Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo delivers childhood nostalgia

Event held at the Anvil Centre sells retro games and art to fans

2016 marked “the year that [the Retro Gaming Expo] levelled up,” says event founder and organizer Brian Hughes. For the first time since the Expo began five years ago, it moved to a much larger venue in New Westminster, the Anvil Centre, and run for twelve jam-packed hours. More time and space for the event means more diverse vendors and activities, including all of the new fans that want to attend the event.

On the first floor of the Anvil Centre, vendors sold games and consoles that were lost in the sands of time. Long-term favourites like N64, Sega Genesis, and Gameboy Colour products abound, but so do the lesser-known gems like Virtual Boys, mini arcade machines, and other handheld consoles.

There were also plenty of booths selling fan art, from paintings and prints to t-shirts and pins. Up two floors was the theatre, where attendees listened to live shows and played whatever their hearts desired to the soundtrack of live music and shows.

Hughes says that the most popular parts of the Retro Gaming Expo are retro gaming trivia, gaming tournaments, and vendors. He, on the other hand, always looks forward to seeing people new to retro gaming at the event.

“My favourite part is seeing the attendees having a good time,” he says. “Especially the kids who didn’t grow up with this stuff.”

Peter Chiykowski, creator of the comic Rock, Paper, Cynic and musician under that title, has been attending the Expo since its 2012 inception. He took a shine to it for its modest and genuine atmosphere, and has been travelling to Vancouver from Toronto every year since.

“They just had so much heart,” says Chiykowski. “I love the fact that it’s just all these nerds getting together for a weekend. It’s not like, ‘Oh my god, let’s get these big impressive stars!’ and there wasn’t that bedazzlement. It was just this really fun weekend and I had a great time.”

He agrees with Hughes that the Expo “levelled up” this year, calling it “bigger and better and badder.” He believes that it had “everything a big show has for glamour, appeal, and a really nice venue,” while maintaining “that underground part and that spunk,” that makes it unique. This year, he provided both his artwork and his music, a collection of “geek-themed and video-game themed silly, fun songs.”

An illustrator, artist, animator, and maker of “cute fan art,” Justine Pollusk, was a first-time vendor at the Expo, but her reasons for coming are similar to Chiykowski’s and Hughes’.

“Just being a video game nerd and wanting to share our love of art and games,” is what brought her to the Anvil Centre, where she sold brightly-coloured prints of Yoshi, Kirby, Sonic, and Pokemon.

“It’s great to have so many likeminded people in one space to share love for weird things,” she says. “I’m excited to see kids coming and parents sharing retro games with them.”

The artist at the booth beside her, Alex York, calls the event a “giant garage sale for all things retro gaming,” and laughs. “I’m excited about staying at my table, because if I leave my table, I’ll spend all my money,” he says.

The event saw a bustling crowd, proving that Vancouver has a pretty vibrant gaming scene after all. Sitting down at an N64 to play Mario Kart for the first time in a decade is a blast from the past to say the least, and it’s difficult to abstain from spending too much cash there for the sake of nostalgia.

Artist behind the exhibiting 8 Bits of Destiny Art Show, Micheal J. Cohen, believes that it’s the long life span of retro games that makes them so intriguing.

“It’s cool, obviously, to see all the old games for sale, but what’s cooler is that games that have been around for, say, 30 years, like Zelda, last that long. People have sort of grown up with them, so it’s a really important part of their lives.”

That passion was palpable at the Retro Gaming Expo on May 28, and that’s why it continues to grow every year.