For the length of... one year, retro game fans across the area have been waiting patiently for the triumphant return of the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo at the Cradle of Aviation. As it is currently the only game convention among the lineup of main events I attend yearly, I was quite eagerly excited myself, so much so that I decided to attend not one, but two days worth of the event. While traditionally a two-day event in the 2010’s, a third day was added for the expo’s return in 2022, featuring shorter hours and a limited number of activities on Friday. For 2023, Friday was expanded into a full proper Day 1 for the event, albeit only with afternoon hours from 4 to 10 PM.
The event kept the same presentation with a few small additions, changes, and expansions taking place across the expo’s three floors. Entering the convention, attendees are placed in the middle of the vendor’s area, which expands out into the back next to the cafeteria. Here, one can purchase game consoles and their associated games, along with gaming-themed merchandise of both official and homemade varieties. There were a few artists present, but as the event has historically favored vendors over artists, the amount of the latter can be counted on a single hand. As much as I like artist alleys and cute the lack of one as one of LIRetro’s missteps, the venue clearly isn’t big enough to have all the vendors it wants to have alongside a full, feature-rich artist alley. That, and Long Island has no shortage of events with healthy and thriving artist alleys, considering the likes of CradleCon and EternalCon. The vendors were open from the start of each day till 7, and everything would be covered in tarp and closed up.
The various consoles, arcade games, and computer games all returned, and were available for all of each day until closing time. The console timeline exhibit on the second floor got a few new machines, most notably the Wii U at the very end as the only machine of the 2010’s. I’m certain the 3DS would have joined it if they could secure a good unit to demo live, and by next year the base PS4 and original Xbox One will be 10 years old, giving them a fair shot at becoming the tail end the timeline as well. The selection of console games to play outside of the timeline exhibit was pretty strong, bigger than last year’s even, and this time the games were put into themed categories (i.e. platformer games, fighting games, racing games, and… art games) complete with standees describing each game and its history. Even a few Game Boys with Game Boy Cameras/Printers set up, letting attendees take selfies in 4-color greyscale monochrome and print them out on the accompanying printers. The arcade machines were, once again, spread into two different arcades on two different floors. The first floor arcade was mostly 90’s and some 2000’s titles set up into candy cabinets, mainly one-on-one fighting games and SHMUPs, though there were also a small collection of modern rhythm games set up and a few pinball machines were lined up for people to play (sadly only six, but what can you do when they’re kind of hard to transport and take up a lot of space). The second floor’s arcade didn’t change much from last year and featured the same focus towards earlier arcade titles, including the legendary Computer Space, but still had a very solid lineup of machines. Not all of the arcade games in this part of the venue were in the best condition—some of the monitors didn’t look all that great for example, but they were all CRT’s and modified to support free play through a button placed somewhere on the machine. And finally, all the way up on the third floor was a whole area dedicated to the history of Tetris, with many variants that were released over the 80’s and 90’s being open for all to experience.
For the rest of the free play areas, the classic PC gaming section returned, once again including some of the most notable PC and DOS titles of the 90’s and early 2000’s for people to play on. There was a free-play PC set up to house a collection of Windows games, letting one experience the look of a Windows 98 desktop and play games that weren’t able to get their own stations in the section. And for those that wanted to experience multiplayer games over good-old LAN, attendees could play nine-player Quake III Arena or OG Unreal Tournament all at the same time. It was a great lineup, perfect for anyone that grew up with consoles to see what people were experiencing on computers, considering retro gaming these days is usually more closely routed with consoles than computers. There was even a PC set up and decorated with Barbie Fashion Designer; obviously a tie in with the Barbie film that recently hit theaters a few weeks prior but it was a great look into one of the most significant and memorable pieces of software released for computers. Opposite of the PC freeplay section was the return of the Museum, a section housing rare and “exotic” consoles and computers. This year, many more machines joined the Museum, some with a rotating selection of games (like the Sharp X68k and the Commodore Amiga, which both swapped out games every half-hour). Many through not all of the machines also included their own standees going into the background history of all these different machines not commonly seen in the current era, or in the USA for that matter. One of the new rooms the Museum expanded into was sort of empty, but when you only have so many computers available to demo in a public space, you’ll understandably run out machines. As someone that always likes seeing the odd and obscure of the video game landscape, the Museum was a treat, and I’m looking forward to see it get bigger and better in the next few years.
So now that I gave you all a run down of the layout and some of the things you can experience at the event, let’s discuss the various activities of Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. Like any good convention, there were panels and guests all over the conventions, spread out into two panel rooms and some booths in the vendors respectively. I was only able to attend one, and the other panel I wanted to attend was sadly timed out in a way that I would miss something I singed up for—more on that later. Music performances once again occurred on the second floor next to the timeline exhibit, and thankfully they never accumulated any large oversized crowds of spectators clogging the area, even towards Saturday night when most of the rest of the event was closed up for the night and the third and final music guest performed at 8PM. It was still kind of loud, but the audio wasn’t blasting across the main area of the expo as it did in years prior. The indie gaming section returned, offering up free demos of indie titles as well as boxed copies of both modern and retro consoles. The NES Maker booth also returned, and new to the convention was Opcode, a group dedicated to keeping Coleco’s ColecoVision console alive through new hardware that expands its memory and lets it play new aftermarket games and arcade ports. I would have purchased one, but my ColecoVision is currently on standby for various reasons. Back down near the museum, there was the “Pokélab” (Pocket Lab), where if you brought an old-generation Pokémon title to the Expo, you could acquire various old and long-gone event Pokémon from past distributions up to the end of Generation V. It wasn’t every event distribution up to that point, and I didn’t feel like digging out my old carts, but if you have an old Pokemon game and missed these event distributions back then, this would be a good opportunity to acquire them again. That said the only thing that felt like it was missing from the Pokélab was a Celebi distribution for the Generation II games. With most of the other games covered, I’m surprised that was left out, but maybe there was no time to get one prepped and ready for the event?
Now where was I? Oh right, competitions. Like last year, many classic games were part of tournaments or other competitions. A slew of classic and modern fighting game brackets were held on the same grounds as the main first-floor freeplay area, along with a few other competitive multiplayer games that weren’t all head-to-head brawlers. Racing games, sports games, and even some puzzle and rhythm games had full tournaments ran. And to ensure even the younger attendees could get in on the competitive fun, various “Kid’s Tournaments” were held. Numerous High Score challenges were held for various other classic games that did not feature direct head-to-head gameplay; players were free to enter as they wish and try to go for the best score or time on a particular retro title, taking turns with other contestants to grind out for the best score possible. For me, one of the standout attractions for the competitive-minded was the EON Gaming section, including full 16-player LAN lobbies for Halo 2 and Mario Kart: Double Dash. While the PC LAN games in the PC game section let players drop in and out freely, players were required to sign up on a list for these, and were then assigned stations and put into teams if they didn’t have a squad lined up. Since I wanted to try my hand at 16-player Mario Kart, I signed up and got accepted into the very last shift of the day at 6:30 PM. With me as the driver and my teammate as the one throwing items and assisting with drifting, I channeled forth my skills at kart racing and led us to victory, scoring the most points out of every participant and getting to pose with the gold trophy. I didn’t get to keep the trophy, but it was nice to win at another competition at LIRetro, even if I didn’t necessarily aim to win, just place good overall and enjoy the experience since I won’t have another chance to play a massive 16-player session of Double Dash until next year.
And with that, that’s pretty much how Long Island Retro Gaming Expo 2023 went. I met lots of new people, played and learned about some new games to check out in my free time, and came home with a big smile on my face and a huge desire to come back the following year. LIRetro 2023 sits comfortably aside Castle Point Anime Expo as part of my top 2 favorite events of the year, and after the following week’s Long Island Tropic Con, it’s safe to say that I can finally take a well-deserved rest until October and enjoy all of what’s left of the summer season. In terms of what could be improved, there isn’t really much I’d say needs improving besides what comes up first in my mind: More games in the arcade and freeplay areas (mainly to fill in some empty spots in the venue, especially in the PC Freeplay and Museum sections), more vendors with maybe a small artist’s alley somewhere in the building if enough artists were to sign up, and maybe for Saturday, an evening panel or two for those attending the convention towards the end of the day. These are all very minor points and even if the game section only changed a small bit, I would still come back the following year for the premiere retro-gaming event of the
area.
And it looks like I’ve finally ran out of stuff to say about LIRetro 2023. Sorry that activity outside of these event coverages has been light and dry around social media and such; on top of wanting to enjoy the summer until it becomes too cold out, I’ve been going through some rough times and an internal re-structuring of sorts and figuring out what projects to make a priority, along with finishing up what I already started and steadily develop the world (and theoretical video games) of Aozora’s Adventure and the big cast of characters that inhabit it. I’ll likely make a follow up post sometime soon in September or October going into greater detail for my plans for the rest of 2023 and going into 2024. Until then, I’ll be taking a well-deserved hero’s rest until I re-awaken for New York Comic Con this October.
