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In this 2024 photo, Tracy Charlton, center, founder of the Utah Retro GameXpo, poses with convention guests at the Davis Conference Center.

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In this undated photo, the convention floor at the Davis Conference Center is flush with attendees of the 2024 Utah Retro GameXpo.

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In this undated photo, a Tetris tournament at the 2024 Utah Retro GameXpo is held.

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Artist Paul Niemeyer will be at Utah Retro GameXpo at the Davis Convention Center on Aug. 8-9, 2025.

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Thanks to social distancing and lockdown orders, people around the world were often forced to find their entertainment at home during the pandemic. For a slew of Gen-Xers and Millennials, that meant taking a warp pipe back to the world of retro gaming, where the princess is usually in another castle, conflicts can be settled in slappers-only mode and Bo Jackson still regularly breaks off 80-yard runs.

It’s a world that Tracy Charlton, owner of Layton’s Minus World Games and the upcoming Utah Retro GameXpo, has inhabited for much of his life.

“We had an Atari when I was younger, but I think it was for my 12th birthday that I asked for an original Nintendo,” Charlton told the Standard-Examiner. “My mom took me to KB Toys, and that’s what I got.”

Fast forward to now and Charlton’s Retro GameXpo — coming to the Davis Conference Center Aug. 8-9 — is bringing back the thrill of acquiring an 8-, 16- or 64-bit console, reveling in the pop culture of the ’80s and ’90s and introducing a whole new generation to the games, toys and other media of years past.

Featured attractions include a full, free-play arcade experience furnished with cabinets from Alan-1 Games and Flynn’s Retrocade in Roy, gaming tournaments, a cosplay contest, an art exhibit of Nintendo Power magazine covers, a charity auction and, for the first time, a professional wrestling component. That’s in addition to a veritable bonanza of vendors and special guests, including gaming-space YouTubers/streamers and icons of pop culture and gaming.

This year’s guest lineup features the likes of former WWE champion Sgt. Slaughter, “Pokémon” singer Jason Paige, Q*Bert creator Warren Davis, Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe, “Sonic” series voice actors Ryan Drummond, Scott Dreier and Moriah Angeline, “Peanuts” voice actors Melanie Kohn and Gini Holtzman, content creators John Riggs, “The Immortal” John Hancock, AbdallahSmash, sonictoast, JRPGLife and many, many more.

Artist Paul E. Niemeyer, who created artwork for arcade games like Tron, the Pac-Man series and Mortal Kombat will be making a return to the expo this month, and he is taken aback by the impact his work and the games themselves continue to have on fans.

“I’m meeting all the fans and they’re telling me their stories and how the game affected their lives and how it was so meaningful to them,” Niemeyer told the Standard-Examiner. “I hear this story at almost every show, a different version of it, but generally somebody didn’t have a good relationship with someone in their family — father and son, brothers, whatever, mother and daughter, the father and daughter a couple times — where one of them was playing Mortal Kombat and the other one came into the room and went, ‘What’s this?’ picked up a controller and saved the relationship. I’m blown away.”

It’s a concept he couldn’t have conceived of during his fledgling days at Bally/Midway during the 1980s.

“I remember I was hired at $19,500 a year, which is crappy money even then,” Niemeyer said with a laugh. “They were cranking out games left and right. When I got done with Super Pac-Man, Paul Faris came over to my desk and said, ‘Now you can start Pac-Man Plus.’ I went, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ The funny thing is, the only reason I did any of that artwork was because nobody else wanted to do that artwork in the art department. … ‘Let the new guy do it.’ That’s how I got started. They were all the pinball art gods. They’d been there five or seven years. I’d been there five or seven minutes.”

Now, he meets fans at 20-plus conventions annually, and he’s looking forward to his latest return to Northern Utah, home to some of his favorite skiing experiences.

The Utah Retro GameXpo has grown by leaps and bounds since its inception. The event began as a retro gaming swap meet held in a tent behind Charlton’s Layton store and, at the time, he had real anxiety about whether anyone would attend.

“That weekend I was like, miserable. It rained and hailed and I was watching the weather forecast for weeks before and I’m like, ‘I’ve got to get a tent,'” Charlton said. “So, I ended up renting a big tent for out there and it was muddy and dirty … people were, because I had my store open, they were coming into my store and tracking in mud.”

When all was said and done, though, roughly 1,000 people had come out for the swap meet. Since then, the event has morphed into a fully-fledged pop culture convention. Some 5,500 people squeezed into Charlton’s portion of the conference center last August. This year, he says the expo will span the entirety of the building; attendees can expect to see an additional 80 vendors participating.

Charlton noted that he works to make the event affordable for vendors, which passes through to attendees.

“You go to expos in other states and you look at stuff and you’re like, ‘Wait, this is way, way too much,'” Charlton said. “I know they have to pay for their booth or whatever, but I don’t charge a whole lot for my booths. … What I wanted to do is make it a little bit more accessible to vendors. And, in turn, people who come in to buy things, they’re going to get a good deal on something.”

And while the Gen-X crowd may get the most out of the event, Charlton believes there will be something for everybody to enjoy at the expo.

“You have a lot of the younger kids, and when I say younger kids, like kids in their 20s, who are into this,” Charlton said. “Those are the kids I see coming into my store because they’re getting into the old gaming, old systems and things like that. We’ll have a 20-year-old kid come in and buy a Nintendo 64 or a Game Boy and start collecting for those. It’s almost, like, all ages to your younger kids.”

Event passes for the Utah Retro GameXpo are currently available online via https://utahretrogamexpo.com/. Friday passes are available for $14, Saturday passes for $17 and two-day passes for $27. Kids ages seven and under will be admitted free of charge.