Donkey Kong: Them fireballs sure is hot! (Image by Joshua Driggs.)

The excellent kottke.org pointed me in the direction of California Extreme, an annual convention of old-school gamers descending upon hundreds of classic coin-operated arcade games. The event, occurring in Santa Clara on July 17-18, will feature all of the well-known favorites–Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, etc.–but a lot of smaller and rarer machines will also be available. Anyone recall Berzerk or Zoo Keeper or Gorf? An excerpt from the promotional copy:

“Arcades were once a fixture on the American urban landscape, and games were plentiful in rural cities too. The closest heir of today is the so-called ‘Family Entertainment Center,’ which is populated with a myriad of devices designed only to take your coins quickly and leave you with a pile of tickets, which you exchange for cheap, trashy toys. This is entertainment? California Extreme was born with a desire to share fun coin op games that are in the hands of private collectors, and to hopefully spread the word that pinball machines were once plentiful, and that videogames were not synonymous with martial arts and violence.”