OTTUMWA, IOWA -- We’re all familiar with the old school Pac Man game and Nintendo. Well, this weekend brought out the who’s who of the gaming world for the 2nd annual Grassroots Gaming Expo at the Bridge View Center.
Ottumwa was deemed the Mecca for video game enthusiasts back in 1983 when it was named the “Video Game Capital of the World.” And that still rings true for gamers everywhere.
“And there are tons of people around the United States and even around the world that they know what Ottumwa is. And it means something to them. And when there are events like this that go on those people want to go out of their way to go and be there because for some people it’s being able to say that they were there,” said Elizabeth Bolinger, organizer.
“I think this kind of cements the fact that Ottumwa is the video game capital of the world. I mean if you look around here, you've got everything from the classics back in the 70's, early 80's, all the way up until today. You've got kids in here that have never seen an arcade game. You've got old people in here that were at the arcades when they were kids and it's a cross-mixing of all these players and all these different games across all these decades,” said Tim McVey, gaming legend.
And if you see McVey out and about, you may want to stop and get his autograph. He was just one of the many legends that were at the Expo this weekend.
“When I was 16-years-old at Twin Galaxies here in Ottumwa, Iowa, I set the original one billion point score on Nibbler. I played starting at Sunday at 2 in the afternoon and finished at Tuesday at a quarter until 11 in the morning. I was the first person to score one billion points on a video game,” said McVey.
Needless to say, McVey was the guy to beat this weekend so that one person could say that they beat the first one billion point record holder.
“If I lose the Nibbler tournament, I’m going to probably cry. I will be very unhappy,” said McVey.
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