Last Friday I drove up to Västerås to attend Retro Gathering on Saturday, my favorite Retro Game convention in Sweden ^_^ Retrospelsmässan is also really nice, but as a retro game buyer there’s just more variation at Retro Gathering :) You can find everything from vintage computers, Atari and Commodore to newer PS2 and 3DS games. There have been more newer games lately compared to the first couple of years that I started attending, I hope they don’t take over though, because I love that there’s a place I can go to find these old obscure computers and consoles! I mainly focus on old cartridges and cassettes when I’m at Retro Gathering. Nintendo and Sega I can find at all the other retro game conventions in Sweden anyway.

So this year I was also asked to host an exhibit of my Castlevania collection, so I was there an hour earlier to set it up. People seemed to like it, but there were also a lot of visitors that asked me where it was. My cabinet had been hidden behind a roll-up behind the scene where they hosted the competitions, which was a shame… but people who looked found it anyway :) For those that missed it, this is what it looked like:

Castlevania Collection

Castlevania Collection

Castlevania Collection

Castlevania Collection

Castlevania Collection

The first thing I spotted was a boxed Colecovision that Japon was selling. I snagged it right away, with a bunch of games and a steering wheel controller ^_^ Pontus and Jan at Japon are really nice and gave me a good deal on it :)

Pontus at Japon

I love visiting Zeela’s table, it’s always filled with obscure and colorful things :) He also had a really fun rarity, Softporn Adventure by On-Line systems! On-Line systems later became Sierra, and on the picture of the “sexy” cover are executives and writers from the company, to the right is Roberta Williams, famous video game designer, writer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line who created for example the King’s Quest series :) This is the game that later became Leisure Suit Larry. Such a cool piece of history! I would have bought it if it wasn’t so expensive XD Also I’m not that into text-based adventures… ;D

Softporn Adventures – On-Line Systems

Softporn Adventures – On-Line Systems

Apart from this he showed me the TRS-80, a computer that I had bought from him a while back that I got delivered here ^_^ I needed one to play my Tandy Tetris game! It’s apparently some kind of Tandy computer.. It was in really nice condition though ^_^ Original box, and I got both a boxed joystick and a big box full of games with it! :D

Ready to hook up!

Tandy TRS-80

Tandy games

Boxed Tandy games

He also had a bunch of other cool stuff ^_^ Like Strip Poker and Centrefold Squares for Atari ST, I bought these for a friend who had been looking all over the place for Atari ST games XD He AND his girlfriend were thrilled and couldn’t wait to play it!! Haha!

Gakken TV-Boy

Zeela’s table

First laptop from Ericsson ///

Bentley Compuvision

Deluxe Strip Poker back

Deluxe Strip Poker

GX4000 – Amstrad home console

Centrefold Squares

Centrefold Squares back

M5 CGL Home computer

There were so many games for sale, and retro game related stuff ^_^ Spel & Sånt had brought some Virtual Boy rarities, they had the three games that I am missing! But they were darn expensive >_< Another seller had setup Zelda on CDi for whoever wanted to try it out XD The creators of Alwa’s Awakening were also there displaying their game which is almost done now, it will be released on Steam :)

Coleco Vision and Vectrex

Retro Game arts

Famicom

Games for sale

Atari 2600

Game Boy

NES

Virtual Boy gems

Sega Master System

Cheap retro games

Games for sale

So much Batman!

Zelda on CDI on display for whoever wants to try it

Cartridges for sale

Games for sale

Games for sale

Alwa’s Awakening

Jumpman Junior

My friends Nathalie and Andreas from up north were also there, and they were selling some of their games. Nathalie tried to sell me a weird DS game, and Andreas wanted me to upgrade my version of Tetris 2 to a mint copy XD I did end up buying Paperboy 2 from them though ^_^ Andreas is a pixel-perfectionist and he had some upscaler connected on display with Super Mario Bro 3, I don’t like when the picture is perfect and the scanlines are too obvious ;P I prefer it the original way with an old CRT and a bit of a glitchy pic XD

Nathalie & Andreas

Good sales pitch by Nathalie ^_^

but no thanks XD

I already have this Tetris game XD

Super Mario Bros 3

Too much scanlines XD

I finally got around to buying the game Photon that has been under development and on display for years at these conventions ^_^ It’s still not finished, but I bought an early version of it :) I also got to talk a bit to the man behind it who told me a bit about the Sord and the community around it :) Apparently there was a club back in the day that released a magazine here in Sweden called “Sordisen”, he had a few issues for sale. He also showed me a few different versions of the system. I almost went and bought one from Zeela, but then again, I don’t have any games for it yet.. so I think it’ll have to wait.

Photon

Photon

Sord computer

Sordisen Magazine

Sord M5 Pro

Sord M5 Pro

Sord M5 Pro

I competed in the yearly Swedish Championships of Pong this year as well :) I won the first take out but lost to my second opponent.. I haven’t been practicing enough, or rather, I haven’t been practicing at all XD I need to get my husband to start playing it with me!! The champion can be seen in the video below, damn that’s an intense Pong game!

Swedish Championships of Pong

Pong championships

As usual they also had a bunch of games and systems set up so people could try them out :) I saw an Intellivision there which reminded me that a seller had promised me from the previous Retro Gathering to bring me one, when I found him though he had already sold it to someone else :((( Hopefully he can set me up with another one.. I have so many Intellivison games and no Intellivisions to play them on XD

Games set up to play

Commodore VIC-20

Commodore C64

Amiga

Coleco Vision

MSX

Texas Instruments

Atari 800

Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Videopac Computer G7000

Fairlight on ZX Spectrum

Crew setting up the games before opening

Intellivision

Colour Genie

Atari 1040 ST

Atari 2600 & NES

Vectrex

Amiga CD32

Sega Master System

Sega Mega Drive, SNES & N64

They also had some other exhibitors, one collection of Sonic games and one of Handic for the VIC 20 :)

Sonic Collection

Sonic Collection

Sonic Collection

Sonic Collection

Handic Collection

One of the best things about going to retro game conventions though is all the people! I met so many old and new friends, and people are so friendly :D

Söders Spel & Skivhandel

Matt8bit

Andreas

Spel & Sånt

Vira & friend

Retrospelsfestivalen

Retroplay

Anders and people :)

After the convention we went out and met up with a bunch of retro gamers, and we found Kralleman and PingeAhlin there who had missed the convention, but had been off on more exciting business! They had scored a bunch of old arcades and other rarities from a connection they had. I was lucky enough to get to go check out their loot :D They had gotten rare prototypes for the Videopac, old minty posters with ads for the Luxor computer, boxed Vectrexes, a Taito Space Invaders arcade cab and a Super Bug arcade with super mint manuals, a really old wooden arcade and an original Break Out arcade. The Break Out arcade had only been played on 64 times, which means it’s hardly been used more than factory testing. That’s pretty rad XD

Box of Videopac prototypes

Videopac prototypes 2-sided

Old luxor ad

Old luxor ad

Old luxor ad

Old luxor ad

Old luxor ad

Boxed Vectrexes

Taito Space Invaders arcade

Super Bug Arcade manual

Super old arcade

Old orange Break Out arcade from Atari

As you can probably figure, Retro Gathering has outdone themselves again and it was an awesome convention! I’ll go through my loot in a later post when I’ve gone through it all ;D