Too Many Games is a mid-sized gaming convention hosted once a year (normally in July, but this one was pushed back by the pandemic) in Oaks, Pennsylvania at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. This year’s convention consisted primarily of three massive halls arranged in a triangle, with huge bay doors connecting them, a main foyer and one panel room, with panel stages also set up in designated parts of each main hall. Of these, one was dedicated to the dealer’s room/artist’s alley, one to playable video games (half arcade cabinets, half consoles hooked up to TVs), and one to main events (including some of the bigger panels as well as all of the live musical performances on Friday and Saturday nights).
I arrived to the convention early on Friday morning, as my boyfriend was volunteering for the con. I was impressed with the way everything was laid out, in that even on the busier days there was little congestion in getting around. Since all the main hallways are connected, it was never difficult to make it from one event to the next. Even more importantly, the expo center had its own massive free parking lot, which made leaving to go buy fast food easily convenient. Even with a pet expo happening on the other side of the convention center, it was never a struggle to find a spot within a two-minute walk to the door.
The dealer hall featured an excellent variety of rare finds in the gaming world, unique artists selling their works, indie developers showcasing their games, and a smaller collection of mainstream developers selling tie-in merch. Rather than the standard industry booths, there was much more focus on the merchandise of Screenwave and Cinemassacre creators, given that their organizations run the convention, largely built out of the continued popularity of the Angry Video Game Nerd, AKA James Rolfe—without a doubt one of the most influential, beloved, and longest-lasting game reviewers still around. I was somewhat glad that I attended the convention with only enough money to survive, as the temptation toward frivolous spending would have been powerful otherwise.
The gaming hall was pretty similar to what I’ve seen at other large East-coast conventions like Otakon. There was a solid balance of popular and obscure titles, with my interest particularly piqued by the back table running PC-Engine, Commodore and MSX machines, among others. My favorite obscure arcade title on display was Dancing Eyes, in which you play as a tiny monkey running around a 3D track along a girl’s clothes, and achieve victory by cutting them off of her. I mostly found myself playing the few shoot-em-up games they had out, though these mostly came from the same series, and I would’ve liked to see some more variety on that front. Super Smash Bros was wisely relegated to exclusively paid competition play, while Guitar Hero was continually available up on a stage, with speakers loudly dispersing the music into the atmosphere. I was consistently surprised how much the people playing on Friday had similar taste in music to myself, which made the game room a fun place to wander about, even if I didn’t end up playing nearly as much as would seem to be the point of being there.
One of the more unique elements of Too Many Games as compared to most mid-size cons I’ve attended is the way people tend to pop in and out. While the con had over ten-thousand attendants in total, I would doubt that more than five-thousand were in the expo center at a given time, with probably half of that in attendance on Friday and Sunday. If you wanted just to turn up, drop a bunch of money in the dealer’s hall, play a couple games and bail on a one-day pass, it certainly would be the place to do that.
My primary interest in the Main Events stage came with the musical performances that started each night. Friday was focused on Nerdcore rappers, including the genre progenitor MC Frontalot, and other old heads like MC Lars, Schaffer the Darklord, and Blaze Ya Dead Homie, leading up to the separately-ticketed Twiztid performance at the night’s end. Of these I was able to attend Schaffer, who put on a fantastic show full of hilarious songs about being a degenerate nerd and cat-lover. I also caught most of Mc Lars, who come ntinually trolled the audience by interrupting his own set to talk up everyone else, most especially Twiztid, in-between his own kind of weird and experimental tracks.
Saturday night focused on the rock and metal side of nerdcore, with performances by Rex Viper (a band featuring James Rolfe himself on rhythm guitar, and a combination of his friends and other professional musicians in other roles) and Psychostick, which I think is best described as a comedy nu-metal band. Rex Viper played surprisingly well, considering the band members had only gotten to play in the same room for the first time three days prior, and had spent that time practicing constantly. Sadly, the singer (also named James and not the last one in the band) started to lose his voice to that over-practice during the second song—but he compensated for this with high-energy wails and screams that kept the show entertaining, while Justin Silverman helped to keep things sounding right with his backing vocals. The drummer absolutely killed it, as did the sound technicians who set up some of the crispiest bass and snare Ive ever heard in a convention hall. Generally, I was in disbelief at how good all of the shows sounded, thanks to the con having rigged up a proper stage in the main events hall, instead of using a stage or system native to the convention hall, which in my experiences usually leads to muddy audio.
Rex Viper has a unique gimmick in that they make metal covers of eighties arena rock hits interloped with video game songs and parody lyrics. (One track begins as a straight metal cover of Eye of the Tiger interloped with the Mega Man 2 theme, before introducing parody lyrics from the perspective of Tiger Electronics about their inability to make good games, ultimately spanning into a seven-minute song with the structure of a Dragonforce track.) Most pleasantly surprising to me was that they introduced a cover of Touch from the Transformers the Movie soundtrack interloped with music from Double Dragon. By pure happenstance it was right after the surreal experience of seeing that song from my childhood performed live by a band whose rhythm guitarist Ive also followed since my teens, that my boyfriend came to me with a cute purple pixel-heart ring and proposed—guaranteeing I will remember that set forever! My now-fiance shortly thereafter found himself running the band’s merch alongside them as the last performance went to stage.
Psychostick was one of the best live performances Ive seen in a very long time, and easily the most fun nu-metal show Ive ever been to. They were hilarious, their performances incredibly tight and precise, and their song selections kept me realizing that I knew more of their catalog than I thought I did (only really remembering the seminal drinking classic, Beer). As soon as they started their Drowning Pool parody “I Can Only Count to Four,” I had to rush into the mosh pit and stay there for much of the performance—where I was in the good company of a Mega Man cosplayer from Super Thrash Brothers and a lot of very excited and cool fans. They brought the house down with their heavy metal hokey pokey cover as the closer, and it couldn’t have been more hype.
Musical performances aside, the only panel I attended at Too Many Games was the Hack the Movies panel, mostly to hear from my friends Tony, Crystal, Johanna, and Newt, all of whom I had the opportunity to enjoy conversations with throughout the con. Without a doubt, if you were interested in getting to see anyone from Cinemassacre or Screenwave, as well as other longtime net celebrities like the Nostalgia Critic and Scott the Woz casually wandering the convention halls, this would be the place to do it. I happily got to meet some of my own viewers and play video games with them, myself!
All in all, Too Many Games was a fun convention for gamers and people with a lot of money to spend, as well as longtime fans of internet creation institutions. For me the highlights were undoubtedly the Psychostick show, the Schaffer the Darklord performance, and getting proposed to in the middle of the Rex Viper set before getting to tell everyone in the band about it and even meet some of the people who inspired me as a creator. I also came away with a strong desire to get back into gaming, having barely touched the medium in the last year, and especially to play more danmaku and shoot-em-up games. Assuming nothing prevents me, I will definitely be attending next year!
Congrats on the engagement!! <3 <3 <3