COLUMBUS, Ohio — An expanding community of video game fans is reliving the animated action found in games of the past and passing up on the more modern options. A group founded by an Ohio native and military veteran has been growing from a small get-together of passionate players and is now converging on the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
Mike Colletti collects games and items that remind him of his childhood. He’s most proud of his assortment of Sega Genesis titles.
“I love the boxes, love the box art,” he said. “I just love how it looks. Everything about it is just awesome.”
He started picking up consoles and games when he returned to Ohio after serving as an 0351 Infantry Assaultman in the Marine Corps, including a more than six-month stint in Afghanistan.
“I realized that while I was away, I stopped doing a lot of the things I love,” he said. “I stopped music, stopped playing games. I stopped doing, like, social things.”
He said he bought a Play Station and remembered how much he enjoyed playing, and he wanted to find others who felt the same.
“I was like, I don't want to do this alone,” Colletti said. “And that's why I created the Ohio Retro Gamer Facebook page and started building that community.”
Rachel Oscherwitz said she learned about the group on Craigslist and attended the first meetup in 2015 and jumped in to help Colletti when he needed a hand. They’re now business partners and co-founders of the TORG Gaming Expo.
“Long story short, 40 people from a Craigslist ad to now we’re having one of the largest video game expos in the Midwest,” she said.
This will be their ninth event, after having to skip 2020 because of COVID. Colletti said each has doubled in size and attendance over the previous year with the team now filling more than 300,000 square feet inside the Greater Columbus Convention Center with free play games, an arcade, experiences, kid zone and vendors. The voice actors from the Halo games are set to be the stars of this year’s show with in-person appearances.
“We have over 10,000 video games just in our booth alone,” said Levi Garrett, owner of Game On in Chillicothe.
Garrett and his team brought his entire video game store to the exhibit hall.
His dad, Jerry, is proud of his son’s success, but surprised by the turnout and level of interest in video games.
“I never dreamed it would be like this, or I’d have kept all mine,” he said with a laugh.
It’s a lot of work to pull an event of this scale off successfully, and Colletti and Oscherwitz do it for the love of the game. They organize and operate the expo themselves each year with the help of volunteers, making it happen on top of their regular fulltime jobs.
“As grueling as it is and stressful as it can get, when I see everyone just having a great time and, like, seeing the happy faces and experiences, it makes everything worth it, all of it worth it,” Colletti said.
“We call it a big family reunion,” Oscherwitz said. So, I’m seeing, like, a lot of the same vendors over and over again, staff, we have volunteers that come back. And of course, like Mike. I mean, I know his family. You know, since I met him, he's had a daughter. He's got married. Same with me. So, I mean our lives are integrated.”
Colletti said they’re conscious about ticket prices and want to make the event accessible to as many people as possible. Every cent raised is used to put on the next year’s expo.
“The main reason I want people to show up is not so much the financial end of it,” he said. “I mean, of course we don’t want to sink, but it would make me super sad if there were less amountof people to see all the hard work of not only myself, but my staff and the volunteers. Because we have so many experiences and stuff, and if that was lost low attendance, that would bum me out.”
There’s a free chance to preview all the games and experiences at the TORG Gaming Expo from 4 -10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1. The full expo is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available in advance at torgevents.com or in person at the convention center.