Category Archives: Games and Technology

Apple II, Commodore 64, Computers/Tech/Games, Console Video Games, Games and Technology, Main, Photo Gallery

Boatfest 2023 Recap

2 Comments

Last weekend I attended the second annual Boatfest gathering, which again took place in Hurricane, West Virginia. Despite its name, the event has nothing to do with boats — it’s a gathering of retrocomputing and retrogaming enthusiasts named after the organizer, John “Boat of Car” Shawler.

Boatfest is difficult to summarize because it’s different things to different people. Some people go to Boatfest to show off their vintage computers and gaming systems, while others go just to see them. It’s an event where old friends reconnect, and new friendships are made. There are tournaments, there are presentations, there are people repairing things, and this year there was even an auction. And the fun didn’t stop at the show, as the party moved to local restaurants each evening. At its core, Boatfest was simply fifty people meeting in a single location to have fun.

This year’s Boatfest took place in the Copper Room, an event space located above a Connolly’s, an Irish Pub… that recently went out of business. Fortunately, Boat was able to work a deal and maintain use of the space. The room was twice as large as last year’s space, with a capacity of approximately 50 people. A series of round tables were available for attendees to set up their vintage equipment. In the front of the room, couches and chairs faced a makeshift presentation area complete with cameras, microphones, and a projector screen. More tables, filled with items for the auction and things for sale, lined one of the walls. There was also a large chest-style refrigerator full of drinks, a restroom, and a kitchen area. With the addition of a few extension cords and power strips, the room was ready for business.

Several people associated with show are involved in podcasts, many of whom performed live shows in front of the attendees. Boat, the event’s organizer, is one of the hosts of the Amigos Podcast, a show about Amiga computers. Boat’s podcasting partner, Amigo Aaron, does another show with his brother, The Brent, called ARG Presents. Both of those shows did live performances, and I did one as well for Sprite Castle, covering the 1986 game Friday the 13th. There were also a couple of Jeopardy-style trivia challenges, but in between those events it was all about the gaming and checking out each other’s tables. My time was spent pretty evenly between demonstrating the things I brought, and checking out everyone else’s goods.

For my part, I brought two computers. First was an Apple IIe with a CFFA-3000 card installed that allows users to load games and programs via a USB stick. I also brought my old Commodore SX-64, which was a portable version of the Commodore 64 (complete with a 5″ color screen). Boatfest is a place where terms like “rare” are relative. Approximately 9,000 SX-64s were originally sold back in the mid 1980s. Of those, of course, many have since died. It’s a nearly 40-year-old computer that cost $1,000 in 1984 and was relatively obscure even when it was new… and there were four of them in the room.

There were so many neat systems on display that it would be impossible for me to list them all. One of my favorite displays was a working Video Toaster running on an Amiga 2000. The Video Toaster was a video editing suite that could be used for video production. It’s a legendary piece of equipment which I have heard about for decades but never actually saw in person. At Boatfest I was able to sit down in front of one, play with it for nearly an hour, and walk away with a DVD-R copy of the experience. All over the room people were having similar experiences, whether they had stumbled across some holy grail from their past or discovered something new for the first time.

Building off of last year’s swap table event, in 2023 Boatfest held an actual auction. Attendees were encouraged to bring items from home, set a reserve, and let ‘er rip. The Brent did a fine job of running the auction, and I had about a dozen entries for sale. I tried to keep things interesting by putting both some low and high dollar items up for sale. For example, I brought five 10-packs of NES cartridges that I listed for $1/game. On the other end of the spectrum, I decided to sell my NTSC Amiga CD32. It is a rare variant of a rare console that ended up selling for $475. The buyer was happy with the price and I was happy to pass it along to someone else to enjoy. I have such a hard time parting with things, and knowing they’re going to someone who will appreciate them as much as I did makes it a little easier. Some of the items in the auction sold much higher than I was expecting, while others went surprisingly low. I didn’t talk to every buyer and seller so I can only speak for myself when I say I thought everything with amazingly smooth and I was more than pleased with what my items sold for.

There was always something happening at Boatfest. In the front corner of the room, Frank and Jason from Retro Rewind were busy soldering on people’s broken machines, doing their part to keep these old computers operational. In the rear of the room, PacBilly and his brother had organized an Astro Duel Deluxe tournament, which had four people at a time shooting each other’s spaceships. There were two separate Jeopardy-style trivia contests that took place. I competed in the first and took second place with -100 points. On the second game, I knew like seven answers in a row — sometimes it’s the luck of the draw! But in addition to all these activities, conversations were happening non-stop, and everyone was always approachable. There were many times I found myself walking up to a conversation in progress and joining in — and, just as often, there were times I was talking to someone and suddenly three or four people had gathered around. There wasn’t a single person at the show who was stand-offish or negative.

At Boatfest 2022 attendees were on their own for meal arrangements, and even though it was never really a problem, each time I skipped out to grab sometime to eat I felt like I was missing part of the show. In 2023, this was rectified by shutting down the show each evening for 90 minutes and inviting everyone in attendance to a local restaurant. This worked out great for multiple reasons. Not only were attendees able to sit down and eat without worrying about missing any part of the show, but it was nice to get away from the noise for a bit and reset. Each night I ended up sitting by different people and had some great conversations. Plus, Hurricane, West Virginia has a surprisingly number of great restaurants!

Traditionally the Sunday after the show is spent visiting local locations and winding down. Unfortunately for my buddy Jeff and I, the beds in our rental RV weren’t as comfortable as we had hoped and so we made a command decision to hit the road back home Sunday morning. We took turns driving and made a few stops to stretch, but ended up driving all 990 miles back home on Sunday. It was a long day on the road, but sleeping in my own bed was 100% worth it.

Both Jeff and I had a blast at the show, and I haven’t heard that anyone didn’t have a great time. If there’s a Boatfest 2024, I’ll definitely be there… although probably not in an RV next year. ;)

My Boatfest 2023 Photo Gallery: LINK

Computers/Tech/Games, Games and Technology, Main

An Up-Down Experience at the Up-Down Arcade

1 Comment

Last weekend my buddy Jeff and I visited Oklahoma City’s Up-Down Arcade. Up-Down is a barcade (21 to enter) with a full bar, a kitchen that sells pizza by the slice, and sixty(ish) arcade games. Jeff and I were hanging out in arcades together years before either of us were old enough to drive, and nearly 40 years later we’re still doing the same thing.

There are seven Up-Down Arcade locations; the other six are in Des Moines, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Nashville. This was my second time to visit our local Up-Down, and Jeff’s first. Up-Down has different specials every day of the week. Some days they offer discounts on beer and on others they offer discounts on tokens. Saturdays (the day we went) are two-for-one token days, which means a fiver will get you 40 tokens — more rounds of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong than most people want to play in a single visit.

As a guy who collected arcade games for many years, I’m pretty sensitive to the condition of games in places like this. Of all the games we played, 95% were in perfect working order. A few of the games we played had minor issues. The Tetris machine has a dim monitor, one of the triggers on Spy Hunter doesn’t work, and some of the controls on the Ivan Stewart 4×4 Off Road machine don’t work. The last time I went to the Up-Down Arcade was two years ago with my buddy Robb Sherwin, and all those same things were broken. That being said, I don’t recall any non-working machines on the floor. Along with the arcade games, Up-Down has eight pinball machines and all of them were in perfect working order as well — no easy feat.

During our visit, we bought a round of draft beers and two slices of pizza. Two beers were $17 ($20 with tip), and ordering two slices of pizza was a complete fiasco. Up-Down offers six different types of pizza by the slice. We ordered a slice of pepperoni and a slice of meat lover’s and were told they were out of both. The employee suggested we try the macaroni and cheese pizza; when we ordered two slices of that, we were told he only had one. Out of six different types of advertised pizza, they had a total of two slices available. The employee apologized for not having more pizza available, explaining “I’ve only been here for an hour and a half.” I must have looked really confused because then he added, “I’m sorry, I’m really stoned.”

A few minutes later while sitting at the bar, we saw the same stoned employee walk behind the bar and refill his beer from the tap. Can you say “dream job”?

Jeff and I had a great time playing pinball and hopping from game to game, trying our hand at Moon Patrol, Q*Bert, and Mortal Kombat, among others. I still have 30-40 tokens left over and I’m sure we’ll be going back again.

Next time, we’ll eat before we go.

Computers/Tech/Games, Games and Technology, Main

Boatfest 2022

I met John “Boatofcar” Shawler online twenty years ago on the Digital Press forums. Although “Boat” is nearly a decade younger than I am, the two of us share a a common love of old computers, games, and arcade machines. Boat has been a fan and supporter of my podcasts from the very beginning, and several years ago he, along with his pal Amigo Aaron, started their own show about Amiga computers, titled “Amigos”. Boat has expanded their show to a small network which includes, among other shows, a couple of my podcasts including Sprite Castle and Like a DOS. When Boat said he was planning a small gathering tentatively titled “Boatfest,” I was in from the very beginning. Boatfest took place June 24 and 25, in Hurricane, West Virginia.

Susan and I arrived at the hotel Thursday evening. The conference room was available for pre-setup Thursday evening, and so I grabbed a table and set up the two systems I brought with me from Oklahoma — my crystal clear Ultimate 64 setup, and my Amiga CD32. My CD32 is the relatively rare (or at least uncommon) NTSC model which was never sold in the United States. At this gathering of approximately 40 people, two other people brought CD32s as well.

The vast majority of people who attended Boatfest run in the same circles. Most of those in attendance listen to the Amigos podcast (most of them listen to my shows as well), and the majority of people there hang out and chat on the Amigos Discord server. In the old days of attending fests, the first few hours were spent trying to figure out who was who. At Boatfest, all of us were wearing name tags, and many of us had seen (or at least heard) one another prior to arriving. This cut out most of the awkward “who is who” phase, allowing us to get right into visiting, gaming, and eventually, drinking.

A big part of the fest were the live shows. Boat and Amigo Aaron did live versions of many of their shows before the audience, including episode of their Amiga, CoCo, and Atari computer shows. Aaron performed double duty, also doing a live version of ARG Presents with his brother, The Brent. Saturday evening, I did a modified version of Sprite Castle in which I talked about my memories of Commodore copyfests.

The gods were smiling on West Virginia last weekend. Storms moved into the area the day before the event was scheduled to begin, knocking out the hotel’s air conditioner. By the kickoff of the event, the skies were blue, and within an hour or two the air conditioner had been repaired. Throughout the event, free food fell into our laps multiple times. Eip, Boat’s wife, surprised us with enough Thai food to feed an army; later in the evening, another group at hotel donated leftover food from their catered event to ours. Saturday evening, Frank from Retro Rewind bought a stack of pizzas to feed to crew. And if that’s not enough to prove everything was going our way, on Friday I won the game-themed Jeopardy contest, thanks in part to a question about… me!

I haven’t been to a gaming fest in many years, and haven’t been around this many people in this close a space in at least two years. Boatfest felt a lot like the parties and gatherings I attended in the 80s and 90s — smaller in scale, with more focus on personal interactions. Everyone I spoke with at the show asked when tickets for next year’s event were going on sale which is a testament to just how much fun everyone had. When they go on sale, I’ll be the first in line to purchase one!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show. I had a great time meeting and chatting with everyone.