Portland Retro Gaming Expo
Recommended
This event is in the past
Fri., Oct. 21, 3 p.m., Sat., Oct. 22, 9 a.m. and Sun., Oct. 23, 10 a.m. 2016
Oregon Convention Center
Lloyd District (Portland)
$10 - $35
Since 2006, the Portland Retro Gaming expo—a weekend-long celebration of old-school video games—has been one of the funnest, geekiest events in town. Things to keep an eye out for this year include the Antiques Roadshow-inspired Retrogame Roadshow, the annual cosplay contest, tons of hard-to-find games, and panels featuring everyone from Atari programmers to RPG designers. Once you throw in the Classic Tetris World Championship, workshops, live music, and the sprawling Retrocade—which boasts a jaw-dropping number of cabinets, consoles, and pinball tables—you've got a great weekend. But because 2016 is a never-ending nightmare that will allow nothing good and pure to exist, all this comes with a condition: Avoid the events featuring one of the Expo's special guests, James Rolfe—better known to gamers as the obnoxious YouTuber "The Angry Video Game Nerd," and better known to everyone else as one of the jackasses behind last spring's misogynist anti-Ghostbusters campaign. Make no mistake: The Portland Retro Gaming Expo is still totally worth going to. But Rolfe typifies the kind of outdated, exclusionary thinking that gives gamers a bad name. The otherwise excellent Portland Retro Gaming Expo—not to mention Portland's gamers—deserve better. ERIK HENRIKSEN