Wow, another massive day. It was way less stressful than Day 1 of the expo, but still madness nonetheless. Last minute calls at midnight last night to solve a staffing issue and hit jackpot with having my friend Hamish come to help out the second half of the day while our other temp staffer for Armageddon Chris, went off to play in a Magic Tournament. None of this is his fault, I honestly thought it woudn’t be so busy at our stand so didn’t bother getting a 2nd person on till the very last minute before I went to bed. Biggups to Hamish, you did yourself good.

Today was very much a day for meeting people. Plenty of conversations had and people pointed not only to here, but various stores that sell retro games (one guess where They are in Petone…also pointed to Cash Converters). Met a few people from England/British Isles who remember owning the never released in NZ, SNES Super Scope.

Gallery, day2 roundup and a video with a special interviewee at the con after the jump

The day opened with the under the radar hit for PSX, Omega Boost and a Super Gameboy for the SNES loaded with Donkey Kong, Mario Land 1 and Earthworm Jim with people playing in less than 5 minutes after the doors opened.

Following that Wip3out was given a good thrashing on TV1 and continues Super Gameboy madness till the Super Scope was broken out for a few hours.

Starcraft64 failed to draw anyone in but me and Chris, with its overly complex controls. Something I have learned from the first RetroactiveNZ Armageddon stand is the need for games which are “pick up and play”. No majorly complex control schemes, and pick games people remember, or would be easy for them to play. With the amount of visitors there are who wish to try things out you should keep things as simple as possible to get the maximum fun out of each game.

Sonic was eventually the game of the day on the first TV, with expo attendee Tom G. (otherwise known as Impish at the Sonic Retro forum) taking it upon himself to play through the entire game of Sonic 3 (with Sonic and Knuckles) over the space of 3 hours with Hamish as Tails, clearing all the levels but deciding to not go the whole (hedge)hog and grab all the chaos emeralds on the way. With this he scored himself a $25 Overworld voucher, which is pittance for the amount of effort put in on his part. Short interview in the video at the bottom.

We saw more crashes on the N64 (which you could have probably cooked an egg on by the end) and thankfully none during Tom’s epic Sonic 3 run through on the Megadrive, the SNES was surprisingly fine and my Super Scope is in one piece! Over the course of the day Mario 1, Alex Kidd and Sonic 3 were completed start to finish by several people.

Mega thanks for the people on either side of our booth for putting up with loud 8 bit music, guns and people of all ages raging at old games and consoles for the past two days as well as tomorrow!

http://www.corysaur.blogspot.com

http://www.tommonster.com

http://www.stacey-robson.blogspot.com

http://used-bandaid.deviantart.com/

Check their stuff out, it’s totally awesome! Also Dinosaurs.

Tomorrow we don’t have a plan for the timetable. I’ve given up on them for this con. Let people play what they want, when they want. Which so far seems to be Mario Kart, Alex Kidd, Street Fighter 2 and Sonic with bouts of Perfect Dark and Goldeneye thrown in for good measure. Who am I to complain they are all brilliant games!