Portland Retro Gaming Expo

What a fantastic weekend at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo.  I knew I would have an incredible time, and the reality was even better than my expectations.  If you've browsed my youtube channel, you've not only seen the Armed For Battle videos, but have also seen videos of my personal achievements in Tetris.  I had a few good reasons to go to PRGE - promoting Armed For Battle, competing in the Classic Tetris World Championships, meeting the producer of my game - Paul from Infinite NES Lives, meeting some of the other Tetris masters from Tetris Concept, some of which star in the documentary, Ecstasy of Order.

I was very happy to meet Paul and his family.  He had a demo running for Armed For Battle, as well as the other games that were being sold at his booth, Nomolos and Nighttime Bastards.

Throughout the weekend, I hung out with the Tetris crowd - house parties, local restaurants, a pool hall, playing some tetris, cards against humanity, and just chillin.  It was like a continuous party from Friday through Sunday, and it was a fabulous group of people to hang out with.  I knew a few of the faces from the Midwest Gaming Classic convention, and the brand new faces felt like old friends.

 

As far as the tournament, I was a bit concerned that I might hit a slump during the qualifying round, and fail to make it into 32 person bracket, but I did end up with a decent 634,000, giving me the 20th seed.  This year, the qualifying scores were way above those from previous years.

 

My very first round on Sunday put me against Jake.  Jake happened to be one of the people I had established an immediate friendship with over the course of the weekend.  When I lost to him, he showed incredible compassion and sportsmanship - such a good guy.  Scoping out the part of the bracket I was in, even if I would have lucked out against Jake, I would have faced dominant player after dominant player.  The level of competition in the entire bracket was insane.  There are videos if you would like to see some of the epic battles that took place in the bracket.

In some promotional efforts for AfB, and also for promoting NES homebrew in general, I gave out a few copies of Armed For Battle, and hope to see the results in some future youtube videos.  I'll keep you posted.  Speaking of homebrew, another very cool thing to me was meeting bunnyboy at the NintendoAge booth.  I wasn't sure if I'd ever get the chance to meet him in person, but lucky for me, he was there.  Two things you should know about him, if you didn't already - 1) he made the tutorials that were essential to me when learning how to program for the NES and 2) he is currently making an HDMI NES system, which looked fantastic at PRGE.

To round out Sunday, I watched a number of matches in the Tetris tournament, got in some last minute expo shopping, then went for dinner and attended one last party.



 

I had a late night flight, which departed at 11:30pm.  I few hours later, I snapped this quick shot while descending into Chicago for my layover.