Thursday, March 28, 2013

Spring is Springing (I Hope)

The birds are singing. The snow is melting. I hope this post doesn't jinx it.

After a winter of staying inside, I'm eager to get back out and enjoy activities like walks and disc golf. Sure, it's fun to stay inside crouched over a keyboard to get your wizard that epic staff he's been questing the past four months for, but the palest of magi needs to get some sun sometime.

I'm partnering with my wife in a blogging quest. We would both like to put our thoughts out there so they're not bottled up until they fizzle out. I'm rebranding this into a more casual blog because I think that it will make it more fun to write and to read. I'd really like to find a better background though.

A really rad (yes, I used that retro term on purpose) trip I had this past weekend as going to the Midwest Gaming Classic. It's a convention that's packed with all of the gaming one could dream of. From pinball to pacman to pokemon - if there's a gaming platform you can think of, it was probably there. The event was so epic that it consumed a hallway of rooms of the Sheraton hotel the event was hosted at. My favorite room was the "80s" room which was dark and had some laser lights with 80s rock pumping through it. The best part of the room wasn't the atmosphere though; it was the collection of old computers and consoles that were set up throughout the room. You could walk right up to a Commodore, an IBM or even a NeXT cube and try it out. My favorite was a portable Commodore that was playing a Star Trek game, which looked like this:


Playing with so many machines of the past gave me a craving to have one of my own. It's something to add to my man-cave wish list along with the arcade machine I want to build. *sigh*

It was also cool to talk with Hughes of The Retro League and others affiliated with the show in person. It was a reminder that there are others out there who share the same niche as you and would love to celebrate it.

I would definitely go back next year but I wish the Twin Cities had something similar to offer so I didn't have to stare at highway for six hours each way. Anyone want to kick-start the TC Gaming Classic?