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The Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition

Bank Of America Investment Since 2003, Tulsa, Oklahoma has been home to the only major convention entirely devoted to classic gaming in the central US. Held yearly at one of Tulsa, Oklahoma's most luxurious hotels, hardcore gamers from the surrounding area of Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and more gather to play games, enter tournaments, cream each other at Halo 2, and have a blast. Since it was founded three years ago, the OVGE has grown into quite a large gathering.

Vendors and Exhibitors rent all of the available space each year, and there is always a waiting list due to available space being limited. Each year the OVGE offers several gaming tournaments to stir up competition in classics like Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Arcade), Mark of the Wolves (Neo-Geo), and modern classics like Halo 2, and this year was no different. Fans flocked to sign up for each one throughout the day, and the competition was fierce for various prizes such as rare cartridges autographed by their designers, and prototypes as well as hardware setups.

Original 1979 Atari Story Display for Sale

If youre a fan of the Atari 2600, NES, Genesis, Neo-Geo, Xbox, Playstation, SNES, or just about anything else, the OVGE is a terrific place to collect hardware, games, collectables, and homebrewed cartridges & discs conjured up by people who design and sell original games in their free time for the love of it. Many of the games are extremely impressive because in this day and age people have learned how to squeeze things out of those machines that the original hardware designers didnt even know or believe were possible during their original life spans.

Classic Gamers in the midwest have never had a large scale gathering where they could meet and have fun together until OVGE came along. You have Philly Classic in the East, Classic Gaming Expo in the west, but now you have OKVE in the middle to fill the 3000+ mile gap.


Nintendo Magnet Toys Display


There were also many people who came and rented tables just to display their collections and play games with other people who share their intrest in gaming. Earl Green, author of the website Phosphor Dot Fossils brought one of the few surviving original 1972 Odyssey consoles, the first home console ever released, in playable form.

Scott Huggins of Atari Age brought a large collection of homebrew games for sale and a working MAME arcade cabinet for free play. Tim Olansen came with exquisite collection of fighting games covering PS2, Neo-Geo, Arcade, and Capcom fighters and had showdowns all day with countless people, but then there were Joshus Risner and Trung Tang of www.shoryuken.com who brought with them 18 years of Street Fighter for tournament and free play as well as personal footage from EVOLUTION, the largest annual fighting game tournament in the country held in Las Vegas.

There was also Joshua Dunbar, a Sequential Art Major who brought his collection of exquisite video game oil and water color paintings. Suffice to say the man is an amazing artist and was selling prints of characters that were sometimes better than the original game artwork. There were also many more exhibitors in the show, but undoubtedly the most popular both was Game Rushs Halo 2 tournament where you could win a wealth of Xbox related prizes. There were countless attendees, and yours truly placed 18th.


"This is Street Fighter Alpha 3"


Original Homebrew Video Games developed by Fans

OKVE 2005 footage (WMV large, 640x480, 23MB)

OKVE 2005 footage (WMV small, 320x240, 16MB)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Please join us on page two for an exclusive interview with Jesse Hardesty, founder and operator of the Oklahoma Gaming Exhibition.

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