I awake to typical confusion.

Okay, sunlight.  Bright, painful.  What's your name?  Danny.  Where are you?  Um...huh, that's a good one.  Oh, right, you're in Las Vegas!  Wow, so it wasn't all a dream.  Okay, so...yeah, there's TheRedEye buzzing around, looking antsy.  Except...wait, is that a pinstripe suit he's wearing?

<TheRedEye> Ah, you're awake. Morning.
<Sardius> (groggily) ...nice suit.
<TheRedEye> Thank you.

I'm still not entirely convinced that I'm fully awake and that this isn't all some sort of weird dream, seeing how strangely well-dressed Red suddenly is.  But I'll go along with it.

Yawn.

Hah, I'm up before Spinner.  Again.  Big surprise.  Sure looks comfortable on his bed.  Bastard.

Shower time.

...

Spinner's waking up and Red's ready to go by the time I get out of the shower.  Red gives me some quick last minute instructions (to the effect of - lock the door when you go, and don't fuck shit up), and he's off with a big box of stuff for the show.  See you soon, man.

Okay, hurry up and shower, Spinner.  Go go go!  Yeah, great, fine...I know you're tired, but I want to go noooowwww.  Okay.  Out the door.  Let's go.  Come on.

Elevators.  Ground floor.  Running.  NO YOU DON'T NEED TO PLAY THE SLOTS NOW.  Show entrance...!

Wait, we need tickets.

Spinner easily obtains his pass by telling the receptionist his name.  He's given a pack of goodies along with his pass, and he's on his way.

I didn't reserve a pass, but I'm just as easily able to get one as Spinner was.  Funny, because everyone was talking about how awful the ticket lines are at CGE.  Bullshit, I say.  And sure, while my pass didn't have my name on it - unlike Se...er, Spinner's - I still thought it was pretty rad.

I wasted no time in clipping it to the bottom of my Stooges shirt, gangsta thug style.  Or something resembling gangsta thug style.  Well, okay, so no gangsta thuggery was involved in the least, but you know.

So I then spend a few seconds leafing through all the goodies I'd been handed with my pass.  None of which, unfortunately, I have scans for at the moment.  Sorry.  I'll work on it.  But anyway, I'm given a pretty sizable glossy CGE promo booklet, which listed all the show's vendors and celebrity keynote speakers.  Along with this pamphlet is...a small box?  Huh?

Inside this box - for whatever inexplicable reason - is a miniature pewter figurine of a dogfaced Princess Leia.  Seriously.  I don't know why Electronics Boutique felt the need to give this little 'bonus' to show attendees, but I gave mine to my dad as soon as I got back to Texas, just so I couldn't accidentally catch sideways glances at it occasionally and scare myself shitless.

(This is just a pointless aside here, so skip over it if you must, but I thought this particular conversation was just too fucking funny to not share.  I've edited it to remove my worthless comments, for your pleasure.  Enjoy:

* TheRedEye slaps his forehead
<TheRedEye> oh my god
<TheRedEye> I forgot about that Princess Leia thing
<TheRedEye> I think they have like a million of those. I got one at Pinball Fun Night. [note from Sardius: a pinball convention with hundreds of machines set up for free play. Yes, I'm jealous that he got to go to it, too.]
<TheRedEye> that was one of the greatest nights of my life
<TheRedEye> a warehouse full of pinball, 6 beers, and a Vikadin
<TheRedEye> I was totally wasted at IHOP at like 3am that night
<TheRedEye> I don't remember this, but Alexa said I went on this whole rant about Pinbot and how you had to please him by rubbing his robot penis
<TheRedEye> I do kind of remember it. Billy was describing pin bot, and he said something about how you have to please him.
<TheRedEye> so I cracked up because I pictured this penis growing out of the front of it
<TheRedEye> anyway
<TheRedEye> I also got a "God Bless America" shirt
<TheRedEye> I drew Inner Bunny on it, signed it, and gave it to the waitress
<TheRedEye> and then we made this weird temple thing out of pancakes and sausages and stuff and had Leia in the middle of it
<TheRedEye> with random sauces all over her
<TheRedEye> and left it on the table
<TheRedEye> so that's what I did with mine

So there you have it, TheRedEye is officially fucking awesome.  Just so you know.)

But enough of this preliminary crap - on with the show!

I approach the entrance.  I point the guard's attention to my pass.  I enter...the Classic Gaming Expo.

Duuuuuude.

This...looks mighty impressive.  My senses are immediately overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of dozens of video games being played and people making deals.  Not to mention the interesting aroma perfuming the air, brought about by the hundreds of gaming nerds of all shapes and sizes - mostly round and large - populating the area.

Jeez, where to start.

All right Spinner, Red's table is over here.

Yo Red!  What up?

Red's doing brisk business even at this early hour.  I notice that his stack of boxed games has been severely depleted since the last time I saw it.  However, most of his Sachens are still on display, untouched by show attendees who probably instinctively knew better.

Something not immediately familiar is playing on Red's TV.

<Sardius> Whoa, what is THAT?
<TheRedEye> Buzz & Waldog - unreleased game.
<TheRedEye> Wanna play?
<Sardius> YES.

So within minutes of entering the show, I'm playing an unreleased prototype game.

And, dude, it's like, good and stuff.  Really good.  Red and I later agree that it's the best unlicensed game that we've ever played.

See, Buzz & Waldog was an unlicensed NES game developed by a Korean company called Daou (formerly known as The Ultimate Game Club), who developed a few NES games that were to be published by Innovation, a US company better known for making console accessories.  None of these games were ever released, though, and Buzz & Waldog's prototype was only uncovered recently.

Unlike every other unlicensed game ever made, though, this one actually looked and played like it had a lot of effort put into it.  The graphics were bright, colorful and detailed, the sound was appropriately bouncy, and the gameplay was smooth as...I dunno, a baby duck's ass, or something.  The game itself was a sidescrolling platformer that played similar to Sonic the Hedgehog, only it wasn't a complete ripoff (and wasn't totally shitty) like Jurassic Boy was.  It starred two humanoid characters - Buzz and Waldog, I assume - who ran and hopped around large, expansive levels while spinning into enemies and hunting for items and keys and such.  What made it so unique was that the gameplay was fast, and yet not confusing and disorienting.  It was genuinely fun, actually.  The only problem was that the game is a one-hit-and-you're-dead sorta deal, but since the proto gave you unlimited lives, it all worked out.

Red informed me that this was DreamTR's prototype.  Huh.  Wonder if I'll run into him here at the show...I sure hope not.  But I guess we'll see.

(P.S. to DreamTR: Get this thing dumped NOW.  I wanna play it some more.  Spin-jumping through those levels was just too much fun.)

Eventually, though, I had to give in to temptation and relinquish the game in order to check out the dozens of classic arcade machines that lined the place.  Which were free to play.  Which was awesome.

I'll now give you a virtual tour of these machines.  If I do this right, you'll feel like you were actually there!  Except, you know, you won't get to play the games, or hear or see your surroundings, and your stationary noninteractive view of the action will often be blurry and obscured due to my shitty pictures.  But whatever.

Here we are a few feet away from Red's table, as you can clearly see (and yes, that is Robocop vs. the Terminator on display), were Battlezone, Paperboy, Mario Bros., and a game that I never thought I'd ever see, Fax, which is unfortunately being blocked from view by some random guy.  Spinner quickly installed himself on Battlezone's high score board, where he remained for most of the show.  I also managed to pull off a respectable 3rd place score on Mario Bros. at one point.  And Spinner and I both eventually came to the conclusion that Paperboy sucks ass.

And see that pinball machine there?  It kind of rules!  But let's move on.

Here's the view standing directly in front of TheRedEye's table and facing left.  That lone arcade machine there is an ArcadePC, which I never got to play because there was always some fat guy in shorts playing it.  Not just this particular shorts-wearing fat guy in the picture, either - every time I so much looked at the machine with a slight desire to play it, a different fat guy in shorts would waddle up to it and start fucking with it.  Damn those fatties.

See?  What did I just fucking tell you?  This closer shot of the Arcade PC - which I found at Digital Press before shamelessly stealing it - proves that I'm not just hallucinating a conspiracy so I can find an outlet for my hatred of fat people.  While eerily similar to the fat guy in shorts in the picture I took, this is actually a different fat guy in shorts.  I swear, this guy here must've taken fifty or so of his clones with him to the show, since they were all over the fucking place.

And since I'm already unfairly and rudely making fun of people anyway: ha ha!  Nice purse, cowboy!

But I'm not one to make insults here, so let's move on.

...okay, so just one more.

Actually, I can't think of anything to add to that picture.  But still, look at it.  That's great stuff.

Okay, seriously.  We're moving on now.

This is the lineup starting on the right-side wall of the Expo, from the back.  I think those might be games, but I'm not sure.  I can make out a Puppy Pong machine, though, whatever the fuck that is.  There's also a Star Wars machine there!  And it was broken throughout the whole show!  And that one dude in the middle (yes, there is a guy in there - try to look through the fog) is playing a PlayChoice-10, which was almost always occupied.  I got to play it once, though, and it was...well, disappointing and pointless.  I don't know why people are so hot for these things, really...you can just buy some NES carts and play the things on your TV for loads cheaper, and you'll be getting the same experience.  You dummies.

Well, I dunno.  Maybe I'm just jaded.  I remember having unlimited free access to a PlayChoice machine as a kid at a bar owned by one of my dad's friends many years ago, and I positively loved it.  Maybe it was just the thrill of playing games that I'd never played before, and didn't have easy access to through emulation or Funcoland.  Yeah, that probably had something to do with it.  Ah, the good old days...

Wait, where were we?  Oh yeah, we were discussing my terrible blurry pictures.  Right.  Here's some more.

Next to Puppy Pong were several more arcade games, seen here.  I can make out Major Havoc, Crossbow, Ms. Pac-Man...and Super Pac-Man and Tron near the right edge.  Crossbow is total shit.  Super Pac-Man was kinda boring, and Tron...well, I never got to play Tron, since it was always out of credits.

See, all the older machines at the show lacked a "free play" dip switch, so the machines' owners had to just pump them full of credits every so often.  So naturally, the more popular games ran out of credits pretty quickly.

I blame the fat people.

Anyway, I didn't play Major Havoc, but I did play Ms. Pac-Man.  I dunno if anyone reading this has ever played it or not, but it's a pretty good game.  Check it out if you can.

Uh...huh.  This is a good one, isn't it?

Look, I'm sorry.  See, I bought some cheapo disposable cameras from Walgreens and I foolishly expected them to be able to fully handle and duplicate the awesomeness of the CG Expo.  I'm stupid, okay?  But let's put my stupidity behind us for a minute so we can make the best of this, all right?

Anyway.  In that picture above - a continuation of the lineup along the show's rightmost wall - you can (barely) see Punch-Out, Galaga, Dig Dug, Popeye, Donkey Kong (in a DK Junior cabinet), and Track & Field.  I've got to say that this is my second-favorite machine group of the show (you'll see what my favorite group is in a second).  While Dig Dug and Donkey Kong were always occupied or out of credits, I did my fair share of rocking on the other machines there.  I played a lot of Popeye, since no one else did, and I got really far in Punch-Out and Track & Field, thanks to the skills I'd developed over the years at both games through MAME.  And hell, Galaga's always fun.  Though TheRedEye had more fun with it than I did.  More on that later, though.

And, sort of on the subject of Punch-Out, if they would have had a Nintendo Arm Wrestling machine there, I would've been glued to the thing for the whole show.  God I love that game.  I'm way better at it than anyone, too, I bet.  Just try me sometime.

And here we have...a whoooole lotta shit.  These are the last few machines lined up on the show floor's right wall.  After looking at a better picture at the Digital Press site, I was able to ascertain that the games in this shot are Break Out, Drag Race, Space Encounters, Crystal Castles!!!!!!, Sega Turbo, something else, and (as out-of-place as it seemed) Mortal Kombat, on the far right.  All of these games were positively ancient, and all of them looked so bad that I didn't even go near them even in my most bored moments at the show.  The only bright spots in this lot are the wonderful Crystal Castles, which I have fond childhood memories of (it was the first machine on which I ever got my fingers pinched by a trackball), and Mortal Kombat, which I spent more time playing over the years than I'll ever admit to.  I didn't get to play either of these, though, since Crystal Castles was always out of credits, and people (mostly fat) were always hogging the Mortal Kombat machine in pairs.  Damn it all!

Anyway, with half the show's machines perused, I start to head over to the other side of the show.  On the way, I browse through several booths and displays.  Lots of neat stuff here.  I see some booth with hundreds of Neo Geo carts lined up in an impressive display, another with a gigantic four-player MAME setup, and the Digital Press booth, whose publication looks pretty tempting...I'll have to come back later and pick up a copy, perhaps.

Far too many of the booths, however, are dedicated to just Atari crap.  Blech.  Fuck that noise.  In fact, I'd say that more than half the dealers at the show only dealt with 2600 games.  Which was disappointing, since I like good games.  But hey, if you're into that kind of shit, then this is your show, man.  I won't hold your liking the 2600 against you, even - hell, lots of people like stupid things.  I can't think of why anyone at all would be interested in the show's bizarre proliferation of Lynx and Jaguar merchandise, though.  Yeesh.

Aaaanyway, I wind my way back to Red's booth, meet up with Spinner again, and we start to explore the other half of the show's arcade machines on display.

This lineup can be seen along the show's left wall, near the back.  Only a few steps away from Red's table, in fact.  Some real classics here, as you can see (if you squint).  Yes, those are genuine Space Invaders and Frogger cabinets.  No, you can't play them, because they're always out of credits.  Such is life.  Deal with it, dickass.

That weirdo slanted cabinet in the middle is Wacko.  It's a pretty unique game.  And by 'unique' I mean simplistic and stupid.  But it was fun in a way.  Right next to it is Sega's Carnival, which, believe it or not, kicks total ass.  I mean, you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at it, but it's lots of fun.  And nobody ever played it, either, so I got to play it all I wanted.  Which was a grand total of once.  But still, yeah, neat game.

Other games in the picture include...well, I can't see them.  Sorry.  But if we'll just slide to the left a little...

HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK, LASERDISC GAMES!  Sadly, Time Traveler is nowhere to be seen, but there's plenty of other shitty FMV games to keep my attention.  And that's exactly what they did, because for about 90% of the show, I was glued to one of these games.

Outside of the shot were Cobra Command (which is rad), Bega's Battle (which not only is a total pile of shit, it also totally misuses what little full motion video it has), and some racing game, which slowed down the laserdisc read speed to simulate your rate of speed in the actual game.  It was only so-so, gameplay-wise, though.

In this shot, starting from the right, we see Galaxy Ranger (ehhhhh), Super Don Quixote (retarded), and...

<Spinner_8> Dude! Lupin!
<Sardius> What? WHERE
<Spinner_8> Right there, look! I swear that's Lupin!

As it turns out, he was right.  Cliff Hanger, over there on the far left, is a game that is entirely based on (and thus uses actual animation from) the Lupin the 3rd movie, Castle of Cagliostro.  Spinner and I immediately check it out.

And...well...let's see, how should I put this...okay, I'll just say it: it's the best FMV game ever made.  Seriously.  The animation is great and highly entertaining, the movements that you have to make are mostly sensical and easy to judge, and the game somehow manages to make the process of memorizing moves fun simply because it rules so much.

I played Cliff Hanger the most out of any game present at the show.  That's how good it was.  Amidst all the spectacle, the merchandise, and even all the other games at the show, this game, of all things, was what impressed me the most and held my constant, unbroken attention for the longest.  And unlike every other FMV game ever made, which one would only play for the attainment of ironic anti-fun, I played Cliff Hanger over and over because it was genuinely a great, fun game.

I could just rave on and on about this thing all day, really.  The animation was slick, the gameplay was really good for an FMV game, and...oh god, the dubbed voices.  Great, great stuff.  Spinner and I quickly adopted the game's more memorable phrases and started using them whenever the urge struck.

<Sardius> Juuuuuump! JUUUUUUUMP!
<Spinner_8> Woooow, look at her! She's GORGEOUS!
<Sardius> *gasp* She's in TROUBLE!

All right, just writing about Cliff Hanger has gotten me all excited about it all over again.  It just sucks that it was never ported to a home system.  And the worst part is that it's emulated, but I have no practical way of obtaining the required laserdisc image, which is more than one gigabyte in size.  And I'll be damned if I'm ever going to try downloading anything from Mamefans ever again.  So, look, I want to make a deal with you, my dear readers.  If one of you can somehow hook me up with a copy of Cliff Hanger's laserdisc image - one that's playable under Daphne - I would...well, I dunno.  I'd be pretty much willing to do anything for you, I guess.  Yes, anything.  I want this thing bad.  Real bad.  So please, please, someone please get me the mpeg Cliff Hanger laserdisc video image.  I'll love you forever if you do.  Thanks.

Back to the story.

So after spending several joyful minutes playing Cliff Hanger, I decided to move on to the last grouping of arcade machines at the show.  Pleh:

And for once, I can somewhat clearly make out what they are without cheating by looking at someone else's pictures.  From left to right: Klax, Blasteroids, Dragon's Lair, and Space Ace.  One of these games is totally awesome - see if you can guess which one.

...

That's right, it's the fantastic Asteroids remake, Blasteroids.  Ten points to you if you properly recognized its awesomeness.  No points if you guessed wrong.  Negative infinity points if you said Dragon's Lair.

Here's a closer shot of the weaker two games of the group.  Check out that dude in the shadows watching that other dude play Dragon's Lair.  You can't really tell in the picture, but he has this massive white scraggly beard protruding from his chin.  And yes, he's also another member of the fat guys in shorts militia.  I think he's the group's grand wizard, since the bottom of his shirt doesn't even touch his body.

Anyway, a quick play confirms our assumptions.

<Spinner_8> You know what's a shitty game?
<Spinner_8> Dragon's Lair.
<Spinner_8> I mean...it's like...
<Sardius> ...it sucks balls?
<Spinner_8> Yeah, exactly.

Unlike its home ports which have at least some kind of sense of structure and design, the arcade version of Dragon's Lair is just a bunch of random, unrelated animation scenes thrown at you in a fashion that's impossible to adjust or react to.  A typical game goes like this:

- Game starts.
- Two seconds later, with no chance to react, you're dead.
- Next life.
- "What the fuck, a different animation scene? This is bullshit!"
- Two seconds later, with no chance to react, you're dead.
- Next life.
- "Fuck this shit, I'm going to play a real game."

All it does is make me crave more Cliff Hanger, whose embrace I quickly and tearfully reach for after experiencing the horror of Dragon's Lair.  Ahhhh, that's better.  Cliffy, buddy, we're going to be good pals, you and me.

Oh, by the way, Klax is cool, and Space Ace blows.  Thank you.

Man, I can't believe that I'm going to have the chance to meet the people responsible for Dragon's Lair soon.  Jeez.  I mean, creating an abomination like Dragon's Lair is one thing, but knowing that they also started an entire genre of shitty non-games just like it is something I may not be able to restrain my homicidal urges over.  Well, wait, I guess that Cliff Hanger might have never been made if it weren't for Dragon's Lair, so I guess they were at least indirectly responsible for something that isn't totally shitty.

Okay, so we've now explored all the games at the show.  I guess we can leave now.

...wait, we have to sit through this thing for several more hours?  And then do it again tomorrow?  Aw MAN.

->On to Part 10
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