I finally got a little time to write, so I’m posting the summary for the Underdog Chamber 2008, which ran at the Midwest Gaming Classic on March 29th and 30th. I will cover each system that was on display, with a ranking of popularity and comments from myself.
Note: Ranks again are represented by the Green bars. Longer equals more popular, simple as that. Unlike last year though, the ranking are based on loose observation, as I got tired of being more attendant to what people were playing this year.
Unlike last year, I’m lumping the ranks into one, rather than ‘play’ vs. ‘casual’ interest. Not as detailed, but it took less time for me to observe this, and I was too busy this year to care otherwise.
Summary of system rankings for the UC ’08:
Apple Macintosh LAN running Quake
Atari 5200
Gamecube
Intellivision
Odyssey2
Vectrex
Apple Macintosh LAN – For 2008, I had seven classic Macintosh computers running Quake, which celebrated its 11th year on the Mac (Quake was released for the Mac in 1997). As expected, the Quake LAN did remarkable well, and got lots of use during the entire show. There seemed to be a better mixture of people playing this year, as I didn’t get too many complaints about other players being too good at the game. We (Erica, Greg and myself) let the game play itself more this year, realizing that once it is running, people can just come in and out of the game, and that it restarts sessions on its own. There were a few more OS 9 crashes this year, and one full LAN crash, but besides those minor speed bumps, it went rather well. Only sad thing is that I’m not bringing Quake back for 2009! I want a different game for the next two years, possible still Hexen II (based off the Quake II game engine). Plus I will probably bump up the LAN to eight Macs next year!
Atari 5200 – This was the first year I had the Atari 5200 in the UC area. It did fairly well, but not as good as I expected. Part of the issue was people messing with the multi-cart, and partly due to the lack of good working controllers. This made what I had setup harder to deal with, as you basically needed two controllers to start and then play the games. I tried pushing trackball games, but most people were not interested in those. One guy on Sunday really got a kick out of 5200 Kaboom!, which seemed to be the highlight of his weekend (and I was more than happy providing the experience for him). I may bring back the 5200 for 2009, but only if I can get some JAMMA made for this system, with some help from Marty!
Gamecube- For once, I finally put a much more modern underdog system into the UC display. I got enough comments about why it was there, but those folks just don’t understand that the Gamecube is truly an underdog, like it or not. It was in third place during its time, and that is and underdog! I was fully planning on running a variety of games on the Gamecube, but I ended up running Burnout 2 all day Saturday, and FX Zero on Sunday, and this was more than enough for people coming into the Underdog area. The Cube was by far the favorite console system for 2008, and it will return again next year.
Intellivision – America’s first 16-bit video game system returned once again to the UC area for 2008. It received a good amount of play this year, but not as much as it did last year. People seemed put off by the numeric keypad and getting games started. I guess the people at the show where more new people this year than last, as that seemed to be the issue. I may pull this system out for a year, as I’ve had it in the UC show since 2006. Again, thanks for the Cuttle Cart 3 for letting people play whatever game they wanted to.
Odyssey2 – Unlike last year, the Odyssey2 did not receive the kind of attention I would have hoped for in 2008. Yes, it got some decent play time, but it sat idle a little too often. The one good thing this year was that there were at least 1/2 dozen people that sat down and wanted to talk about the Odyssey 2 in general, and this is a rare thing for this true underdog system from the late 70′s and early 80′s. This alone made it worth it to continue to bring my favorite underdog system to the show, as I will every year!
Vectrex – I took the Vectrex out of the show last year, because it did not do well at all in 2006. This year was much different though, and the Vectrex received a good amount of attention from show goers. Many people were interesting in playing with this unique system, plus there where many fans of the old system. I even learned that the Vecflash is finally for sale on the net, a cartridge that allows you to download games into it, similar to Ssan’s multicart, but you put in it what you want (up to a certain limit). Plus it is menu driven, and doesn’t have to be turned off to switch games. I will probably have this at next years show, as soon as I can get ahold of one (currently out of stock). In all, a good year for the Vectrex in the UC ’08 showcase!
That is is for my UC ’08 summary. The show was lots of work, but lots of fun as well. Thoughts of the 2009 show are already in my head, even before I’ve finished unpacking from the ’08 show!
And, as usual, a big THANK YOU to Erica and Greg for their help with running the Underdog Chamber. I could not do this without their help, simple as that!