We broke our fasts at the Cottage Café before heading out to Oconomowoc on Saturday morning. It was a pleasant drive and we made good time. Pulling into the Olympia, we saw the ski hill towering over the resort. This hill having been made of garbage. The parking lot was fairly full and we spied license plates from Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, and, of course, Wisconsin. Entering the lobby, we spied dorky looking folk everywhere. There were pimple-faced teenagers as well as the middle-aged. There were a handful of conference rooms commandeered for the occasion and one of the hallways was setup for seminars. Topics included the resurrection of MicroProse and how to keep your pinball machines in top notch shape.
Speaking of pinball, that was one of the major draws for Charles and myself and we found the first room we entered to be aglow with their comforting LEDs amidst the roar of bumpers and sound effects. We got in some quality time with a White Water machine as we reminisced about the long-lost arcade at the now defunct University Square Mall.
In addition to more pinball machines, the far side of the room was dedicated to tournament play. Here are the trophies which would be awarded on Sunday.
Although I don't have a photo, there was also a table setup on behalf of the legendary Billy Mitchell which had books chronicling the highest video game scores for sale as well as hot sauce. Unbeknownst to me, Mitchell holds the world record for the highest score in Donkey Kong. Charles, however, was well aware of this which speaks volumes. (In my opinion, anyway.) Mitchell also has record scores in Pac-Man and, of all games, Burgertime.
Adjacent rooms held the Classic Gaming and Computing Museum. If seeing early 90s pinball games brought back good memories from college, then the museum made me feel positively dated. The earliest machines there were the simple Pong consoles.
There were also Atari 2600s and various incarnations of the Magnavox Odyssey that I remembered very well. Other highlights were the ColecoVision, which a good friend of mine had back in 1985 or so, and the Apple IIc. Unfortunately, there was no Intellivision, which was the system my parents had bought my brother and me. At least there was an Aquarius, which was a really bad attempt at a PC by Mattel, makers of Intellivision. At least it had Astrosmash available.
Truth be known, I have an Intellivision emulator on my PC which I fire up for an occasional game of Astrosmash. I don't want to sound more Plimptony than George Plimpton himself, but the Intellivision kicked Atari's ass! Its controller had a disc which replaced the joystick, buttons on the side, and a numeric keypad. You'd slide an overlay on top of the keypad which delineated the functions of the buttons. The sports games were great and, having a father who read everything he could on World War II, my brother and I also played Armor Battle and Sea Battle quite a bit. Another favorite of mine was Utopia which was a bit like Civilization. The players had to develop an island – grow food, build hospitals & schools, and develop a fleet of fishing boats which would need protection from pirates. And there were hurricanes which would come along and destroy your work.
There was also some space devoted to Commodore computers. My first computer was a Commodore 64. Here's a shot of the C64c, a later revision.
The black hoolie extending out of the back is a custom memory expansion module of 2GB. Yes, I have a Commodore 64 emulator for my PC as well. I had lots and lots of games for the C64. They came on floppies which meant pirated software was easy to come by in contrast to game consoles. And, being a computer, games for the C64 could be more involved than those for my beloved Intellivision. RPGs were more than shoot-em-ups as The Bard's Tale proved. You actually had stats! Sports games were a hoot as well on the 64. Accolade was a leader with Hardball and 4th and Inches. Friends and I spent hours playing them.
I also recall very well getting a copy of Strip Poker. Even with what is now considered limited graphics capabilities, those representations of nekkid chicks in 16 glorious colors were good enough for a 12 year old.
I also played lots of text adventures such as those from Infocom like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Zork, and Planetfall. (What is a grue?) And while I could go on forever in this vein, I will mention one last game - Portal. Your character is an astronaut who returns to earth after a long mission only to find the earth abandoned. There's not a soul about. All you have is access to a massive planet-wide computer system named Homer. The player has to access various databases and gather information to figure out why humanity seeming disappeared in a poof from its home planet. I know it probably sounds boring to you but I loved piecing the clues together. It was like LOST spread over 6-8 floppy disks. No doubt it would also probably sound boring to these folks:
I don' t mean to rake on these kids. I'm sure if I were their age, I'd be huddled around the Xbox360 as well. The contrast between the graphics of the early Pong consoles and the latest and greatest is quite astounding. They don't know what they're missing.
Down the hall in another large conference room vendors had their tables setup and one corner featured pinball machines and arcade games for sale which you could play. There were several vendors selling spare parts. Track balls, buttons, and lots of doohickies for pinball machines such as these..
I kept thinking that there's a quirky documentary just waiting to happen which profiles people who maintain 40 year old pinball machines and true geeks who, with soldering iron in hand, give Commodore 64s 2GB of RAM and keep them humming along.
Any Commodore enthusiasts in the area might be interested to know that the Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention will be held this autumn in Lombard, Illinois.
Charles and I were disappointed at the paucity of arcade games. While we appreciated the selection of pinball machines, there were only a handful of old stalwarts like Centipede. I was hoping for Missile Command, amongst others. Still, we had fun shooting centipede segments which turned into psychedelic mushrooms. It took me a couple games but I eventually got my groove back and took second highest score.
I think we spent 3-4 hours there. Seeing old computers & games was a fond trip down memory lane. Plus playing pinball was a blast. But it was also disappointing in that we had hoped for more arcade games and I figured that there would be more contemporary gaming consoles scattered about. I was also disappointed that none of the seminars appealed to me. Not being a hardcore video gamer, I was hoping there'd be something aimed at folks like me, talks which were more general instead of appealing to a particular niche.
Still, I walked out the doors with a souvenir – a copy of Sea Battle for the Intellivision still in the box.
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