Computer show to feature old school gaming
By Charles Cassady
Insights
Published May 23, 2007

This Saturday, you can parity-check like it’s 1989 — at the Classic Computer and Game Show, in Fairview Park.

We all know about vintage and classic car cruise-ins and automobile swap meets. Now imagine a similar dealer market and collectors-club display devoted to data-information and recreation, a brave old world of “retro-computing” and vintage video games. That would describe the CCAG Show, plugging in this year at the American Legion Hall Clifton Post, at 22001 Brookpark Road.

For those of you with a fondness for vintage electronic gadgets and hanging around video arcades and Radio Shack while growing up instead of doing homework, the names here will evoke a warm glow of nostalgia (or is that just the mighty four-color CGA monitors?). Names like the Texas Instruments TI-99. The Commodore 64, 128 and Amiga computers and game cartridges. Colecovision and Intellivision. Atari in profusion, not just the 2600 game-console units, but also the Atari XL and ST desktop PCs. Timex Sinclair, famously purchased in “American Splendor” by Harvey Pekar’s nerd friend Toby Radloff using mail-in boxtops. The Sega Master System and the offbeat Vectrex, both of which came out with 3-D hardware and software.

Not to mention “Pong” and “Odyssey.” Remember those?

Guests of the CCAG show remember. They include ACE, the Atari Computer Enthusiasts of Columbus. There will be specialists in re-engineering joystick and input devices – even new game software – for older systems. Reps from GameRoom and RetroBlast! Magazine are scheduled, as well as aficionados of classic pinball.

Vintage computer and gaming shows take place across the country now, and some visitors will be arriving from out of state, said Mike Gedeon. His commute is far less arduous. Gedeon runs the Video Game Connection store, headquartered at 4824 Memphis Ave. in Old Brooklyn, and he will also maintain a dealer display, as he has at every CCAG Show since they began in 2000.

“The Old Brooklyn store I’ve had for, like, 14 years,” said Gedeon. “We get a lot of old retro stuff there.”

While the CCAG Show welcomes computing devices, like the Apple IIe (like the Model T Ford, once the most widely-used of its type in the country, now rare to see up and running), Mike Gedeon’s Video Game Connection traffics in gaming  only.

“I do Atari 2600, Colecovision, Playstation 2, 3, Game Boy…up to Xbox,” said Gedeon. His store also stocks the occasional full-sized, quarter-devouring arcade-game unit from time to time.

While there are national chains of video game-swapping and resale shops in most every mall, riding the popularity of “Halo” and John Madden Football and the latest movie tie-ins, these emporia typically have zero interest in older systems and the “orphan” games and consoles no longer in production. Not so with Mike Gedeon. “Retro games are definitely on the grow. They’ve been on the grow for some time. And they’ll keep growing.”

Customers include not only grownups seeking to recapture a childhood spent on “Legend of Zelda,” “Space Invaders,” “Pole Position” or “Pitfall,” but also “a new generation of kids” who enjoy games older than they are. Games from the days when “Pac Man” first roamed the Earth, enormous jagged pixels and all.

“Even though the graphics are pretty basic, kids know it’s not how a game looks,” said Gedeon. “It’s how it plays.”

Gedeon couldn’t name his single favorite game (“There’s so many…I’ll play anything”), but he did ID the most exotic find that came through the doors of the Video Game Connection. “It would definitely be a rare prototype of an Atari 2600 game called ‘Polo.’” An eight-bit simulation of the game of polo - with the horses and the balls and everything – ‘Polo’ was conceived as tie-in promo with the Ralph Lauren cologne of the same name. Very few of those limited-edition cartridges found their way into game-players’ hands, and they now command vast sums on the collector’s market.

It won’t cost you vast sums to attend the Classic Computer and Game Show. Admission has always been free to the public, and you’re welcome to bring your own gear to sell or appraise. Chinese auction prizes include a full-sized “Pirates of the Caribbean” pinball machine and a rare, newly-coded game cartridge that allows you to play Sudoku on your old Nintendo Entertainment System.

The hours at the American Legion Hall in Fairview Park are from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on May 26. For more information, go online to www.ccagshow.com.

Mike Gedeon’s Video Game Connection in Old Brooklyn, meanwhile, is open seven days a week, Monday through Friday from noon to 8 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. Call the store at (216) 741-7005 or check out its Web site at www.videogameconnection.com.