Video games and comic books have a long history together, pretty much since the dawn of the arcade has their been some game that had characters from the panels punching and kicking their way across a screen, hopefully with friends, for a quarter a pop. SoCal Retro Gaming Expo was a welcome return to the old arcade as well as consoles from over the last 40 years of the medium. How was the con? Let’s find out!
Last year, on a whim, I had gone to SoCal Retro Gaming Expo as it was held in Frank and Sons, a known swap meet of all things nerdy in southern California. It was small, but filled to the maximum with all kinds of used game vendors, arcade machines, console setups, and special guests in the gaming scene of YouTube and Twitch. This year, it’s moved to Pasadena at their convention center and the whole thing has grown in size and easily filled it up. There were more vendors, more guests, more arcades and consoles to play. This year was all about more.
For me, the nicest part about this convention was that while it was so much bigger than last year’s it still had the same vibe of last year’s coziness. When you went to the section where the guests were, it was more of a friendly gathering, you could see guests intermingling with fans and leaving their tables to better interact with their fans. If anything, for next year, they may want to rethink the guest location to accommodate this friendlier atmosphere a bit better. I mostly spent my time looking at all the cool merch and games on display. I was sick this year and last year there was a cold going around so I mostly avoided visiting any of the guests so as to not get them sick or get sick, as was the case last year.
If guests and merch aren’t your thing, you could always step into the arcade for some old school gaming goodness, there was the old school arcade machine set up and a bunch of tables with a variety of old consoles ready to be played to your hearts content if you brought the coin to do it. I was happy to see that my old favorites, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Alien Vs. Predator, and The Simpsons were always busy with folks pumping in quarters to play. I couldn’t be mad that I didn’t get a chance to play since it was just a delight to see others having such a good time with games I’ve spent hours on in the past.
If you have any sort of desire for retro gaming, maybe you have a Let’s Player or Twitch streamer you like, or just want to check out all the cool goodies that are gaming related (I got the Katamari Damacy soundtrack on vinyl) then I highly recommend you go to the next SoCal Retro Gaming Expo.
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
