Preparing for the show
Well, after spending the whole night sorting out and packing stuff i'd wanted to sell from my collection (i'm the worst planner ever!) and about about 3 hours of sleep, it was time to pack the car and head off to Apeldoorn, where the Retrocomputerdag was held this year.
After picking up my fellow collector and nephew and with 800kg of hardware stuffed in our necks, we were finally on our way. Luckily for us, my brothers navigation system showed us the way flawlessly.
Setting up
After my nephew had emptied his entire bankaccount at the nearest cash machine, we arrived at our destination. It was time for us to unpack and as you can see by the photo, so had a lot of other people.
Next it was time to set up. I had reserved a total of 3 tables, but unfortunately it was still not enough to display all the stuff i brought. But in the end we've managed to get everything ready in time before the public opening of the event.
When i left home i knew that no-doubt i would have forgotten something and after setting up my development vectrex with VecRam i knew what it was: MY BACKPACK containing my laptop with vectrexdemo's!!! (oh, and other stuff i wouldn't miss that much like food and beverage). Luckily i didn't forget to bring my japanese vectrex (you can see it in the back).
The event
There was a lot of stuff to see at the event. If you live in the netherlands there are not a lot of this type of events in the area, so seeing this amount of old videogame hardware other than in you own gamingroom is always a great feeling.
click here for an overview video of the floor around our tables (AVI 320x240, 5MB).
After having everything set up it was time for me to take a stroll down the closest thing to retrogaming paradise available within a 100 miles ;-). Here you can see fellow vectrexfans Pepijn and Jeroen doing some final preparations. It was really nice to finally meet them in person and have an analogue-type of communication for a change.
Pepijn also brought his home-made 50% scale Ms.Pacman mame-cabinet. It was done so brilliantly i didn't even notice it was a 100% home-made at first. Hats off to this great piece of work!!!
Also Pepijn was selling the "how to beat those videogames" dvd-set (which i forgot to buy from him!!!).
click here for a movie of a guy explaining minestorm (AVI 640x480, 17MB).
Next to Pepijn and Jeroen was a guy with a huge (read complete) game&watch collection. His collection was so overcomplete that he nearly had a second complete game&watch collection available for sale. Unfortuanatly for my nephew he was rather expensive, so i don't think he did a lot of sales that day, but it was nice to drool staring his collection.
click here for a video of the game&watch collection (AVI 640x480, 7MB).
Meanwhile, the crowd was filling up the place and to my great surprise, actually quite a number of people showed up. To be honest, i really didn't expect a lot of people (other than the folks who had already rented a table) so this was nice to see.
click here for a video of a kid playing minestorm (gotta teach them while they're young!) (AVI 640x480, 13MB).
The guy with the arms crossed (talking about having a bad bodylanguage) had built his own Vectrex multicart. I had a really good discussion with them regarding my idea of building a device to use the vectrex for lasershows (i.e. playing minestorm in the open sky). Since i'm not much of a hardware-genius it was good to get his side of the idea. Not at all undoable :p Also (as you can see from the photo above) i was able to get a japanese Saturn for the amazing price of €1 euro. (thats about $499,- USD with todays euro-to-dollar conversion rate ;-). Don't worry, the saturn didn't work.
In conclusion
All in all, it was a good day in Apeldoorn. I was able to keep my girlfriend the promise that i would spend less money than i would earn by selling some of my stuff. I met a lot of great people and made some new friends! Can't wait for next year!!!
Martijn Wenting (for www.vectrexnews.com)
The Retrocomputerdag will be held next year on the 9th of april 2006 in Vlaardingen, The Netherlands.
For more information go to: www.retrocomputerdag.nl. See you next year!