Another Portland Retro Gaming Expo is in the books, and the SHIRO! crew had a great time providing a huge Sega presence there.
They began setting up the Sega Lounge on Thursday and finished it up Friday — you can read about that and see photos of it in our story last week.
The Lounge opened to the public Saturday morning, but for anyone who couldn’t attend, SaturnDave gave a tour of the room in a YouTube video.
The Sega Lounge got busy, with people playing games on Master System, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast and Game Gear, not to mention the Virtua Fighter 2 and Shinobi arcade cabinets.
Some photos courtesy of Emerald Nova.
They even had some cosplayers stop by, including Space Channel 5’s Ulala, Nintendo 64 platforming mascots Banjo-Kazooie and Guilty Gear’s May.
A lot of Saturn homebrew games were on display, from Blue Skies and GalaXmas to Sky Blaster and Bridget Bishop, plus in-progress translations like Soul Hackers and Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town.
7shades was on hand to demonstrate the latest build of his 3D platformer Cubecat.
Three Saturn homebrew developers pose for a photo, from left: Hassmaschine (developer of Pixel Poppy Pong), 7shades and Emerald Nova (one of the developers of Blue Skies and GalaXmas).
And here are Dave and Pat with Hassmaschine and 7shades:
A fire alarm that afternoon evacuated the convention center, but it wasn’t long before the show was back up and running.
Thankfully everyone was back inside in time for SHIRO!’s panel at 4 p.m. Titled “SEGA: A Company (Too Far) Ahead of Its Time,” the guys looked at how Sega pushed the limits of console gaming with 3-D glasses, the Mega Modem, Lock-On Technology, the Sega Channel, Saturn NetLink, the PlanetWeb browser, online MMORPGs and more.
A Twitch streamer named G to the Next Level attended the panel and said on X, “The @playsegasaturn SHIRO team is killing it with the Sega love at PRGE!”
SHIRO! returned the favor to G to the Next Level by attending his panel Sunday morning about the Sega Pico. “Enjoyed @GtoTheNextLevel’s panel at PRGE! Pico is the best :)” SHIRO! posted on X.
Sunday was a quieter day, so some of the SHIRO! crew got a chance to check out the rest of the convention.
Over the two-day show, the SHIRO! crew clearly had fun while working the Lounge…
…especially Pat, who belted out a tune on the Super Prologue 21, a Saturn karaoke machine.
The Portland Retro Gaming Expo began in 2006. Last year, more than 27,000 people attended the three-day convention dedicated to current video games, retrogaming, arcade games, pinball, board games and collectible card games.
SHIRO!’s mission of outreach, education and community-building for the Sega Saturn at PRGE and other events like the Game On Expo and Gamescom is made possible thanks to all of the generous contributors to the SHIRO! Patreon. Thank you for helping to get the word out that you must play Sega Saturn!
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