Meet

Caleb Ashton

We asked Caleb to write us a bio for himself and we got this.

Caleb has been a fake gamer since 1999, and has been a YouTube poser since 2019. On weekends you may find him scalping, faking video game finds for views, and manipulating the market for retro video games. His greatest strengths include creating trashy clickbait, and lowballing children at yard sales. 

We think he’s pretty cool though.

Don and Liz Caldwell

Don and Liz have been ambassadors for MGC since the early days. Don has authored various pinball articles and is always ready to share his knowledge and Liz is a keen competitor. Together they are very active in the Milwaukee pinball scene and often host league nights.

Tamara Chambers

Tamara Chambers is an actress and comedian from California. She studied Acting at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in California but now lives in Chicago where she hides from the snow. Tamara is on the internet show The Nostalgia Critic alongside Doug Walker and Malcolm Ray and is known mostly for her Character “Hyper Fan Girl”. You can find her on Chicago stand up stages, on YouTube, on her couch in a onesie playing Fallout, in commercials for milkshakes and pharmaceutical companies, and other extremely fun places like that.

Archie Cunningham

Archie Cunningham is a comic book artist and creator, painter, and art teacher who brings dynamic story telling to the page or canvas. Archie will be creating a number of original pieces for the show!

Scott Danesi

Pinball designer, mechanical engineer, sound and music programmer and software engineer… Scott did it all on Total Nuclear Annihilation and is the designer behind Rick & Morty pinball! Scott built Total Nuclear Annihilation just to create a semi-simple custom machine. The result was so good, Spooky Pinball worked with Scott to start production of the machine in 2017!

Jack Danger

Stern Pinball’s newest game designer, Jack Danger, is heralded for his many innovations in the Pinball industry regarding media and exposure over the years. Starting his design career with Stern’s Jurassic Park Home Edition, Stern Pinball just released Jack’s second machine: Foo Fighters!
Jack started his career as an animator and worked on commercials, music videos and feature films for nearly 20 years prior to launching his own design studio. When he got into pinball, he launched the Dead Flip Pinball Streaming channel, where he live streamed pinball, became a Stern Brand Ambassador and was the driving force for the “Pinball” category being added on Twitch.

Patrick "Patman QC" Davis

Patrick Patman QC Davis is a lifelong videogame fan. He has been around pinball and arcade machines all of his life. He has also been collecting video games from the Atari 2600 to the Xbox one with literally everything in between. In 2018 he started the YouTube channel PatmanQC history of arcade game documentaries which has amassed almost 200 short documentaries on various arcade and console games. In 2015 he lost his hands and feet due to complications from pneumonia but that didn’t stop his love for video games which continues to this day.

Christian A. Deitering

You may know Christian as the “Ferris Bueller” of the Internets, owner of the unorthodox Dragon Warrior collection, producer of the Earthbound documentary Mother to Earth, and/or the cofounder of the Let’s Play Gaming Expo. A lifetime collector of Nintendo, his most recent achievement was acquiring the NES SimCity prototype and creating its first GameFAQ.

Richard Divizio

Richard Divizio is best known for portraying Kano in Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. He also portrayed Quan Chi and Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, Baraka in Mortal Kombat II, Kabal and Noob Saibot in Mortal Kombat 3 and provided some of the motion capture for Mortal Kombat 4.

David Fix

David is the Executive Vice President of American Pinball, overseeing all business and production operations. He has been involved in the pinball and gaming industry for over 20 years, including his role as Vendor Hall Chairman for the Chicago Pinball Expo. 

Jason Gares

Jason C. Gares is the Programming Director, Panel Director and Videographer at the Midwest Gaming Classic. He is also the host of the Midwest Gaming Classic Podcast, which can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, and Twitch platforms. You can find out more about Jason at his website JasonGares.com which showcases his original documentary films and series that can be viewed on many video streaming platforms worldwide! His most popular works includes Beyond the Comic Panels, a great documentary discussing how to break into the comic book field with various comic book artists, Video Workbench, a classic how-to model kit hobby series, and Building Large Scale Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models, a 473-page eBook brimming with information about how to create award-winning plastic model kits and dioramas.

Martin Goldberg

A former writer and programmer in the video game industry, Goldberg has had a lifelong fascination with all things electronic entertainment since first playing PONG and Tank as a child at his local arcades in the 70’s. As the former site director of IGN/GameSpy’s ‘ClassicGaming.Com’ and a current freelancer for Retro Gamer magazine, Goldberg has been writing about video games for 20 years. Along with Dan Loosen and Gary Heil, Goldberg is also a co-founder of the Midwest Gaming Classic, one of the largest electronic entertainment expos in the United States open to the general public. In 2004, Goldberg also founded the Electronic Entertainment Museum (E2M), a non-profit archive whose mission is to help preserve the history and artifacts of the video game and home computer industries. In line with this goal, he’s also a member of the International Game Development Association’s (IGDA) Game Preservation SIG, a hub and community for those interested in digital game preservation and history.  Whew!

John Hancock

John is a longtime collector of video games.  As one of the original organizers of the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, John went on to establish a YouTube channel where he uploads weekly content that covers everything from Atari to Xbox. He loves to share his passion about video games with others.

Imoto (Arcade) Harney

Imoto does it all! As the face of MarcoTV, Imoto helps introduce the world of pinball to new players and educate pinballers of all ages! A positive force in the community, Imoto Arcade is there to cover it and share her love of all things arcade!

Ben Heck

Ben is a master hacker, engineer and tech hobbyist who has done things that touch nearly every aspect of the show… including naming it in 2002! Ben has hacked consoles to create portable versions of them, created pinball machines that were then manufactured by Spooky Pinball, talked with Dan and Terry Diebold to help fix the Nintendo Playstation Prototype and runs a popular online show, the Ben Heck Show, while he’s at it all!

Matteau Isbill

One of the lead announcers of the Monster Jam Triple Threat series Matteau Isbill has been hosting for 7 years.  He is also the owner of Overdrive Reality Productions producing the Midwest Gaming Classic After Party, videos, voice overs, and so much more!

Eugene Jarvis

Eugene designed many landmark arcade video games including Defender, Robotron 2084, Narc, Smash TV, and the Cruis’n series. He also worked in pinball, helping to bring designs like Firepower, Pinbot, Space Shuttle, High Speed, and F-14 Tomcat to life. If that isn’t enough, he owns Raw Thrills and Play Mechanix, the premier modern arcade developer with hits such as the Walking Dead, Jurassic Park, Injustice Arcade, the Big Buck Hunter series, and more!

Brad Jones

For the past 13 years, Brad Jones has been the creator and star of the popular YouTube and Channel Awesome series The Cinema Snob, a satirical look at exploitation cinema throughout the decades. As well as portraying The Cinema Snob on a weekly basis, Brad also keeps very busy, having created the animated series Lloyd, the movie review show Midnight Screenings, and is also the writer of the feature films The Cinema Snob Movie and the religious parody film Jesus Bro.

Dankey Kang

Virginia,

Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.

All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Dankey Kang. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Dankey Kang! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no championship belts, no barrels to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Dankey Kang? You might as well not believe in Sanic! You might get your Papa to hire men to watch all the chimneys on MGC Eve to catch Dankey Kang, but even if they did not see Dankey Kang barreling down, what would that prove?

Nobody sees Dankey Kang, but that is no sign that there is no Dankey Kang The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.

Did you ever see Sanic running on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that he is not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart Lonk’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, or even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond.

Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding.

No Dankey Kang? Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, maybe 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of children.

Paul E. Niemeyer

Paul E. Niemeyer is probably best known for being the artist of the first Mortal Kombat the game cabinet, control panel, and header, including illustrating the Mortal Kombat logo. Other work includes TRON, Tapper, Satan’s Hollow, Spy Hunter, Wacko, Super PacMan, PacMan Plus, Professor PacMan, Demolition Man Pinball, sculpts for the American Pinball game “Legends of Valhalla”. Paul also worked in the big ad agencies on movie licenses like Jurassic Park 2, Men in Black, Star Trek 6, Little Mermaid, Hercules, Star Wars Phantom Menace, Pirates of the Caribbean, and many more. From 2000-2005 he was part owner of Eagle Games Board Game company, which is now Eagle-Gryphon Games. Paul designed and illustrated many games in Europe and the US, including the very popular “Through the Ages” and the hugely successful PopCap games, Peggle and Bejeweled 2. Paul owned and ran ABYSS Haunted House, a top 10 haunted attraction in the Chicagoland area, from 2006-2014 and has recently done packaging artwork on 7 Nintendo Switch Games (Super Blood Hockey, Pigeon Dev Games Bundle, Demons Tier +, A Robot Named FIGHT, Cathedral, and Rack ‘n Ruin, Super Dungeon Maker) for Premium Edition Games.

Greg Peters

Greg Peters is an internationally renowned animation artist who has won 4 daytime Emmys! Peters has worked at many of the greatest animation studios including Hanna Barbara, Amblin, Warner Bros, Sony, Disney, and Nickelodeon! Specializing in character design, some of Peters work includes Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, Rugrats, Dilbert, Family Dog, Timon & Pumbaa, and Mickey’s House of Mouse! He also worked as an animator for Sega video games in the 1990s. Today, Peters is part of Wacool Animation School.

Erika Phillips

A nerd-girl with a fashion modeling background, Erika “Verika” Phillips found a way to combine two of the things she loves by becoming a published model in the board gaming industry. She enjoys promoting the value of gaming through the products she has appeared in. In a predominantly male hobby, she aims to break down the perceptions of typical female gaming stereotypes by showing females can be smart, strong, funny, and anything else they want to be for themselves. She hopes her example leads to females becoming increasingly interested in gaming!

Brian Quezada

Brian Quezada, “Q”, has been playing competitive air hockey regularly for the last 14 years, finishing 11th in the 2023 World Championships. Along with his teammate, Dan Meyer, Q is a two time doubles world champion. Brian enjoys discussing strategy and tips for air hockey with anyone who wants to learn more about the sport.

Malcolm Ray

Malcolm Ray is a SAG actor and voice actor repped by Stewart Talent. Graduating from Columbia College Chicago, Malcolm has shown proficiency in performance and production. Known for nearly a decade of commercial voice over, Malcolm became a YouTube personality on Channel Awesome for Nostalgia Critic, Fanscription and a variety of abridged series. Now known as that ‘devilish’ smooth voice acting savant, he can be heard in various indie projects as well. Including The Black Sands (Apedemak), Lackadaisy Cats (Nicodeme), Bulletville (K-05), and TOME Rpg (Demon King).

Heather Reusz

Heather is the resident Channel Awesome Twitch Queen and can be seen on camera throughout the week in addition to running tech behind the scenes for the live-streams. She first joined the cast of Channel Awesome in 2016 for the show Awesome Comics. Since then, she has also appeared in and written for Orbit Report, Top 5, and Nostalgia Critic. In addition to Channel Awesome, she has her own Twitch variety channel (twitch.tv/heatherreusz) focusing mainly on story-driven games. When not gaming, Heather enjoys watching movies, TV shows, and anime and drinking craft beer with her friends. Find her on Twitter (@heatherreusz) or Instagram (@hreusz).

John Riggs

John Riggs started his YouTube channel in November 2014 as means to showcase his love for video games and breakfast cereal. It features a variety of topics including how to edit your own Nintendo games, how to clean and ‘fix’ your old carts with ‘Open Cart Surgery’ and showcases new technology that most may not have known about. He also gets a lot of help from his daughters who are featured in his videos regularly. John’s a regular guest on the Metal Jesus Rocks channel, is “taller than I expected” and is looking forward to returning to MGC!

Zach Sharpe

Zach of all trades, master of all things pinball! Director of Marketing for Stern Pinball. Vice President of the International Flipper Pinball Association. Former #1 ranked competitive pinball player in the world. To say I was born into the world of pinball would be an understatement. To say I love my job working in the pinball industry would be a disservice. When you love your job you never work a day in your life and I hope to live a very long one with pinball by my side!

Jim Shird

Mark Valuch

Love pinball? Learn how it works with Mark’s Basement Arcade! Mark has an incredible YouTube channel where he shows how to fix and maintain older, electro-mechanical pinball machines. Want to ask questions while you learn? Mark hosts Mark’s Basement Arcade Chat and Repair every Sunday at 2 pm CST on tvMGC on Twitch!

Aiyanna Wade

Aiyanna is a comedic performer and writer. She loves to perform various sketch and improv shows at Second City Training Center and The Annoyance. You may recognize her from Nostalgia Critic Reviews (including Harley Quinn in NC’s Suicide Squad and Beverley in NC’s It Chapter 1 & 2) or Channel Awesome’s Top 5. She also voices Becky and Sunny in the animated series Multiplex 10.

Doug Walker

Doug is best known for his character The Nostalgia Critic from ChannelAwesome.com, who reviews movies and TV shows connected to childhood. He’s also noted for having a long standing “rivalry” with The Angry Video Game Nerd.  He’s appeared on PBS, Entrepreneur Magazine, New York Times, 20/20, Rifftrax, Honest Trailers, Cinema Sins, and was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year at the Mashable Awards as well as one of the Best Youtube Critics by WatchMojo.com. 

Rob Walker

From Santa Christ to the Executor, Rob Walker always plays a big role in the creation of the show Nostalgia Critic.  He co-writes each episode, plays several hilarious characters, and also co-hosts the blog series Sibling Rivalry with his brother Doug.  Always having a quick comeback (except when he doesn’t), he’s there to entertain.

Arlo

Arlo is a Youtuber who strives to create a friendly, upbeat environment where discussion is greatly encouraged and bad puns run rampant. This includes reviews, opinion pieces, let’s plays, analyses, nostalgia talk, comedy bits, and anything else he feels like cooking up. Whether he’s offering a positive reaction or an honest criticism or a pained lament, lighthearted comedy is at the heart of everything Arlo does. His main focus is Nintendo, but he dabbles in PC gaming and other consoles as well.

Eric Bischoff

As Executive Vice President of WCW, Eric Bischoff took WCW from a distant second to the leading wrestling company in the world for a time, while also serving as a major on screen character. After WCW folded, Eric shocked the world by agreeing to serve as the WWE RAW General Manager. Today, he records the popular 83weeks Podcast with Conrad Thompson about his time in the industry.

Ted DiBiase

Often regarded as the greatest villain in pro wrestling, WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase played the Million Dollar Man to great affect, headling Wrestlemania IV and the first SummerSlam! His character was also featured in numerous wrestling video games, and is fondly remembered to this day.

Ernie Hudson

Perhaps best known for his role as Winston Zeddemore in the Ghostbusters series (including voice work for the video game and pinball machine!), Hudson has appeared in countless movies and shows, and is currently producing and starring in The Family Business on BET.

Eugene Jarvis

Eugene designed many landmark arcade video games including Defender, Robotron 2084, Narc, Smash TV, and the Cruis’n series. He also worked in pinball, helping to bring designs like Firepower, Pinbot, Space Shuttle, High Speed, and F-14 Tomcat to life. If that isn’t enough, he owns Raw Thrills and Play Mechanix, the premier modern arcade developer with hits such as the Walking Dead, Jurassic Park, Injustice Arcade, the Big Buck Hunter series, and more!

Jeff Lee

@!#?@! Perhaps best known as the creator of Q*Bert, Jeff Lee is an artist who created great work for many of Gottlieb’s video arcade games, as well as games on the Macintosh and Genesis.