Geo AES and 1 Neo Geo CD both were $550+. I saw lots of homebrews and repro carts at several vendors. In 2014 I had seen a few vendors and this time around there was at least 10 booths selling these items.

There was a large booth for Atari homebrew which was interesting. It appears for now that Genesis and SNES common games are holding their value. The N64 may be the hot system right now. Everyone wanted $50+ for the system and even the common games were $5+. I saw tons of Sega Genesis systems for $30+ I was lucky to get a model 2 for $18. Sega CD’s model 1 and 2’s were over $75. There was plenty of Nintendo, Playstation and so many other retro games. I should have picked up a Sega CD-X for $150.

Overall I had a blast and I cannot wait to attend next year.