Anyone in the area (or traveling) and planning to attend this year? I’m still working out the details with my family, but it’s looking like I should be able to spend Saturday up in Milwaukee to enjoy this. Would be the first time I’ve attended this convention - any tips from previous years?
Some day I will go to this. It’s a busy time of year in my office. Hard to take time off.
I’m going to this too on saturday. Hard to give any specific tips as this is their first year in their new location. Last few years were at a hotel they clearly outgrew, as the vendor hall was in a tent outside. As far as I know, it should be inside this time.
For the vendor hall, in my experience haggling is OK but YMMV depending on vendor. Bring cash, not everyone takes cards. The museum is great too, as it has basically every system ever. Last year I got to play a x68000 and an amiga cd32.
As a final note, back off the turbografx stuff is mine. 
Oh, cool, I didn’t pick up on the fact that it was a new venue this year. With the way the weather has been the past couple weeks, I can’t imagine what it would have been like had it been outside.
No worries about the TG16 stuff, it’s all yours. 
My experience with it was limited to just one childhood friend owning the system but never playing it and no interest in collecting it now. Big box PC games, on the other hand, I’ll fight you for. 
I will serve them to you on a silver platter, I don’t collect much computer stuff.
My only hope with the new venue is that parking isn’t too bad. The old one was next to an abandoned toys r us so it was no hassle, but this seems to be more in the city.
I got back from the convention late last night and here are a few thoughts and pictures.
I attended the Retronauts panel discussion on “Why Atari got a raw deal” surrounding the video game crash of 1983 and really enjoyed it. Afterward, I tried to help Jeremy Parish with his vision of a 16 player Faceball 2000 game. Sadly, we weren’t able to get it working.
I really enjoyed the arcade museum. Got a chance to play the Virtual Boy for the first time. I can confirm that it started hurting my eyes after 5 minutes of play. 
Also, you know you’re old when your college days activities are in a museum now:
The vendor expo was fun, but I would never go in looking for any great deals. The selection was impressive though, so it’s a great way to fill in a collection with something that’s unusual or hard to find. I made the mistake of going to the vendors on Saturday in the morning - crowds were tough to wade through and I felt a bit rushed. When I went back at the end of the day around 4pm, it was much less crowded. I only found one nice big box PC game (Might and Magic IV Clouds of Xeen) with a price of $5 on it. When I went to buy it the
vendor tried to pull a switch on me and changed the price drastically. I said “nope” and moved on. Oh well. I did manage to find a $5 copy of what is supposedly the most influential Game Boy game. 
@Beartruck did you happen to see the brand new in box Turbo Duo for sale. Just $2800 and it could be yours!
Pretty jealous you got to meet the Retronauts crew. Maybe I can get to this in 2019 or 2020.
You get used to it. Sound on that thing is amazing too
Hahaha, yeah, I saw a couple turbo duos there. All of them were at least a hundred more than what they cost online. I was actually at the retronauts panel too, but couldn’t find where they were set up later to play faceball (were they back by the boardgames?)
My haul was actually pretty good. There was plenty of turbo stuff there, but I’m on a budget so I only got a few US games. Pic below (Popful mail wasn’t at the show, that was an earlier pickup):
I also ended up going to the after party, which had the Nintendo playstation prototype set up running street fighter 2. Playing on it (and quickly touching the system when the guy wasn’t looking) was really really cool.
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