I was feeling lost.

After almost nine years working at Disney, I left the company and accepted a new role in the UK.

Assuming it would all be great, my better half moved back to the UK in preparation for our new life there together. We got rid of all our furniture. I started my own company so I could invoice the UK company for my work.

Unfortunately, the opportunity didn’t work out well. Which meant I was separated from my better half by an ocean. Now I had to figure out what I was going to do next, what I started a company for, and how I was going to make money to feed my family.

She of course accepted a role right away and proceeded to win another BAFTA. No big deal. Me? I was on my own, living a lonely bachelor life and trying to figure out my next move.

Now what?

To keep myself from going crazy, I decided to drive to Portland to attend my first Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

This wouldn’t be a big deal to most people, but I live in Canada, and it’s an 8-hour drive plus a border crossing to get there. I live just north of John Riggs in the Okanagan/Okanogan region of America - the temperate strip that runs from Washington State to British Columbia.

I didn’t do much research on PRGE. I just saw a small ad in the back of Retro Gamer magazine and thought “why not?”

I’m glad I made the trek.

Somehow it was a huge lightbulb moment. It helped me re-discover my long-lost passion for old video games.

I’d spent the past five years battling my now ex-wife to get a divorce. I’d lost my passion for my work. I was utterly depressed.

But somehow, just by going to PRGE, I found my way again.

“Meeting people is easy” -Radiohead

Since I wasn’t sure what to do with myself as a solo attendee, I brought along my camera gear and interviewed a bunch of vendors and attendees.

I put myself out there and asked new people if I could interview them. That’s how I first met nice folks like Norm from The Gaming Historian, Joey from Clan of the Gray Wolf, and Kole and Gary from Duckfeed:

I had a random chat about video gear with a nice stranger in the hallway. Then I went to a panel talk, and that same nice guy got up on stage. It turned out that nice guy was Activision co-founder David Crane. He was so friendly and down to earth, I’m glad I had a normal and ordinary conversation with a game dev legend.

PRGE was awesome. I was so inspired by all the people I met, and it was so surreal to see how many people cared about the same things I did.

Since my ex-wife was anti-video games, I’d missed a decade worth of gaming history. I was so excited to learn about all the games I’d never heard of before.

When I interviewed Norm from The Gaming Historian, he introduced me to Panic Restaurant. I’ve got that video footage somewhere, I should dig it up one day and release it.

That’s how out of touch I was with the video game collecting community. I wasn’t on NintendoAge, and I wasn’t collecting games. I remember sending Nathan pics of a CIB “E.V.O.: The Search for Eden” going for hundreds of dollars. Neither of us had any awareness of the collector market. We just had those games because we loved them.

The card game

Inspired by what I saw on Day 1 of PRGE, I started designing a board game about video game collecting. I spent the first night in my Portland hotel room on my computer mocking up cards.

I didn’t have a name for the game yet so I just called it “Video Game Card Game”. Eventually I settled on the name “CollectorQuest”. Over the next couple of years before the pandemic I worked on the game with my friend and podcast co-host Nathan Lige (aka Cardboard Wolf). We even had a Patreon and a forum for the project. I saw a few projects called “Collector’s Quest”, but I figured our project was different enough and the name was very slightly different.

But as Johnny Iucci’s awesome podcast The Collector’s Quest got better and better, I had this nagging feeling that our card game needed a new name. Now I was starting to feel bad about having a project with a similar name.

Johnny’s podcast is awesome and I’m glad I changed our name out of respect for him. He’s so much more knowledgeable about game collecting than I am, and the name is a much better fit for his project. We put our game on hold, but I still love the idea and hope to return to it someday.

Each day at PRGE I’d return to my hotel room and design some cards.

Since I love Koei, the first card I designed was for “Inindo: Way of the Ninja”. I chose it because I love the cover art by my favorite Japanese artist, Noriyoshi Ohrai. Sadly, the artist himself would pass away a week after PRGE 2015.

That was the spark that lit the flame: returning to my Koei roots.

The discovery

Inspired by the creative buzz of meeting new people and designing cards with Koei art as placeholders, I went shopping.

I bought a stack of Koei’s Super Famicom games from a vendor, including Angelique, the “first love game for women” from 1994. I was ecstatic to find new Super Nintendo games I’d never heard of before! The Super Nintendo is my favorite console of all time, and I was blown away to find not only so many games I’d never heard of, but also that Koei made a bunch of them!

Little did I know that there were so many more Koei games on other platforms that were only released in Asia.

That’s where this Japanese Game History project begins. PRGE 2015 was so formative for me – it’s the origin point for this project.

• I have Kole Ross of Duckfeed to thank for introducing me to Airtable, which I’ve been using heavily ever since. We used it for our card game and for this project. I’ve been plugging away at my Koei database since 2016.
• I have the Collector’s Quest (Johnny Iucci’s podcast) to thank for helping me fill in the many gaps in my knowledge. I like Johnny a lot and I consider him a friend. I enjoy the opportunities I have to hang out and chat with him. Tyler is also awesome and so funny. They make a great pair.
• I have Norm Caruso and Joey DeSena to thank for reminding me that I love video games and history, and that those two things overlap in many interesting ways.
• Plus Norm introduced me to Panic Restaurant and Little Samson, helping me realize just how much I didn’t know.
• It was an honor to see Jason (aka Metal Jesus Rocks) tweet about the video I made about PRGE. I can’t watch the vid without dying inside a little bit because I hate the sound of my own voice, but at least I got the thing edited and uploaded.
• Without the organizers of PRGE or that tiny little print ad in Retro Gamer, maybe I wouldn’t have started this project.

For all these people and experiences, I’m grateful. If you’ve helped influence me along the way, thank you! I hope this project can pay it forward.

PS

Here’s the video I made about PRGE 2015. Just promise me you won’t judge me too harshly for how out of touch I was with the game collecting community. I shot it with my BMPCC and because of the crop factor, I had to have the camera 50 feet away from me on a tripod, hoping and praying no one would knock the camera over while I interviewed people.

The one that really bums me out was my Mega Ran interview, because I lost the video footage. Luckily I do still have the audio, which we included in a podcast episode. I’ll have to dig that up and re-upload it again someday.