This year they added a side entrance to the event that fed directly into the vendor hall. That was a very welcome addition as I always make an immediate beeline for the sales. I was not disappointed as I was immediately greeted with piles and piles of games for sale.

A couple things were different this year - first off, there were more TurboGrafx-16 games than I recall seeing in previous years. There used to be 2-3 vendors who had a couple games each but now there were 5-6 who had a nice stack. Don't let this picture fool you, Jaguar games were very scare. I'm not a Jaguar collector but there are a couple more I'd like to own.

The other difference was that import games were everywhere. There's always one vendor that specializes in import games but this year many others carried a small assortment of Famicom and Super Famicom cartridges.

Atari 2600 games were cheap last year. This year they were going for garage sale prices. Boxes like this one were prevalent. It's not like they were filled with Combat and Pac Man either, there were some good titles going for next to nothing.

Boxed copies of common Atari 2600 and Intellivision games were plenty cheap too. This is a great time to get into game collecting for these systems.

Console prices were higher this year though. Last time around there was a vendor with stacks of original PlayStations for $1. Now they were hovering between $10-$20. Nintendo 64s seemed a bit high too considering I see them at yard sales for $1-$5 on a regular basis. Although if you buy a system here you can feel confident it will work. The vendors here are all classic gaming enthusiasts too and aren't out to rip you off.

I'd say this was a really great deal for an old boxed system but I bet it was only $50 new whenever it was purchased.

Now here's a crazy item that someone had for sale - a boxed Atari computer printer. There's gotta be some collector out there looking for one.

This is the first time I recall a vendor selling Magic cards but it makes sense because there's a lot of audience crossover.

I only took this picture because I didn't know someone made a trackball for the PlayStation. There was a PlayStation mouse so why not?

Sega Nomads were still a bit pricey. I thought maybe with inexpensive clones now available they'd come down a little but I suppose people prefer the original.

When I finally left the vendor hall I wandered over to the main entrance and saw a silent auction for a Pioneer LaserActive. No matter how much I'd like to own one of these I wasn't prepared to enter a bidding war.

In the arcade room they had a playable Baby Pac Man. I tried for a few minutes and found it to be more difficult than the rest of the series. For obvious reasons this won't be available in a home version so if you ever want to experience it you have to track down a real machine.

I never heard of Tri-sports involved but it appears to be sponsored by Frosted Flakes or whatever those objects in the middle of the screen are supposed to be.

The arcade room was packed tight so I didn't stick around long. Rest assured, there was a much wider selection than the two games I snagged pictures of.

Next I ventured over to the console gaming rooms. One thing I noticed right away was that many systems were using the Imagineer Arcade Stick. It apparently comes with converters for many classic systems. I may be adding one of these to my collection in the future.

They had an Arcadia 2001 available for play with a Mouse Trap clone. This system had the misfortune of being released shortly before the video game crash of 1983.

By far the craziest setup was Bomberman Stadium for the Saturn. They had something like 12 controllers hooked into it. If it wasn't on a large screen I have no idea how it would have been playable because the characters were tiny.

The Fairchild Channel F wasn't playable unfortunately, I would have liked to give it a whirl.

A PC-FX playing a non-adult game. Well I didn't play far enough in to confirm, I'm sure it eventually had some x-rated anime scenes.

A strange personal highlight of the show was finally playing an Apple Pippin. Their demo unit had a first person shooter set in a space station. It was OK, roughly on par with the 3DO but it was easy to see why it couldn't compete against the PlayStation. I've heard nothing but bad things about the controller but found it was just fine.

A massive Apple III tower. This, and the next few pictures, are going to look dark because the classic computer room had the lights out. They were going for some classic arcade look in there with all kinds of random neon lights. Very cool atmosphere, very bad for picture taking.

An old Tandy computer playing Donkey Kong on an HD screen. Pure zaniness.

I've received plenty of hate mail for mocking Commodore computers and/or the Commodore company. Most of the time I'm not even trying to poke fun at Commodore, I make observations and some feel personally attacked by them. So I just won't say anything about the Commodore PET today. You've won this round Commodore fanboys but I'll be back.

I'm really surprised there's not a piano attachment for any modern consoles. Or is there one in those Rock Hero games?

I don't care how unusable that keyboard looks I still want one.

The original King's Quest running on an IBM PC.

Back in my day we didn't have any fancy graphics. We had green text on a black background and we liked it!

Atari's brief foray into the phone business. I couldn't find anything online to confirm whether this Atari Eagle Eye was ever released for sale.

And to wrap things up here's what I bought in the vendor hall this year. Loom and Magical Dinosaur tour bring me slightly closer to owning every TurboGrafx-16 CD game, although I still have a way to go. I own about 10 versions of NBA Jam Tournament Edition but not the 32X one. There are a couple games like it, and Doom, where I feel compelled to try and get every home version.

I can't read a word of Japanese but bought a couple import games anyway. Cosmic Fantasy 3 was cheap and I figure someone will translate it eventually. Worst case is I rip the soundtrack and give it a listen. Legend of Heroes: Dragon Slayer was also cheap so I bought it for my collection of Falcom games.

I also grabbed a couple assorted pins and magnets. There were a couple vendors selling unlicensed Etsy-type stuff like this.

It's only been a week but I already can't wait for the 2012 show...