Torg Gaming Expo Pickups and Experience

 TORG Gaming Expo '23

I missed out on Midwest Gaming Classic this year with changing jobs, but I had to go to TORG with it being a short drive away! TORG is held annually in Columbus, Ohio and is one of the premier expos in Ohio for video games. I was able to go last year for the first time, and I'll go into my experience more in just a second, but overall it was better than last year on just about every front! I also was able to set aside a decent budget for games this year as well with Genesis games and a few uncommon titles which I was happy to find most of what I was looking for! Lets get into the experience overall.

Experience

Huge shoutout to the expo staff for running a smooth experience this year. Last year TORG was just a one-day con, but the turnout was so good that they expanded it to the weekend and so they had much more people on staff to help people getting in. Again looking at last year, the line to get in was pretty long and if you don't know Ohio weather in November, it's pretty chilly especially at 9 in the morning. This year we were able to get in super quick, we were inside the venue in a separate waiting area, and the staff actually let us in 15 minutes early which was awesome. I'm pretty sure they also moved buildings even though it was technically the same venue as last year because it felt much bigger. There was probably 100 different vendors from individuals to local game stores to art vendors and tabletop games, all pretty standard for a convention of this type. It was also nice that they had food trucks outside of the venue as well as a food court inside the venue. We didn't stay the entire day, getting there at 9:30 and leaving around 3 but it only started getting busy around lunch time with our first trek around the expo being pretty chill. Best part of all, its only 20 bucks for a one day pass. I think they got it right this year for sure in terms of an overall experience and I'm excited to go next year.

Games

Now for the fun part, what games did I get? I got 11 different games this time around, and after not buying any games for like a month I was itching to buy. I won't post a ton of photos for some of the lower dollar items but I'll add in some of the highlights. Let's start with the Genesis games. First off I picked up some common games that I had found elsewhere but weren't in the best shape when I did, so these ones were in nice shape. Early on I found a nice CIB copy of Ms. Pacman which I wanted to try the 2-player after seeing it online. I also found a copy of Nigel Mansell's World Championship, which might be a hidden gem on the Genesis. The game also came out on Snes, but I really liked the music, there were a ton of courses to select from and the driving itself felt pretty good. I wish the tracks were a little bit wider to make passing cars easier but for 10 bucks it made sense to me to get it CIB. Not quite CIB but at least in the box I got Gunstar Heroes as well which was a much needed addition to the collection. I was surprised at the price as well, getting it in box for what you could get it loose was nice.

Lastly on Genesis I got Burning Force which I was really looking for and excited to get. The copy I got is really clean and the game has been a lot of fun so far. I only made up to stage 3-2 so there's more to experience, but well worth it having on my shelf. I'm looking to eventually get a few more of the Namco Genesis games with Rolling Thunder 2 and Phelios primarily on my list, but all in due time. 

From taking a look at my list of games that I was keeping an eye out for, I had a lot more DS games that I didn't end up getting, but I did get some Vita and 3DS games to fill the gap. Mario and Luigi: Dream Team was the first purchase of the con, and something I knew that I would be in the mood for after playing the Mario RPG remake on Switch, especially because I loved the previous games in the series. I also got a pair of Vita racing games, Ridge Racer and Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed. I heard that the Ridge Racer game was generally a pretty weak entry, and after playing it I can see that because there isn't a ton of single player content off the bat, but DLC certainly helps with that. Sonic Racing on the other hand was harder than I expected initially, but I can see myself playing a lot of this one as well. I'd say next on Vita I'm looking for Shiren the Wanderer and then spending some more money on some of the higher tier RPG's like YS and a few others.

Lastly, I picked up some miscellaneous PlayStation and Saturn games that I had my eye on for a long time now. There wasn't a import Saturn stuff unfortunately, a lot of the import games were Famicom, Pc Engine and surprisingly a lot of import GameCube games. I was able to find a copy of Fighters Megamix on Saturn that was imported thought, and added that to my collection pretty quickly as it was cheap, and I later learned that it might still be factory sealed which is cool. One pair of games that I had my eye on for a long time were Ace Combat 2 and 3 which I got both this time around as well. The more retro games I play nowadays, the more appreciation I have for Namco and what they've done not only in arcades but also during the PlayStation as well.

 By this point during the day I had bought most of what I was looking for, so we had stopped and ate some lunch and then took some time to check out the game museum that was there, and got a chance to play some Typing of the Dead 2-Player which was awesome! It definitely makes me want a Dreamcast sooner rather than later. There was still one game that I was looking for in particular, being Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast on PS2. The Xbox version looks better sure, but it's much more expensive and I just want to play the game. We went back around to the tables we had been to, and found one that we must've skipped over because they had a huge PS2 section where we found a copy! By this point of the convention I was pretty satisfied with my pickups, and started looking for some other goodies I could take home. I ended up getting some pins, t-shirts for my girlfriend and a custom tumbler cup and straw with the Q-Bert arcade marquee.

I had a great time at TORG this year and will definitely make it an annual occurrence. If you're nearby Columbus or even if you're a little further away, definitely try making it to the con next year because it seems to be getting better year after year. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I'll have another article up at the end of the year recapping some of the games I had a chance to play this year and I'll rank them in order.