Earlier this year, I had a realization. The SIU Student Center, like so many buildings that have been around a long time, has a bunch of old CRTs in storage. What if, instead of just letting them sit there collecting dust, they could be brought out to serve their original purpose? By which I mean, of course, letting people play Duck Hunt on the NES with nice, satisfying Zapper Gun clicks at Saluki Con this past weekend, from the 18th to the 19th.
When I first contacted Saluki Con about the possibility of setting up free-to-play retro games at Saluki Con, Nathan Bonner of Student Affairs was enthusiastic about the idea. So was Ryan Burger, the publisher of Old School Gamer Magazine. He offered four Ataris from his personal stash for the event. Unfortunately, there were only two gamepads in that stash, one of which can’t go down. Fortunately, Nathan Bonner had an old copy of E.T., so on that first day I just set E.T. up with a broken controller, figuring no one would understand the game well enough to realize that they’re supposed to be able to go down.
Unsurprisingly, even when I changed up the display on the second day, consolidating the Atari games to a single 2600, no one could figure out what they were supposed to do. One family did manage to figure out how to beat Adventure though (the little Stormtrooper was one of them), and a teenager who initially hated H.E.R.O. got to appreciate the obscure, late age Atari title. Pac-Man is, well, Pac-Man. I did get the idea to set up an old Pac-Man plug-and-play just to show off how crude the Atari 2600 port is compared to something that more clearly resembles the Pac-Man we all know and love. I also set up the Epilogue Playback with some Game Boy games, mostly because a lot of people asked for Tetris that first day.
Overall, the event was quite successful! I thought three TVs would be plenty, but demand was high enough that I requested a fourth one for the second day. Now that these CRTVs have been awakened to their true purpose, they can slumber for the next year awaiting the moment when they will be called into service again, dazzling children with their beautiful scanlines. Maybe next year we can have a second NES too, with Hogan’s Alley. Until then, a merry welcome to any new subscribers who scanned our QR code for that free digital subscription!
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