AH contributor Aaron Auzins recently had the chance to attend the VGXPO in Philadelphia and here he discusses what kind of attention arcades got at the show.
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“The previous weekend featured the annual Video Game eXPO (VGXPO) show in Philadelphia, marking the fifth straight year the consumer-based gaming culture show has been held. While the show featured a few publishers of new titles such as Nintendo and Storm City Games, one of the bigger attractions of the show, which is now a staple of the event, was the Retrocon section, filled with classic gaming vendors. Parked off to the side of the section was a full classic arcade set on free play for gamers to play at their leisure.
The arcade was a healthy mix of genres, release dates and stand-up versus deluxe cabinets, featuring some pretty noticeable names. Players could see names such as Crazy Climber, Robotron and Scramble, mingle with a four-player Warlords table, enjoy some mid-’90s classics such as Primal Rage, partake in some obscurities such as Atari’s Hydra and SNK’s Beast Busters or take a seat in some of the more modern deluxe cabs such as Smashing Drive, Star Wars Pod Racing and Tokyo
Wars.
It was great to see the arcade be featured as one of the more popular parts of the show, which had some other great features and guests lined up. It goes to show that arcades can still successfully be a part of gaming events and we’re looking forward to seeing if VGXPO and the classic arcade will come back for another year. Given some online accounts of the show, one could maybe gather the classic section was the true highlight of the show, but that just speaks well of how
classic games can stand the test of time.”
More pics after the post break
god I used to love playing smashing drive when first released. I wish gaelco would start making arcade games again like they used to. the last game they made was tuning car championship racing which was a bit of a flop and it was to be honest not their best efforts. all they focus on is their dart game radical darts