Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2025 celebrates nostalgia and gaming icons

On the weekend of Oct. 17 to 19, the Oregon Convention Center hosted Portland’s annual Retro Gaming Expo. Over 30,000 attendees poured in all through the weekend, visiting a whole bunch of cubicles and distributors across the conference heart.

This 12 months’s major attraction, along with retro gaming, have been the cubicles that includes toys, buying and selling playing cards, prints and clothes.

The occasion featured native Portland-based companies like Top of the Line Games and Hawthorne Game Exchange; native arcades Next Level Pinball and Ground Kontrol arrange within the halls, that includes free video games starting from Donkey Kong to trendy rhythm and dancing video games from Japan. 

A console freeplay space was additionally free to visitors, that includes the Atari 2600, Xbox 360 and  PlayStation 3. Additionally, old-school PCs from the Nineteen Nineties have been arrange with video games like The Sims and StarCraft. Attendees have been in a position to compete in weekend-long tournaments for video games starting from Super Smash Bros. to Tetris. 

Roberta Vaughan, a late member of the Adventure Game Hotspot, was honored on the Full Motion Video video games zone. The FMV was one among two displays featured, standing alongside Nintendo’s fortieth anniversary. In distinction to Vaughan’s celebration of life, Nintendo showcased each subject of the Nintendo Power Magazine and displayed their hottest video games. 

Indie and upcoming video games had an opportunity to showcase their work as nicely. Some featured video games have been Keys of Fury, Circus Interstellar and Lords of Nysera, moreover the writer Atari introduced playable demos for a few of their upcoming releases, Bubsy 4D and Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection.

Non-gaming associated occasions corresponding to a cosplay contest, a VHS swap and a meet and greet with voice actors Charles Martinet and David Hayter, who voiced Mario and Solid Snake, respectively, known as the eye of many attendees. 

However, the focus was Portland Animal Rescue Connection’s annual kitten snuggle, the place rescues might be cuddled with for a $5 donation. The hope of the partnership is to get the kittens adopted by having functions exterior the “cuddle tents,” in response to their web site.

The Expo, originally often known as Northwest Classic Games Enthusiasts or NWCGE for brief, hosted its first present in 1997 in Seattle, Washington. It moved to Portland in 2008, the place it has been hosted for the final 17 years. It has served as a protected haven for avid gamers, collectors and cosplayers alike, permitting them to be immersed within the digital world of gaming.