Video games have invaded Portland. They're filling up bars and taking over former music venues, earning their own floor at Warby Parker's trendy new eyeglass store, and glowing alongside the counter at restaurants such as Double Dragon. And from Friday to Sunday, they'll return to the Oregon Convention Center for the 11th Portland Retro Gaming Expo: a celebration of video game playing, history, and preservation.

"Retro" is the key word there. Other events focus on current games, the ones that have led the way as gaming's become a major cultural force: in 2015, the industry's reported $23.5 billion U.S. revenue topped film and music earnings combined. There have never been more ways to play, from computers to consoles to the phone apps that have sucked up countless hours of our thumb-tapping time. The ubiquity of the smartphone has been a revolution for portable gaming, bringing its possibilities to millions of new people and drawing in old favorites from Pokemon to Nintendo plumber Mario, who will make his iPhone debut in the upcoming "Super Mario Run."

It may be the enduring popularity of Mario and his digital colleagues that helps explain the rise of the Retro Gaming Expo, which now draws thousands of people to play its vintage arcade and console games, listen to talks, meet gaming icons and buy and sell dusty classics.

"I think that's why kids like the older video games," Expo board member Chuck Van Pelt said. "They play 'Mario' today... 'Sonic the Hedgehog'... 'Tetris'... modern versions of those games. But they pick up a game that was made in 1985 that has those same characters... then they find out that they were actually pretty fun games."

Portland is so often a national nexus of geeky, indoor activities--from craft beer to knitting to indie rock--that it could be a "Portlandia" punchline how the city, predictably, is one of America's gaming destinations, with retro bar-arcade Ground Kontrol leading the way since 1999. The Expo launched in 2006: last year, it claimed the attendance of over 7,000 people.

"Our show is thousands of people higher in attendance than the next closest retro gaming convention anywhere in the country," Van Pelt said. "We've been doing it consistently for a long time, maybe that helps, but there's something special here. I don't know what it is."

It's not just the digital stuff people come out for. Joining the arcade games at the Expo will be pinball machines, another source of Portland pride: according to Pinballmap.com, a nationwide tracker, the city boasts 715 machines in 304 locations. New York has 227 machines. Los Angeles has 190. "Weird" ol' Austin, Texas, has 299. Whatever.

Plenty of those machines are also over at Quarterworld, the new Southeast Portland arcade. It's another sign of Portland's retro gaming obsession: Quarterworld took over the former Alhambra Theatre earlier this year, flipping it into a sprawling home for pinball, arcade games, and boardwalk favorites such as skee ball and basketball machines. There's a performance stage in one room and a big screen in another space, the adult-leaning Q Lounge. The venue is all-ages during the day, and on a recent Friday evening, kids and parents made their way through the gaming maze alongside solo grown-ups headed for the bar counters.

Like the Expo, a trip to Quarterworld is a tour through history: Its space shooter "Galaga" turned 35 this year. Well before "Game of Thrones," there was sword-and-sorcery Sega saga "Golden Axe," whose dragon-riding, gladiator-slashing pleasures I'd forgotten. It's just a few games down the hall from 1989's "Altered Beast," another Sega creation, which offers mythological landscapes and vividly imagined 16-bit monsters. In classic arcade fashion, "Altered Beast" ate two of my quarters.

Quarterworld's arrival comes after years of Ground Kontrol's success, and that downtown landmark is working on its own expansion. Co-owner Anthony Dandrea expects the new building, previously occupied by all-ages music venue Backspace, will be ready in a month or two. But even that seems like less proof of Portland's current gaming ubiquity than the September news that the hip Warby Parker would be saving its Northwest brick-and-mortar's second floor just for retro games--perhaps they're easier on the eyes than the PlayStation 4's millions of pixels.

A new generation

For every player nostalgic for the day these games arrived, there's another just discovering them. The Retro Gaming Expo's guests this year include young YouTubers such as 26-year-old PeanutButterGamer, whose channel has over 1.6 million subscribers.

"When we first invited him and some of his colleagues down, the lines for autographs were hours," Van Pelt said. One vlogger's video from the Expo, a 2014 recap from a fellow who posts as Barnacules Nerdgasm, has over 100,000 views. "It's a good partnership, it's a good vehicle for us to meet our ultimate goal, which is to educate people."

Viewers at home can also tune in for a handful of tournaments including this year's Classic Tetris World Championship, a competition now in its seventh year (fifth at the Expo). Thanks to some two dozen master players, some younger than the 1984 game itself, "Tetris" has become a genuinely international competition. Top players from Japan and Finland will fly out for this year's event, though anyone can enter the tournament on Saturday and try their hand, with amateur tournaments alongside the main event.

"There's people that come every year to watch the championship," producer Vince Clemente said. "There's one kid specifically I see every year with his dad, he's smiling and cheering and he knows the players' names."

The Expo includes other tournaments and a sales floor alongside the arcade, guests, and speakers, and there will be more time to soak it in this year: the event will expand from two days to three, with Friday afternoon and evening devoted entirely to the free-play arcade. It'll feature dozens of console and arcade games from individual owners and Ground Kontrol's cache ready for button-mashing: just don't mash too hard.

"A lot of our games also come from private collectors and they generally are volunteering games that are from their homes," Van Pelt said. Ground Kontrol supplies some and helps gather others up, a task that takes two trucks and a full day of careful moving. "It's really fantastic that these people trust us enough to have these games brought in."

A key aspect of the Expo is preservation: just as art museums and film archives maintain their collections, aging physical video games need the same care. One of the convention's speakers is Frank Cifaldi, Head of Restoration at Digital Eclipse, who will address some of the challenges, including the sorts of copyright issues and legal red tape that also keeps, say, music releases and old movies out of print or off of digital platforms.

With maintenance a constant issue, Ground Kontrol's Dandrea said game restoration and modification has become an emerging industry unto itself.

"Parts are often about 20-30 years old," he said. "It's not like we can just order them from Amazon."

"There's a lot of hobbyists that have kind of gone pro," he added, noting a "Donkey Kong" arcade mod made by Ground Kontrol co-owner Clay Cowgill. In his version, players use Pauline, previously a damsel in distress, to save Mario from the titular ape.

That's not how we might remember it. But alongside preservation, reinvention is the future of retro gaming, as modern creators pay tribute to the past with hacks and fresh vintage-inspired games alike. With the medium more popular than ever in Portland, that's sure to make a lot of people happy.

"The appeal lies in the approachability. Arcade games were designed to be very easy to enjoy quickly," Dandrea said. "You don't have to read a manual, you don't have to go online and find someone to play with. You just put a quarter in and press start."

Portland Retro Gaming Expo

Oct. 21-23, Oregon Convention Center. Tickets: $30 presale weekend pass, $10 Friday only, $22 Saturday only, $16 Sunday only. Up to two child passes free with each paid admission for children 10 and under. Visit retrogamingexpo.com/admission.php for all options and full schedule.

-- David Greenwald

dgreenwald@oregonian.com

503-294-7625; @davidegreenwald

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