Classic Game Fest a blast from the past

AUSTIN — Nothing makes someone realize his or her mortality faster than seeing the things he or she loved as a child become “retro.”

As I walked through the 70,000-square-foot vendor halls at the 10th annual Classic Game Fest in Austin on Sunday, I could not help but feel the weight of my near-32 years on this planet. As I walked and gawked at the sights, many gaming and memorabilia retailers sold my childhood favorites like Sonic The Hedgehog 2 as trendy nostalgia trips.

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I may have also felt my hairline recede just a bit. As inevitable as winter, the proverbial “wheel of nostalgia” always comes to claim our youth and resell it to us in new, shiny packages.

Classic Game Fest is one of the largest conventions of its kind in the country, standing alongside other Austin conventions such as South By Southwest and Dreamhack. Owner and creator David Kaelin said in an email interview that more than 6,000 attendees visited Classic Game Fest in 2016 and attributed the company’s success and growth to the niche of retro gaming.

Lucky for Kaelin and Classic Game Fest, retro is not only popular, but drawing big bucks for companies and charities able to capitalize.

Leveraging the nostalgia of its most popular consoles, Nintendo has managed to send consumers into a frenzy with the NES Classic and soon to be released SNES Classic. The former set enormous sales numbers before it was discontinued in February. Nintendo shipped 2.3 million units of the small retro console to stores, with the secondary market continuing to make the NES Classic a beloved — and expensive — piece of nostalgia.

The SNES Classic releases in early October and is sure to reach the same success. If the NES Classic was any indication, finding a SNES in the wild may be nigh improbable.

Fund-raising in the world of gaming has also owed thanks to ’90s gaming nostalgia. Charity Extra Life gives millions of dollars each year to various Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, as gamers around the world live-stream marathon gaming sessions to raise money. Extra Life was in attendance at Classic Game Fest, using its floor space to extol the virtues of using classic games as a way to draw in viewers — and donations.

Each year the total amount of money raised by Extra Life grows, totaling around $9.5 million in 2016. Another group finding success in fund-raising is Games Done Quick, a speed-running event that has happened in winter and summer since 2010.

For those unfamiliar, speedrunning is a genre of competitive gaming where players attempt to beat games in the fastest manner possible. Players around the world compete at various games for world record times, all while using shortcuts, glitches, and pure skill to work.

Think of speed-running as the golf of competitive gaming. Players are competing against others, but the real challenge is surpassing their own best times.

Games Done Quick puts these players on display, running a 24-hour, weeklong marathon that live-streams on Twitch. TV and raises money for such charities as Doctors Without Borders and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Millions of dollars are raised as players donate toward incentives, prizes, and the chance to see specific games appear during the marathon.

Some retro favorites each year include Super Metroid, Earthbound, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The success of Games Done Quick grows with each event, and July’s Summer Games Done Quick event raised just more than $2.2 million in a week for Doctors Without Borders.

Amazing what a bit of nostalgia can do, right?

Though I may have felt like I was decaying with every step I took at Classic Game Fest, the news was not all bad. Alongside a wall of arcade cabinets, I spotted a father teaching his two young sons how to play Virtua Fighter, a game released in 1993 that is older than both boys combined.

At the least, my favorite games are preserved for another generation, filling lives with happy memories that were once mine. To quote a famous song that former The Ramones front-man Joey Ramone covered in 2002: “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”