Game On

[September 26th, 2007]

It’s a busy Monday night in smoky hipster lounge Beulahland. Conversation ripples through the cavernous bar, and eyes are drawn to a projection screen in the main room.

The screen is a psychedelic ’80s flashback. Tron is playing in its neon-pastel glory. Layered atop the movie, Ms. Pac-Man is racing through a maze, gobbling pellets and chasing ghosts. In a corner of the room, Danny Norton and Phantom Hillbilly (a.k.a. Nicholas Wells) spin Pink Floyd records. Two guys sit on a couch, controlling the Pac-lady on an old Atari 2600. The match is displayed on TVs throughout the bar.

Since May, Hillbilly, 39, and Norton, 37—both freelance video editors—have hosted a weekly Atari tourney at the bar, a grudge match for glory—and cheap beer. The pair bring a stash of about 35 games to each tournament.

It’s a kick to see ancient games lapped up by the young crowd of twentysomethings. Frogger isn’t exactly cutting-edge in an era of Grand Theft Auto and Second Life . But, as Hillbilly suggests, old-school games and systems aren’t just nostalgia.

“[New Games] have terrific graphics, but they’re not challenging,” he says. “With old games, there’s no ‘pause.’ If you do, you die.”

A cute blonde approaches Hillbilly and asks to play. He grins and tells her she needs a gaming handle. She looks confused. “It’s more fun if you have a name,” he says. Soon “Vixen Vivacious” is embroiled in a game with a girlfriend.

“See? Games aren’t just for geeky dudes,” he laughs. “We just had two chicks going head-to-head. Chicks have always been into Ms. Pac-Man.”

From the looks of Portland’s old-school gaming culture, antiquated games are a serious commodity. Portland is rife with gaming enthusiasm, with dozens of stores like CD Gamexchange and Video Game Wizards doling out systems to consumers hungry for gaming history, proving that gaming isn’t just for basement-dwelling nerdlingers. After three decades, they’re a way of life.

It doesn’t make sense at first. After all, in the toy world things become outdated fast, left by the wayside as newer products come along. Indeed, why play the old Atari version of Combat , with its blocky airplane dogfights, when you can grab an XBOX 360 game and blast through the high-definition stratosphere in an F16?

“Video-game concepts, no matter how you dress them up graphically, are still the same,” says Billy Galaxy, owner of his namesake West Burnside Street shop where he sells old systems and games along with retro toys. Galaxy is also author of the 2001 book Collecting Classic Video Games . “You’re still going left to right, or up and down. It’s not just nostalgia.”

Galaxy is co-sponsoring this weekend’s NorthWest Classic Gaming Enthusiasts Atari 2600 Tournament and Show, a gaming extravaganza featuring competitions on old-school systems Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as battles featuring newer games like Halo 3 and Guitar Hero . The event, held in Seattle for the past decade, hits the Holiday Inn Portland Airport Hotel&Conference Center Saturday and Sunday, boasting 18 vendors hawking classic collectibles. The competitions alone are expected to draw upward of 50 gamers.

“We want to keep the classics alive. They’re what made present gaming possible,” explains 44-year-old delivery-truck driver Rick Weis, a tournament staffer and planner. “If it wasn’t for [Atari], who knows if video games would have ever caught on?”

When Atari 2600—which was the girth of a small briefcase and required seemingly indestructible, 8-trackish cartridges—hit shelves in 1977, it became a springboard for rapidly evolving systems, from the NES in 1985 to new monsters like XBOX, PlayStation and Nintendo’s latest brainstorm, Wii. Currently, video-gaming is a multibillion-dollar industry with multigenerational appeal. Atari products are still very much alive in the form of Atari Flashback, a reissued version of the 2600 ($39.99). And old-school Atari cartridges are still produced by international programmers, who sell them through websites like atariage.com.

“Video games don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re part of our language. It’s in our DNA—a shared experience that creates a community,” says Anthony Ramos, co-owner of Ground Kontrol, which provides further proof of Portland’s love of classic games and public play.

The two-level arcade is a monolith of social gaming, with more than 90 games—from the 1977 Star Wars arcade to a massive collection of pinball machines. The Old Town spot doubles as a music venue and bar and sells old-school consoles like Atari and NES (prices range from $39.75-$99.75, depending on the package) at a rate of about three a week.

“People have a strong bond with games,” says 39-year-old Ramos. “It’s a coming-of-age thing, and classic games are a way to relive that.”

That bond has given Ground Kontrol an edge. In 2004, the arcade moved from a small space on Southwest 12th Avenue to its current home, nearly double the size of the original. The rent has doubled, too, but with constantly busy weekends, that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

“We’re riding the wave of people who grew up with different systems,” he says. “There’s a nostalgia age—the mid-20s and early 30s—where people want to relive youth.”

It’s midnight at Beulahland, and I challenge the tournament champion—a baby-faced dude with the hair of a hipster Napoleon Dynamite, known only as “The Destroyer.” He hasn’t left his throne (the couch) since he came in two hours ago.

The challenger gets to pick the game, and I choose something obscure—Beat ’Em&Eat ’Em .

The object of Beat ’Em is to maneuver two naked women to catch rectangular globs of semen from a masturbating man with a massive, blocky penis. The game, produced in 1983 by a Swedish erotica company called Mystique, is one of a handful of pornographic Atari games released in the early ’80s, including the truly offensive rape-a-squaw adventure Custer’s Revenge and Bachelor Party —games that make the infamous doggy-style scene in Grand Theft Auto look like Skinemax.

As we gobble up pixilated spooge, I ask the 29-year-old Destroyer about the appeal of old-school games. He continues to play, but his voice hits a Zen-like tone.

“It’s back to fantasy,” he says, referring not to the pornographic game, but to Atari itself. “It’s so pure.”

Destroyer lives up to his name. “It’s an honor to have my ass beat by you,” I say.

“It’s an honor to have kicked your ass,” he says, laughing. And then he moves on to meet his next challenger in a game of Dig Dug .

The NorthWest Classic Gaming Enthusiasts Atari 2600 Tournament and Show takes place Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 29-30, at the Holiday Inn&Conference Center, 8429 NE Columbia Blvd. Vendors open 9 am-5 pm. Last tourney of the day begins at 5 pm. $10 one-day pass, $20 two-day. Tournament times vary: Halo 3, 1 pm Saturday; Atari 2600, 5 pm Saturday; Guitar Hero, 1 pm Sunday; NES, 5 pm Sunday. Entrance into tournaments is free with admission. Nwcge.org. All ages.

Beulahland’s Atari 2600 competitions take place every Monday at 10 pm. 118 NE 28th Ave. 235-2794. Free. 21+.