AVC Online

US Tour

Video Game Summit Report
by Daniel Iacovelli

On July 18th,2009 AVC Online, held it’s annual Video Game Trade show entitled The 2009 Video Game Summit.
Here is a brief walk through of the room where the show.
I got to the Heron Point Convention Center in Lombard, IL around 7:45am to set up the tournament area, later my co-promoter Todd Friedman joined me and I helped him set up some stuff.
Around 10am, Paul Zimmerman showed up to set up his attempt area for phoenix on the 2600. Also we had few people who registered online come in as well. Besides Paul’s and the tournament areas, we also had a small gaming area set up near Paul for people to play games.
Here is the layout of the show as you would see if you entered from the main door: along the side wall you would notice the 2600 tournament table that featured 2600 Phoenix and Laserman 2k3 and Laserman(my two 2600 games) and the Jaguar Tournament area(before the show Mad Bodies was showed, during the show mostly Alien vs Predator and Gorf Classic was shown). Along the front wall near the door was Dan Loosen’s Goat Store LLC who was selling various games and showed Tempest 2000.
In front of him was the Entrance table, where pop,chips and admission was done (Goat Store left early, so I moved there for the remaining time of the show) behind me I had shop items and Tilt DVDS for sale.
Back wall we had Zack Freedman and his Nuon system, next to him was I fight dragons 8-bit band, and next to them was Chris Duddridge (aka Chupathingy 8-bit musician). On the other side wall, Paul Zimmerman table’s had his own stuff for sale, his attempt at 2600 Phoenix World Record, and Twin Galaxies posters and books.
Near him, was Todd Friedman’s table where he was selling some his items and as mentioned before we also had some systems set up to play as well.
The show was busy all day we even had a couple surprise visitors to the show like Trickman Terry and Ken “Sushi-X” Williams from VGEvo.com who came to watch Paul’s attempt live, Ed Glover from EGSA.com(who was our sponsor), and even former Atari Lynx programmer Scott Williamson (who I didn’t know until I got an e-mail from him after the show when he joined the yahoo group for the show).
Todd and I even got interviewed for a local paper follow up
(triblocal.com under Lombard section).  One major highlight of the show when Paul Zimmerman had made history at show by playing 2600 phoenix for over four hours and crushing the record with a score of 4,014,440.
This was recorded on VHS tape as well witnessed by a member of Twin Galaxies who came as attendee of the show and not officially representing Twin Galaxies at the show. Most of the tournaments didn’t go well due to technical problems. Laserman games were awarded to Todd Friedman as he was the only person who played.  Over all I would estimate approximately 30 or 40 people came to the show. We are working out plans for a show in 2010 right now. (The whole show was streamed live at ustream.tv and later on at stickam.com, during paul’s attempt on ustream.tv we had Mike Feinstein(phoenix programmer for the 2600) and Walter day of Twin Galaxies in the chat room) After the show, a bunch of people went to Star Worlds Arcade for the first annual Post-party and tournament. (I couldn’t go due to work the next morning)