Howard Scott Warshaw, Rob Zydbel, Bob Smith, Tod Frye conduct the Atari 2600 programmmer panel at PRGE.

PRGE is proud to host over 50 hours of panel programming at the 2019 expo. We are bringing in speakers from all over the country including notable figures from the early days of the gaming industry as well as current celebrities.

NEW THIS YEAR! Speakers and panels at PRGE will take place in in the Portland Ballrooms which are upstairs from the main show hall.

Check back often as our guest list is still growing!

Rich Adam Rich Adam has, designed, developed, and led scores of electronic entertainment products to market. He has participated in the creation of original titles such as Missile Command, Gravitar, and what is now PGA Tour Golf. The most recent title he has contributed to is the Spyro Reignited Trilogy for Activision.

Arlo Arlo is a Youtuber who strives to create a friendly, upbeat environment where discussion is greatly encouraged and bad puns run rampant. This includes reviews, opinion pieces, let's plays, analyses, nostalgia talk, comedy bits, and anything else he feels like cooking up. Whether he's offering a positive reaction or an honest criticism or a pained lament, lighthearted comedy is at the heart of everything Arlo does. His main focus is Nintendo, but he dabbles in PC gaming and other consoles as well.

Matt Artim Another Castle began in late 2009 in Edmonds with the primary focus on Matt's hobby and passion for collecting and playing retro games. In mid-2010 Another Castle added a small arcade to the store; Matt's other passion, classic coin-op arcades and pinball. 2010 is when Matt got to know Jason "Metal Jesus" when he would frequent the shop every month or so, and talk for hours about games. That is also the year that Kinsey Burke, Matt's old manager and friend from Game Crazy, came to work for the shop (which is how Metal Jesus and Kinsey met).

Another Castle moved to a larger suite in Edmonds in 2012 and added a larger arcade. In 2013-2014 Another Castle expanded the arcade and made it an arcade bar by adding 50+ more games and pinball machines and added canned and bottled beer to the repertoire. Another Castle today has 4 shops and 4 arcade bars from Bellingham to Bremerton.

Philo Barnhart Philo worked many animated TV shows and video games including The Smurfs, Scooby Doo, Jem and the Holograms, Space Ace, Dragons Lair, and many more. He worked on consumer products for several years with Disney, and to this day you can still find his artwork still being used on toys, books, home electronics/appliances, apparel, and posters.

Tyler Baron Tyler Baron is one of the founders of the YouTube Channel, Treesicle. He specializes in the writing, editing, and business side of YouTube. Treesicle is all about the gaming headspace, creating videos pertaining to video games, their characters, theories and analyses, current events, and anything else the Treesicle Team might come up with. They heavily focus on entertainment, comedy, and satire, while ensuring there's a lesson to take away from every video.

Curtis Bonds Curtis Bonds, aka 'CurtDogg', is the creator and host of Double NintenDare, a Nintendo-themed send-up of the classic Nickelodeon game show. While he's dabbled mostly in YouTube and Twitch streaming, he decided to combine all three of his passions, live performances, video games, and 80s & 90s pop-culture, and start hosting his game show at various gaming conventions.

Mat Bradley-Tschirgi One of our native Portlandians, Mat is one of the hosts for the Sequelcast 2 podcast. Mat is also the author of The Films of Uwe Boll Vol. 1: The Video Game Movies.

Kinsey Burke Kinsey is an avid collector who hails from Seattle, WA. She hosts a YouTube channel spotlighting video games and craft beer, and is also a regular contributor on Metal Jesus Rocks.

Evan Butler Evan Butler is an east coast author and videographer with a penchant for games, true crime, and shenanigans. He is available for hire for all three.

Frank Cifaldi Frank Cifaldi is Head of Restoration at Digital Eclipse and one of gaming's leading researchers and historians. His past credentials include being senior editor at 1UP.com, editorial director and community manager for Turner Broadcasting's GameTap games-on-demand service, and a contributing author to publications that include Edge, Wired, Nintendo Official Magazine UK and GamesIndustry.biz, among others.

Brian F. Colin Creator of such videogame classics as RAMPAGE, XENOPHOBE and GENERAL CHAOS, Brian F Colin is a vastly experienced Game Designer, Artist, Animator and Development Group Leader with over 80 video game titles to his credit.... including the creation of some of the most-popular, highest-earning & best-selling titles in video game history!

Pat "The NES Punk" Contri Pat Contri is a video game player, collector, and historian known for his web shows Pat the NES Punk, Flea Market Madness, and The Completely Unnecessary Podcast. He is the author of Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, currently working on the SNES followup and conducts the live annual NES Charity Marathon benefiting children's hospitals. In his spare time he enjoys eating numerous nachos, and hanging out with an old Jersey hippie named Frank.

David Crane Crane started his programming career at Atari, making games for the 2600. Crane left Atari in 1979 and co-founded Activision, along with Alan Miller, Jim Levy, Bob Whitehead, and Larry Kaplan. At Activision, he was best known as the designer of Pitfall!. Pitfall! was a huge hit, and maintained the top slot on the Billboard charts for 64 weeks and was named video game of the year in 1982. In 1986, Crane left Activision to co-found Absolute Entertainment with Garry Kitchen. With Absolute, he was known for Amazing Tennis and A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, a successful NES title following the adventures of the protagonist and his companion, a shape-shifting blob.

Walter Day As the founder of Twin Galaxies, the oldest video game scorekeeping and adjudication service in history, Walter Day is known as the creator of e-sports and has often been called The Patron Saint of Video Games. His remarkable efforts to find, verify and catalog video game world records has led to a decades-long partnership with The Guinness Book of World Records.

Joe DeCuir Joe Decuir was one of the original engineers at Atari, who helped design, build, and produce the Atari 2600. He also wrote the game Video Olympics, a Pong collection that launched with the system. He later went on to help develop the Amiga, and the USB architecture.

Christian Deitering Known as the "Ferris Bueller" of the Internets, the Aftermarket Archivist for new old Nintendo games, owner of the unorthodox Dragon Warrior collection, and/or the cofounder of the Let’s Play Gaming Expo. A lifetime collector of Nintendo, his most recent achievement was acquiring the NES SimCity prototype and creating its first GameFAQ.

Ian Ferguson By day, Ian Ferguson is a mild-mannered game store clerk, but by night he is one-half of the popular Completely Unnecessary Podcast along with Pat "The NES Punk" Contri.

Joe Granato IV Joe Granato IV is a multidisciplinary creative. By day, he is a professional videographer, filmmaker, and documentarian; by night, an enthusiastic programmer, musician, and novelist. In addition to his creative work, he is a teacher and mentor. He has taught game development, music production, and filmmaking in different educational environments for fifteen years. Currently, he is Senior Videographer at Ringling College of Art and Design, and the CEO and Creative Director of The New 8-bit Heroes, developers of NESmaker.

Tod Frye Tod Frye is a computer programmer once employed by Atari, and is most notable for being charged with the home adaptation of Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 video computer system. Other games designed by Tod include LCD Breakout Atari handheld, Asteroids for Atari 400/800, and the Swordquest series (Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and the uncompleted Airworld). Unreleased titles include Save Mary and Shooting Arcade and Xevious for the Atari 2600.

Josh Hamblin Josh Hamblin is the owner of online game store, The Place 4 Gamers. Josh doesn't shy away from the controversy around the "reselling" of classic video games and will cover topics including game values, engaging positively with collectors and understanding the marketplace. Forget everything you though you knew about "filthy resellers". He has a ton of useful information for collectors to help them build their collections as quickly and economically as possible.

James Hampton James likes games. He's been playing and making them all of his life.

His career in video games began at Lucasfilm Games in 1990 where he was a Playtester working on the first Star Wars Nintendo game, Monkey Island, and Monkey Island 2. After a brief stint at Maxis, he joined the Atari Corporation as a Producer, where he developed games on the handheld Lynx and led the design and production of 'Alien Versus Predator' for the Jaguar console.

After leading development on games for the PlayStation, he moved toward online gaming, joining Macromedia and was part of the original shockwave.com launch team, and received the 2000 People's Choice Webby Award for 'Best Game Site'. Since then, James co-founded a downloadable games company, worked on a social MMOG, produced games for i0s and Android, as well designing and producing award winning educational game titles for LeapFrog, based on the Pixar movies 'Ratatouille' and 'Wall-E'.

John Hancock "The Immortal" John Hancock is a mega-collector known for his comprehensive game collection and his comprehensive knowledge of all things video game. He is also the founder of the Cowlitz Gamers for Kids charity game expo in Kelso, Washington which has raised tens of thousands of dollars for local children's charities. John has his own YouTube channel where he releases several videos per week and he is a regular contributor on the Metal Jesus Rocks channel.

Traci Hines Traci Hines is a Singer/Songwriter, Voice Actress and Designer, most known for her music, YouTube videos and likeness to a certain redheaded mermaid. She uses her passion for fiction, fantasy and cosplay to fuel her music, and the majority of her original music to date takes inspiration from pop culture...books, movies, video games and even apps! Traci is also known for her high production cosplay music videos (most of them Disney) on YouTube, where she posts to an audience of over 430K subscribers. Her most popular music videos have reached 35 and 24 million views with her overall channel view count at 174 million. Traci began producing videos for fun, but now also gets to produce video and social media content for brands she loves, like Disney, Studio Ghibli, Skillshare, Google Play, Box Lunch, Final Fantasy XV, and most recently, a music video for Square Enix and Kingdom Hearts III!

Matt Householder Raised in rural northwest Ohio, Matt studied chemistry at Kent State University before encountering computers. While earning degrees in computer engineering (U of Mich) and computer science (Northwestern), he became a fan of coin-op video games. Commencing in 1981 his electronic game career spans all platforms -- coin-op, home computer, console, handheld, social (myspace/facebook), and mobile. His most famous creation may be the NPC quest marker "!" in Diablo II.

J. Bone-Christian J. Bone-Christian (aka “Bones”) is a filmmaker, artist and QA tester hailing from Portland, Oregon. Forever failing to climb out of the Earthbound rabbit hole, they serve as director of the documentary Mother to Earth and self-proclaimed Mother series historian.

Dan Kitchen As a passionate Game Designer, Dan is credited with developing and producing over 240 commercially released titles across 15 platforms. He is renowned for such Atari 2600 classics as CRACKPOTS™, GHOSTBUSTERS™, TOMCAT: THE F-14 FIGHTER SIMULATOR™, CROSSBOW™, IKARI WARRIORS™, DOUBLE DRAGON™, COMMANDO™, RIVER RAID II™ and KUNG-FU MASTER™. Recently, in addition to completing development on his first Tabletop Board Game, DRIVE-IN!™, due to be released in 2019, Dan is designing and programming two NEW GAMES FOR THE ATARI 2600. The first game, GOLD RUSH! ™, is based on a game he originally started back at Activision in 1983 which was intended to be a sequel to his brother Garry's smash hit, KEYSTONE KAPERS™. The second game, BON VOYAGE! ™, is an original title where players sail a luxury liner through iceberg filled waters of the North Atlantic while rescuing survivors of the infamous Titanic shipwreck. Both games are scheduled to be released early next year.

Go now to dankitchengames.com and subscribe to receive the latest game development updates and information on upcoming KICKSTARTER Campaigns!

Garry Kitchen From 1981-1995, Garry was an industry leader in the development of home video games, generating over $300 million in retail sales. His 2600 adaptation of the hit Nintendo arcade game Donkey Kong, published by Coleco, was one of the top selling games on the Atari platform, selling over 4 million units. In 1983, Kitchen followed up the success of Donkey Kong with his hit title Keystone Kapers, published by Activision and a nominee for Video Game of the Year.

Chris Kohler A writer and editor with over 20 years of experience in gaming journalism, Chris Kohler is currently Features Editor at Kotaku, where he hosts the retro game series Complete In Box. A lifelong game collector, he is known for hosting the Retrogame Roadshow panel at PRGE and elsewhere. He is the author of the books Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave The World An Extra Life, Retro Gaming Hacks, and Boss Fight Books' Final Fantasy V.

Tim Lapetino Tim Lapetino is a writer, creative director and author of the 2016 book, Art of Atari. His award-winning design and branding work has been published in more than a dozen books and magazines. He co-authored the design inspiration book Damn Good: Top Designers Discuss Their All-Time Favorite Projects and has written for HOW magazine, Geek Monthly, RETRO magazine, and others. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Museum of Video Game Art (MOVA), and is dedicated to chronicling the intersection of design and pop culture.

Jamie Lendino Jamie Lendino is the author of three books on his favorite Atari systems: the Atari 800, the Atari 2600, and the Atari ST. He's also the editor-in-chief of ExtremeTech and has written for PC Magazine for almost 15 years. Other publication credits include Popular Science, Electronic Musician, Consumer Reports, Sound and Vision, and CNET. In his spare time he's an avid (golden age) arcade gamer, a mix engineer, and a fan of comma-separated lists.

Kelsey Lewin Kelsey Lewin is a small-business owner from Seattle, Washington. When she's not living the dream as co-owner of Seattle's famous Pink Gorilla vidoe game store, she is a frequent guest on the Metal Jesus Rocks YouTube channel and a co-host of the Game Blitz Podcast. You can also catch Kelsey on her own YouTube channel, Kelsey Lewin Gaming.

Lord Ezekiel Arevalo A VR & AR aficionado that likes to go in depth with any VR & AR game, and discover new communication platforms that enhances the experience. Submersed in feeling truly present with the wide variety of being in different scenarios while sharing these experiences with novice and experienced players like myself is a novelty. VR & AR allow us to experience countless spaces, and experiences with people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends but with anyone online is a great adventure into a different shared reality.

Jason "Metal Jesus Rocks" Lindsey The Metal Jesus is a long-haired rocker dude who runs a popular YouTube channel dedicated to Retro Gaming with a Heavy Metal soundtrack. With the help of the Seattle gaming community he covers Hidden Gems, Buying Guides as well as the popular I HATE U series, Gamer Eats and much more. He was also an employee at mega publisher Sierra On-Line in the 90s and he brings his love of big box PC gaming to his channel as well. New videos released every Tues & Friday!

Austin Lockwood Lockstin dives deep into Pokemon and other Nintendo lore and science in his semi-educational series called Gnoggin! You can never quite tell how serious he's being... Not sure if he even knows...

Ed Logg An American video game pioneer. Joining Atari in February of 1978, Ed became a premier designer and programmer in the coin-operated games division. His best-known work includes the coin-operated versions of Super Breakout, Asteroids, Centipede, and Gauntlet. Ed also designed and programmed in supporting roles for several other Atari games..

Matt McMuscles Matt McMuscles has been making things and playing games on the internet for more years than he cares to admit, but now he's making even MORE stuff! On his channel, The Flophouse, he's been asking the eternal question WHA HAPPUN to some of the biggest gaming disasters of all time, reviewing any and all Godzilla media, and regularly chowing down on exotic American cereals. He's also been involved with making games as well, having written and produced the new indie Beat 'Em Up, The Takeover. He loves his two cats and his fashionista wife, Crymetina.

Charles D. Moisant Charles has been publishing comic books since 1991, starting with Kremin. Silver Phoenix Entertainment works with many artists, printing comic titles like Myth Told Tales by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye, Mystery Manor Haunted Theatre, and Whispers from the Void.

Modern Vintage Gamer From Developer to YouTuber : Modern Vintage Gamer is a emulation and homebrew developer thats worked on the original Xbox, Xbox 360, Amiga, Sony PSP, Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Switch with over 30 different released across these systems including the Nintendo 64 emulation on the Original Xbox – which many said couldn’t be done. .After launching his youtube channel in 2007 as an outlet for showing off his coding efforts and projects, in 2014 began the exploration of retro consoles and computers recounting the stories of hacking, trade secrets of the modding underground scene.

David Murray David Murray is the creator of The 8-Bit Guy channel, a computer video series focusing mainly on retro technology from the 80's, 90's and 2000's. He makes educational content about retro technology and some of his most popular videos include detailed mini-documentaries on 8-bit computer graphics and sound.

Bob Neal Bob is the founder of RetroRGB.com, a website that launched in 2011, dedicated to the preservation and restoration of classic video game and display hardware, as well as the community that drives these projects. He has a weekly podcast that's a consolidation of all the news articles posted on the site that week, as well as more in-depth review and educational videos on his social media channels.

Paul E. Niemeyer Paul has illustrated for a multitude of products, including Jim Beam, Malibu Rum, Stolichnaya Vodka, M&M/Mars, Quaker, McDonald’s, Burger King, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Beatrice, Nestle’s, Con-Agra Foods, Disney/MGM, Paramount Pictures, American Airlines, Pegasus Games, PopCap Games, Eagle Games, and FunAgain Games, to name a few. Oh a little known game called Mortal Kombat.

Howard Phillips Howard Phillips is an American video game consultant and producer best known as an early employee of and spokesman for Nintendo of America in the 1980s. Initially a boat painter, Phillips started his video game career as manager of Nintendo of America's first Tukwila warehouse in 1981.

Chris Pranger Chris Pranger is a former Localization Writer/Editor from Nintendo of America where he worked on titles such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Hyrule Warriors, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Star Fox Zero. He's also been part of The Escapist back in the day where he was on a show called No Right Answer, and has two semi-ongoing podcasts called Media Sandwich and Dads Review a Thing (DRAT).

John Riggs John is a master at modifying NES game ROMs to do new and interesting things. You can learn more about what he does on his YouTube channel, RIGG'd Games.

James Rolfe - The Angry Video Game Nerd James Rolfe is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, film and video game critic, and internet personality, best known for starring in the web television series The Angry Video Game Nerd. Rolfe began filming Nintendo video game reviews as a child in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has created more than 270 films during his career. His career fully took off in 2004 with the beginning of the Angry Video Game Nerd. The series centers on Rolfe's nameless character, referred to simply as "The Nerd", who is a short-tempered and foul-mouthed video game fanatic who delivers commentary and sketches on retro video games he considers to be of poor quality. The show would later encompass reviews of gaming consoles, peripherals, and short lectures about video game history and culture.



Two years later, Rolfe gained mainstream attention when one of his videos went viral after friend and collaborator Mike Matei persuaded him to publish them on the Internet. Between this time, he filmed videos he created on his own and most of them have been released on his website Cinemassacre. He also performed briefly in music playing on the drums.

Ed Rotberg Ed was a key member of Atari's coin-op division, back when the staples of action gaming were introduced with each new Atari arcade game: "Missile Command," "Asteroids," "Centipede," "Tempest"; the list goes on. During his first stint at Atari in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ed was the primary force behind the 3-D tank game, "Battlezone." He worked for Atari Games again a few years later, having a guiding hand in "Blasteroids" (a 1987 update to "Asteroids"), "S.T.U.N. Runner," and, with Ed Logg, "Steel Talons." During most of the years between tours of duty at Atari, 1981-1986, Ed was Vice President of Software at Sente, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell's new coin-op company. Later, he worked for Apple Computer and 3DO.

John Salwitz John Salwitz began his video game career at Atari Games where he first found success as the lead game programmer of Paperboy. His arcade titles include Paperboy, 720⁰, Cyberball, Cyberball 2072 and Rampart, all for Atari Games. After Atari John worked at Electronic Arts where he developed Haunting-Starring Polterguy for the Sega Genesis. John left EA to become one of the principal founders and president of Blue Shift, Inc., an independent game developer, where he oversaw the development of Vapor TRX for the arcade, Running Wild, World Series Baseball 2K2 and 2K3 and Toxic Grind.

Robin Schapiro An Oregon native with a palette for gaming & music. A fan of the obscure, bizarre, and even evolutionary. Exploring the world of ahead of its time gaming releases, and unusual peripherals. Finding the good in horrible games. I may just be a fan of the gaming scene, but I hope to one day share my gaming thoughts, and opinions with the world. Game on!

Bob Smith Bob is a 20-year veteran game programmer and one of the founders of Imagic. In addition to Imagic, he has worked for Atari and Accolade writing such noteworthy games as Video Pinball and Star Wars for the Atari 2600. His best known work is probably 1982's Dragonfire, although he also wrote Riddle of the Sphinx. He continued working on games through the 1980s and 1990s for a variety of companies.

Pamela Smith Pamela Smith worked for Atari in the Promotion Design department for Consumer Electronics from 1982 - 1984. She designed the holiday packaging for the 5200 game console, and the retail point-of-purchase and sales support materials for the Ms. Pac Man, DigDug, Pengo and Phoenix games. She worked with the team that designed and produced the 1983 sales catalogs, including the 2600 and 5200 video game consoles and the entire line up of games. Pamela has worked as a graphic designer for over 30 years. Her previous employers include Landor Associates, Maxtor Corporation and Medtronic Inc. She has consulted for Apple Computer, Borland International, Brocade, Hewlett-Packard, and VMWare. Her work has received awards from Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club of New York, Creativity Magazine and POPAI.

Stop Skeletons From Fighting Stop Skeletons from Fighting is a celebration of video games and video game culture, from celebrating the medium's weird and unnecessary to its history. SSFF is a team made up of Grace Kramer and Derek Alexander, with popular shows including Punching Weight and Past Mortem. You can check them out on their Youtube Channel.

Switch Jeff "Switch" Sorensen provides the soundtrack for the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. As our loyal house DJ, he provides just the right atmosphere for a 90,000 square foot hall filled with classic gaming goodness, which is no small task.

Sydabee Sydabee is a 29 year old nerd from Portland, Oregon. Ever since her first convention in 2005, cosplay quickly morphed into her greatest passion because it combines all of her other hobbies together: gaming, comics, horror, anime, crafting, painting, makeup, and modeling. While she keeps busy with her day job in the coin-op industry and being a mom, she continuously dedicates her free time to honing her crafting skills and creating new cosplays.

Chris Trimiew A lifelong collector, Chris started his career in gaming at Working Designs working on games such as Vanguard Bandits and the Arc The Lad Collection. He went on to work as a reviewer for Silicon Mag before founding Lost Classics which he currently owns and operates.

Matt Uelmen Raised in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles, his formal training in music consists of 7 years of piano lessons starting at age 6. Self-taught as a multi-instrumentalist and orchestrator, Matt's most famous performance/composition is the "Tristram town music" from the Diablo series of computer games -- in which he plays the 12-string guitar and flute.

Howard Scott Warshaw Howard Scott Warshaw, MA, ME, LMFT was the sole designer and programmer of one of the greatest flops in video gaming. He will discuss all the behind the scenes machinations and shenanigans which led to turning one of the most coveted licenses in video game history into a dynasty crushing disaster and ultimately the sub-flooring of the New Mexico desert. He will also discuss his experience carrying the moniker "maker of the worst game ever" for three decades. It's a tale of hubris, triumph, blind ambition and in the end... resiliency. Artist, technologist, creator and healer, Howard Scott Warshaw is first and foremost a communicator. His career accomplishments include video game pioneer, MoMA artist, award winning film producer, celebrated software developer, author and columnist. Howard enlists this eclectic skill set to serve others as a psychotherapist in California's Silicon Valley, where he specializes in the issues of hi-tech leaders and the super-intelligent. Check out his blog at hswarshaw.com.

Brett Weiss Longtime gamer, freelance writer, and national columnist Brett Weiss has been a respected journalist in the gaming and pop culture communities for more than two decades. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Old School Gamer, Game Informer, Gameroom Magazine, Classic Gamer Magazine, the Pingame Journal, Video Game Collector, and Video Game Trader, among many others.

Weiss is also the author of 10 books, including the Classic Home Video Games series, The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987, Encyclopedia of KISS, and The SNES Omnibus volumes 1 and 2. Check out Brett's new YouTube show, Tales from a Retro Gamer.

Reggie Williams "Radical" Reggie Williams is an avid collector of various game types. He is especially a big fan of import gaming. Reggie is also a veteran of the U.S. Army where he served his country. Reggie continues to delight everyone that follows him with his knowledge of retro and current gaming while keeping it real and down to earth. He's very proud of his great collection of games that he's acquired throughout the years and is happy to share his passion of video games with the world. You can check out his new YouTube channel here.