MEET
The Midwest Gaming Classic hosts dozens of industry professionals each year! Here are the guests currently confirmed to be coming to the upcoming show! (List subject to change!)
Scott Danesi
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!
Jason Gares
Jason Gares
Jason C. Gares of 249 Studios & JasonGares.com produces original documentary films and series that can be viewed on many video streaming platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, Plex and Filmocracy! His most popular work includes Beyond the Comic Panels, a great documentary discussing how to break into the comic field with 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. Jason is also the Midwest Gaming Classic panel director (even receiving a Walter Day Trading Card commemorating his help in 2022!), and he shares panels from the show and stories behind them on the tvMGC Twitch channel with his show Jason’s Showtime Arcade Extravaganza.
Martin Goldberg
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 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.
Ben Heck
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!
Camille and Kennerly Kitt
Camille and Kennerly Kitt
Identical twin harpists Camille and Kennerly Kitt have achieved extraordinary success by smashing boundaries between genres of music! The twins’ ability to reinvent the harp has given them the opportunity to represent the United States at four different World Harp Festivals, amass over 2.5 million fans across their social media sites and over 140 million Youtube music video views! Mixing their virtuoso harp skills with stunningly complex arrangements of rock, metal, Celtic, Renaissance, and soundtrack classics – as well as Celtic Nordic inspired original songs – the Harp Twins deliver exciting, comedic, and interactive family-friendly performances that you won’t forget!Â
Adam Koralik
Adam Koralik
Adam Koralik is a content creator who has been producing videos for thirteen years on YouTube. Whether he’s unboxing a PS5, cleaning and restoring a Sega Saturn, or just giving an engaging history lesson on previous console generations; Adam’s videos are a must-watch for any gamer. He is a video game console expert known Keep Dreaming, Console Retrospectives, and PlayLoad. He features consoles from different generations of gaming and provides many videos detailing how to repair them. He even has whole videos with incredible access to one of a kind prototypes like the Sega Pluto and Nintendo PlayStation!
Erika Phillips
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!
John Riggs
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 his first time at MGC!
Charles Urbach
Charles Urbach
Charles Urbach is an award-winning writer and colored pencil illustrator with more than 25 years of experience in design, publishing, and illustration. His detailed original concepts and drawings have appeared on book covers and merchandise, and hundreds of his illustrations have appeared in gaming products including: Magic: The Gathering, Heroclix, Legend of the Five Rings, A Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, various Star Wars products, Das Schwarze Auge, Infinite City, Mage Knight, Everquest, Call of Cthulhu, Esper Genesis, DoomTown Reloaded, and many others.
More information about his work is available at his website: www.charlesurbach.com
Mark Valuch
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!
Brett Weiss
Brett Weiss
National columnist Brett Weiss has been a gamer since 1975 and a professional gaming writer since 1997. He’s the author of a dozen books, including The NES Omnibus Vol. 1 and 2, The SNES Omnibus Vol. 1 and 2, and The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987. With his Classic Home Video Games series, he wrote the world’s first complete guides to numerous video game consoles, including the Atari 5200, Atari 7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Vectrex, Odyssey2, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, Neo Geo, TurboGrafx-16, and Sega Genesis.
Alumni
Below are some guests from past shows
Arlo
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
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
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
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. Mr. Hudson is expected to join us on Saturday, April 13.
Eugene Jarvis
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!
Christopher Sean
Christopher Sean
Japanese American Actor. Very proud son to a Navy veteran and Mother born and raised in Japan. Known for Star Wars Resistance, Hawaii Five-0, Days of Our Lives and Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Cultured through living in many countries but Southern California is considered home. Studied martial arts, Tae Kwon Do, Jiu-Jitsu, boxing and wrestling.
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Gary Stern
