Festival of Games 2022 recap December 16, 2022

Posted by Mike C. in Animation, Aviation, Christmas, Game Shows, History, Internet, Media, Military, Personal, Photography, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.
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Last year’s Festival of Games (the first)

Last Saturday, the second annual Festival of Games was held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum along Museum Row in East Garden City. The so-far one-day spinoff of Long Island Retro Gaming Expo (read about the 2022 LI Retro here) was my latest chance to walk and snap photos in as many sections as possible. Then, back to the vendor halls to add video games to my multi-console, multi-generation collection.

Thanks to my past recaps, I have made friends with the organizers, volunteers, and a week before this Festival of Games, the museum’s director of marketing and community relations, Jerelyn Zontini. I’m honored to know them and to promote special events like this.

I did not think to check the Festival of Games website for this year’s schedule, so I missed out on the panels in the main stage (planetarium) and classes in the classroom, but I saw everything else on offer, and was surprised to meet legendary collector, YouTuber, and streamer Pete Dorr at his vending table. More on that later.

To photograph the event, I brought my Canon EOS R7 with RF-S 18-150mm lens and Speedlite 430EX III-RT. When writing about my initial experience with the mirrorless camera, I did not lower the resolution on test photos. Considering the camera’s higher native max resolution (6984×4660) with the same 3:2 aspect ratio as my previous camera, it made sense while editing Saturday’s photos to increase my default blog post/social media resolution. Thus, going forward, photos will be no lower than 2000 pixels vertically, stepping up from my max horizontal resolution of 2600 pixels.

Again planning on a two-hour stay, my mother dropped me off at 12:43 PM:

Once inside (and having my bag searched), I presented my e-ticket printout to a box office attendant who stamped my left hand.

A promotional banner for Cradle-Con:

Each section I walked through at Festival of Games has a dedicated photo gallery. We start with the vendor hall gallery:

The board game section:

In all the years I’ve been inside the Cradle of Aviation Museum, I never observed its exhibits. I rectified that after passing the board games section.

MY ANSWER: Most of them, thanks to my proximity to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The planes are either on final approach or just took off. I also see general aviation aircraft coming to or from Republic Airport in Farmingdale, which is even closer to my house.

Back to video games in the free play area:

Tournaments:

On to the second floor:

Of course, most of the arcade games were housed on the Air & Space hall sky walk:

I chose not to play any of the arcade games or free play console games. I just wanted to buy games, and where better to start than at Pete Dorr’s table? I didn’t introduce myself to him right away, but he approached me after a few minutes of rummaging. That’s when I complimented him on his work. I ended up buying five Sega Genesis games from Pete’s table, which he gave me a great discount on. Then, we posed for a photo:

An hour of vendor-hopping yielded 42 games in all, including seven imports! Four games were for the Family Computer (Famicom) and three were for the Super Famicom. Final Fantasy V was a timely get as GTV Japan posted a retrospective the day before (last Friday).

Satisfied, I proceeded to the parking lot for my mom to pick me up.

Back at home, I spent nearly two hours photographing my pickups, removing price stickers, and cataloging the games.

Now, photos of all pickups by console, starting with Family Computer (Famicom):

• F1 Race
• Pac-Land (the first home port of the game)
• Super Mario Bros.
• Tetris (variant after Nintendo acquired the rights; thanks to Leonard Herman for bringing that to my attention)

Super Famicom:

• Final Fantasy IV (localized for SNES [Super Nintendo] as Final Fantasy II)
• Final Fantasy V (never ported to SNES)
• Super Mario Kart (champagne!) – This was timely, too, with a Gaming Historian retrospective posted on December 2)

Nintendo Entertainment System:

• Captain Skyhawk
• Goal!
• Gotcha! The Sport! (shown before Goal!)
• Ninja Gaiden
• Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
• Nintendo World Cup – This and Goal! are still more timely gets as the 2022 FIFA World Cup was in the quarterfinal stage last Saturday. The final is this Sunday.
• Operation Wolf
• Ring King
• Skate or Die!
• Tiger-Heli
• Wizards & Warriors
• Xevious

Yes, I passed on Deadly Towers again.

Super Nintendo:

• Best of the Best: Championship Karate
• Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (Bubsy for short) (complete in box!)
• Cliffhanger
• George Foreman’s KO Boxing
• The Jungle Book
• NHL Stanley Cup
• Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally
• Super Black Bass
• Tecmo Super NBA Basketball

I didn’t notice a crack on the upper left of Tecmo Super NBA Basketball until cataloging later. I bought a better condition cart on eBay Tuesday night and put in an offer for another Looney Tunes game, Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos. I bought that on Wednesday when my offer was accepted.

Sega Master System:

• Great Basketball
• World Grand Prix
• Zillion

Now, I have the original Zillion to go along with the sequel I bought last year.

Sega Genesis (Mega Drive outside North America):

• Bubsy – I bought this before the CIB SNES port
• Chi Chi’s Pro Challenge Golf (featuring golfer Chi-Chi Rodriguez) – This game always makes me think of Dave White’s [intentionally] mangled pronunciation during a Game Sack end skit (“Chy-Chy Rah-drigwez’s Pro Challenge Golf!”).
• Eternal Champions
• Space Harrier II
• Strider
• Super Hang-On
• Taz-Mania (I bought the SNES version last year)
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster’s Hidden Treasure
• ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron (maybe I’ll find the original next year)
• Virtua Racing

And one Nintendo Wii game: The Price is Right: 2010 Edition:

That last pickup was the culmination of all the time that I spent this year watching various winning pricing games and showcases from the Bob Barker era of The Price is Right, and with my resulting renewed obsession with Barker era music cues, many of which can be found on this YouTube channel.

It was another successful and enjoyable Festival of Games. Thank you to Pete Dorr and all the vendors I bought from, to the LI Retro staff including George Portugal (who I saw on Saturday), and to Jerelyn Zontini. It was great to meet her in person after she connected with me on LinkedIn a few weeks ago.