Good Deal Games - Classic Videogame Games ARTICLE

ReCap '02 by Michael Thomasson

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

A week ago, if anyone had asked me, I would have told them that CinciClassic was about games. Sure, There were thousands of rare cartridges, devices, peripherals, consoles, adapters, collectable - literally a grand multitude of miscellaneous hardware and software from the the Golden days of electronic console gaming. Objects to represent just about every niche of gaming history, from the common to the most obscure. Devices new even to the most experienced enthusiest. Many times I witnessed the awe of discovery pertaining to items decades old. But all of this, as fantastic as it was, is nothing more than stacks (and stacks) of plastics and wires, componants and integrated circuits, buttons and switches.

What was CinciClassic really about? It was about James Balmer taking hours of his life to create the first portable Nintendo Entertainment System; Ronald Lloyd explaining how to play his homebrew game Koffi: Yellow Koptor for the Atari 5200; BT Garner's premiere of Implode - the first new Turbografx-16 Super CD game in almost a decade; GDG launching Citizen X for the Sega CD's 10 year anniversary; The contests, the trading, the swapping, the bartering, the sharing, the showing, the explaining, the learning -- CinciClassic was about interaction. Interaction, not with machines, but with people. People that appreciate the machines.

Special thanks to Photographers L. Tatton Partington, John Cook and all those that supported GDG at CinciClassic! It was a pleasure to finally meet many of you face to face and have the honor to shake your hands.

See Photos from CinciClassic 2001
See Photos from CinciClassic 1999