'Surprise and delight': Raleigh Retro Gamers' Summer Expo draws hundreds to Moore Square Park

It was a retro takeover Saturday in downtown Raleigh.

The Raleigh Retro Gamers hosted their Summer Expo at Moore Square Park. The event featured over 100 vendors selling games, consoles, arts and crafts and food.

A surprise group at the event was Nintendo, who wasn’t announced to be in attendance until Saturday morning. RRG’s Jeff Thomas had known Nintendo was interested in representing themselves at the event since their popup market in April at Heyday Brewing in Zebulon.

"Nintendo actually surprised us," Thomas said. "We did our Heyday market. All of a sudden, two people walk in and said 'We're from Nintendo and we're looking for the person putting on this event.'"

Kayla Blackmon, brand ambassador for Nintendo, said Nintendo doesn't really like to announce when they are going to be at events.

"One of Nintendo's biggest things is 'surprise and delight.' You won't always know when we're going to show up," Blackmon said. "We look for places we can be to join not only the gaming community, but the local community."

Nintendo was set up at the game stations, which had consoles both new and old for kids to play on during the 6-hour event.

Century 21 Triangle Group, who sponsored the game stations, said they had the consoles donated to get kids to fall in love with the games they grew up playing.

"We love it because it's a great opportunity to get the kids involved in the games that us adults grew up with," said David Berry with Century 21 Triangle Group.

Beyond the game stations, the event had 89 vendors between store fronts, collectors and individual sellers.

Two of the sellers, Retroid Games and Records in Winston-Salem and Hidden Block Games, were also sponsors of the event. During RRG’s 2022 summer expo, they were only vendors.

For both stores, RRG has been very influential in selling what they love.

"We came to the first event out here at Moore Square Park last year," said Nick Hofstetter, owner of Retroid Games. "It was such a huge success that we wanted to come back again and I told Jeff we wanted to sponsor it in Raleigh because we love what he's doing."

"Raleigh Retro Gamers have been a very impactful of us deciding to open a store period," said Jeremy Smith, owner of Hidden Block Games.

There were other established sellers at the event as well, such as Limited Run Games and Phynix PC.

Limited Run works with indie game publishers as well as major brands to help bring digital game release to the physical plane, while Phynix PC helps build custom PCs for customers, and builds the PCs live on the gaming streaming platform, Twitch.

"We were looking to reach out to local communities," said Ryan Branigan, co-owner of Phynix PC. "We just wanted to talk to people face to face, and we found Raleigh Retro Gamers and felt it was right up our alley."

The event was also an opportunity for smaller vendors to showcase what they do as well.

Becky Welty started a crochet making store six months ago and started making video game characters. On Saturday, she said it was a great opportunity to share what she loves with other passionate gamers like her son, who confounded RRG.

"It's been really busy, which has been awesome," Welty said.

8-Bit-Stich was another arts and crafts vendor at the event, and has worked with RRG multiple times since starting in 2013.

"I had a friend clue me in to these markets, because my husband is a video game collector," said Kari Warning, owner of 8-Bit-Stitch. Warning doesn't just do 8-Bit-Stitch, as she also works at an emergency veterinary clinic for her day job.

The event had more than just vendors with a passion for gaming, but food to fuel a trip through the entire market with multiple food trucks available.

There were four musical acts during the day, DJ Ricky Smith started and ended the expo and in between music was played by Stage Select, Fuchsia City and and the Ashley LaRue Band.

For Fuchsia City, it was a partnership they wanted since before the pandemic.

"We saw an event they tried to do on Facebook, this was way before COVID," said Mason Williams, one of the musicians for Fuchsia City. "We reached back out to them and we felt like we could rock it out."

If you missed out on the chance to attend this year's expo, there will be another popup market event at Heyday Brewing next month, and you'll be able to start planning for another retro takeover of Raleigh next year.