And we got guest truth nation, we got the Midwest gaming classic coming through this week.
Look, I'm gonna tell you this, when I saw the jar was on the list to come through today, I was so excited.
How you doing?
I'm doing good. It's been a very busy week already and there's more to come because we haven't even started moving the show yet.
But it's gonna be one heck of a year, I think.
Look, we got Dan Lucin in the studio.
He's the Midwest gaming classic operator.
Co-founder.
Co-founder.
And look, this event is huge because I was a video game fanatic.
Grandma used to have to yell upstairs to tell me to go to bed.
I was up all night.
I mean, I went from 2600 to Atari to, you know, Sonic the Hedgehog.
I mean, Mario Brothers with the Nintendo.
And I think I got all the way to the PlayStation.
I think PlayStation 3 before I just kind of just.
I had a son that was playing video games and I kind of just was like, you know what?
I'm gonna let him have it for a second.
I'm gonna let him take his stab at the video game.
Yeah.
Video games and games in general.
One of the things that's just awesome about them is that you kind of have a shared experience, even if you're not playing them together.
Right.
So what you just described is so similar to me.
I started with the Atari and my dad was like, I was like, oh, dad, I really want an Nintendo look at how cool it was.
And he was like, you know, Dan, no, that's the exact same thing as the Atari and we've already got that.
And so we used to go to rummage sales and find games.
And every time I got a game, I was like, this will be like the Nintendo game and I plugged it in.
And I would say up all night playing them and trying to find like, ooh, what's the secret in this one?
And sharing it with friends.
And that's now, I guess the show does is put on a massive basis.
Now, this Midwest gaming classic, 2026.
Give us information on it because the old gamers, this is classic games.
Like the old school games and then some games that we probably never seen before from like other countries.
Yeah.
Well, this is a combination of a lot of games.
This is actually everything.
So it started, believe it or not, because there was a system called the Atari Jaguar.
Okay.
And me and some people really loved that and we tried, we chatted online.
And we enjoyed chatting with each other online about the Atari Jaguar and we said, you know what would be better than chatting online?
Let's get together and let's play the games together.
And so we did that and we brought in people from around the country and we even had people that you're flying from Japan.
And it was 100 people, but we were all there to like celebrate and share.
And the people that came said, oh my god, this was great.
Let's add more to it.
And then every year since then, anybody that walks to us and says, hey, can I do whatever we say yes to?
And so now it's retro games, modern games, games that hasn't come out arcade games, pinball machines, air hockey tables, tabletop games, trading card games.
This year new is speed puzzling.
There's people doing Rubik's cubes fast.
There's so many different things.
Contest.
Yeah.
Contest.
There's open play.
There's learn to play.
There's lots of crazy things going on.
And again, like so for me, games ended up being like an important thing in life.
I was kind of a, we'll say that I wasn't the most popular kid in school.
And so I was always nervous about meeting people.
And there was an arcade game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the arcade game.
And I would go to the arcade and I put my quarter in the Donatello slot because he's the best, I think.
And didn't matter who walked up and put their quarter in.
We were instantly a team.
So we were talking to each other and didn't matter who they were or what they were.
I could make friends that way.
And after the game was over, we could have a talk.
And I might talk with someone that I would have never otherwise met.
And that's what we try to do with our show is to introduce different people that our people ultimately.
And you might otherwise never get to meet them in that same way.
And so that's kind of the real goal behind it.
The games are the way that we can get you to come and enjoy yourself.
Now, they're saying I'm reading that this is the 25th anniversary celebration.
35,000 plus games.
10,000 playable games.
And this is all going down at the Barrett Center.
Yeah.
It's all going down at the Barrett Center downtown.
Kitty Corner from where we're broadcasting in third street market hall right now, actually.
And yeah, it's going to open up on Friday night.
We do a preview night Friday that there's about 1500 people there for.
And then it's open all day on Saturday and Sunday.
Last year we did about 36,000 people at the show.
A little bit over that.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
It's a big thing.
And like I said, it's really unique because a lot of the times when you have these big shows,
what they are is that they're people coming from all over the world, all over the world.
Absolutely.
And some people that you know, some people that you don't.
Do they dress up?
Some do.
Absolutely.
You don't have to.
Yeah.
Somebody might come in there looking like Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man.
Yeah.
So we actually have a guy at Chris Bartlett that's coming who has played C3PO now as well as some other droids for Star Wars.
And he started by dressing up as C3PO and his own costume and taking that to conventions.
And I guess that Lucasfilm saw him and was like, whoa, that's really cool.
Do you want to come B.C. 3PO?
And so now he's a whole bunch of different droids for that.
Oh, wow.
Now I'll tell you this.
What is your favorite game?
Or do you have a favorite game, Dan?
Because I remember when I flipped Pac-Man.
I flipped Pac-Man as a kid because I was just so.
You got to be zoned in to flip Pac-Man.
Absolutely.
And back then they didn't have a memory card.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think it was like 26 and 28 levels or something like that.
Yeah.
And all of a sudden I hit the last level and it just stopped and started blinking.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Not many people can do that.
Yeah.
I flipped Pac-Man.
So I was up all day.
Grandma didn't say nothing so I was.
Yeah.
I couldn't turn it off.
Of course not.
You're winning.
I mean, they didn't have any memory storage back then.
Right.
And like, here's the thing too.
Before I answer that question, I just have to say, what's so cool about that is that that's still a story that you can tell to me.
Oh wow.
And we just met each other and yet we're like, I feel like I've had a communal experience with you.
And again, there's so much in our world right now that's made to tear each other apart.
Like a lot of powerful interests have said, hey, you know what's really important is let's get everybody to yell at each other because we'll make money.
And a conversation about games like this can bring people together that may have completely different backgrounds.
Right.
And how are just people?
Video games is never about race.
Yeah, or anything.
It was just about the storyline.
Yeah.
Characters.
Many times the characters was just a figment of the creator's imagination.
Right.
Exactly.
And you can be whatever you want to be in it.
There's all those different things.
As for my favorite game, I kind of rotate between whichever one I pick.
And so today I'll say Super Mario Bros. 3.
Okay.
That one is the first game that I ever bought the day that it came out.
Oh, wow.
I got it home.
I plugged it in.
I loved it.
It is one of the only games that I still make time to play every single year no matter what.
And so that one is one that I absolutely love.
My favorite game is Madden.
Madden Football.
Yeah.
That I head on to that game the longest after I kind of retired and my son started playing video games.
I think I head on to Madden the longest.
Yeah.
And every now and then I peek in there.
But now they got so many different options to, you know, they added so many different things.
His stick, different other ways to play the game that it's not simple anymore.
Yeah.
Now, you know, now they got a lot of tricks to the game now.
Yeah.
And it does, you know, I think it takes away from the natural come on.
Let's line up and let's play many times when I start to play those football games.
Yeah.
I don't disagree.
What's interesting is that I feel like more actual football players tend to gravitate to the more complex games now.
So I'm on green's been coming to our show now for a couple of years.
Oh, he's awesome.
And he plays a lot of different games with people.
And I think that he was the one that was telling me this.
He'll call me up and tell me that I'm wrong if I'm wrong.
But I think that he was the one that was telling me that a lot of the players actually play Madden to like think about like how like different plays are run and stuff.
Like that.
Which you can see now.
Whereas like the earlier games, it was like you said more of a scrimmage type thing and you weren't really learning from it.
It's actually funny.
Other story I was talking to Ted DiBiassi from the WWE F.
Yeah.
He came to our show a couple years ago.
Yeah.
He came to our show a couple of years ago and he was he brought the Midwest Gaming Classic Championship belt.
I'll bring it by.
I'm actually going to be here.
I wish I did.
I should have walked in here wearing it.
It's hilarious.
We actually got it made from the same guys that make the WWE belts.
But he was he was like, yeah, I'm really excited to come.
But I have to be honest with you.
And I was like, yeah, Ted, what's up?
And he's like, I've never played any of these games.
And I was like, that totally makes sense because like your work was wrestling.
And so the last thing to me that you would want to do is go home after working and play yourself working.
Like that sounds like terrible.
And he was like, oh, I never thought about it that way.
And so I'm kind of impressed that the newer games, a lot of like I said,
at least from what I've been told, a lot of players and stuff like that that are actually in them.
In those industries, wrestling, football, baseball.
I'd learned that the wave soccer team loves playing FIFA.
It's fascinating to me that they love those games now with all their complexity.
Well, what a thing is, games take you kind of like out of reality for a second.
You know, out of the stressful elements of living life too as well.
Like, you know, when I got frustrated, you plug in the game and you get into another space,
you get away from it for a while and then you come back.
It's like going for a walk.
It's like the same effect.
Like just get away from everything.
Let's go for a walk.
Yeah.
And video games kind of help people regulate their emotions as well.
Yeah.
It takes them to another world.
And then they get to come back more calmer.
Right.
And like the regular life situation, you can do that to regulate yourself.
You can do that to meet people.
They're this incredible tool.
And it's fascinating because back when both of us were younger, games were like,
if you were a gamer, people were like, oh, they're playing with kids toys.
And like now everybody's like, oh no, like if you have a phone,
likely you're playing some sort of game on your phone.
Well, now gaming is the graphics now.
Like they have evolved to the point where realistic graphics,
more realistic situations.
Back when we came up, you flipped the game.
It was like some writing.
The lights was flashing.
And that was it.
Congratulations.
Exactly.
One of the things.
One of the things that I love about our show.
So we have on, both Saturday and Sunday, if you're nine and under,
you get to come in for free with your parents.
And one of the things that we've loved about that is that the parents will come in
and be like, oh my gosh, look at what I used to play.
And they'll like show them, oh, this is an intent or this is a,
text adventure on a computer or whatever.
And then the kid will be like, oh, let me show you what I play now.
And they'll go over to Minecraft or they'll go over to whatever game that is
over there generation right now, right?
And say, this is what we're going to be showing.
And it's really awesome to be able to have that intergenerational communication.
Because again, it's one of those things where so often it's hard to just find
something that you can instantly share.
And if you walk up to me and I'm playing a game,
we are instantly able to share and have a conversation and a bond
over something that we are doing.
And that means so much.
I want to run the break when we come back.
I want to talk about virtual gaming.
Absolutely.
Like people are actually able to go inside the game.
You got to have especially equipment.
But I want to talk about the next generation and gaming.
Yeah.
Where are we going with this?
Sure.
We got Midwest gaming classic.
It'll be here this week, 25th anniversary celebration at the Barrett Center.
Hey, look, when we come back, I want to talk about this virtual virtual reality of
gaming.
Dan from the Midwest gaming classic.
It'll be at the Barrett Center this weekend Friday Saturday Sunday.
Yep.
Friday's preview night.
So if you want to go to preview night, it's about 10% of the people that we do on the
holidays or less actually.
The games are open.
The vendor hall isn't.
And then Saturday and Sunday, it's the whole show.
There's tons of just everything to do and tons to see and stuff like that.
You still get to see some of that on Friday.
But Friday is more about like, oh, I'm going to play the games.
Right.
Saturday and Sunday are more about I'm going to meet the people.
Hey, look, I'll say this.
You say people coming in from all over the country.
Yeah.
Games from all over the country.
Yeah.
You get to all of the games.
Can a person coming there?
I mean, you just have to pick a section.
I'm going to be honest.
I'm just saying like, no, you can't.
There's no way.
It's overload.
Like, you cannot get to every game or every experience because it's so many games.
Right.
Here's the theory that we had.
How do you manage?
Well, so our theory is that people are going to come mostly for the game that they're
most attached to.
And I'll give you an example here in just a second.
But so we have all those different types, like I said.
But then they're going to also branch out and see how other people are passionate about
stuff.
And maybe they'll find something else that they love.
So I have a couple of friends that they own some pinball machines.
And they love bringing pinball machines to places.
And they bring them to a couple different shows.
They bring them to our show.
And they go and they play board games the entire time.
And they say that's the only show that they do that on because no other pinball show has board games at it.
And so they're like we also like board games, but we don't feel like we have another place.
Like it's not worth us going just to a board game show.
So it gives people all of these different options.
I tell people that our show kind of gives you like gaming ADHD
because there's so much cool stuff that you have to like really decide.
And generally people only stay in one spot for like 10 or 15 minutes.
But you just kind of prioritize what it is.
And then the other thing that I tell people is just walk by and see what catches your eye.
You might be really surprised to walk by and see, you know,
I know people that have never played pinball that came to our show.
And we're like, what is this?
Played it and fell in love with it.
I know people that have, you know, way younger than us that found it in Atari 2600 played it and said,
I wonder if I can program that and have now released games for it.
And so there's like so many fascinating things like that.
And there's so many like littler and littler segments that you can get to to get to your interests as you fall down the ramp.
Do I bring a bunch of quarters?
No, good question.
Once you get there almost everything is free.
Okay, all the games is free.
Once you pay a mission.
The only thing why not there's a couple of things that aren't which is like there's an escape room.
And that's because it's so low capacity that otherwise the line for it would and it's like an hour long experience.
So like that's not and there's redemption games.
So like if you go to play a plush crane, you're winning something.
So that's not free.
Otherwise pinball arcade arcade video games home consoles, all the tabletop games, stuff like that.
There is like if you're going to play magic, there's or other card games, Pokemon and stuff like that.
There may be a thing where you're like, oh, I'm going to buy $20 with the cards to play in this tournament.
But then you keep the cards.
So like that's not the same type of thing.
And like there is a magic tournament.
If you know magic, the gathering, the gathering at all.
There's a magic tournament that is giving away a $4,000 card to the winner.
Oh, wow.
And you buy your tickets and you can enter the tournament.
You got to sign up online for it.
But you can enter the tournament and be in the running to win that card with no additional cost.
Now virtual, the virtual gaming is here.
Yeah.
I thought that the metaverse was going to have everybody in the air walking around doing the day or something like that.
But I don't think it worked out like that.
Yeah.
So I'll tell you that I think that there's two different things with it.
The first is that I think that gaming is inherently social.
And VR, because you're putting on a thing, you're kind of leaving the room.
And so it makes it harder.
There are ways that make it work.
But it's generally figuring out how you can do a VR thing that is social.
And like putting on a VR helmet so that you can like digitally walk around a world to try to talk to people.
Right.
It's harder than calling them up on the phone.
And so I think that's why a lot of that hasn't worked out the same way.
I do think that there's definitely some experiences there that we're going to see start to grow in the future.
But I think that we need to figure out what it is.
For so long, we've had so many people say this is just going to be it.
This is what the future is.
And I think that it's a part of the future.
And I think that it's really cool.
We've got some people that are doing it.
There's the place here in Third Street Market Hall that's doing it too.
Right.
And they're awesome.
I know them.
They were at the show last year.
But like it's also things like we have Stern Pinball and Roth-Thrills,
which is an arcade manufacturer.
And they make games for arcades that are really social experiences.
And so you need to physically go somewhere to play those.
You can't play them at home.
And they're not VR.
Although sometimes Roth-Thrills has used VR in their games.
But they've made them into social experiences.
A couple of years ago, we had a Godzilla machine where you put on a VR helmet.
And then you had a gun that you shot at Godzilla with.
And you'd look around to see them.
Before you get.
Yeah.
And you sat, though, next to someone else.
And it was on a moving platform and stuff like that.
And that was the latest game.
And so there are definitely applications for this.
But really, I think that everything just evolves.
It doesn't necessarily, like it's not like tomorrow we're going to have VR gaming.
And everybody's going to forget that the NES was a thing.
People are still going to remember that.
People are still going to appreciate those games for what they were.
We're just going to get some other cool stuff.
Well, AI is here too.
So I want to get your take on AI.
With that effect gaming in some kind of way.
Just for the record, I love this conversation.
Because these are not questions that I usually get.
Because I thought you were a gamer.
Yeah, yeah.
So my take on AI is this.
I think that AI will do things that are very helpful for the world in general.
Okay.
Having said that, I think that the way that we think that it is working right now is kind of like I just said that we were talking about VR a couple years ago, where it's going to do everything.
And like, there are things that AI can do and does well.
But we're like, oh, it's going to do everything.
It's going to take over everybody's job.
It's going to do all this stuff.
Most of that stuff, it's not going to do better than humans.
Funny story.
Human contact is the best.
Yeah.
Well, and like, a big issue is that we have to be able to trust it.
And so the first show, like I said, was about the Atari Jaguar.
Right.
I was looking up on myself a review that I wrote on the internet in the late 90s.
It was right after I got the internet, I reviewed the Atari Jaguar when I got it.
I was trying to find it because I was like, that would be funny to share.
And so I looked up my name, Atari Jaguar.
And AI told me that I had no record with the Atari Jaguar, which I clearly do.
And it told me that I was a huge collector, though, of Jaguar sports cars, only in over 50 of them.
And I've never had a Jaguar sports car in my life.
And I was just like, oh, wow.
Well, this, you just made this up.
And so like, there's this huge trust factor there because you can feed it stuff that's not quite right.
And so like, I think that it can help with creativity.
Once in a great while, I'll use it for things of like, I can't figure out a good name for something.
So I'll like feed it prompts and it will give me names.
And like, I'd say one out of five times, one out of three times, the name that it came up with.
I'm like, oh, I like that.
A lot of the times it will come up with stuff that will jog me to do something else.
And so there are benefits to it.
If you got a direct, a direct, yeah, I feel like it needs that human more.
And like, then is it exactly AI?
It's not the way that we're talking about it.
Well, video games have changed over the years.
Look, this is the Midwest game in classic, all your classic games.
All of the games you grew up with and games that you probably never seen from China.
Yeah.
There's a system that we have.
Is there games like a like a game boy that from China that we've never seen before?
Like the one that interesting games like that.
Yeah, the one that I like pointing to every year is that we usually feature a system called the Super A-Can.
Nobody has heard of the Super A-Can because they only sold it.
It was actually sold in South Korea.
I believe that they sold only a few thousand of them.
If you look them up on like eBay, the games are worth thousands of dollars.
Wow.
Because the few people that have heard of it are like, what is this?
I actually bought a number of the consoles because they were being liquidated in the United States
in the early 2000s.
And I found them.
And they were literally being sold as scrap.
What?
You can just take these and you can just take out the chips and you can like melt them down.
And there's probably some value there for that.
And so I bought some of them.
And then I bought a couple games before anybody had really realized it was a thing.
And that is a system that we now kind of regularly feature because it's so weird.
But there's tons of examples like that.
The gaming industry is actually filled with ideas that people had that don't work out.
And so hearing about some of those ideas is always fascinating to me too.
It's not just successes that we celebrate our show.
It's also the things that didn't quite work out and figuring out why.
Well, let give everybody just an overall view of what's going on as weekend.
And how can they participate?
Yeah, absolutely.
So the best thing that you can do, I guess if you're looking right now, go to Midwestgamingclassic.com
because that's our website that has all of the information on it.
What I suggest that you do is that you look through both the pages that are content areas
which will tell you about a lot of the different groups that are coming.
It's not all the groups, but it's a lot of the different groups.
And then also our show map.
And our show map will take you to different parts and you can click into them
and you can kind of see what it says each area is going to have in it.
And then after that, you can buy tickets there.
Tickets are available online until Friday, but they are cheaper if you get them before Thursday.
We're going to be doing a pre-show party at Third Street Market Hall from six until eight PM on Thursday.
So you can actually buy tickets there in person also.
And we've got some pinball machines there that we're going to have on free play.
We got games all around the Third Street Market Hall.
Yeah, yeah, most of them are mine actually.
And a lot of them are fun games to play.
Yeah, yeah.
And so you'll be able to stop by and do that.
And then Friday, like I said, we have preview night.
So if you want the experience of getting to play some of these games without lines,
especially like there's new pinball machines that are going to be there.
There's certain games that like people get really excited to play.
And so they'll develop a line on Saturday and Sunday.
I'm not saying that there won't be a line, but they'll be less of a line on Friday.
And then on Saturday, if you've pre-ordered your tickets,
you get to go into the vendor hall starting at 9.30.
Show runs from 10 until eight PM in all of the halls.
There's lots of fun things going on.
Beyond just the gaming stuff, there's fun stuff to see.
There's lots of different stages where people are doing presentations.
We've got a lot of different voice actors.
So I mentioned the mind greens coming.
He's going to be there on Sunday, and he's doing some stuff
where he's playing against people in a pro's versus Joe's thing.
Yeah, that's family day.
We've also got wrestling on Saturday from ACW Wrestling.
We'll be there.
We have Pro BMX that's doing stunts in the back on BMX tricks.
That's in the back of our vendor hall on both Saturday and Sunday.
So just kind of everything.
We have the weirdest after party ever.
I feel like you should come to this because I bet you'd like it.
So I'll give you one example.
Have you ever played NBA Jam?
Yes.
The voice of NBA Jam comes to our after party.
The guy that, you know, boom!
So we have a pop-a-shot, and you can play pop-a-shot.
And he'll call you playing pop-a-shot.
But instead of him being like, he's on fire!
He'll be like, oh my god!
He missed again!
And so it's just like a really funny experience.
Actually, at that, a mind green is going to be playing a game called J.S.
Joust where you have a controller that you have to like hold steady.
So you get to do like a physical challenge within an actual football player.
We actually have a guy that dresses as Superman.
You get to do a challenge with him.
We have programmers that made some of the games that you get to play with.
Different people in the community.
There's music.
It's a whole big thing.
And then, yeah, Sunday.
Family day.
Ten to five.
Kids nine and under get in free, by the way, on both Saturday and Sunday for the main show.
We have lots of different things going on.
There's a stage that's kids stage that day where we've got different people reading different books.
We've got different activities again going on.
Show closes at five and then we're packing up and we'll be back in a year.
But it's going to be a whole weekend full of gaming.
Yeah.
And it's a family orientated event.
Absolutely.
And look, you could come out, have a great time.
Some nostalgia.
Yeah.
I appreciate you for, let me tell you something.
I'm out to come and see what's really going on because I'll tell you this.
I would just be, I would probably stay in the one section where they had the Atari section.
Atari is actually coming to our show now.
So we've actually got the company coming to the show.
They've made new hardware and we also have programmers who made games in the day that are coming.
One of those programmers at night, you can play the game crack pots with him.
He programmed the game crack pots for activism.
Yeah.
And so to make it fair though, we make you play with your feet with a foot controller.
That sounds crazy.
That sounds like a crazy good time.
Yeah, it is.
Look, thank you for coming through.
I appreciate you for coming through.
Look, it's going to be a fun weekend in Midwest gaming classic 2026.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Thank you, Dan.
