A sampling of the crowd attending OKGE 2004 at various times of the day.
The OKGE arcade had a nice sampling of classic and more recent coin-ops, from Battlezone and Gorf to a Neo-Geo cabinet and Namco Classic Collection. There was also a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pinball machine on hand, and many of the coin-ops were for sale.
The rarest arcade game on display was the incredibly rare cocktail version of Joust, on sale for only $1,400 – a steal for that particular version of that game.
This Gorf cabinet was a beauty too – and played like a champ. Kicked my butt sixteen ways to Wednesday.
The busy OKGE tournament table offered high-score contests as well as plain old door prize drawings, held every hour.
OKGE 2004’s mini-musuem included some classic consoles, from the original Magnavox Odyssey to specimens of the Fairchild Channel F, Bally Astrocade and Atari 2600, to nifty memorabilia like the Coleco tabletop arcade Pac-Man game and a Dragon’s Lair lunchbox.
At left, OKGE organizer Jesse Hardesty announces yet another prize winner. Hopefully Jesse’s grand prize after the show was over was some uninterrupted sleep – he’s earned it!
And maybe after that, he can play some games on the Ivory Tower – a high-powered thing of beauty that he’s put together solely for the purpose of getting the biggest oomph out of DOS games.
One of the funniest sights of OKGE 2004 was the opening of an observation window that I didn’t even know existed on the second floor, as people from another event peeked in on our show. Hey! Buy your tickets and get your hand stamped like everyone else!
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