Midwest Gaming Classic 2026 Field Report

Midwest Gaming Classic 2026 Field Report

Games—both Limited Run and otherwise—conquered Wisconsin for a weekend.

By Jeremy Parish

I don’t know what you did this weekend, but I spent my weekend haunting the halls of the Baird Center in downtown Milwaukee. The annual Midwest Gaming Classic convention took over a massive chunk of the city for a few days, and tens of thousands of people converged to do, well, video game stuff. Video game stuff is great! I highly recommend it. 

First and foremost, MGC featured a lot of play spaces, some very specific. There were tabletop session breakout rooms, elaborate LARP zones, rooms dedicated to fighting games and dance titles, and of course little cloisters of arcade cabinets and pinball machines like the one pictured above.

I always enjoy spotting new and unexpected things at these conventions. This time, a Dariusburst Another Chronicle cabinet caught my eye. Another Chronicle is an arcade game based on a Vita game which then became a PlayStation 4 game that Limited Run published nearly a decade ago. Although I knew the history behind it, I didn’t realize that the arcade version maintained the ancient Darius tradition of being a massive double-wide cabinet with bench seating for three. The only time I’ve ever seen any full-sized Darius cabinet since the game debuted in the late ’80s has been at the legendary Mikado arcade in Tokyo, so encountering this sequel outside of a Japanese game center feels like almost a cryptid sighting.

All of the dedicated breakout spaces were entirely separate from the show’s main arcade, a setup that stretched to fill the entire third floor of the Baird Center. The machines here spanned the entirety of video game history, from its very earliest days more than half a century ago to some brand new releases.

The early history was well-represented in a museum space, which included a tribute to pioneering designer Ralph Bear and his famous “brown box” gadget, which became the Magnavox Odyssey—the first home video game machine. 

There was also a space dedicated to the Fairchild Channel F, the first games console to run software from interchangeable cartridges. Without the Channel F, there would be no Physical to make Forever in the first place. 

I can always count on the MGC museum space to include things I’ve never heard of, like this collection of Saba Video Play cartridges. It turns out this was more or less just the Channel F localized into German. Not that those games had a lot of content to translate into German text, of course, but there was that whole thing with the competing analog television standards.

Also featured here? Robots. That’s because robots are cool. 

There was actually a full-sized R2-D2 roaming the show freely all weekend, which proves what I’ve been telling people for years: Artoo is real, and strong, and he’s my friend.

Also cool was this little shrine to Virtual Boy, hidden in a dark corner. 

Say, what’s that at the bottom-right of the case?

On the newer side of things, you could enjoy great fan creations like a four-player arcade cabinet constructed around Marvel: Cosmic Invasion, as well as entirely official new works like the Star Wars: Fall of the Empire pinball machine that launched a few months ago.

Unique to MGC is the fact that, after playing Fall of the Empire, you could duck downstairs to see LucasFilm Ltd. regular Chris Bartlett talk about voicing all of C-3PO’s lines for the game (and playing tons of droids on-camera in recent Star Wars films and shows).

You could also attend a panel to hear some folks talk about Metroidvania history and then buy a book about it! You know. If that’s the kind of thing you’re into. [Image Source]

Back in the arcade space, I had my eyes peeled all weekend for the six-up version of Konami’s X-Men: The Arcade Game. Best I could manage was this four-seater. If only there were some way to have instant access to the six-player version any time you like....

I also spotted this Jaws pinball table, which I’d never encountered before. Granted, it’s no Jaws: Retro Edition, but it’s still pretty neat to see pinball manufacturers revisit classic properties with updated table tech.

Over in the classic computer free-play zone, my friend told me rock stars keep dying on the Oregon Trail so I asked how many rock stars have died and she said she just sends a new rock star out afterwards, so I said it sounds like she’s just feeding rock stars to the dysentery virus, and then she started crying.

The arcade floor also included a few of its own breakout spaces, including on dedicated to my all-time favorite 8-bit party trick: a 16-player Faceball 2000 jam. For Game Boy! Years ago, someone discovered that the Game Boy version of Faceball included hooks for 16-player connectivity, even though Game Boy only really had support for four-player linking. I tried to set up an impromptu 16-player session at Midwest Gaming Classic years ago, and I failed horribly because I had no idea what I was doing. But a team of dedicated fan hackers and engineers figured it out, and now it’s a thing you can actually do, in public, with 15 other humans. Amazing.

Aside from the corners dedicated to live streams and BMX stunts, the second floor of the convention center featured a massive vendor hall.

That is to say, a place where you could buy games, but also art and other media. For example, you could snag a copy of Gameplay Harmonies from author Brian Clark and illustrator Enerjax.

Not for sale, but worth admiring all the same: Ecto 1. And Vinz Clortho!

Actually, the vendor floor featured a bunch of familiar vehicles, but I only had eyes for this baby. Sure, it may not look like much, but it’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. And it was made before catalytic converters, so it runs good on regular gas.

I also spotted quite a few LRG releases on the show floor. It’s always a strange (but satisfying) sensation to walk around and see projects I’ve worked on just kind of casually mingling with the likes of Chrono Trigger and Sonic.

Plenty of top-shelf LRG goods out there, too, like the legendary Monkey Island Anthology box set. Don’t ask about what the asking price was. I will say that if you picked it up along with the boxed Sega CD-X sitting next to it, you could totally fail to make next month’s rent. (Of course, if you snagged the CD-X, you’d also need to get the Secret of Monkey Island Classic Edition to make full use of it....)

Midwest Gaming Classic is one of the first major gaming events of the year. You can expect to see Limited Run—either as a company or just as interested individuals—at plenty of additional shows throughout 2026. And you need look no further than this very blog for announcements.