Retro gamers gather in Lombard

Hundreds of classic video games were for sale at the Video Game Summit in Lombard.

For one day, the advanced graphics of the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 and the innovation of the Nintendo Wii took a backseat to the simple joys of eight-bit graphics and video game controllers with only two buttons.

The Video Game Summit took place at the Heron Point Convention Center in Lombard July 18. Gamers gathered to play classic games from systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis and the Atari 2600.

"Somebody on an Atari [message board] started talking about having a gathering, and that got the ball rolling," said Dan Iacovelli, who organized the summit.

The event has taken place for seven years and usually attracts about 40 to 50 people. Most of the attendees are familiar with each other because of other video game conventions and events.

"Pretty much everybody here already knows each other," said Todd Friedman, who has helped organize the summit for the past two years.

Small groups set up tables dedicated to individual games and systems. The summit also hosted Paul Zimmerman, who holds the world record for numerous Atari 2600 games. During the summit, he sat for hours trying to top 3 million points in "Phoenix."

The event also featured classic games for sale. Owners of www.goatstore.com had a display of hundreds of NES, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Atari 2600 games.

The display can be a dream for any retro gamer, but it can also be a fairly lucrative business. While vendors had common classics like "The Legend of Zelda" or "Mega Man," some of the more obscure or rare games can sell for $1,000 or more.

For example, the holy grail of classic games is "Nintendo World Championships," a game produced exclusively for the 1990 competition of the same name. Only about 20 of the gold cartridges-given to the top players-were produced, and it is not known how many still exist. The estimated value is about $17,000, said vendor Dan Loosen.

"It pretty much started as a hobby in high school," said Jim Mieritz, who works with Loosen. "It has since taken over his entire basement. And this is only a very small portion of what we have."

By Jim Jaworski
Triblocal.com reporter