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While RePlay FX 2018 has its roots in a festival for pinball enthusiasts, it has developed nicely over the years into Pittsburgh’s premier gaming invention, a locus for not only pinball and old school coin-op video games, but console and tabletop games, as well as a showcase for cosplayers and gaming inspired musical acts, such as Super Thrash Bros and The Triforce Quartet.

We’ve attended RePlay FX since its inception, so this marks the fourth year of our attendance, and every year the convention seems better and more vibrant, with not only higher attendance but a high caliber of attendees, which is to say that everyone you meet there is super nice and only interested in getting their game on. And, as all the games are set to free to play, there is a lot of gaming going on at any given time.

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The Staying Power of the Arcade Experience

Vintage coin op video and pinball games remind us that the novelty of technology can outlive its general use; that old often means not irrelevant or unentertaining, but proven playability; that newness can disappoint when compared with vintage classics (case in point: RePlay FX’s classic Rampage, a much better game than the updated cinematic one at Dave and Busters); and, that though the times change, past treasures will continue to find new fans, like my seven year old, who did not want to leave the pinball games. While my guess is that 99 out of 100 kids would play pinball if they had the opportunity, outside of RePlay FX, few habitats remain for these classic games.

Which is not to say that there isn’t new tech here, such as the Twitch broadcast of vintage gaming competitions, just that part of a successful technological culture may be acknowledging its age, enjoying the hybrid edge created by the fusion of the old with the new, and recognizing the virtue of old machines in which design and programming coalesced into something not only addictive, but classic. Certain old video games create not only an experience, but an aesthetic, that humans living in any decade would appreciate, and it is this unique entertainment signature that continues to attract players to the game, regardless how old and clunky the interior or the cabinet. While the cell phones of 1995 are laughably obsolete, you can imagine people playing a 1979 Asteroids or a 1982 Ms. Pac-Man in future centuries or on another planet, so that at least until humans have different eyes, different hands, and different brains, these games are not technologically obsolete, but technologically immortal…at least, as long as humans remember how to repair these games.

Games Played

As you can tell, I really love these old video games. A veteran of every RePlay FX, this year was not about the nostalgia of rediscovering old games, not about playing now what I played then, but about replaying all the games that have transcended my nostalgia to become something that I really, really enjoy playing now. For the two days of our RePlay FX experience, a 1982 arcade lived and breathed, because that was the way I once played games. So that, rather than playing a smattering of different games, I accumulated Centipede, Galaga, Tempest, Ms. Pac-Man, Rampage, Battlezone, and Asteroids plays, and adding to that a play each of certain games for which I hold a curiosity or a shred of nostalgia, such as Saito’s Superman, Xenophobe, Frogger, Missile Command, Space Invaders, and the slower Pac-Man games (which usually sent me running back to the speedier Ms. Pac-Man). As I’ve mentioned in past reviews of RePlay FX, not every vintage game is good; for every Asteroids or Tempest, there are ten that aren’t so good, and only gazing at them through the pixellated glasses of nostalgia will tempt you into seeking a playable game there. Defender, I’m looking at you.

Another evolution of my RePlay FX experience is that this year I played a lot of Centipede. I attribute this to the fact that in previous years, my enjoyment of RePlay FX was partially about the nostalgia, and Centipede was not one of the best-loved games of my childhood. When my attention shifted from nostalgia to a pure gaming experience, one game of Centipede led to another, and now I would like to tell twelve year old me to play more Centipede.

The third trend in how my RePlay FX experience is changing is that I’m playing more pinball, which is the by-product of my son’s fascination with pinball. In previous years, while I played a few pinball games, I was mainly interested in the art values of the machines. At each pinball game my son played, he wanted to play it several more times, and this zeal rubbed off on me to a degree, so that I watched his games with growing interest and played a little more myself.

If I have any regrets about my arcade experience at RePlay FX 2018, it’s that I didn’t play more Joust, and never played Gauntlet. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but because, whether it was due to its popularity or my luck, Gauntlet was never unoccupied, and my wife and daughter took every chance to play Joust. (Not that I should complain, considering how long I made them wait between turns on two-player Ms. Pac-Man.)

Being RePlay FX veterans, we played only coin op games on Friday, when the lines are lighter and you can go game to game. Even if you’re champing at the bit to play Tempest, which we were several times, you’ll eventually find one by going with the flow, game to game. By comparison, Saturday we played guilty pleasures, those coin op games that are in bad taste for one reason or another, such as Saito’s Superman in which the Man of Steel throws fireballs, adding another apocryphal power to Superman II‘s cellophane S and amnesia kiss. There is never a line on Saito’s Superman, and I do like to play it when I find one.

Saturday is also a great day to learn a new boardgame, as while this was the biggest and best year for the tabletop area, there were always available chairs. This year we taught ourselves Kodama: The Tree Spirits, which, though we weren’t able to finish, seems not only like a fun quick game, but one of those elusive four player games that also plays well with two players. While the game materials are average, the art values are high, so Kodama‘s competitive and strategic aspect is also accented by the visual pleasure of crafting a tree bearing flowers, mushrooms and caterpillars.

Kodama (2nd Edition) Board Game

An Area of Opportunity and an Exciting Development

The only area in which RePlay FX has not exhibited much growth is in their alley of vendors, which has not increased to match the pace of this burgeoning convention. This may be the vendors’ fault, I imagine, as it seems like there are nothing but missed opportunities for merchants at RePlay FX. For instance, on Saturday, the board game area had 50-100 people seated at any given time, and there was only one tabletop game vendor at the convention.

Although Vendors aren’t savvy about RePlay FX yet, several indie game creators attended and brought playable games. While an arcade game developer attended a past RePlay, if indie game designers start to see RePlay FX as a viable showcase for their work, this could be an exciting development for RePlay FX that might lead to RePlay growing to something like a Pittsburgh version of PAX, or–fingers crossed–a hybrid event with tabletop developers as well, adding that je ne sais quoi of GenCon.

The most striking indie game was ParaLily, a puzzle sidescroller that had three of us enthralled for about twenty minutes. While it is not yet available on Steam, here is some in-game footage:

Conclusion

Once again, RePlay FX brought the dazzle, the pixels, and an arcade glamour to the David L Lawrence Convention Center, transforming the hall from a rectangle of only so many dimensions into a brightly-colored platform bearing the backdrops, levels, and stages of many games. In this galaxy of games, the fun is universal, not only for coin op gaming fanatics, but for gamers of all stripes, cosplay enthusiasts, families, and anyone else looking for a broad spectrum of entertainment.

Cross-posted on NerdSpan.com. Board of Life uses affiliate links.

RePlay FX 2018: A Review of Pittsburgh’s Gaming Convention While RePlay FX 2018 has its roots in a festival for pinball enthusiasts, it has developed nicely over the years into Pittsburgh's premier gaming invention, a locus for not only pinball and old school coin-op video games, but console and tabletop games, as well as a showcase for cosplayers and gaming inspired musical acts, such as Super Thrash Bros and The Triforce Quartet.